Comments (8) to “Expelled Opening Weekend Income”

1. anon wrote:

   You really want to hammer away on this until you look silly, don’t you?

   Posted on 21-Apr-08 at 10:51 pm | Permalink

2. dalton wrote:

   There’s an amusing review of the film here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200.....MuvHv0kPUI

   I’m afraid the writer wasn’t as impressed as you were.

   Posted on 22-Apr-08 at 3:40 am | Permalink

3. Charles Anthony wrote:

   Matthew,
   I suggest that you read Richard Dawkins himself concerning alien seeding:
   

   “Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It’s the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be.
   —SNIP—
   The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such ‘Directed Panspermia’ was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent ‘crane’ (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen.“

   That much of what he is saying is sound.
   Having said that, Dawkins goes on with other conclusions which are not sound, in my opinion. Nevertheless, Ben Stein (and now yourself) harping on this theory in this manner is unjustified.

   Posted on 22-Apr-08 at 6:12 am | Permalink

4. Ken wrote:

   Here’s another review of the movie:

   “Flunk This Movie!
   Ben Stein’s new anti-science movie Expelled is all worldview and no evidence.

   Ronald Bailey | April 16, 2008″

   http://www.reason.com/news/show/125988.html

   Posted on 22-Apr-08 at 7:52 am | Permalink

5. dalton wrote:

   Matthew, what’s your source for this statement, please?

   “Second-highest gross earnings for a documentary in its opening weekend! (the #1 spot goes to Michael Moore’s movie that glorifies the Canadian health care system as being efficient…).”

   According to the source you linked to,
   a) the opening weekend gross was $2,970,848, NOT 3.2 million.
   b) other higher opening weekend grosses for documentaries include Farenheit 9/11, Tupac: Resurrection.

   Can you provide your link?

   Posted on 22-Apr-08 at 2:29 pm | Permalink

6. Matthew wrote:

   Charles Anthony, even as Dawkins tries to explain his way out of an unedited, lengthy explanation on the conditions in which he could see ID as possible (and his exact words in the movie were that it was in the realm of possibilities — see the movie for yourself if you don’t believe me; see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtuByYoqS3c for another description of an actual movie-goer’s observations). Dawkins, in his interview, confirmed what us creationists have long observered, which is that militant atheists will believe ANYTHING that allows them to scratch God out of the equation, including aliens descending from on high to seed the world (presumably on the backs of crystals…). Nothing in the quote you offered above has directly disputed this or explained it, so forgive some of us for seeing Dawkins in this instance as being a bit of a pyramid-hatted kook.

   Posted on 22-Apr-08 at 9:23 pm | Permalink

7. Charles Anthony wrote:

   Well, Matthew, I am a creationist and that is not how I view Dawkins. There is no basis for saying that Dawkins will believe ANYTHING and when it comes to this “alien insemination” concept, I actually do not see it as being very far from the truth anyways. God comes from out of this world, as I understand it.

   Your insistence “that militant atheists will believe ANYTHING that allows them to scratch God out of the equation, including aliens descending from on high” is unjustified because Dawkins was simply asked for a possibility. That possibility is valid.
   In other words, Stein baited Dawkins and then took his words out of context. Now, YOU are doing the same.

   Posted on 23-Apr-08 at 4:35 am | Permalink

8. dalton wrote:

   Matthew, you may have missed my request for a source for the information you quoted. We atheists tend to value evidence over assertions of belief, so if you could provide that…? Thanks.

   Posted on 25-Apr-08 at 12:46 pm | Permalink

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