Dawkins, Myers, and what R.S.V.P. means
| March 24, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
R.S.V.P. is an abbreviation for the French “répondez s’il vous plaît” which means “please respond” and traditionally is appended on invitations so that the host knows who and how many guests to expect.
Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are running around saying they weren’t “gate crashers” at a pre-screening of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. But that’s exactly what they were. PZ Myers claims he went through the same process to get a reservation for himself and a number of guests as all the other guests by going here
ADDENDA: 3/25 There is no way to get to the URL above from the main page www.getexpelled.com. The above is not a publicized address. The links from the main page all go to TOUR BUS events not movie screenings.
The sticking point is that Myers was never invited. Myers RSVP’d to an invitation he never received. He fooled the host by gaming the invitation/response system employed. The host wasn’t checking RSVPs against a list of invitations sent out but rather just assumed that any RSVP received was in response to an invitation sent out. One could possibly say this was due to Myers’ ignorance of what RSVP means but he seems to be “As Smart as a 5th Grader” so that’s not a credible excuse. The only other alternative is Myers’ purposely and knowingly deceived the host which of course means Myers is dishonest. THAT is credible.
One might blame how this was allowed to happen on the naivety of the producers in trusting that RSVPs would be received only from invited guests. Honest people don’t tend to think like thieves so it might not have occurred to them that RSVPs would be received under false pretenses. But that still doesn’t excuse Myers’ dishonesty.
Richard Dawkins isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but even so it’s hard to believe he believed that Myers was an invited guest but the possibility exists that Myers duped him into believing he was a legitimate participant in the pre-screening so I’ll reserve judgement on Dawkins for the nonce in this one case.
The question remains as to why Myers was singled out of a crowd waiting to get in when a more notorious and easily recognized skunk at the garden party (Dawkins) was not. I’d guess it’s because Myers was vigorously exercising his anti-religious potty mouth loud enough to offend other guests and someone complained while the other members in Myers’ anti-Christ crusader party were exercising a modicum of discretion. That’s just my working theory and it could be wrong but I wouldn’t bet even money on it being wrong. Too bad Myers doesn’t have the stones to be honest about his indescretions. Real men ‘fess up when caught pulling sophomoric stunts but I guess Myers can’t play it down by saying something whimsical like “Sorry, the devil made me do it.” 
80 Responses to Dawkins, Myers, and what R.S.V.P. means
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Nope, no proof. I’m not in the habit of saving web pages (are you?). I was planning to reserve tickets for the April 1 showing at Owings Mills, MD.
Now I can’t.
And that’s why I know.
Believe me or not, it’s your choice.
Nochange @ 79:
“I was planning to reserve tickets for the April 1 showing at Owings Mills, MD.”
Apparently, Baltimore is slated for an upcoming screening, so maybe with a little patience and luck, you might get a chance to see it there. Again, see here
http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/ev.....l/expelled
If money is an issue, you can apply here
http://www.getexpelled.com/ticketcontest.php
One of life’s lessons is that we don’t always get what we want and that life itself is about constant changes. We just gotta learn to live with it and hope for the best to come.
Yes, I know, it just sucks to have to wait eighteen more days for a movie that may not be worth paying for. But hey, April 18 will be here before you even know it, and then we can all celebrate the virtues or lack thereof.
Here is a list of theaters Expelled will be playing in.
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.php
I am amazed that there are no shows in the Northeastern United States.
Showings in Washington.
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.php
Sorry, that link is to the random list. You have to select the state in question from the list..
Oops, by the way …
In haste I thought PO had said “Northwestern” …so nevermind.
No need to be sorry, Charlie.
I’m always making mistakes.
The P. Z. Myers affair has all the marks of a living farce. This reminded me of passages from The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich, the gifted Russian mathematician and friend of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. First the marks of farce:
Somewhat later in the text, Shafarevich makes reference to private rooms (an analog to the private showing of the film):
and again:
The very fact that these people would deliberately plan to violate a private showing speaks volumes about their attitude toward their fellows. The fact that they are also almost uniformly political leftists is, as the Marxists were fond of saying, no accident. Later Shafarevich explicates the other outgrowths of this attitude, the socialist ideal:
He then goes on to consider a single aspect, the fate of the family under socialism:
Shafarevich provides many more examples that demonstrate how this trait is manifest. It is no accident (there’s that phrase again) that Myers, Dawkins, Dennett and company also display it in modern dress, the vision of Darwin to be sure (Freud and Marx having bit the dust). One is on record that Baptists belong in concentration camps or something of that sort, their children having been taken from them — for the good of the children to be sure. Another, that religion is a form of child abuse and should be abolished by law.
As regards religion, especially Christianity, all of them seem to have a visceral sense that it is dangerous to their whole view of existence, inchoate though that sense may be. And they would be right, for Christianity is the antithesis of their view: the Divine Comedy as opposed to a pessimism that despairs of even the possibility that life may have meaning. The Gospel provides extremely infertile ground for such, hence the implacable hostility, just as it was manifest by the Gnostics of the 1st Century, the Middle Ages, and the Enlightenment. (They would have gagged at John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and the Human Person, if they had bothered to read and understand it, which is extremely unlikely.)
Igor Shafarevich’s book: The Socialist Phenomenon is available online for no cost.
Other recommended reading on the same themes:
Eric Vogelin’s The New Science of Politics, From Enlightenment of Revolution, and Order and History (in 5 volumes).
Incidentally, I am aware that Igor Shafarevich has been accused of anti-semitism, a smear during the hurley-burley of post-soviet politics that, no doubt, was designed to limit his influence; in the West, it was probably effective.
I went to the Expelled site a few days ago and registered for a ticket for the April 1 screening in Maryland. There was no option for a guest with my registration, so my husband registered separately.
We received email confirmations and were instructed to bring IDs to the theater.
I did this without having received an invitation.
That screening seems to have been cancelled.
ck1
So you RSVPed to an invitation you never received using a web address that has no link to it on the host’s website.
What’s wrong with that picture?
ck1, are you by any chance the same person that is posting under the username “nochange”?
Actually, there are links to the rsvp system that come from the Evolution News & Views website.
From Evolution News & Views, click on “Academic Freedom Petition”. From there, click on “Get Expelled”. Click on “Events & Tours” and Click on “RSVP”.
I imagine there are other ways (I found this one accidentally, while reading Evolution News & Views). This showing wasn’t a secret. This showing wasn’t a private party. This had a perfectly legit way to sign up if you were interested.
Meyers is a bad man, we all agree on that. But the Expelled people screwed up, and then lied to cover it up.
This was an event that anyone could sign up for.
When will we apologize?
(PS, ck1 is not me. Maryland has a population of about 5 million. Apparently at least 2 of us read Uncommon Descent).
Nochange @ 94:
This was an event that anyone could sign up for.
No it wasn’t. It was one of many screenings expressly labeled “Private” whose RSVP URL was neither published nor linked from other pages on the website.
See my post 34 for details.
Davescot:
I did not RSVP to any invitation.
I registered for a ticket on a website on which I did not see anything stating “By invitation only”.
I did not see anything on that website indicating that registration was restricted to invited persons.
(and I have not registered here under any other name)
nochange @ 94:
Nochange, the Events & Tours” to which you are referring were indeed public; but this is not what we have been discussing.
All along the subject has been about movie screenings, which fall under a different banner.
And about my mistaking you for ck1 – this is because the two of you were expressing the same concern in exactly identical fashion (and the two of you not having bumped into each other into agreement) just seemed kinda odd.
Re-read my post # 94. It is exactly what you have been discussing. Now click through on the links I’m talking about. It takes you to the RSVP site that previously would have allowed you to sign up for showings of Expelled. Indeed, I had been visiting it myself, until it was changed.
You can link to a site that previously allowed *anyone* to sign up for tickets from the Evolution New & Views website. Not hidden. Totally linkable. Anyone could have found it. Anyone can sign up. This is the site that until a few days ago would have allowed me to sign up for showings in Owings Mills, and has the showing in Minnesota that generated the uproar.
How is that private?
Unless it says, “Sign up for tickets, unless you are Meyers or Dawkin’s, or a Darwinist”, I think this constitutes public. How many ways will you twist yourself into a pretzel to make it seem like the folks at Expelled didn’t screw up? If this had been done to us, we would be trumpeting the censorious nature of Darwinists (indeed, we do! and we should!). But done to the other side, it’s okay. This bothers me deeply. We are supposed to be better than them. Not as petty. Not as censorious.
P.S.
“(and the two of you not having bumped into each other into agreement)”
In addition to 5 million people in Maryland, there are at least several different places Marylanders can connect to the internet. What are you talking about? Can you tone down the paranoia? I don’t need a sockpuppet to agree with me. I’m quite content to hold my own opinions. I’m an independent thinker. I don’t no ck1. Never met ck1. Embarrassed that this is even an issue.
How is that private?
Compare the URLs:
Here is the public tour URL:
http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/movies/expelled
Here is the unpublished, unlinked “private” screenings URL
http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/ev.....l/expelled
Look at the differences in the two URLs and note the “private” screenings URL has “special” in place of “movies” in the URL.
That’s how.
Nochange @ 98:
“This is the site that until a few days ago would have allowed me to sign up for showings in Owings Mills”
Mr.Nochange, and why didn’t you sign up at the first opportunity?
ck1 @ 90:
“That screening seems to have been cancelled.”
Hello there Ms.Ck1. Please meet Mr.Nochange who happens to be from your area (I think). Both of you seemed to have had the same problem with the April 1 screening that you now say was cancelled. Can you explain to Mr.Nochange that if a screening for a particular city and/or date is cancelled that this then would necessitate a change in the website as well? Mr.Nochange is under the impression that the producers are acting maliciously for reasons that don’t appear to be clear.
ck1
I did not RSVP to any invitation.
Exactly. You RSVPed but didn’t get an invitation. You don’t know that an RSVP is a response to an invitation?