Deceit and the Creationists

Hmm -- seems to go together, doesn't it. I've been casually following PZ Myers' comments on the film Expelled, a creationist propaganda piece for which he was interviewed under false pretenses. If you're familiar with Myers, you know he's a biologist and a vocal atheist. The shenanigans of the producers of the film have been quite entertaining, but ultimately seriously dangerous. Tristero points out some of the issues in the controversy at Hullabaloo. The post takes off from this piece by Matt Nisbet, which is thoroughly off-base, although well-meaning.

The simplistic and unscientific claim that more knowledge leads to less religion might be the particular delusion of Dawkins, Myers, and many others, but it is by no means the official position of science, though they often implicitly claim to speak for science. Nor does it stand up to mounds of empirical evidence about the complex relationship between science literacy and public perceptions.

Excuse me? First off, as tristero points out, the film doesn't give raw footage of Myers and Dawkins -- this has been edited. Second, neither man claims to speak for science, and what entity do we go to for the "official" position of science? I hadn't realized there was such a thing. Tristero:

First of all, Nisbet is not quite accurate here. If you actually watch the clip and suffer through the insufferably bad music, you will find fairly innocuous statements by Dawkins and PZ (the "fairy tales" stuff is a bit gratuitous, but hardly offensive compared to what McCain bff Pastor Hagee has said about Catholics). In fact, the Dawkins/Myers material is actually pretty thin and uncontroversial. Hence the unbearable, ominous music and more importantly, the addition of a third interviewee - not Dawkins or Myers - who declares religion "evil" and who serves as the button for the segment.

Secondly, NIsbet fails to realize that Dawkins and PZ didn't create the takeaway message. The producers of the film did, by deliberately misleading them about the nature of the film in the first place, asking questions that provoked certain hoped-for answers, and most critically, editing the film in such a way as to turbo-charge the message. When you're dealing with dishonest filmmakers - Matt, they lied about the nature of the film in order to snag face time with PZ and Dawkins - then no matter who they had "representing" science - including Nisbet himself - they would be slathered with bad music and edited to look like the Devil Incarnate.

It goes back to my recurring message, which tristero restates: dialogue is not possible with people who refuse to acknowledge that there is any legitimate opinion but their own and who do not include the word "compromise" in their vocabulary.