JUDGMENT DAY: Intelligent Design on Trial

[InfiniteNow]

So, this evening on the esteemed program NOVA, the topic was Intelligent Design and the court case which took place in Dover, Pennsylvania over a school board decision to teach "alternative" scientific theories in the biology classroom.

 

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | PBS

 

 

As always, the PBS program did a wonderful job of the presentation. There were no attacks, just presentation of facts. They took the classic "show us, don't tell us" approach, and I'm very pleased with the output. You can see the preview here:

 

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | Preview | PBS

 

 

Did anyone happen to see this?

 

Do you feel this was a historic decision, and if so, why? If not, why not?

 

Do you have any other comments which do not rehash the

tired old dead horse

which is the "debate" between evolution and ID? If so, please share them.

 

 

 

If you didn't catch the program the first time, PBS tends to re-air shows throughout the week. You can find out when by entering your zip code at the link below:

 

PBS | TV Schedules

 

 

If you haven't already, please try to find the time in our schedule to sit down for this one. Also, try to recall that God designed DVR and Tivo for a reason. :evil:

 

 

Cheers. :rolleyes:

[Racoon]

We all die eventually.

 

What a surprise/.

 

Does it really matter what you Believe when you die ?

[InfiniteNow]

We all die eventually.

 

What a surprise/.

 

Does it really matter what you Believe when you die ?

 

You seem to have completely missed the point of the thread, Racoon. That's okay, though. You should check out the special if you get the chance. It really is worth your time. :)

[C1ay]

Michael Shermer: Why people believe strange things

 

Quasi off-topic but certainly worth a view for a view of ID in one line :)

[InfiniteNow]

I guess I'm the only one who caught it. Oh well.

[C1ay]

I guess I'm the only one who caught it. Oh well.

 

I saw just the beginning and then changed the channel...

[Turtle]

So, this evening on the esteemed program NOVA, the topic was Intelligent Design and the court case which took place in Dover, Pennsylvania over a school board decision to teach "alternative" scientific theories in the biology classroom.

 

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | PBS

 

Did anyone happen to see this?

 

Do you feel this was a historic decision, and if so, why? If not, why not?

 

Do you have any other comments which do not rehash the

tired old dead horse

which is the "debate" between evolution and ID? If so, please share them.

Cheers. :cup:

 

I watched the full show.

 

I think it was an historic decision because the evidence presented revealed the organized and purposeful christian fundamentalist game plan to change "creationism' to 'intelligent design' and do an end-around on the Supreme Court's earlier ruling against teaching creationism.

 

I particularly liked hearing what the judge had to say in retrospect, and the introduction of new research that pins down some of the 'gaps' in evolutionary theory that the fundys claim invalidate the science.

 

As the judge and others in the program pointed out, there is still more to come, as polls consistantly show ~40% of Americans don't believe in the science of evolution. :)(possibly due in no small part to textbook publishewrs removing evolution from text books for some 30 years:doh:) Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction. Think we can get shcools to show it in class? :eek: :hihi:

[HydrogenBond]

Creationism is more symbolic, than it is science. It should not be taken literally, rather the symbols need to be translated. Evolution is more based on science, but it has a a small conceptual problem. This does not make it invalid, but incomplete. The problem has to do with the nature of the discontinuous data. Based on the data, the theory is valid but since data is dicontinuous, the theory is also discontinuous,by default.

 

Let me give an analogy. I have done this before. Say you made a journal of a child from birth to 18 years old. Each day we enter something into the journal. This is analogous to the data of the living state. The data behind evolutionary theory is analogus to randomly picked about 1-10% of the pages and based on that, we come up with a theory of why the child is what it it, on their 18th birthday. The analysis will depend on the data chosen. If it just so happens to leave out important events, the theory will not reflect it. Evolution satisfies the data at hand. But one needs to realize that need data will appear, that will change the theory.

 

If you look at the data logically, the types of samples most likely to have been preserved, should be the most common things. In other words, if only one of something appeared, the odds of finding that would be less than if there were 10,000 units of something. It is very likely, the data reflects the creatures with the most units at any time. The data and selective advantage go hand in hand with the odds of finding data.

 

There is another consideration. Genetic evolution does not necessarily have to imply selective advantage. With dinosaurs, might was right. The mammals were higher on the genetic scale, but didn't have selective advantage for a long time. It is possible genetics were moving faster than selective advantage, but selective advantage just kept eating them up. Selective advantage can slow the pace of evolution.

 

Let me give an example, the bully and the knurd. From the genetic point of view the knurd has more advanced genetics, on the relative scale, since his mind is more atuned to the nature of the future. But in the playgound the bully will have the selective advantage. If there were no rules, except the rules of the jungle, each time a knurd's genetics appeared within the jungle playgound, the bully could kill him, since he is weakk. From our samplng of data, the knurd never appears, so he never existed.

[InfiniteNow]

I watched the full show.

I had a feeling you would have seen it, and thank you for your post. :hyper:

 

 

I think it was an historic decision because the evidence presented revealed the organized and purposeful christian fundamentalist game plan to change "creationism' to 'intelligent design' and do an end-around on the Supreme Court's earlier ruling against teaching creationism.

I see it as important precendent as well. This can be used to help fight against and mitigate other transgressions of this nature.

 

 

I particularly liked hearing what the judge had to say in retrospect, and the introduction of new research that pins down some of the 'gaps' in evolutionary theory that the fundys claim invalidate the science.

I liked the part countering the irriducible complexity claims. That was a solid slice to the heart of ID and creationism.

 

 

As the judge and others in the program pointed out, there is still more to come, as polls consistantly show ~40% of Americans don't believe in the science of evolution. :)(possibly due in no small part to textbook publishewrs removing evolution from text books for some 30 years:doh:)

I had a visceral sickness to this part myself. However, I did laugh out loud quite a bit when they summed up the issue in two words: "cdesign proponentsists" and called it "the missing link between creationism and intelligent design." :hyper:

 

 

Thanks again for the on topic post.

[Buffy]

I watched the whole thing 1 1/2 times (well, Reaper was on for the second hour of the first showing last night! How's that for an odd combo! :hyper: ), and my reaction was pretty much the same as Mr. Turtle's...

 

I liked the part countering the irriducible complexity claims. That was a solid slice to the heart of ID and creationism.

Irreducible Complexity is their *only* argument other than "there are too many gaps" and I agree that the most devastating piece of the plaintiff's (anti-ID folks) arguments came from all evidence that continued to roll in *during* the trial, filling in those gaps.

 

While as you said in the OP, Now, the show was unbiased in terms of letting each side make their case in their own words, the argument ID folks kept coming down to was simple denial of the enormous quantity of evidence: Michael Behe saying emphatically that "there's no theory of how the vertebrate immune system could have evolved" and being shown stacks of books explaining the theory, may have been--as the ID'ers lawyer complained a "lawyer's stunt"--its astounding that he continues to make the claim blindly without having even a short response as to why all those man-decades of work was "not reasonable" or "completely unsupported."

 

It seems as if denying the evidence strongly enough will some how make it go away.

 

At the end, the defendants seemed to be reduced to vague statements about how the judge "had no right to make that decision." At one extreme was one of the pro-ID school board members saying:

BILL BUCKINGHAM: To put it bluntly, I think he's a jackass. I think he went to clown college instead of law school or else he went to law school and slept during the Constitution classes because, uh, his decision doesn't jive with the law. Uh, I think he should be on a bench, but it ought to be in a centre ring of Ringling Brothers Circus. He, it, it, it's disgusting.

...to a less strident but still content free statement from their lawyer:

RICHARD THOMPSON: I think first of all you, you have to say we had a fair trial. I'm just disturbed about the extent of his opinion that it went way beyond what, what he should have gone into deciding matters of science.

 

I guess this was evenhandedness, but those folks really come across as having not a single decent argument for what they're doing that does not come down to "its my belief."

 

I thought at least the pastor in town was being honest by claiming that teaching evolution was a "slap in his face":

PASTOR RAY MUMMERT: Teaching the traditional evolutionary Darwinian concept that man evolved from lower forms of life, that's almost a slap in my face. That takes the dignity away from humanity as far as I'm concerned what gives dignity to man is that every one of us are made in the image of God. He is the creator. And he created the world with intention and with design. It upsets me deeply that now in our educational system we are indoctrinating our young people to think differently about humanity.

Honest, heart-felt position. Just ain't science. And its a position that's offensive to those of us who's God is *not* anthropocentric!

I had a visceral sickness to this part myself. However, I did laugh out loud quite a bit when they summed up the issue in two words: "cdesign proponentsists" and called it "the missing link between creationism and intelligent design." :hyper:

That was my favorite line too!

 

I won't go on. As you old timers know, I've got hundreds of posts here on Hypography slaying some really ardent IDers, and I've been glad I haven't had to post too much on the topic recently, but with the new movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" coming out in February we'll be dealing with the next "reinvention of Creationism": As this article in Salon this week [you might need to sit through an ad to read this link] notes, they have pulled back even further given this ruling to avoid *any* discussion of any "alternative theory" and simply focus on complaining that Evolution "is full of holes." The decision made it clear that they could not promote a "theory" that was not scientific, but they think they can get away with continuing to "teach the controversy" by saying that calling Darwinism hogwash is "just part of the scientific process."

 

As the judge remarked at the end of the show, "By no means did my decision put a capstone on that. And that will proceed for generations, I suspect."

 

By the way, the transcript for the show can be found here.

 

I could never have imagined that I would receive threats to my person— in an establishment clause case. But that's what happened— in the— Dover case. :)

Buffy

[CraigD]

I read an excellent article on Kitzmiller v. Dover, “The ‘Vice Stategy’ Undone”, by expert witness in the case Barbara Forrest, in the January/February 2007 Skeptical Inquirer. I’ve not yet seen the “Nova:Judgement Day:ID on Trial”, but will as soon as it appears again on a channel I get (right now, all that’s listed as upcoming on Nova is something about army ants battling termites!)

 

Forrest’s account details what she sees as legal blunders and insider fighting among ID proponents, primarily William Dembski, the Discovery Institute, and the Thomas More Law Center.

 

Judge John Jones’s decision was rendered 12/20/2005, making it, by typical news standards, “old news”. Among followers of the ID debate, there is, I think, a tendency toward complacency due to Kitzmiller v. Dover and other legal successes. Programs like Nova do a public service, I think, in drawing attention to this and other cases. B)

 

For sheer real-world scariness, I recommend the 2006 documentary “Jesus Camp”. Having lived next door to a genuine, snake-handling Pentecostal church (specifically, a Church of the Nazarene) , this film seemed rather old hat to me, but folks who’ve not been exposed to such varieties of Evangelical Christianity, will, I expect, find it a chilling eye-opener. B)

[InfiniteNow]

I’ve not yet seen the “Nova:Judgement Day:ID on Trial”, but will as soon as it appears again on a channel I get (right now, all that’s listed as upcoming on Nova is something about army ants battling termites!)

I think I may have seen that special on army ants battling termites, and it's pretty cool. Amazing close camera work. B)

 

 

 

If the Judgment Day special is not going to be on television in your area any time soon, no worries. Starting Friday (which is tomorrow as of the time of this post), you and others can watch the entire program online here:

 

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | Watch the Program | PBS

 

 

Enjoy. B)

[InfiniteNow]

If the Judgment Day special is not going to be on television in your area any time soon, no worries. Starting Friday (which is tomorrow as of the time of this post), you and others can watch the entire program online here:

 

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | Watch the Program | PBS

 

 

So, has anyone else watched the program?

[InfiniteNow]

PBS comments on the reaction to the show, the fact that it wasn't shown by a couple of affiliates, and prints some letters they got in response. Most of the letters regarded the "one-sided nature" of the presentation. As others have stated, it's funny what happens when you go with the facts. More at the link.

 

PBS | Ombudsman | 'Judgment Day,' Intelligently Designed

 

 

 

Why do you keep teaching that everything in our solar system orbits the Sun? Don't our kids deserve alternative view points? What you're doing is SO one-sided! :)