Expelled Movie Promoters Expel Critics - Except Richard Dawkins
The promoters of Ben Stein's anti-evolutionist movie Expelled have been holding screenings around the country to drum up enthusiasm for the movie. But to keep that enthusiasm from being dampened by negative reviews (and the producers know those reviews will inevitably come from reviewers who live in the reality-based community), they're trying to keep out people they think will be hostile to the movie (like this reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel, who was "inadvertently" invited to a screening)
It's an insane strategy - by making it so transparently obvious that they're running from critics, these guys are just drawing more bad press.
But the Expelled promoters do know who to look out for. The University of Minnesota biologist PZ Myers is one of the most vociferous critics of intelligent design in the blogosphere, and at a recent screening of Expelled in Minnesota, Myers reports that a security guard had been given instructions to keep him off the premises. So Myers was booted out, but he had guest with him who was allowed to stay and watch the movie, the one guy that the Expelled people should have been more worried about than PZ: Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, and the biologist who is probably the highest-profile defender of evolution in the world.
I'm sure you can expect Dawkins' scathing review of the movie shortly.
UPDATE: Dawkins didn't fail me. Here's that scathing review.
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