makeshiftmind

Ben Stein’s pseudo-documentary Expelled, a film about the alleged prejudice against intelligent design advocates in scientific establishments, has been receiving a lot of negative attention in the scientific community because it borrows heavily from Michael Moore’s playbook, i.e., it’s a dishonest film that does not present facts accurately.

Scientific American, a very popular scientific magazine, has written an interesting article called “Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know…” that details six of the film’s most disturbing flaws. Atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, who was interviewed for the film, claims that, among other things, he and his colleagues were told that they were being interviewed for a totally different film, and that their quotes were taken out of context and twisted. He has posted an article called “Lying for Jesus” that heavily criticizes the film. The film’s Wikipedia article catalogs the controversy surrounding the film with quite a bit of detail.

Whether you are a creationist, an evolutionist, and ID advocate or just undecided, twisting facts, distorting quotes, and citing material out of context is a very low way to solicit your position. Don’t accept less than the truth.

Ok, my clock reads 10:04 AM and I am already pissed of.  Here’s why.

First, I found a site about the world’s most worthless money.  Straight from the first page:

As Americans worry about the rate of inflation exceeding 4 percent, we should consider Zimbabwe, where the inflation rate broke the shocking 100,000 percent mark and the country released a 10 million-dollar note (now valued below $4 on the black market).

Why this pisses me of: dude, it’s a ten million dollar bill.  Released to the public.  TEN. MILLION. DOLLARS.  You would think that someone in the Zimbabwe government would be like, “You know, maybe there’s an problem here when we’re printing $10M dollar bills.  Maybe we should find out why our economy is so fucking horrible, and quit pretending like everything is fine.”  In all honesty, Zimbabwe could probably distribute toilet paper with more value.  But no, instead, men (and probably women!) who love power and oppression continue to pump out waste and pretend it’s legit currency.  Understand this: inflation is pretending that reality is something it is NOT.  And Zimbabwe’s meathead leaders pretend that reality is 100,000% what it is NOT.

The second thing that pissed me off this morning is a story about a baby born in India with a deformity that caused her to literally have “two faces”.  What really makes me angry is that she is being worshiped as a Hindu goddess.  Seriously.  Folks, what does it say about your belief system when you elevate physical deformity to godesshood?  When you view the destruction of the natural order as a good thing?  This is so deranged and anti-life that it makes me want to puke.  I feel sorry for this poor infant, and hope that she grows to overcome her deformity, live the best life she can, and disregard the religious nonsense that calls believers to worship physical corruption.

Four prominent atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) spend a few hours talking about religion and their own beliefs.

Hour 1

Hour 2