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Dawkins, Myers, and what R.S.V.P. means

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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

Expelled – RSVP System

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.” 😆

Comments
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?DaveScot
March 26, 2008
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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.JPCollado
March 26, 2008
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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?JPCollado
March 26, 2008
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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/events/special/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.Charles
March 26, 2008
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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.Nochange
March 26, 2008
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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.JPCollado
March 26, 2008
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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)ck1
March 26, 2008
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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.Charles
March 26, 2008
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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
March 26, 2008
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ck1, are you by any chance the same person that is posting under the username "nochange"?JPCollado
March 26, 2008
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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?DaveScot
March 26, 2008
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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
March 26, 2008
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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:
… the curious traits we observed in the “Conspiracy of Equals” …: the naive adventurism, the arrogant boastfulness, the disposition to petty dishonesty and disruptive behavior, a certain inanity that gave the whole movement a somewhat comic and Gogolian flavor. (Ch. IX. Socialism and Individuality, p.267)
Somewhat later in the text, Shafarevich makes reference to private rooms (an analog to the private showing of the film):
…in Crime and Punishment, the character Lebeziatnikov expounds on the question of free entry into rooms in the future society: “It has been debated of late whether a member of the commune has the right to go into the room of another member, male or female, at any time. ..well, it was decided that he does.” ((Ch. VI. The Contours of Socialism, p. 99 — quoting from F. Dostoevskii. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Collected Works, in Russian). 30 vols. Leningrad, 1972: VI: p. 284)
and again:
One enthusiast published a book based, as he claims, on Trotsky’s ideas: “It should be made clear that I do not consider the idea of rooms necessary; I believe that it will be possible to consider a room only as the living space of an individual person. After all, isolation in a room is quite unnecessary for collective man. ...The isolation needed in certain hours of love can be had in special pleasure gardens where the man and his female companion will be able to find the necessary comforts.” (Ch. VI., p. 99 — quoting from M. V. Shchekin. Kak zhit’ po novomu (How to Live in the New Way, in Russian). Kostroma, 1925.)
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:
We can see that all elements of the socialist ideal — the abolition of private property, family, hierarchies; the hostility toward religion — could be regarded as a manifestation of one basic principle: the suppression of individuality. (Ch. IX. Socialism and Individuality, p.269)
He then goes on to consider a single aspect, the fate of the family under socialism:
In the 1970s, the Japanese police arrested members of the “Red Army,” a Trotskyite organization, which was responsible for a number of murders. Although this group numbered only a few dozen people, it had all the attributes of a real socialist party — theoreticians, a split on the question of whether revolution should occur in one country or in the entire world at once, terror against dissidents. The group established itself in a lonely mountain region. And the same trait surfaced here: they took newborn children away from their mothers, entrusted them to other women for upbringing and fed them on powdered milk, despite difficulties in obtaining it. (Ch. X. The Goal of Socialism. pp. 270, 271)
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.D.A.Newton
March 26, 2008
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No need to be sorry, Charlie. I'm always making mistakes. :)PannenbergOmega
March 25, 2008
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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.Charlie
March 25, 2008
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Showings in Washington. http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.phpCharlie
March 25, 2008
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I am amazed that there are no shows in the Northeastern United States.PannenbergOmega
March 25, 2008
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Here is a list of theaters Expelled will be playing in. http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.phpPannenbergOmega
March 25, 2008
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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/events/special/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.JPCollado
March 25, 2008
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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
March 25, 2008
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Again, since when is a contractee responsible for the actions of the contractor's employees? Do you people really think that an established organization or firm will expose itself to that sort of risk? If security officers are the hired workers of the theatre in question, then their supervision rests with the management of that institution. Security personnel follow certain proxy rules in controlling crowds of people, and when they are faced with extraordinary exceptions, management is the one called upon to make ultimate decisions.JPCollado
March 25, 2008
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ov_ #73: I suppose I can understand wanting to contol a test audience, but I don’t think one can reasonably expect such a degree of control with such automation coupled with the mass e-mail invites. It wasn't a test audience so much as a marketing tactic to generate "buzz" around the films pending release to garner schedule slots in theaters. Much the same was done for Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ". The point is to show the film to ostensibly friendy viewers (like pastors) and potentially unfriendly but nonetheless likely interested viewers (biology educators, professionals) to give them a basis on which to recommend or request showings in local theaters. Moreover, from what I understand, many of the invites allowed for “guests” when signing up. How could one reasonably maintain that this is a situation intimate enough to warrant dis-invites after the fact? It was a private screening. The website not unreasonably relied on an unpublished special RSVP URL and the honor system we when RSVPing to clearly labeled Private screenings which apparently worked previously and works normally amongst pastors and most biology educators and professionals, for example. When the honor system works, extending the private screening audience to the guests of specifically invited individuals leverages the effectiveness of whatever lead lists were purchased. The point of the RSVP is both to measure interest and plan to not exceed seating limits by holding the screening invitations open too long. I'm suspect they invited more people from the leads list than RSVP'd and more people RSVP'd than actually showed up. The website is a marketing/screening management tool. However, PZ Myers is a known aberration, who was turned away as he seemingly was never invited initially, well, at least he hasn't to date provided his initial invitation (not the same as a confirmation of an honor-based RSVP to a private invitation never sent).Charles
March 25, 2008
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Nochange @ 70: "Now, they aren’t even showing the future showings of the movie (there was supposed to be a showing on April 1 in Owings Mills, MD) - now it doesn’t show, and I can’t reserve tickets. I’ll have to wait until it comes out on April 18th." Not necessarily true. See http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled From a logistical and business standpoint, it is no wonder to see schedules being reshuffled in response to the high demand and controversy the movie has generated.JPCollado
March 25, 2008
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Dave, maybe nochange is referring to this http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/movies/expelled which was "previously an open RSVP system."JPCollado
March 25, 2008
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Nochange: "The page has changed. Previously it was an open RSVP system." Mr.nochange, do you have proof of this? Keeping track of a stale website sounds like an awful and wasteful hobby to me.JPCollado
March 25, 2008
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Davescot, Ah, apologies! You are certainly correct about the limited access then. I suppose I can understand wanting to contol a test audience, but I don't think one can reasonably expect such a degree of control with such automation coupled with the mass e-mail invites. Moreover, from what I understand, many of the invites allowed for "guests" when signing up. How could one reasonably maintain that this is a situation intimate enough to warrant dis-invites after the fact? Also, there's the issue that the subject at hand (Myers) was rejected from a film that he is used in. Frankly, I would assume I was welcome to any screening of a film that used my beautiful likeness, even if I hear about the screening on a random message board. In the end, it comes across as heavy handed if nothing else. By the way, I apologize if I sounded a tad condescending earlier. I was certainly wrong. I admit an emotive reflex over people being booted/harassed by security in general. Anti-authority reflex. Good luck with the movie. I'll try to catch it when it comes out.ov_
March 25, 2008
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"Rather than speculate, how about some facts. Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:" Blessman apparently can't keep his story straight. See comment #6 here:
It was obvious he was being kicked out by theatre management because he was not invited nor was he on the pre-submitted list. He didn’t cause a disruption per se; he was kindly escorted out.
[Emphasis mine] Several other witnesses (admittedly friends of Myers) say the same thing.KevinWParker
March 25, 2008
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"The links have not been changed. The open RSVP system had to be abandoned due to abuse and the few showings left either cancelled or closed." Beg pardon, I miswrote. The page has changed. Previously it was an open RSVP system. Now it is not. Hence, it would seem that the open RSVP system was previously used to RSVP by folks who knew where it was. And now it can no longer be used. But my interpretation stands. It appears that they are hiding that Meyers and Dawkins could easily have legitimately gained entrance. Whether it is due to abuse or not, the appearance is of someone trying to hide something.Nochange
March 25, 2008
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Nochange The links have not been changed. The open RSVP system had to be abandoned due to abuse and the few showings left either cancelled or closed. Tauma The URL was made public the first time as far as I can tell by Glen Davidson on talk.origins on March 12th, just a week before the Minnesota screening. It no longer points to any future screenings as the juvenile deliquent Myers supporters started abusing it shortly after the affair by RSVPing everyone from PZ Myers to Adolf Hitler to Mother Teresa.DaveScot
March 25, 2008
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DaveScot, The links have been changed. It makes me think even less of these Expelled producers, that they are now hiding their tracks. When I received an e-mail from them, the link gave a page where you could reserve tickets. Now, they aren't even showing the future showings of the movie (there was supposed to be a showing on April 1 in Owings Mills, MD) - now it doesn't show, and I can't reserve tickets. I'll have to wait until it comes out on April 18th. But I don't think I'll go see it. As much as I wanted to, I'm very disappointed by both the behavior of the producers, and by the behavior of the ID community in endorsing their poor behavior. I am so deeply disappointed by this. We are supposed to be better than them.Nochange
March 25, 2008
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