Religion

PZ Myers Gets Expelled

This is completely hilariously awesomely fantastically awesome.

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12 Comments

  1. Oh no! This is going to go straight to PZ’s head! His ego will swell immensely! He can now say with perfect honesty that he is now clearly considered to be more of a threat to the creationists than is

    Richard Dawkins!

    Seriously, how weird is it that they won’t even let someone they interviewed for the movie see the movie in the theater?! That level of stupid is almost beyond comprehension.

    I’d thought about seeing the movie at some point, but now I think I am busy that day.

  2. You have to wonder if anyone in the theater is going to go “so that guy on the screen is Richard Dawkins… wait a minute, that guy over there is Richard Dawkins! WTF?!”

  3. *Gets duct tape and wraps it around his head in case it explodes*

    I’m not sure I’ll stop laughing before my head explodes.

  4. Thanks for the link, Sam – that’s some quick damage control, although I suppose we should expect them to be on the ball with the propaganda. The article also doesn’t make sense when it comes to refuting PZ’s version of events.

    The writer of that article on the Expelled site claims he saw a man harassing other movie attendees, and that because the man was unidentified, security threw him out. He writes that if one of the producers had been around to recognize him, PZ probably would have been let in … even though he states just a paragraph or so later that the viewing was strictly invitation -only and that Dawkins was a “gatecrasher,” too. In that case, why would they have let PZ in? It seems much more likely that they were prepared for him, since both he and the screening are located in MN – but they wouldn’t necessarily have foreseen Dawkins showing up.

    PZ’s account, however, has several details about waiting in line to show his ID (with his family, no less, not some strange man just wandering around picking on other people), and being specifically threatened with arrest by theater security. Even from a creationist viewpoint, he’s too smart of a man to make up so many false details that can’t be corroborated later. Everyone knows that if you want to get away with a lie, you keep it as vague as possible.

    You know, like the Expelled article’s version of what happened.

    Frankly, I don’t believe it. And I don’t believe that the producers of film so focused on “free speech,” as the last paragraph of that article claims, should have to resort to policing their invite-only screenings and lying to scientists in order to get interviews for the film in the first place.

    There, I’m done now. :)

  5. I agree, Jen, I’m inclined to believe that PZ was targeted.

    My favorite part of creationist’s account was how he tried to make the movie sound so even-handed. If you highlight his “spoiler” at the end, you get (I swear):

    “Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.”

    Tweeeeeeeeeeet! We have a Godwin Penalty on the offense. 10 yards. Fourth down.

  6. FEXAKE! My ironical humour circuits are fried! I’m STILL laughing! Oh my (lack of) god, this is the BEST!

  7. Contrast Stuart Blessman’s backtracking, once he was called on what can only be described as dishonesty. From the comments section where his first account was reproduced:

    “Yes, you registered online, but the initial invitation was by invite only. You registered who was coming in your invited group, not just “first come, first serve.”

    And since I was literally 3 feet away from Myers when he was “expelled,” I heard every word. It was obvious he was being kicked out by theatre management because he was not invited nor was he on the pre-submitted list. He didn’t cause a disruption per se; he was kindly escorted out.”

    with his original statement:

    “I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself.”

    So, he was “literally 3 feet away from Myers when he was “expelled,”, and could hear, “every word”, and yet, he couldn’t quite make his mind up whether PZ “didn’t cause a disruption”, or whether the “management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in.”

    Obviously, his first account, claiming that PZ was causing trouble, is the one that is making its way around numerous Christian sites, including the “Expelled” site.

    I think that I will go with the four or five accounts of the people that I trust, to be honest.

  8. The fundies project their own vitrol onto their critics. I’ve never met PZ or even been in the same room as him, but Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris are all very meek and mild mannered guys who are quite soft spoken, yet people are always accusing them of being vitrolic, bitter, militant, shrill, and — perhaps most enlightening — fundamentalist.

    It is projection, pure and simple. Extremists assume that because they feel that way about their critics that everyone else does, too.

    Hitchens is an ass, so I didn’t include him above. He’s certainly not shrill, though. :-)

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