Kevin Eleven is a lying sack of santorum

Kevin 11, the screenwriter for "Expelled," had been telling us on his blog that he doesn't say anywhere in his film that Darwin or atheism were the cause of Hitler's policies. Yet according to this "Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda," by Richard Dawkins, people like Michael Shermer have gotten letters saying things like this:

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

It turned out the author of the letter had just seen "Expelled."

Some blame is put on Ben Stein for the film's mendacious suggestion that Darwin and atheism are to blame for Hitler. However, Stein was only a hired actor speaking the lines given to him by Kevin 11. He didn't necessarily know. Kevin is the one who did the "research" and crafted the blue print for this propaganda film. He has less of an excuse.

And if you go to his blog you'll find Kevin continually trying to deny he has made any such connection. In the comments section of his blog, for example, this one, he wrote:

...no one is arguing that Darwinism is a sufficient condition for Nazism, but it is a necessary one, because Darwinism provided the philosophical and scientific justifications for pre-existing prejudices and hatreds.

New communications technologies, railroads and trucks were necessary conditions to kill millions, but Darwin's theory was not. Without the trains and trucks for the transportation of the victims, Hitler's henchmen could not have gotten them to the camps easily. Without the communications technology, Hitler and his henchmen couldn't have passed their orders across Germany and Europe.

Does anyone really think that all the pogroms and antisemitic violence before Darwin would not have been worse if only they had better technology? The attacks against Jews back during the Crusades, the Pogrom of 1096 in France and Germany? The massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189-1190? In the eleventh century there were Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain.

I had already noted before that the Germans had plenty of philosophical and pseudo-scientific justifications without using Darwin. In fact, many of the justifications used were specifically Christian.

Not only are "necessary conditions" such as railroads and radio generally considered morally blameless, or at least not something to be abandoned because they enabled mass murder, the idea that Darwin's theory is even in that group is utterly bogus. The first assumption in this faulty logic here is that because the killings of millions of people like that didn't happen until after Darwin that his theory might be a necessary condition or cause. But killing people, killing Jews, in large numbers, hundreds and thousands, goes back to before the Roman empire. The only big change was in humanity's capability to organize and move people.

Kevin 11 admits that his research pretty much involved reading books like Peter Weikart's "From Darwin to Hitler," which is itself a political propaganda book.



UPDATE:
Brian Flemming predicted it would happen on his last blogpost, but I couldn't believe they'd be that stupid.

It appears that the producers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (in the making of this film) have used John Lennon's song, "Imagine," in their film without getting permission. Yoko Ono, and Lennon's sons are suing the filmmakers.

And the never ending freak show just goes on and on and on...

PZ is the ring-master under the circus big top with his top-hat, tails and cane and he directs our attention to ring number one where an "American-style ministry" (our country is now an adjective for theological idiocy) pretends to offer medical treatment and psychiatric care, but instead tells their patients that they're not good enough Christians to rid themselves of their demons. And after being locked away from society for so long, the patients start to believe them. You can hear the old familiar chant off in the echoing distance; "one of us, one of us, one of us..."


Then PZ directs our attention to another ring where the odious Sally Kern, the Oklahoma legislator who babbles about gay conspiracies while her gay son is essentially deleted from her public life because he's not... "one of us, one of us, one of us, one of us..."

Then, dramatic music and a drum roll, and then PZ unveils, in the center ring, the main attraction, the makers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” And boy did this monster freak draw in the crowds! The news is all over the internet. Even the New York Times has taken note.

You probably know the story by now, and if you don't, you won't have any problems finding information if you follow the links in the above paragraph. However, to make the flow of this post at least slightly coherent, here's a brief recap: PZ and Richard Dawkins (among others) were interviewed under false pretenses for the "Expelled" film. PZ noted this on his blog. The film is supposed to be about a lack of academic freedom for people who hold to the Intelligent Design "theory." The film even thanks PZ and Dawkins in the credits. Then the film makers started screening their opus for selective audiences -- you know, they wanted viewers to be "one of us, one of us, one of us..." And when PZ and Dawkins tried to attend one of the screenings, PZ was expelled, he wasn't allowed to see a film he was in (yet Dawkins got in).

You can sure tell who is one of us, one of us, one of us and who is one of them by their reaction to this movie. ID proponents and creationists loved it. Science defenders were appalled by it.

I haven't seen the film myself, but from the reviews it seems like all its "rational," supposedly fact based, arguments can be easily defeated. The idea that Darwinism and atheism lead to Hitler is an old lie I've already dealt with here and here.

However, the film isn't about rational arguments, it sounds more like its about psychological manipulation and it exploits how we judge the thoughts of others. It will probably be effective, in a limited way, in increasing the divisiveness of the theist/atheist debate and push a certain group of theists deeper into a delusional interpretation of science, history and the nature of the current culture war. Atheists will be provoked into becoming more insulting and dismissive of all theists.

There's something very Rovian about this movie:


It may work to the advantage of the Republican think tanks that want to prevent the political compromises some evangelicals might want to make with the Democratic side.

It wasn't too long ago that this debate seemed to take place at a higher level. When people argued about why irreducible complexity wasn't a valid biological concept and the arguments were academic. But after the Dover trial things started to get nasty.

Knowing now that they can't win either a legal or scientific battle the proponents of ID and creationism have shifted into a new strategy. I'm not exactly sure what they are trying to do with this Expelled movie (I haven't even seen it) but it wouldn't surprise me if increasing divisiveness and pushing the argument down to lower levels is exactly what they want. Their reasons are probably political and have little to do with either science or academic freedom. This is, rather, a Swift-boating of science and academy.

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UPDATE:

1) Greg Wright claims to have discovered that one of the three publicity firms now handling Expelled is CRC Public Relations, the firm employed by the Swift Boat veterans. They crafted press releases about the Myers flap and Stein’s visit to Missouri.

2) Tyler DiPietro left a comment here saying he thinks "Expelled!" goes farther than identity politics and fear-mongering. He thinks the film-maker's real goal are aimed at getting Horowitz-style bills through local legislatures that hamstring the academy. He left a link to his blog, here.