Expelled Exposed: The Untold Sequel - Dr Richard Colling

Looks to me like we need to get a PR crew together to make our own version of EXPELLED: NO SCIENCE ALLOWED. Perhaps it would be better to hire professional filmmakers and documentary makers and not leave the task to scientists alone. We could even hire such notables as Kirk Cameron for on-screen talent. I'm sure that for enough money he would be willing to change sides.

Smilar things happened to Terry Gray and H. Van Nil (Calvin College). I'm still trying to figure out how these came out.

Gray "recanted" but it was a strange recantation that is difficult to understand. AFAICT, he agreed to simultaneously believe that Adam was created from dust and that evolution is the current fact and theory in biology.

Van Nil apparently managed to hang onto his job at Calvin. As far as I know, evolution is still taught there.

I hope someone is compiling a systematic list of the *real* persecution stories of pro-evo people by ID/creationists, as opposed to the trumped-up stories told by the makers of Excreted.

Been said before. It is foolish to make believing false and dumb things a litmus test for a religion. People quite often will take it seriously. The fundies have produced more atheists than Dawkins et al. by a lot. Dawkins may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The fundies have made it a compelling reason.

The Catholic church tried that once with Galileo and G. Bruno and geocentrism. They changed their mind in a hurry. Pope Pius said it best, "One Galileo in 2,000 years is enough."

The creos will lose in the end. Reality is what it is, no matter how many scientists and science supporters get persecuted. The only question is whether this will be before or after they bring down our American civilization. All civilizations end, the British and Soviet empires ended within living memory. It would be nice if it hangs together for a few more decades.

I hope someone is compiling a systematic list of the *real* persecution stories of pro-evo people by ID/creationists, as opposed to the trumped-up stories told by the makers of Excreted.

Posting the list of who is really being beaten up, threatened, fired, attempted to be fired, and killed. Not surprisingly, it is scientists and science supporters by Death Cultists. There is a serious reign of terror by Xian fundie terrorists directed against the reality based academic community, specifically acceptors of evolution. I’m keeping a running informal tally, listed below. They include death threats, firings, attempted firings, assaults, and general persecution directed against at least 10 people. The Expelled Liars have totally ignored the ugly truth of just who is persecuting who. If anyone has more info add it. Also feel free to borrow or steal the list. I thought I’d post all the firings of professors and state officials for teaching or accepting evolution. 2 professors fired, Bitterman (SW CC Iowa) and Bolyanatz (Wheaton) 1 persecuted unmercifully Richard Colling (Olivet) 1 attempted firing Murphy (Fuller Theological by Phillip Johnson IDist) 1 successful death threats, assaults harrasment Gwen Pearson (UT Permian) 1 state official fired Chris Comer (Texas) 1 assault, fired from dept. Chair Paul Mirecki (U. of Kansas) 1 killed, Rudi Boa, Biomedical Student (Scotland) Death Threats Eric Pianka UT Austin and the Texas Academy of Science engineered by a hostile, bizarre IDist named Bill Dembski Death Threats Michael Korn, fugitive from justice, towards the UC Boulder biology department and miscellaneous evolutionary biologists. Up to 10 with little effort. Probably there are more. I turned up a new one with a simple internet search. Haven’t even gotten to the secondary science school teachers. And the Liars of Expelled have the nerve to scream persecution. On body counts the creos are way ahead.

There is also the sad, but true, case of a Turkish college professor who was murdered by an Islamofascist zealot in Turkey for believing in evolution.

raven: Dawkins may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The fundies have made it a compelling reason.

John Kwok: There is also the sad, but true, case of a Turkish college professor who was murdered by an Islamofascist zealot in Turkey for believing in evolution.

Venus Mousetrap:

raven: Dawkins may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The fundies have made it a compelling reason.

I guess you meant Darwin, but I may have to steal this quote. ^^

for Raven:

QoD has a recent posting on Van Till here:

http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/

(scroll down to the second post)

this fills in some info.

I met Colling at the last NABT meeting in Atlanta, and I have a copy of his book - all I need is time to read it...

Similar things happened to Terry Gray and H. Van Nil (Calvin College).

freethoughtassociation.org: Dr. Van Till expected that the reaction from his Calvin colleagues and those presiding over that institution for higher learning, would have a polite and fruitful engagement with him over the ideas expressed in his book, and that they would have prepared intellectual and carefully crafted arguments. But what he faced was angry objections and from-the-gut, not the head, emotional reactions. An ad hoc committee was set up by the trustees to probe into his convictions regarding the 1619 decrees. When he got questions in writing, he responded with a well crafted and full (10 pages; single-spaced!) reply. He also questioned the necessity of the requirement of signing the Form of Subscription still, and this brought about its own backlash. Finally, feeling like a mouse in a roomful of cats (as he put it), he no longer would agree to take part in the interrogation which went beyond the pale in both scope and duration. He was attacked—sometimes in full page writings, in an ill-mannered way—by ill-informed detractors, who had often at best only a feeble grasp of the academic issues that they took him to task with. Ultimately, what he had written was not only accepted but came to be supported and encouraged. He was honored, in 1999, with the Faith and Learning Award, for his work in integrating faith with true knowledge—including knowledge gained about the workings of the world from discoveries made SINCE the 1700’s! Van Till told us about how a colleague and friend he had known for some three decades, was reduced to tears due to having his worldview threatened (as he experienced it) by his (Van Till’s) honest opinions and writings. The changes he had made in his journey of discovery (self-discovery and about other portraits of reality) had been subtle and incremental as Van Till perceived it. So he was shocked to find himself being seen as so different, threatening and emotionally provacative to those he had had such a close personal and professional relationship with. All these experiences took their toll and caused him to re-examine his personal portrait of reality further, to expand his thinking to include more and more ways of interpreting the world around him and to ponder how we each create our own portrait of reality from our backgrounds and genetic endowment.

raven:

John Kwok: There is also the sad, but true, case of a Turkish college professor who was murdered by an Islamofascist zealot in Turkey for believing in evolution.

Do you have any more info? I googled "Turkey college professor evolution" among other words and all I got was your post.

I note on the 'expelled the movie' site that there are one or two posts about those who accepted evolution being 'harassed.' Perhaps we should start posting our own examples on the Expelled site?

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

They may then start dropping such posts, but that would be another example of their duplicity. Will some of you try this?

Do you have any more info? I googled “Turkey college professor evolution” among other words and all I got was your post.

noticed that you dropped mentioning the death threats against Judge Jones and his family. They were under the protection of the US Marshall Service for a while.

"Or you can take the blue pill and go back to your dream world …sans.. MATRIX"

I'll take reality "sans" Matrix, thanks.

Dawkins may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The fundies have made it a compelling reason.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Would it be too much to ask the Administrators to delete Bornagain77's latest post, given as how it's a copy and paste duplicate of his previous post from 3 to 4 months ago, and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread?

My pleasure. Born Again, gone again

OK you’re both wrong :)

raven: Gray "recanted" but it was a strange recantation that is difficult to understand. AFAICT, he agreed to simultaneously believe that Adam was created from dust and that evolution is the current fact and theory in biology.

Raven said:

Gray “recanted” but it was a strange recantation that is difficult to understand. AFAICT, he agreed to simultaneously believe that [Adam was created from dust] and that evolution is the current fact and theory in biology.

Well, aren't we all made from the dust of the earth, which was stardust at one time? If not, then what else are we made from? Sounds like Gray was paraphrasing Galileo by saying "Yes, I believe in god but the earth still moves."

He knows he's up the creek in regards to teaching at his prison, but he's not giving up his ideas.

raven: 1 successful death threats, assaults harrasment Gwen Pearson (UT Permian)

Just because there are evolutionists who are militant atheists doesn’t imply we all are. Likewise, just because some evangelicals are opposed to true academic freedom does not imply that we all are.

“Gwen Pearson death threat” doesn’t turn up anything on Google except your posts.

Gwen Pearson from www.publiceye.org 1996. Smiting science By Gwen Pearson On my first day of work as a new assistant professor at the Permian Basin branch of the University of Texas, I signed in and bantered with one of the university secretaries, a nice woman who wanted to make me feel welcome. After we established that I did not wish to purchase any Amway products, she invited me to go to church with her family that weekend. "Oh, no thanks," I said. "It's a lovely Lutheran church. You'll love it." After a few more urgings on her part, I gave her the truth: "Um, actually, I'm an agnostic." "Oh. Well, I don't think we have one of those churches here. You'll probably have to drive to Lubbock." That was my introduction to the community in which I was to live and teach for three years. Each week I seemed to discover a new facet of the city's religious fervor. At faculty orientation, a history professor told me of a note that he received from a European history student explaining she would not attend class that week. The lecture topic: Darwin and the influence of On The Origin of the Species on late 19th-century English social policy. Even discussion of the theory of evolution as an historic event was not acceptable to this student. I started my senior-level university evolution class with an introduction to the scientific method, and a brief history of the development of evolutionary theory, including its legal status. About a month into my first semester, I got my first hint that all was not well. I found a photograph of me from the student newspaper taped to my door with horns, blacked out teeth, and a "666" on my forehead. I took it down; another one was put up the next day. This seemed annoying but harmless. Shortly after, the first assignment in my evolution class was due: a written review of a Stephen J. Gould paper. Here I discovered the anger of my students at being "forced" to take a course in what they perceived was blasphemy. Although I never stated my religious beliefs, by being the teacher of this subject, I was assumed to be an atheist, a communist, and a source of evil. Here is a sample of comments garnered from those student papers: "The Word tells us there will be many false teachers in the end times, and I firmly believe that anyone who detracts, further interprets or lessens the context of the Word by applying worldly standards and principles is falling into Satan's deception and rapidly becoming one of those false teachers." The persuasiveness of Gould's argument annoyed one student: "Just as some religion has attempted to manipulate with emotion, Gould has tried to coerce with intelligence." I learned that one of my students was required to "confess" to the sin of attending my class before her whole church congregation. She eventually dropped out of class. I also ran into conflicts when I taught my environmental ethics course. At least half the class maintained there was no need to be concerned about environmental deterioration, because the Apocalypse was coming. One student wrote: "I believe the Lord instituted marriage for the purpose of procreation and He did not set limits on family size....I believe the Lord is coming back to the earth to take the Christians to Heaven before overpopulation will have a chance to destroy the earth!" This all became a great deal more serious when I began to get messages on my home answering machine threatening to assist me in reaching hell, where I would surely end up. I also received threatening mail messages: "The Bible tells us how to deal with nonbelievers: 'Bring those who would not have me to reign over them, and slay them before me.' May Christians have the strength to slaughter you and end your pitiful, blasphemous life!" An envelope containing student evaluations from my evolution class was tampered with. A student wrote a letter to the president of the university claiming that I said in class that "anyone who believes in God gets an F." Despite the fact that she had never been in my class, and it was clearly untrue, a full investigation of the charge ensued. There were other problems. Often I arrived in class to find "Dr. Feminazi" scrawled on the blackboard. An emotionally disturbed student assaulted me on campus. In town, Maurice Sendak's award-winning book Where the Wild Things Are was removed from school libraries, as it might "confuse children as to the true nature of Beelzebub." The California-based Institute for Creation Research (ICR) preached in the county stadium to 10,000 local people. I finally resigned when I received an admonition from the dean in my yearly reappointment letter to "accommodate the more intellectually conservative students with a low threshold of offensibility" in my evolution course. Rather than compromise my academic freedom, I chose to leave what seemed to be a dangerous place. Gwen Pearson is currently an assistant professor at Albion College in Michigan. Potential publishers for her book, God in a Box, may contact her at [deleted email address]

I had students holding prayer meetings outside my door one semester while I was teaching. Apparently, several of our courses are on the "do not take list" at the local University baptist church. Nothing like the shocker above, but Raven is right -- we need a public assembly of such stories from around the country.

raven:

Just because there are evolutionists who are militant atheists doesn’t imply we all are. Likewise, just because some evangelicals are opposed to true academic freedom does not imply that we all are.

I know and point this out often. Some of the people who run this website, PT, are Xians.

My finer point is not only are other kinds of Christians friendly to evolution but so are many evangelicals.

Not all Christians are fundamentalist evolution deniers, but I still get creeped out by people who believe in patent nonsense. Sam Harris correctly points out that it's the so-called moderate religionists who make it possible for the 'radicals'. He also points out that the truest implementation of Christianity was the period of the Inquisition. I like his take on it. He wryly notes that it was during this time when the Bible was being used most literally. So the Crusades and Inquisition were not an aberation of Christian values but the truest expression of them.

You can't 'believe in the Bible' as the written word and law of GOD and not be a radical. It's only because we've had a couple thousand years of beating back the tyranny of religion that we are even able to have these discussions.

As a constitutionalist, I have a hard time justifying outlawing religion because people have a right to believe lunatic things UP TO THE POINT THEY TRY TO BRING IT TO THE PUBLIC SPHERE. We don't let crazy parents deny their kids necessary life saving medicine on the basis of religious belief (for the most part anyway). You can't yell Fire! in a crowded theater with your free speech rights. Time to clamp down on the relignotards if they're not happy staying on their side of the church-state divide.

Enjoy.

evolution is evil nonsense, of the devil, anti-God, anti-intellectual, anti-Christ

Mike said: evolution is evil nonsense, of the devil, anti-God, anti-intellectual, anti-Christ

Study at OLU Chicago and IL, and earn your associate, bachelor's or master's degree online or by distance learning within two years. Olivet's adult education degree programs are designed to accommodate the working adult.

Study at OLU Chicago and IL, and earn your associate, bachelor's or master's degree online or by distance learning within two years. Olivet's adult education degree programs are designed to accommodate the working adult.

I would like to nominate the above robot spam for the most obscene and disgusting thing I've seen on the internet this year. Oli vet Nazcarene Univacuostity is responsible for persecuting scientists. To have its tawdry little spam ads in this thread is intolerable.

Dave Luckett said: I would like to nominate the above robot spam for the most obscene and disgusting thing I've seen on the internet this year. Oli vet Nazcarene Univacuostity is responsible for persecuting scientists. To have its tawdry little spam ads in this thread is intolerable.

I do not deny Dr. Colling’s scientific skill and knowledge. What bothers me is the conclusions which are extrapolations of science. You would do no injustice to his book or science if every time you see the phrase “therefore this is an example of evolution” with the phrase “therefore this is an example of an intelligent design created by an Intelligent designer.” Evolution and Creation both use circumstantial evidence to support their logical extensions into expressions of faith.

Evolution and Creation both use circumstantial evidence to support their logical extensions into expressions of faith.

I have to agree that I am also bothered by conclusions that are unjustified extrapolations of science. I believe the evidence equally supports the mainstream planetary science view of the nature of the Moon -- and my belief that it is made of green cheese.

wile coyote said: I have to agree that I am also bothered by conclusions that are unjustified extrapolations of science. I believe the evidence equally supports the mainstream planetary science view of the nature of the Moon -- and my belief that it is made of green cheese.

As a former member of the Nazarene Church I was under the impression that the University existed to perpetuate a lifestyle and a way of thinking about the Bible and God, and that money was raised in local churches to fund it. If someone disagreed with the people paying his wages that he should find some secular atheistic university to employ him. Academic freedom is an interesting concept if your employer supports the idea. If not, it may be insubordination.

I'm all for that. I would be happy to know there is a University out there that would censure a teacher of astronomy for refusing to teach that the Moon is made of green cheese.

Floyd wrote:

"...he should find some secular atheistic university to employ him."

Great idea. Can you recommend one? I would be very interested in knowing about an atheist univeristy. I didn't know they did enough fund raising to have their own universities. Is the word atheist in their mission statement? Do they require you to sign a statement of nonbelief? Do they have nonprayer meetings required for all faculty and students?

What about a Buddist university or a Hindu university? Would you prefer that they worship no God at all rather than a different God than you?

Oh well, at least you don't support the academic freedom that so many creationists seem to be in favor of.

DS said: Oh well, at least you don't support the academic freedom that so many creationists seem to be in favor of.

and my belief that it is made of green cheese.

Great idea. Can you recommend one? I would be very interested in knowing about an atheist univeristy. I didn’t know they did enough fund raising to have their own universities. Is the word atheist in their mission statement?

Henry J said: On the bright side, on of those would have no trouble declaring itself to be a nonprophet organization.

Academic freedom is an interesting concept if your employer supports the idea.

Floyd Coates said: As a former member of the Nazarene Church I was under the impression that the University existed to perpetuate a lifestyle and a way of thinking about the Bible and God, and that money was raised in local churches to fund it.

Oops that first sentence should read "...for our empirical observations..." D'oh!

Cheers for the post, your blog looks solid! I have wanted to watch Where the Wild Things Are since it came out but I haven't had the chance yet. This totally made me want to see it even more!

That is definitely terrific and really nicely written. Typically I won't make posts on on the internet, Then again I have to give you props on this one. Awesome blog