Expelled

One of the side effects of identifying yourself with a group, any group, is that others in that group will stop thinking of you as an individual. They will assume that you share the views, opinions, and political leanings of the majority of the group. Since my personal views vary so dramatically I don’t seem to really fit into any real group identity. I pride myself in being a free-thinker. I evaluate each idea and opinion based on their individual merits and not who else is behind me. One area that frequently causes me issues is home schooling. We home school our oldest and but the others are doing just fine in public school. At PTA meetings we might hear somebody bad mouth home-schoolers and then have the awkward silence when the find out that that we home school. Or our home-schooler friends will bad mouth public school only to have the awkward silence when they find out that we have two of our kids in public school.
The latest such conflict of ideas happened yesterday over the subject of intelligent design. Many home-schoolers are doing so for religious reasons. They just don’t think that kids are getting enough religion while at school. So it’s not surprising that I received the following email from a home school specific yahoo group.

To: hsconnectgroup; NorthGaHome Educators
Subject: [hsconnect] TAKE ACTION
About the film

WHO Ben Stein, in the new film EXPELLED: No intelligence allowed

WHAT His heroic and at times, shocking journey confronting the world's top scientist, educators and philoshers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few.

WHERE Ben travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth that bewilders him, then angers him and then spurs him to action!

WHY Ben realizes that he has been "Expelled", and that educators and scientist are being ridiculed, denied tenture and even fired for the "crime" of merely believing that there might be evidence of "design" in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance.

To which Ben says: "Enought!" And then gets busy. NOBODY messes with Ben.

Check it out!!
http://www.getexpelled.com/

Take action. Contact this lady to request that the movie be brought to our theatre here in town. If the recieve overwhelming support for the movie we might be able to get it here in town.
http://www.getexpelled.com/


Well I don’t accept the theory of intelligent design. I have no problem with the symbolic language of the Genesis and I accept the Bible as an inspired book to help my faith. However it is not, and was never intended to be a science textbook. When pressed to detail their theory most ID proponents are forced to admit that they really have no theory. All ID amounts to is a criticism of the flaws in evolutionary theory with nothing to replace or answer their own questions. The crux of their argument is to surrender their argument and simply say, “It is this way because God made it this way.”
As I’ve stated before, I agree with Galileo on this one.
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
So I fired off the following reply:

Thank you for copying me on this email. We will not be paying to see
this movie and will not be substituting theology for our children's
science education.
For advanced reviews of his movie and an objective review of the
science, or lack thereof, behind intelligent design theory please visit
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

I encourage my readers, both of you, to check out this site as well. Another poster on a discussion board that I frequent made the following observation and I don’t think I could have said it better, "If they spent half as much time reading about science as they did fearing it they'd know enough to not fear it."