'Lying for Jesus?' - Richard Dawkins on getting expelled from Expelled

Much of the internets (at least the reality-based, rational, irony-rich segments) have been rolling with laughter over the kerfuffle on good friday in Minneapolis when PZ Myers was expelled from the audience of the IDiotic documentary Expelled despite being featured - and thanked - in the film itself, and even as his companion Richard Dawkins, Darwin's rottweiler, was allowed in. You have probably caught the story somewhere by now for even the New York Times picked it up. Now we have Dawkins' own account of the incident as well as a trenchant critique of the film itself. Not to be missed!

I have to say that, once I'd picked myself up from the floor after all that ROFL-ing friday night upon reading PZ's comic account, I was inclined to chuckle and move on. Until, that is, a couple of Pharyngula's sciblings (fellow scienceblogs writers) started trying to throw PZ and Dawkins under the bus over this silly business! While I am not surprised that those master "framers" of science, Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney are upset at these two atheist gadflies kicking up such a ruckus without even actually misbehaving - I am puzzled that they want PZ and Dawkins to shut up even in the face of such blatant (if incompetent) targeting by the ID goons! Surely, at least in this incident, N&B ought to be telling their religious friends that they shouldn't be overreacting to mild-mannered atheists (who, in this case, had bent over backward in consenting to be interviewed under false pretenses by the producers of this film), rather than trying to shove the atheists into a closet?

I therefore have to now share the following videos with you. Watch and tell me - how threatened are you by these two science geeks?

And this, from their interviews in the film itself, where they were apparently so rude, as spun through the IDiot perspective:

So I have to ask, once again, why can't these master framers try to actually "frame" atheists like Dawkins and PZ in better humanistic light to their religious pals? Why not tell the religious that they really have little to fear from these atheists, other than gaining some sound scientific knowledge, and even getting an occasional guffaw out of their irreverent wit, rather than tell scientists to shut up for fear of offending the pious? And how much duller our lives would be if people like Dawkins and PZ shut up?