We’ve looked at The Coral Ridge Hour before. The program seems to encapsulate fundiedom more than many other pray-TV shows, so we’ll probably examine a few more of them in the months ahead.

The Coral Ridge Hour stars now-wormfood D. James Kennedy (DJK), who was one of the more extreme fundies. He’s the guy who gave us Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which blamed Nazism on Darwin. Just like L. Ron Hubbard is still writing books years after his death, DJK is still making TV shows. His ministry is taking old sermons and packaging them into new shows. The shows consist of a 15-minute DJK rerun, then a 10-minute newsmagazine-style exposé of some horrible affront to Christianity (usually atheism or evolution).

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

The show opens with DJK’s daughter, Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, who knows a cushy job sponging off of her father’s legacy when she sees one. She says:

[M]y dad realized early on that science had been hijacked by unproven atheistic philosophy. In this timely message, he shows how all of creation cries out the truth that in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.

We then cut to old footage of DJK. This sermon is called “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”. He says he wants to tell us about a scientific discovery so monumental that it rivals all of the great discoveries of the past, yet almost nobody has heard of it! Suppression! It must be suppression! I’ll bet those evil atheistic scientists who run the liberal media are to blame! Thankfully, we have DJK to tell us the story:

But something happened on the way to the 20th century. And that is the entire scientific enterprise was hijacked in the middle of the 19th. Of course, I am referring to Darwin’s theory of evolution. And the whole scientific enterprise has been hijacked into a naturalistic or materialistic view of the world. “Naturalism” means there’s nothing in the universe but nature; there’s nothing supernatural. “Materialism” believes that there’s nothing in the world but matter.

He then tells us that some of the recent discoveries in molecular biology are astounding. He tells us that Michael Behe has made some amazing discoveries. He then parrots a bunch of Behe’s irreducible complexity nonsense. Therefore, molecular biology proves God’s existence!

Here’s a question for the Discovery Institute, Access Research Network, or any of those other “academic freedom fighters” out there: If “intelligent design” isn’t religious and isn’t creationism, then why is a religious guy (DJK) using it to “prove” creation?

Freedom to Impose Religion

After DJK’s forgettable sermon, they next show us a video report about Darwin’s thugs (the ACLU) and the Dover creationism trial.

Dr. Norman Geisler, author of Creation and the Courts, starts us off:

Evolution is the kingpin of atheism. If evolution is disproven, atheism is disproven, cuz they don’t have any other explanation.

According to Dr. Geisler, atheists apparently know that there is a god, but as long as they have evolution to cling to, they don’t have to admit that. It’s a good thing I have Dr. Geisler here to tell me what I believe.

Frank Manion (some shyster stooge from Pat Robertson’s anti-ACLU group called American Center for Law and Justice) says:

[The Dover school board] didn’t mandate the teaching of intelligent design in biology class. What they said was there are criticisms of evolution from a scientific standpoint, one of which is something called intelligent design…

BUZZZZZZ!!!! Loser!! Oh, Manion contradicts himself in the same sentence! What a moron! Intelligent Design isn’t science. It’s not even scientific! It’s entirely religious, with a thin veneer of scientific buzzwords painted on.

…and if you’d like to read more about this, there’s a book in the library that we have provided that you can read.

Yes, the book was Of Pandas and People a religious creationism book. God damn these people are stupid! I guess when they only talk among themselves, nobody notices. Does a town consisting entirely of morons have a village idiot?

Next, we get to listen to Dr. George Grant, author of Trial and Error: The American Civil Liberties Union and Its Impact on Your Family:

The ACLU has a stake in the argument over Darwinism, simply because the ACLU has a very distinctive religious and political agenda, rooted in a revolutionary worldview that comes from Darwinism. The whole intent of the ACLU is to change our society, to make it into something new, something that the old Christian foundations of America could never allow.

Cool! A secret agenda! I bet they’re all Freemasons, too!

Finally, they give us [M]Ann Coulter. As if this program didn’t lack enough credibility:

Einstein would not be allowed to teach in a school today, because he referred to God.

Two things are wrong with this sentence. The first is that old lie that Einstein was a theist, at least in the sense that fundies understand it. This has been debunked. Second, notice how [s]he’s implying that the mere belief in God is enough to disqualify somebody from teaching. That’s a massive persecution complex [s]he has there.

To have, you know, these hacks like Eugenie Scott come in and say “Oh that’s not real science. Unless you keep God out, it’s not real science.” It’s preposterous.

What’s preposterous is to have a hack like Ann Coulter pass judgment on Eugenie Scott’s credentials. That’s like Charlie the Hamster saying Luciano Pavarotti can’t sing.

I don’t think we need to worry about Expelled. Ben Stein is doing a perfectly fine job of destroying its credibility all by himself.

Stein was on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last Friday. This is what he said (minus the unfunny banter with Ferguson):

Darwinism doesn’t explain the laws of gravity. Darwinism doesn’t explain the laws of thermodynamics. …And we don’t want people to be fired if they say that the planets stay in their orbits maybe by something other than Darwinism. …His followers claim it explains everything including astronomy.

Update 4/29/08

It occurred to me that the above transcript is so absurd that many of you will doubt its veracity. Fortunately for us, we have YouTube! One quick look found the segment, which I have embedded here. You also might want to go by the actual YouTube page and read the comments. It’s about an eight-minute video, and I’ve given you the transcript of most of the relevant content. It’s amazing how little information is conveyed in a modern American entertainment program (if you can call Craig Ferguson entertaining). Anyway, enjoy! (The drug references add a surreal irony to this whole embarrassment.)

(YouTube page is here)

The Coral Ridge Hour is the TV show of the late D. James Kennedy. The episode they aired last Sunday was devoted to Expelled. Apparently they were expelled from math class as well. This “hour” was only 30 minutes long. Maybe they call it that, because when you watch it, it feels like an hour.

I decided to watch this program to see what they’re telling people. It isn’t pretty. Remember that DJK was one of the first people to try to link Hitler’s atrocities to Darwin. He produced a film called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which made that claim.

The second half of the program was various promotional segments for Expelled. There’s nothing new there, so instead I want to comment on the first half of the program, which consisted of a rerun of a sermon by DJK. The sermon was called “The Christian View of Science”.

My first reaction is to object to his claim that what he is presenting is “The Christian View of Science”. Not all Christians reject science. He is unfairly tarring all Christians with his science-hating brush.

He started off by reading from Genesis 1:1, as if that proves anything. He also read Genesis 1:26, which has always disturbed me:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….

“We”? “Our”? So God has MPD?

DJK then said this:

There has been the introduction of an alien philosophy into science. This has been done surreptitiously and unnoticed by many, but the mask has been ripped off by Dr. Phillip Johnson, professor of law at U.C. Berkeley.

Phillip Johnson is one of the early creators of Intelligent Design creationism, so you can tell already where this is going. But what is this “alien philosophy”?

DJK says that the philosophy of Naturalism was never a part of science, but now it dominates. He claims that naturalism is totally different from science. Naturalism refers to nature, and it rules out the supernatural. By definition, it rules out God.

My reply is that it’s more accurate to say that naturalism is only concerned with what is natural and measurable, and it is not concerned with (nor can it measure) the supernatural. Yes, it rules out God, but only as an actor in the drama. It says nothing about whether God is backstage or in the audience.

DJK then went on to say that the greatest damage Darwin has done was to separate science from God. And:

…not only has it done that, but it has separated innumerable millions of young people from God. It’s probably the most devastating broadside against religion and Christianity and theism that has ever come down the pike.

This is probably one reason the Christians always think they’re being persecuted, even though they’re in the majority. They invent themselves out of the majority. They convince themselves that science is anti-Christian. Because we are living in a scientific age, then ipso facto, we are living in an anti-Christian age.

He continues:

Virtually every kind of anti-Christian “-ism” that’s come down the pike in the past 100 or more years finds at least a pseudo-scientific foundation in evolution.

This is why they hate evolution so much. It isn’t merely because it contradicts their Bible. It’s because evolution somehow is responsible for everything (real or imagined) that now opposes Christianity.

Evolution, therefore, has given rise to things like Nazi-ism.

Notice he’s not even blaming Darwin here. I thought maybe the reason the fundies keep talking about “Darwinism” is because they’re trying to give the impression that Darwin is some sort of secular cult leader. DJK isn’t doing that here. He’s somehow linking the fact that species evolve to Hitler’s policies. So in the beginning, there was a primitive cell. It reproduced. Its descendants evolved into multi-cellular organisms, which became fish, which eventually crawled out of the ocean, which evolved into primates, which became the Third Reich. This sounds like I’m creating a straw man here, but that is the only way I can interpret what DJK is saying. Look at that quote again: “Evolution, therefore, has given rise to things like Nazi-ism.” That’s crazy talk.

The only real connection between evolution and Nazi-ism is that a few people misunderstood evolution, and they misapplied their distorted knowledge to the social sciences. Darwin is not responsible for the misunderstanding and misuse of his theory, but that’s not even what DJK is claiming. He’s claiming that the evolution itself is responsible for Nazi-ism.

Let’s just say that’s the case. That means that all societies would ultimately end up as something similar to the Third Reich. It would have to be the natural end-point of evolution. Since that hasn’t happened, and it’s showing no signs of happening, then that supposition must be false. The fundie claim that evolution = Nazi-ism is false.

The only way I can make sense of this is there must be the built-in assumption that evolution isn’t real. So that means what they’re really saying is that Darwin came up with this crazy unfounded idea. Other people took the idea and used it to justify killing. Darwin shouldn’t have been so irresponsible as to publish the idea.

An analogy would be that sometime before WWI, some German guy probably said “Hey, you know what would be a good weapon? Poison gas!” That guy would have to bear some responsibility for the devastating poison gas attacks during the war. If you’re coming from the perspective that evolution is fake, then maybe the argument that the guy who invented this fake idea is responsible for how it was used makes a bit of sense.

The reality is that evolution is real. Therefore, Darwin isn’t responsible for how a misunderstanding of evolution was misused (by Hitler or eugenicists or anybody else) any more than Henry Ford is responsible for cars being used as getaway vehicles by bank robbers.

DJK then went on to claim that communism and Marxism were the direct result of evolution. He must have gone to one of those unaccredited Bible colleges. That’s the only way I can explain his colossal ignorance. Communism and Marxism are the opposites of evolution. Unbridled capitalism is the closest equivalent to evolution in the social sciences. In fact, that is why Social Darwinism was embraced so heartily by many rich Americans. It allieviated any guilty feelings they might have had about all of the people they were exploiting.

DJK’s next pearl of wisdom was:

Science is a wonderful thing. Naturalistic science is a perversion of science, but it has succeeded in convincing many people that science and religion are enemies.

No, it is fundies who have convinced many people that science and religion are enemies. Why is it that non-fundies (i.e., Catholics and mainline Protestants) don’t have that belief?

DJK’s next whopper was:

Science is a contribution to this world by Jesus Christ.

Really? So nobody learned anything about the natural world prior to about 30 A.D.? The Egyptians, Greeks, and early Romans just lived in caves and ate the moss growing on the sides of trees? Nobody invented agriculture or irrigation or architecture or selective breeding or astronomy?

He then went on to claim that there was “proto-science” in Greece, but it didn’t lead to much. He claimed that science arose only in Christian Europe in the 16th century. Oh, you mean after the Dark Ages, when your Church oppressed all curiosity? And even once the Renaissance started, the Church opposed Copernicus, Kepler, Gallileo, and every other scientist who dared to find out how the world worked. Yes. That’s the religion that gave us science.

Finally, DJK added this to his pearl necklace of wisdom:

The most scientific statement ever made on the subject is this: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”

My irony meter just imploded.

The Blue Collar Scientist has published a meta-analysis of reviews of that giant steaming turd that Ben Stein expelled from his rectum. BCS says:

In my searchings, I didn’t find any positive reviews that weren’t associated with religious or right-wing political publications — and then only two of those.

He then presents excerpts from a dozen reviews, every single one of which savages the film brutally.

The movie will do good box office this weekend, because the producers have done a good job promoting it to the folks whose logical reasoning capabilities are about as sophisticated as Wild Thing’s.

But after the first week, word of mouth from the few people who wandered into this film by mistake will kill this turkey dead.

In emails I’ve received from the promoters, they talked about how they wanted to get this film onto the list of top ten opening weekends for documentaries. I’ve lost that link, but aside from a very few high profile films (e.g., Fahrenheit 9/11), most documentaries have small opening-weekend box office. The main reason for this is that documentaries don’t start in too many theaters. Supposedly Expelled will be in 1000 theaters. They’ll be able to make their goal. The real question is how many theaters will it be in next week? Very few, I’m sure.

As we discussed in part 2, fundies like to deny that there is a problem with overpopulation, because traveling down that route leads to things they don’t like, such as birth control and abortion. And if stabilizing the population is bad in their eyes, imagine how bad any efforts to reduce the population must be!

Well, as if they didn’t have enough stuff to worry about, the fundies are actually looking decades out, and they think they see a depopulation boom. Here’s an email I received from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

You are Cordially Invited to Family Research Council for the documentary Demographic WINTER: the decline of the human family.

If you’re in Washington on May 12, you should RSVP. Penetrate the belly of the beast! Anyway, they go on to describe this film:

Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family explores the severe economic and social consequences of family decline and plummeting birthrates worldwide. In Demographic Winter scholars from many backgrounds give economic, social scientific, demographic and historic context to population decline and the impact families have on the strength and stability of society.

As you can see, the film is about the population issue, which already has the fundies concerned. But look at that other element: family. Somehow they managed to drag families into this. That gives them a one-two punch on this issue. Because, after all, only fundies care about the family.

OK. Let’s find out more about this movie that Tony Perkins is so excited about. The trailer is on YouTube. Please take a few minutes to watch the trailer now, and then we’ll discuss it on the other side.

(YouTube page is here)

There were a lot of claims jammed into that trailer. Obviously we need to see the movie to be able to discuss these issues thoroughly. But I do want to discuss what we can now, based on what they said in the trailer. Let’s start with some of the overblown fears.

Overblown Fear #1:
Economic Prosperity Requires Population Growth

Yes, our current economic model requires population growth, but our current economic model is wrong. The current economy requires consumption. It depends on the conversion of non-renewable natural resources into consumer goods. It is actually an illusion of prosperity, because we’re living off of a savings account, in this case the accumulated resources of the Earth: Forests, fishstocks, water, minerals, etc. All of these things are extracted from the Earth, consumed, and thrown away. As long as we keep extracting resources, we can continue our current lifestyle. More people means more consumers, which accelerates the depletion of resources, but generates even more money in the process. If population reverses, consumption declines, and the amount of money being created declines.

The problem, of course, is that resources are finite. Whether the population is growing or shrinking, once a resource runs out, the money stops.

What is needed is a different approach to economics. We need to create a sustainable economy based on sustainable levels of resource consumption. In fact, having a lower global population makes this goal much easier to achieve.

Overblown Fear #2:
Nobody to Run the Trains

Because of automation, robotics, computers, and other advanced technologies, today’s worker is way more efficient than the worker of days past. Every indication is that this trend will continue. This is a non-issue.

[Semi-] Overblown Fear #3:
Too Many Old People Sucking Services;
Not Enough Young to Pay for It

This one is a legitimate concern, but it is partially the fault of weak politicians. People are living way longer than they used to, and they will probably live even longer in the future. There is absolutely no reason for the retirement age to be where it is currently. If the government would raise the retirement age now, there would be enough money in the Social Security Trust Fund to carry that program through the end of the century.

(Or maybe not. The dirty little secret is that the government has already spent that money. The Social Security surplus has been financing deficit spending for years. When that money is due to be paid back, there won’t be enough taxpayers to foot the bill. That’s the other problem with weak politicians. They’ve destroyed the system from two different directions.)

There’s more to this issue than just Social Security. Health care is probably a bigger issue than that. We’re extending the sick end of people’s lives. We’re letting people get older, but they’re doing it while consuming medical services, usually the really expensive services.

I don’t have an answer for this problem, but you can’t solve it by increasing the birth rate. What happens when these new people get old? Now you’ve got an even bigger group of people who need expensive care. This is a pyramid that will collapse.

Somebody needs to come up with a clever solution to this problem.

Overblown Fear #4:
Depopulation

This documentary pretends that there actually will be a declining global population this century. There’s not much reason to believe that’s the case. Current projections show that the population is still rising and will continue to do so until the middle of this century. The projections suggest that a gradual decline will begin after that.

The problem is that we really don’t know what’s going to happen in the latter half of this century. You can only make projections so far out. We don’t know what economic, social, and scientific changes will occur in the future. The population could rise as easily as it might fall. Even if it does fall, as I pointed out above, that is not a problem.

How Does the Family Fit Into This?

One subject they focussed on was the family. Their experts said that the traditional family structure is the strongest, and it’s the best environment for children to grow up in.

I have seen data that suggests there is at least a little truth in these statements. The problem is, that one structure of the father, mother, and children is not realistic. Humans are more complex than that, and it’s naive to think you can force that structure onto every member of society.

This part of the documentary really appeals to the fundies, though. They can use this as a new way to attack all of those things they don’t like: women’s liberation; gay rights; divorce; pre-, post-, and extra-marital sex; etc.

It’s Not That There Won’t Be Enough People,
It’s That There Won’t Be Enough of the Right Type of People!

Much of the fear of declining birthrates is that it is the wrong people whose fertility is declining. They said in the trailer that it is only the developed nations whose rates were dropping.

That one guy said that there would be no native-born French who come from the traditional French population. He didn’t say there would be no native-born French. The country isn’t going to disappear. The demographic makeup of France will be very different. That’s what they don’t like.

The Nation magazine has a video, which discusses this aspect further. Check it out:

(YouTube page is here)

Then you’ll want to read the Nation article.

Yes, our old friend, concerned “woman” J. Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America, is going to the movies, and he’s taking us along! Old Barbie has reviewed Expelled: No Intelligent Design Evidence Presented.

(S)He writes:

“Expelled” is intellectually honest, cerebrally stimulating and delectably provocative.

I don’t know about those last two, but “intellectually honest”?! Getting interviews under false pretenses is intellectually honest? Blaming the Holocaust on the fact that species evolve is intellectually honest? WTF, man! WTF?!

Evolution = Holocaust is a total non-sequitur! Not only is that not “intellectually honest”, it isn’t even logically honest!

People come onto my blog and leave comments grousing about how I keep calling creationists “retards”! Look at the evidence, people! J. Matt Barber has to be a blithering idiot to call Expelled “intellectually honest”! Does he not understand honesty? Does he not understand intellect? He’s obviously unacquainted with both.

He then continues:

[T]he general consensus among the evolutionary scientists interviewed was that all life, including human life, likely began when lightening [sic] struck a mud puddle (you know, like Frankenstein but without all the prefab body parts).

You’re right, Barbie! That sure is an absurd story. Not like this one:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…. [Genesis 2:7]

So tell me, Barbie. How does that story work? Like Frankenstein but without all the prefab body parts?

Continuing his review:

As the movie masterfully illustrates, we live in a cultural climate where secular elitists in academia, the media and the courts chew up and spit out anyone who dares to question the gospel according to Charles Darwin. They’re absolutely terrified to follow the scientific evidence wherever it may lead.

And that evidence is what, precisely? Your people have never provided any.

They don’t want to upset the morally relative applecart, which is loosely held together by the notion that we’re all just a bunch of monkeys with an instinctive, biological excuse for all our behavioral choices. To them, life’s a whole lot easier under the theory of evolution. Without a sovereign Creator to answer to, we get to scoot along and party hearty, free from accountability.

BINGO! That’s the payoff! Read that paragraph again. This is the entire foundation that the fundies’ anti-evolution campaign rests on. It’s the real motivation.

Fundies are convinced that without God, there can be no morality. They don’t understand that evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology very cleanly explain how morality evolves and develops within human societies and even other animal species.

Fundies believe that scientists don’t want there to be a God. Scientists, intellectuals, and their co-conspirators in the Liberal Media all want to be able to run around in sinful, materialistic debauchery. They don’t want to have to answer to God for their sinful ways, so they invent an atheistic science to “prove” that God does not exist.

Not only is this belief absurd, it’s logically bankrupt. If God exists, but you pretend he doesn’t so you don’t have to adhere to his rules, that doesn’t make him go away. If he exists, wishing him away won’t work. But that’s the logic that fundies think secularists use.

It’s crazy-town logic. It makes as much sense as saying that because species evolve, Hitler killed the Jews.

You probably remember the flap last September when Kathy Griffin won an Emmy for her cable-TV reality show, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. The award was presented at the Creative Arts Emmy awards. The program was taped and scheduled for broadcast the following week on the E! cable network. She pissed off a lot of fundies with her acceptance speech:

Now, a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn’t help me a bit. If it was up to him, Cesar Milan would be up here with that damn dog. So all I can say is suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now!

This caused enough of a stink that E! was forced to cut her acceptance speech out of the broadcast.

Last night, I came upon a rerun on Bravo of a standup comedy show that Griffin taped not long after this incident. She discusses the event and its aftermath. I thought it was quite funny. I managed to find the program on YouTube. The bit is split over these two parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

(YouTube pages are here and here.)