[Hac-announce] Fwd: STARS OF V.P. PUNKED BY CREATIONIST FILMMAKERS

[David E Schafer]

Because of your experience at the Peabody you would be the best person in 
our group to explain some of the subtleties of creation and interpretation 
of the displays.

David

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Platt" <tplatt13 at gmail.com>
To: "David E Schafer" <deschafer at comcast.net>
Cc: "humanist mailing list" <hac-announce at cthumanist.org>
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 1:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Hac-announce] Fwd: STARS OF V.P. PUNKED BY CREATIONIST 
FILMMAKERS


Hi David & all,

After thinking about it a bit, I will order a copy and share it with
the membership, hopefully as a group.  I occasionally work on the
front lines teaching "dinosaurs & more" to early grade school
children, their teachers, and other accompanying adults, so it is
particularly important that I be forewarned and forearmed.  As it is,
I usually discuss the fact that many of the fossils that they see and
handle are copies and why this is so.  This is even more true of the
displays in newer museums, thus making them even more vulnerable to
the charge that "They're fakes!!!"

Tom

On Nov 19, 2010, at 12:01 PM, David E Schafer wrote:

Might we worth getting and showing to a group of interested
Humanists.  I'd
like to see it myself.  Think you what?

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Platt" <tplatt13 at gmail.com>
To: "humanist mailing list" <hac-announce at cthumanist.org>
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 11:51 AM
Subject: [Hac-announce] Fwd: STARS OF V.P. PUNKED BY CREATIONIST
FILMMAKERS


Hi Humanists,

I have just received this forward from one of the paleontologists at
the Peabody.  I have deleted much of the "to & from" names and
corresponding e-mails.  V.P. = vertebrate paleontology.  Since it is
obviously of a personal nature, please accord it due respect. - Tom

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: STARS OF V.P. PUNKED BY CREATIONIST FILMMAKERS
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:52:23 -0800
From: Kevin Padian


Got your attention? Good. Here's a recent video called "Evolution,
the Grand Experiment," that dozens of VPers helped to make, innocent
of the fact that the smooth-talking and obviously intelligent
filmmakers were young-earth creationists. As the publicity says, it
was "filmed over 12 years on three continents and seven countries,"
and you can get it for twenty bucks on Amazon. It's being widely
shown on cable TV. And it's being used in testimony for a current
trial about whether and how to teach evolution in schools.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Grand-Experiment-Episode-1/dp/0892216972

The scientists punked by these twerps include Jim Kirkland, Phil
Gingerich, Angela Milner, John Long, Gary Morgan, Irena Koretsky,
Tasser Hussain, Gunther Viohl, Peter Wellnhofer, Tim Rowe, Annalise
Berta, Phil Currie, Bill Clemens, Paul Sereno, Dave Weishampel, Nick
Czaplewski, Andy Knoll, and Monroe Strickberger ... and yours truly.
It's not that what all of you say in the video is wrong. It's that
the filmmakers have taken it completely out of context. They have
represented the honest uncertainty of science as fraud and hoax.

Oh, except for the supreme a**holery of Storrs Olson, king of the
knuckleheads. He plays right into their hands, as you would expect.

The lesson would seem to be: unless you know personally and trust who
filmmakers and media folk are, don't talk to them.

Except, of course, if they are from National Geographic. The best
thing about this film is that it blows a new protostome into the
scientific pretensions of some of that magazine's staff, who ignored
Tim Rowe's evidence that Archaeoraptor was a fake, and instead went
with the counsel of an (unnamed but widely known) advisor to NG who
stated that "all these fossils have been altered anyway."

You may want to consider buying this video and showing it to your
students with your own narration. You could even build a non-majors
course in scientific inquiry and evolution by showing and stopping
this film, interspersing your own evidence and perspective, and
showing how some people are happy to lie for Jesus and any other
religious icon.

Thanks to the NCSE staff for putting us on to this scam. -- kp

--

Kevin Padian
Department of Integrative Biology & Museum of Paleontology University
of California,
Berkeley CA 94720-3140
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