The Privileged Planet

According to a live-blogger at the Southwestern premiere of “Darwin’s Dilemma” earlier tonight, a Darwinist during Q and A challenged Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells by charging that the interviews in the film of noted paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine (both evolutionists) were done a decade ago. “Are you aware that the interviews of Morris and Valentine were done 9 and 10 years ago?” the questioner asked. Apparently the implication was that the interviews were so old they no longer accurately reflected the views of Morris and Valentine. Except that the questioner was flat wrong. According to Illustra Media, with whom I checked tonight, the interviews were done specifically for this project in October and November of 2006 Read More ›

Last week a colleague of Guillermo Gonzalez’s had a decidedly nasty letter published in the Ames Tribune. Rather than address any of the scientific arguments raised by Gonzalez and co-author Jay Richards in their book The Privileged Planet, this letter writer instead pens an ad hominem diatribe full of misinformation and falsehoods.

The Ames Tribune has published Gonzalez’s response. While the letter tries to make out all ID supporters as ultra right-wing zealots — even to the point of comparing ID scientists to the Taliban — Gonzalez points out:

Now that the dust has settled from the very successful national premiere of The Privileged Planet, I can post a few of the photos (taken by expert photographer Brian Gage who also designed all the materials for The Privileged Planet premiere, not to mention the book cover and the DVD cover as well.) The event itself went very well and it appeared that everyone of the 220 guests in attendance had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

The long-awaited screening of The Privileged Planet documentary at the Smithsonian takes place this evening in Washington, D.C. Stay tuned for some first-hand reporting of the event later tonight and on Friday from Rob Crowther.

In the meantime, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all of the Darwinists who provided free publicity for the screening by denouncing a film they had never even seen. (If they had seen the film, they would have known that it doesn’t deal with biological evolution. See Rob Crowther and Bruce Chapman’s prior posts, here and here, respectively.)

After tonight’s screening, I’m sure we can look forward to still more encores from the pro-Darwin chorus. Keeping in mind that the most vocal critics to this point have neither read the book nor seen the movie, Discovery’s Seth Cooper decided to help out by drafting a few form letters critics can send to newspaper editors tomorrow :

CSC Senior Fellow David Berlinski has just sent me an open letter to the Amazing Randi. Randi you may remember led the Darwinist charge of the bright brigade to try and coerce the Smithsonian into deep sixing The Privileged Planet. And Randi was serious because he offered a $20,000 bribe to keep the film from playing. Berlinski, however, has decided to screen the film in Paris. But here’s the thing, Randi. I was sort of planning to screen the film right here in my apartment in Paris. I’ve got a little screening room I call The Smithsonian right between the bathroom and the kitchen, I sort of figured I’d invite some friends over, open a couple cans of suds, sort Read More ›

Today’s Washington Post has a handful of letters about the dust-up at the Smithsonian over the screening of The Privileged Planet later this month, both good and bad. First the good.

The Washington Post today publishes an editorial prepared by Anne Applebaum (“Dissing Darwin“) that uses the term “intelligent creator” three times to describe the concept of intelligent design. The writer knows better, but apparently believes that if she can lodge the word “creator” (as in “creationist”) in people’s minds, it will reside there forever. The key to understanding such writing: the proponents of intelligent design must never be allowed to speak for themselves or define their own ideas. Instead they must only be spoken about and accept definitions of their terms that are offered by their foes. The editorial also twice describes the film The Privileged Planet as “religious”, though the writer admits it doesn’t mention the word God. (It Read More ›

The Washington Post has a story related to the showing of the film “The Privileged Planet” June 23 at the National Museum of Natural History. It will be interesting to see how the story is covered given the hysterical tone in evidence on certain ultra-Darwinian blogs in recent days. Once invitations got out and the New York Times ran a story over Memorial Day weekend (with its unfortunately misleading headline tying the film to the evolution debate, which is not its subject), the Museum apparently was flooded with calls and emails from angry Darwinists demanding that the event be cancelled. None of these would-be film-burners has seen the film, or read the book, of course.

RELATED DOCUMENTS:
PDF of recommended invitations provided by SI to DI
PDF of invitation sent out by DI
PDF of e-mail from SI saying The Privileged Planet had been reviewed and approved
PDF of letter received from Smithsonian by Dsicovery June 1

The Museum did not buckle, but it surely bent.

The event has not been cancelled. However a “Director’s Message” referencing supposed “consultation with the Secretary” (!) was circulated on the web Wednesday, and it purported to come from the Museum Director, Cristian Samper. The trouble is, Lucy Dorrick (director of development and special events) of the Smithsonian, who called us back when we telephoned Director Samper, knew nothing about it and seemed surprised to hear our report of it. She asked in turn if we had received a different, shorter message from her, on the museum’s behalf. We had not. She obligingly sent a copy to us and we sent her a copy of the questionable “Director’s Message.”

Addressed to Mark Ryland, Vice President of Discovery Institute and director of the institute’s Washington, DC office, the letter sent today to Discovery says,