Blue Collar Scientist

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is out, and it looks pretty certain at this point as though it is only appealing to religious extremists. Predictions from the producers that the movie would make $12 to $15 million on opening weekend, and blow Fahrenheit 9-11 out of the water, have turned out to be no more than smoke from a wet campfire. And the self-satisfied predictions from the producers that this was going to be as big a deal to science as Galileo and Copernicus - well, that was all just silly.

But now that the movie is out, the fringe religious activists that are behind it are going to follow up with certain political action. I think that one of the political actions they are going to take is to try to get the movie screened in schools.

It isn’t a new idea - this was done with An Inconvenient Truth, for which a program was started to distribute free copies to science teachers. I’d expect a program like this to crop up for Expelled sometime soon, and I’m not the only one.

So, the question is - what do we do about it?

I’m of the opinion that the more widely that Expelled is seen the better - movies like this one, which are blatantly antisemitic, obviously misleading and condescending to the audience, and, by most accounts, overwhelmingly boring, really can’t hurt our cause as long as we are in a position to respond to what is happening.

At the moment we have no coherent response. I’m thinking of putting together (along with some of my friends) an information pack for Alaska school districts about the movie, utilizing some of the resources at Expelled Exposed, here, and elsewhere on the net. Perhaps I should seek the collaboration of other potentially interested organizations?

Let me know what you think.