No Intelligance Allowed April 14, 2008

No Intelligance Allowed

By Guest Contributor
April 14, 2008

One of the largest Facebook groups supporting Ben Stein‘s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is (seriously) named this:

Suporters of Ben Steins Movie – Expelled “No Intelligance Allowed”

I. Love. Irony.

The creator of the group had to put this (possibly more amusing) message up:

I have tried and tried and THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE THE SPELLING. PERIOD. I have followed everyones suggestions and there is NO WAY. If you comment on this site about the spelling i will delete the comment…..if you email me about the spelling i will delete your email……if you dont like the spelling of this group name than you will have to take it up with Facebook themselves. They are the ones that make it so i cannot change the name. There is nothing i can do to change the Spelling of this group….however incompetent that may make me sound to you it is reality……

If none of the above satisfies you than start your own ben stein group with the correct spelling and invite all of your friends to your correctly spelled group and the world will be better because you correctly spelled the title of your group…….you will not hurt my feelings in the least.

Chelsy Askren

While we’re on Facebook, though, let’s compare some numbers. How large are the groups in support of the intellectually-bankrupt movie?

Facebook Group Members in Group
I AM EXPELLED: “No intelligence allowed.” 2,953
EXPELLED the movie 873
EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED! 740
Suporters of Ben Steins Movie – Expelled “No Intelligance Allowed” 700
Ben Stein’s Expelled! 390

And on the flip side?

Only one group I found had over 100 members:

Protest Ben Stein’s Expelled 835

We’re bad at this whole Facebook thing.

On a brighter note: The National Center for Science Education, through its website Expelled Exposed, will publish its full response to the movie’s claims tomorrow.

(via grrrl meets world)


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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  • stogoe

    Well, arbitrary groupings and tribal spats aren’t the sort of thing that atheists are well known for.

    Also, I don’t think Expelled needs to be protested. Rather, it should be mocked, dissected, ripped apart and its propaganda hung in the gibbet for all to see. Let them release their ball of lies. Mockery is powerful.

  • Chris in Columbus
  • Kate

    Hahahahahahaa I love morons who can’t spell intelligence…granted, I know spelling is not indicative of intelligence. But knowing how to use spell-check is a pretty good indicator of intelligence. 😉

  • Chris in Columbus

    Stogoe– then come join my page! 🙂 (the link is above)

  • it always hurts me a little when i see those facebook group titles with misspelled words…don’t join them!

  • We’re bad at this whole Facebook thing.

    That’s a good thing, right?

  • Kyle

    Well, I’m not concerned seeing as I’m in a group supporting it. Of course, I’ve posted links to all the background information to various sites like Greg Laden’s or ExpelledExposed. I’ve also been in discourse with some people who are convinced that a) there is a First Amendment right being violated and b) Darwinism does, in fact, lead to genocide and because humans are “natural beings” means that when we decide to perform genocide, it’s “natural”.

  • Vincent

    Personal pet peeve:
    I hate when people get “then” and “than” mixed up.

    Usually it’s done the other way around, so this time it’s particularly grating.

  • Jason

    LOL, I posted on their wall yesterday. I expect my post to be deleted by now, in a cosmic display of irony.

  • I’d rather just not give any more attention to the movie and let it disappear on its own, due to what I hear is its objectively poor craftsmanship.

  • Ron in Houston

    Honestly though what do you expect? It’s just a fact of life that atheists aren’t evangelical about their non-belief.

    I think we should just be thankful that we have any visible and active internet community.

    BTW – thanks to people like you who help pull it together. I know that it takes time to blog so I appreciate the time and effort you put into this blog.

  • Given the billions of times I’ve seen “athiest,” I expected to see “Stien” up there.

  • Josha

    Also, I don’t think Expelled needs to be protested. Rather, it should be mocked, dissected, ripped apart and its propaganda hung in the gibbet for all to see. Let them release their ball of lies. Mockery is powerful.

    I agree, dialogue and criticism will do more to dispel this pseudoscientific way of thinking.

    My brother’s Catholic friends are going to see it this weekend so he’s decided to join them. He said that he was surprised that they fell into this trap created by the ‘Expelled’ crew. He is going so that he is able to critique it and discuss with them the propositions made in the film. (I am not going though. I don’t want to support it monetarily).

  • Ha! I just noticed the other spelling error: “suporters”

    I love it when the other side does the work for us!

    Thanks for the link. 🙂

  • Kyle

    Actually, one of the bigger ones, I don’t know if it’s the one with the misspelling, says it is not a place to debate. In other words, they are expelling those who don’t agree with them.

    Man, irony among irony.

  • geru

    These protest groups are a bit silly anyway. Just try searching for “islam” at Facebook. There’s the “F*ck Islam” group, and then there’s about 20 Anti-“F* ck Islam” groups, all of them with misspelled names.

  • Masao

    It would seem those who can’t spell don’t know what REAL science is either. It ceases to amaze me how people can chose to be ignorant when there are many opportunities to learn and mean really learn, not this quackery crap either.

  • Mriana

    Whoops! I think I need to be more observant, esp when I know my comp saves stuff. 🙁 I didn’t change the name and address on that. 🙁 Avoid sharing computers with family when you can.

  • Kyle W. Peterson

  • I know I didn’t join the protest group, nor do I support the current protests against the pope coming to the US, because I believe in free speech. Why should I protest someone’s free speech? They aren’t using my tax money and they haven’t shown it in public schools, so they are well within their rights. They were dishonest about getting the interviews, but journalism and documentaries are full of that these days. There’s no reason to join a protest group against this movie.

  • Lee

    From watching the Expelled ‘Super Trailer’, the main complaint that Ben Stein seems to have about Evolution and (un)Intelligent Design is that ID does not get its share of coverage in peer reviewed professional science journals – and he seems to liken that to a stifling of freedom of speech for the writers of the articles that are submitted for peer review.

    This argument is flawed because the purpose of peer reviewed articles is to keep academic and professional information up to a standard that ensures the reliability of the information contained within. It is a privilege – not a right – to be published in such a journal (and if you’re stupid enough to send an article for peer review that is not capable of passing the test of the scientific method, then you’re asking for the ridicule you receive!).

    I’m certain that if the proponents of ID ever submitted an article that was worthy of a peer reviewed journal, then it would certainly be published and raved about incessantly.

  • Trying to help them out…

    I appear to have grabbed the screenshot from one of the other Expelled groups I posted to, but I posted the same thing to the one with the multiple spelling errors.

  • Seriously, we are bad at this Facebook thing! We have the blog thing down and have a nice online community, but why don’t we have more of a presence on social networking sites? They’re a great way to spread the word.

    Oh, that reminds me to go dust off my MySpace account…

  • I rarely use my facebook account, I hate that kind of stuff. But just for you I joined the group. Ben Stein is going down now baby!

  • Cade

    Alright, I’m going to shamelessly plug my group on Facebook.

    “There is no god and the Babel Fish proves it!”
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7627053132

  • Irony. Over. Whelming. Can’t. Breathe

  • Katie

    When it comes to the Web (discounting non-personal blogs), the most talking is typically done by the stupidest people. Why?

    Well, they’re stupid, which is why they’re wasting all their time babbling incoherently about things they can’t even spell, let alone understand.

    They also have nothing better to do, which is why they are able to do this in the first place.

    Those of us with or pursuing college degrees (who actually deserve said degrees) tend to have a lot more important things going on than making up unscientific “alternatives” to evolution.

    In the most basic incarnation of the difference between ID and evolution:

    ID is logically anomalous even in terms of itself, without even considering the fact that it makes (incorrect) assumptions about everything from astronomy to zoology, taking a rather painful detour at causality.

    Evolution on the other hand is an idea that came up two centuries ago, out of the church for crying out loud. It was incredibly disliked, and Darwin himself could have easily stifled it for who knows how long by simply discarding the idea and continuing with his plans of priesthood. Instead, time and time again scientists have tossed their faith (if any) to the side in order to objectively evaluate evolution… and time and time again, despite countless attempts at finding contradictory evidence (actual or contrived), and despite evolution’s inherent scientific falsifiability, it has instead been backed up and reinforced, expanded, and strengthened by *every single experiment* ever invoked against it.

    That’s tens to hundreds of thousands of unique data points that all give evolution a thumbs-up, whereas anyone with a basic understanding of logic can debunk ID during a coffee break.

    So yeah, let’s not be concerned about the volume (in terms of sound as well as scale) of these idiots. The simple fact that most atheists aren’t so vocal just demonstrates that we’re a lot more civil, polite, and accepting than they are… and that we have far better things to do with our time than misspell “intelligence” on Facebook.

  • Chelsy Askren

    I misspelled Intelligence…….SO WHAT………i made a mistake……i even tried to fix it……i am human i am allowed to make mistakes you know…….i bet there was a time in your life when you misspelled a word or two…….you know i think it is a shame that you would take the time to mention this in your blog….you obviously have allot of time on your hands and i suggest you find more profitable things to do with it……since you’re so good at spelling why not become a teacher……just a thought. If your going to bother offering advise to people i also suggest doing it in a more constructive way so that its not a complete waste of your time…..people might actually respect and listen to what you have to say.

    Oh yeah and also……..i choose to rarely use punctuation online because I’m not writing a paper or doing anything that requires me to do so…….and sometimes ill be honest i don’t have allot of time……and sometimes i just dont feel like it…….i also dont use my spell check either…….oops did i say i needed a spell check occasionally…….thats not very intelligent is it OH WELL…….You know whats funny about all this……you all must find yourself very intelligent for pointing out my lack of intelligence for spelling intelligent incorrectly…….seriously get a life.

    You know whats even more ridiculous you type my name in on google.com and this website comes up……so i hope your all satisfied now anyone could find out that chelsy askren misspelled intelligence…..not sure they will get as excited about it as you have though.

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