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Boo-Hoo: Documentary Makers Didn’t Tell Us They Think Darwinism Is a Crock

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John Lynch whines that “noted historians”* weren’t properly informed that a documentary for which they were interviewed (The Voyage That Shook the World) would take an anti-Darwinist line. Lynch is outraged: the documentary makers are guilty of “lies” and “deception.” Would a charge of fraud hold up in court? I suspect the documentary makers simply withheld information. Is that wrong? The BBC, for instance, didn’t inform me that a documentary they were making about ID was to be called “A War on Science,” and that I would be portrayed as one of the “bad people” trying to “destroy science.” I was, to be sure, displeased with this outcome, but I recognize that this is the way the game is played. The other side has been dishing it out for a long time, but has a hard time of it when the tables are turned.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6SVU7dbK4

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*Would Lynch have been okay with the documentary if the historians in question had instead merely been “mediocre historians” or “historians whose reliability regarding Darwinism is questionable”?

Comments
I'll bet a piece of wood shaped exactly the same wouldn't evoke the same reaction, either. Most likely chemicals are involved.Davem
July 6, 2009
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Jehu, I didn't say he saw it.Davem
July 6, 2009
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CMI's Voyage defence cites Dr Dembski's comment above (cherry-picking him though, heh heh ;) )Ktisophilos
June 30, 2009
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IRQ Conflict @ 27: "You mean like peewee Myers? Sneaking into previews?" Professor Meyers didn't sneak into anything. He was one of the people who was paid to appear in "Expelled!". He applied for a ticket on line under his own name, and was waiting in line, ticket in hand, when someone connected with the movie decided it would be a good idea to kick him out of the theater while allowing Richard Dawkins to enter. Funniest. Thing. Ever!djmullen
June 24, 2009
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Ah, it's so nice to hear some common sense and rational thinking! Be great if some of you could go and share the love on Will Crawley's blog where this all started. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/06/creationists_defend_darwin_fil.html I understand that there will be a statement coming out from CMI shortly regarding the allegations. I guess check their website in the next few days or so. I also understand that there will be a major DVD release later in the year. FWIW, Cornelius Hunter is in the film. Perhaps somebody could get him to comment.korotiotio
June 23, 2009
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"heavy guns" ? You mean like peewee Myers? Sneaking into previews?IRQ Conflict
June 23, 2009
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Wow! Maybe this will even be bigger than Expelled! Let us all hope and pray, that Dr. Lynch and his Dawinist cohorts don't bring out the heavy guns and prevent this from bringing in the dolalrs in 1000 theaters opening weekend.Scot.David
June 23, 2009
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People like to feel important. What's better than someone pointing a camera at you so they can share your expert opinion with the world? Surely if the subjects were really worried about how their interview would be used they could do some research on the filmmaker or have a lawyer draft something to protect them.ScottAndrews
June 23, 2009
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Learned Hand,
Jehu, it appears that you’re assuming facts not in evidence.
I also forgot to friggin care. These whiny little girls are so predictable. I know what they are going to say before they even think it. What they are worried about is looking cool to their peers - so they make a big fuss about how they were tricked into being in a totally uncool creationist movie. bleh.Jehu
June 22, 2009
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Davem, You have got to be kidding me. If worms had eyes to see they still wouldn't have emotions to know something like fear. So no, I doubt the worm was afraid of the shape of a beak it could not see.Jehu
June 22, 2009
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AussieID, Oh I see. I doubt if it will play on network or cable here in the U.S.CannuckianYankee
June 22, 2009
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G'day CannuckianYankee, The plan isn't to actually have it as a cinematic release (as far as I know) but as a doco piece for TV. These cinemas are undertaking forward screenings, as far as I can ascertain, and that's about it.AussieID
June 22, 2009
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Davam, I think the worm saw that the pheasant was after your finger too. It's selfish genes told it to cling to your warm cozy finger to prevent the beacked thingy from partaking.CannuckianYankee
June 22, 2009
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I'm wary of documentaries of any POV. The problem is that any group has the ability to cut and edit an interview to make an interviewee say what the filmmakers want him/her to say. Apparently this happens all the time. I'm not saying it necessarily happened with this film. I don't know, but I hope not. Also, I was looking at this film's webpage - the screening locations section. If they spent so much money on this film as is obvious, why is it only going to be shown in a few Churches in the South and Midwestern US? It's not even going to be shown here in California. This puzzles me. Maybe they plan a huge DVD distribution?CannuckianYankee
June 22, 2009
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Re #17: Of course my main point was that different responses to different beak shapes would provide strong support for Davem's programming hypothesis.herb
June 22, 2009
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Davem, That's an interesting story. I wonder if the worm's response (terror in this case) is in any way related to the shape of the bird's beak. Perhaps exposure to a seed-eating bird would not provoke such an intense reaction.herb
June 22, 2009
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I'd like to insert something that may appear trivial but it's an incident that gave me pause. A friend once gave me a young pheasant and I was trying to get it to eat. It wouldn't eat seed so I dug up a worm. The worm was hanging loose but when I attempted to feed it to the bird and brushed it up against the beak it wrapped itself around my finger; it was obviously terrified. So where did it get this fear of "beak shaped thing"? Certainly it's parents didn't train it, and I doubt it had a close call in the past. Did millions of years pass by until the first worm got by accident the "beak shaped thing = death" gene? The simplest explanation is that worms were programmed that way.Davem
June 22, 2009
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Off topic: Dr. Dembski here is a gem from Dr. Craig that meshes well with your Law of conservation of information: William Lane Craig - If Human Evolution Did Occur It Is A Miracle - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUxm8dXLRpA In Barrow and Tippler's book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, they list ten steps necessary in the course of human evolution, each of which, is so improbable that if left happen by chance alone, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have incinerated the earth. They estimate that the odds of the evolution (by chance) of the human genome is somewhere between 4 to the negative 180th power, to the 110,000th power, and 4 to the negative 360th power, to the 110,000th power. Therefore, if evolution did occur, it literally would have been a miracle and evidence for the existence of God. William Lane Craigbornagain77
June 22, 2009
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Avonwatches, They are attempting to sell it to TV companies so, sooner or later, if they allow alternatives to be aired, then SBS or ABC may pick it up. Anyway, in the meantime, enjoy the drive to your local cinema! They filmed one aspect of this film locally. The actor who plays Darwin's 'sidekick' Syms Covington, is a friend. He turned up to watch the filming and, from what I believe, since he looked remarkedly like ol' Syms, was given the job. In one part of the filming, in what was supposed to be wonderfully balmy waters as depicted in the historical accounts, it was instead freezing cold, and as all good actors have to do, they had to ignore it for artistic and historical integrity and accuracy. I wonder how the 'notable historians' will react to the attempt at 'historical integrity and accuracy'? HmmmAussieID
June 22, 2009
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Jehu, it appears that you're assuming facts not in evidence. Did Lynch say that the filmmakers were required to disclose their biases to him, or that he would have given an altered version of his remarks if they had? I only skimmed his comments, but it looked to me like he said that he was "deceived," which implies more than a mere failure to disclose. I also took away the impression that he would have declined to speak to the filmmakers had he known their biases, not that he would have "given different testimony." Lynch doesn't give enough information, as I recall, to know exactly what happened, but he implies that he was actively deceived, as opposed to Dembski, who implies that he was merely not informed, as to their respective interviewers' intent.Learned Hand
June 22, 2009
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Jehu @11, Well said. The defensive paranoia that we observe amongst the Darwinist/materialists crowd stems from an inferiority complex, IMO.Mapou
June 22, 2009
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Anthony09, "Excuse" implies that something wrong has occurred. In this case there is nothing that needs excusing. It is complete nonsense to suggest that a journalist is required to tell people whom he interviews what the perspective of his documentary will be. If such a stupid code existed it would inhibit the ability of a journalist to gather basic facts. Furthermore, it is ridiculous for someone who testifies in documentary to complain that they would have given different testimony had they known the documentary was going to be against Darwinism, as if there is one set of facts that one discloses when speaking with Darwinists and another set of facts when speaking with skeptics of Darwinism. The very fact that witnesses are complaining that they would have testified differently had they known the perspective of the documentary demonstrates the very need of the journalist not to reveal his or her perspective in order to get unbiased testimony.Jehu
June 22, 2009
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Sasha Baron Cohan is a comedian, and Michael Moore is a propagandist. If one wants to avoid either of these titles, one needs to be forthright about one's intentions. Honesty is always the best policy. "That's how the game is played," i.e. "well, they do it too," is not an excuse.Anthony09
June 22, 2009
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If there was such a rule, Sasha Baron Cohen and Michael Moore would be out of business. It is nonsense that documentary makers have to reveal their conclusions to people they interview. BTW. Great article today in the Washington Post about how analysis of the genome of 25,000 human fails to show any natural selection but does show lots of neutral drift. Last thing. UD should have some kind of place for readers to give tips on internet content relevant to ID. Every now and then I find a great article that I think would make for good discussion at UD but I hate making off topic posts. If it was limited to registered users, I don't think you would get much spam.Jehu
June 22, 2009
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Something tells me PZ Meyers won't be interested in crashing the screening of The Voyage, closest to where he is in Minnesota: Screening Date and Time: Sunday July 19, 2009, 10:15am, Twin Cities Bible Church, 2555 Hazelwood St, Maplewood 55109. (MN)bornagain77
June 22, 2009
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Looks like a good professionally done Documentary. Excellent, will have to get a copy. The only way ID/Design Theorist will get an opportunity is if they fight back in Print, Movies, TV, Radio, Internet. And now the PLoS online publishing journal as well. The Ben Stein movie was a big payoff. Hope this one is as well. Great going to all involved that dare to question the athesit god, Darwin. It appears there is a convergence on all sides about biology becoming an information theoretical driven science. I checked out CMI. They recently wrote about Biology turning into a computational systems dynamic. Bill Gates program in Italy depends upon modeling biological entities as programs. And Mike Gene noted just recently at Design Matrix, the latest information of cells thought of as computational devices... Quotes from the article in Molecular Biology: "Gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo!, researchers report today in the online journal Molecular Systems Biology." “It’s extremely rare in nature that a cell would lose both a master gene and its backup, so for the most part cells are very robust machines,” said Anthony Gitter, a graduate student in Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department and lead author of the Nature MSB article." How dare he call cells machines! Where are the Orwellian thought patrol police from NCSE to stamp down and oppress this man! He continues... “We now have reason to think of cells as robust computational devices, employing redundancy in the same way that enables large computing systems, such as Amazon, to keep operating despite the fact that servers routinely fail.”" Mirrored systems technology in the cell. At nano levels so complex and dense that the storage rate of compression is still beyond our current technology. Good reason for Gates and others to follow the cellular software inside all of us and nature. Goodluck to CMI on the movie!DATCG
June 22, 2009
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Documentary makers don't know exactly what they are going to do until they complete their interviews. How would they? The interviews haven't happened yet. The tapes haven't been played back. Who's credible? Who isn't? Who's good footage? Who's not? Of course they start with biases, but so does the Boo Hoo crowd. Still, a good documentary has to be somewhere on the chart with relation to reality. And all the smart ass critics in the legacy media can't change that by denouncing it. The difference is that the Boo Hoos don't seem to recognize that fact - they regard their biases as a statement of reality and the norm for everyone. Cry me a river, Boo.O'Leary
June 22, 2009
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While I am please this will be shown in Australia, I find it lame that I'll have to drive an hour to the nearest cinema it is being shown at. Quite good coverage (Australia), though the city-centres don't seem to be buying it :/Avonwatches
June 22, 2009
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Nice to see CMI is behind this---I regularly listen to Dr. John Morris's radio spots, and I know their doctrine is sound. The evos are whining now, but anyone want to bet PZ Myer tries to crash a screening of the film again? LOL :Dherb
June 22, 2009
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"John lynch whines..."? Clive?Alan Fox
June 22, 2009
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