NOVA's Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

[Moridin]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as "What is evolution?" and "Does intelligent design qualify as science?" For years to come, the lessons from Dover will continue to have a profound impact on how science is viewed in our society and how to teach it in the classroom.

This should be interesting. Intelligent Design Creationism finally fulfilled a goals in the Wedge Strategy: To have IDC portrait on a PBS show such as Nova treating design 'theory' fairly. To bad for the proponents of IDC that this means complete annihilation.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20071010150344tsop.np/newsblaze/NEWSWIRE/NewsBlaze-Wire.html

"Judgment Day captures on film a landmark court case with a powerful scientific message at its core," said Paula S. Apsell, NOVA Senior Executive Producer. "Evolution is one of the most essential and least understood of all scientific theories, the foundation of biological science. We felt it was important for NOVA to do this program to heighten the public understanding of what constitutes science and what does not, and therefore, what is acceptable for inclusion in the science curriculum in our public schools."

I'll so be watching this.

 

[Evo]

Thanks for the heads up, sounds interesting!

 

[turbo]

I just marked my calendar. Thanks.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I just marked my calendar.

Me too. Thanks Moridin.

 

[rewebster]

IDC

"Indoctrination Disinformation Conditioning"

 

[Chronos]

The intelligient design conjecture is logically irrefutable. The universe would not otherwise exist. NOVA has proven nothing but a willingness to argue the obvious.

 

[NeoDevin]

The intelligient design conjecture is logically irrefutable

It is also not scientific. It should not be taught in schools alongside evolution for this reason, not for how refutable it is.

 

[rewebster]

It is also not scientific. It should not be taught in schools alongside evolution for this reason, not for how refutable it is.

personally, I don't mind...but if they do--I think that this other theory should be taught too:

"In the beginning, the universe was a black egg where heaven and Earth were mixed together, and in this egg was contained Pangu. He felt suffocated, so he cracked the egg with a broadax, and the light, clear part of the egg floated up to form Heaven while the cold, heavy part stayed down and formed Earth. Pangu stood in the middle, and he and the egg's two parts grew and grew until he was nine million li in height."

http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00875/text/ChineseC.htm

 

[Moridin]

I have no problem teaching against intelligent design creationism, but it should obviously not be taught as a credible alternative to evolution.

The intelligient design conjecture is logically irrefutable. The universe would not otherwise exist. NOVA has proven nothing but a willingness to argue the obvious.

Unfortunately, the IDC movement is divided into plenty of sub-conjectures, some of which are indeed logically, experimentally (and for some, theologically) refutable.

Take the case of the now refuted irreducible complexity (IC) of certain biological structures:

"Biological entity X is too complex to have evolved, therefore it was designed by an intelligent designer".

Even this is composed of three conjectures. The last part is not falsifiable and thus not science. The false dichotomy between evolution / IDC has been attacked by plenty of people (Scott, Miller, Dawkins, Pennock, Forrest/Gross, Roughgarden, Myers, Shermer etc.) and the first conjecture that no biological precursor exists has been falsified by hypotetico-deductive method.

Although you might be referring to their cosmological arguments? If so, Michael Shermer has written a thorough dissection of it in Why Darwin Matters - The Case Against Intelligent Design.

As for NOVA, the public understanding of science should be one of the most vital goals of the scientific community (or at least science journalists).

 

[Lockheed]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/



This should be interesting. Intelligent Design Creationism finally fulfilled a goals in the Wedge Strategy: To have IDC portrait on a PBS show such as Nova treating design 'theory' fairly. To bad for the proponents of IDC that this means complete annihilation.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20071010150344tsop.np/newsblaze/NEWSWIRE/NewsBlaze-Wire.html



I'll so be watching this.

Haha! I guess the old saying "be careful what you wish for" holds in this day and age...


Its about time that a major media outlet treats it like the total trash it is. I'm am most certainly going to watch it

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Q: Then why are you smiling?
A: Because tonight's the night.

 

[Moridin]

Q: Then why are you smiling?
A: Because tonight's the night.

Indeed. NOVA has made a generous website as well. Ken Miller is right on, as usual:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/defense-ev.html

There is also a briefing packet for educators. Furthermore, the world will be able to watch it online on 16 November on their website.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/ (The part on the right where it says "Watch Online".

You can also watch a trailer there, or if you prefer, here is a version of it on Youtube:



Some extras include watching the evolution of salamanders in California and som interesting personal reflections by Judge Jones.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/extras.html

 

[Evo]

Thanks for the reminder!

 

[Evo]

Excellent show! Thanks Moridin!

 

[Chi Meson]

Indeed, excellent show. Stick it right up their flagellum.

 

[Moridin]

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial Transcripts

For those of you who live outside the US, you can read the transcripts above. The full video will be published online at the Nova website Nov 16 available for everyone.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The show was quite good. It bought out some rebuttals to parts of the anti-evolution stance. In particular, it showed how the flagellum is not irreducibly complex after all. Also, it showed the discovery of an animal that bridged the gap between fish and amphibian, something that the anti-evolution crowd said was necessary to find.

Apparently, the decision at the trial was rather narrow. They did not find that ID is not science, but rather found that the defendants had tried to introduce religion into the classroom. This is as much as would have expected since I don't think it's against the law to teach subjects other than science in a science classroom, but it is against the law to teach religion anywhere in a public school. The defendants claimed that they were pushing ID as science, not creationism. However there were two pieces of evidence against them. One was a document that was supposed to express their guiding principles. Indeed it mentioned ID, but not creationism. However, it turns out that the document was an exact copy of an earlier document and everywhere the word creationism had been, it was replaced with ID. In at least one instance, the replacement was bungled and both words appeared mixed together. The other was the fact that books of a religious nature had been bought by the defendants to be placed in the school library. Since the objective of the defendants was to have the teachers guide the students to those books, it was evidence of intent to teach religion.

Spoiler warning: The defendents lost.

 

[Moridin]

http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/highlights/2005-12-20_Kitzmiller_decision.pdf

Technically, the conclusion of the court was that:

- Board's ID Policy violated the Establishment Clause (Conclusion p. 136 ->)
- That ID was not science / accepted in the scientific community (which was necessary in order to apply the Lemon test) p. 64
- That ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and therefore religious antecedents (p. 136 ->)

What the Court did not take a position on was whether ID was true or not.

More details on the highlights posted by jimmysnyder:

The morphing of the Creationism / ID 'textbooks' can be found in the Barbra Forrest's supplemental report (p. 6 ->)

http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/experts/Forrest_supplemental_report.pdf

All trial documents (deposits, trial transcripts, slides etc.) can be found on the website for the National Center for Science Education.

http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?page_id=5

Something funny happened in 1987 that made them replace creationism with ID (Edwards v. Aguillard; Supreme Court decision banning creationism as unconstitutional). I think this was the definitive piece of evidence for their creationist past.

http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/origins_of_ID/Forrest_chart1.png
http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/origins_of_ID/Forrest_chart2.png

I can't wait until Nov 16 =)

 

[Chi Meson]

What was that word? The "missing link" that proved that "creationism" evolved into "intelligent design" ? Something like cintelligentsm, but that's not it.

It's so funny that they found a "transitional word" that proved that creationism had been renamed and repackaged.

 

[Moridin]

What was that word? The "missing link" that proved that "creationism" evolved into "intelligent design" ? Something like cintelligentsm, but that's not it.

The term was 'cdesign proponentists'.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2910607983914622531&q=creationism%27s+trojan+horse&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

It's so funny that they found a "transitional word" that proved that creationism had been renamed and repackaged.

Indeed. The plaintiffs (pro-science) noticed that the entire book (of pandas and people) had gone through a search-and-replace job in the 80's, so they subpoenaed The Foundation for Thought and Ethics for all of the available drafts and then plotted the graphs showing how the words had changed (but not the definitions).

FTE even had drafts that where intended for the next edition of the book, 'The Design of Life', where 'intelligent design' had been replaced with 'sudden emergence'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/national/18judge.html

In the recent trial, a lawyer grilled an intelligent design proponent on why a textbook the witness helped to write substituted "intelligent design" for "creationism" in a later edition and with "sudden emergence theory" in a draft of a future edition.

"We won't be back in a couple of years for the sudden emergence trial, will we?" the lawyer asked.

To which Judge Jones interjected, "Not on my docket."

 

[Moridin]

Heh, most of the IDC bloggers are either oddly silent or frantically trying to produce propaganda such as "PBS Airs False Facts in its "Inherit the Wind" Version of the Kitzmiller Trial" or "Judge Jones Nudges Judge Judy".

I was sort of expecting that.

 

[D H]

Both creationism and ID are now failed attempts to remove biological teaching from America. So what's next on the agenda for the cdesign proponentsists?

 

[Moridin]

Both creationism and ID are now failed attempts to remove biological teaching from America. So what's next on the agenda for the cdesign proponentsists?

Don't know if the question was rhetorical, but I'll go ahead and speculate either way

Barbra Forrest (key witness for the pro-science side) has written a paper on the future of ID creationism earlier this year:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/intelligent-design.pdf (p. 19-27)

It is frightening.

Summary of future tactics:

Teach the "Controversy"
Teach the Full Range of "Scientific" Views
Critical Analysis / Critical Thinking
The "strengths and weaknesses/evidence for and against" evolution.
Academic "Freedom".

They will morph and change their language and will publish more textbooks trying to distort the publics view of science and evolution. There is also some other IDC projects going on. The Discovery Institute has an annual budget of around 5 million USD (mostly from donations from conservative Christian groups). National Center for Science Education has around 500k.

I'm guessing the next target will be Big Bang (in addition to further attacks on evolution and abiogenesis). There will be more trials on evolution. Kitzmiller et. al. versus Dover is only valid in the jurisdiction.

According to some ID bloggers "The Design of Life" (next generation of pandas and people) is about to be released by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics on Monday, November 19. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Oh well.

 

[Moridin]

Some Youtube clips for those who haven't seen the show (it will be up on the NOVA Website on the 16th Nov):

(Eugenie C. Scott on the unscientific state of IDC)
(On the religious nature of IDC; Interview with Nick Matzke and Barbra Forrest)

For all fans out there, Ruse and Pennock (both pro-science) is making a revised version of Ruse's book "But Is It Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy" including 50 new pages on the dover trial and the future. Is going to be published Nov 30 2007.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Indeed. NOVA has made a generous website as well. Ken Miller is right on, as usual...
There is also a briefing packet for educators.

I much enjoyed the NOVA episode, but one point which struck me as terribly sad but also terribly important: Judge Jones remarked that during the presentation of evidence by the paleontologists, he wondering why, as a literate and well-educated person, he'd never heard of any of this wonderful classic work. The answer, as Ken Miller (IIRC) pointed out, is that due to strenuous opposition over many decades from Creatonists, very little of it ever made it into even recent high school biology textbooks. Many years ago, the New Yorker ran a wonderful profile on a more or less unelected public official in Texas who in effect determined national policy because she controlled the Texas schoolbook committee and Texas is sufficiently populous than textbook publishers felt it would be uneconomic to produce one set of books for the deep South and another for say California. This woman happened to be a creationist and, single-handed, she set back science education in the U.S. by a century over the course of at least twenty years. I believe she eventually retired but of course by that time a new generation of creationists had arisen, such as the Discovery Institute, who have unfortunately enjoyed considerable success in continuing to suppress some of the best of modern biology from many high school science classrooms.

I wish I could remember the details and the exact citation to the New Yorker story; probably someone out there will remember the story, because this situation was notorious among biology teachers for decades.

 

[D H]

Don't know if the question was rhetorical, but I'll go ahead and speculate either way

Barbra Forrest (key witness for the pro-science side) has written a paper on the future of ID creationism earlier this year:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/intelligent-design.pdf (p. 19-27)

It is frightening.

The question was not rhetorical. Thanks for the paper, especially this line

Dembski is unambiguous on this point: “The scientific picture of the
world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but massively wrong."

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I agree. Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg of unscientific horrors the religious right wants to visit upon us. They have problems with climate science, geology, cosmology, medicine, physics (in other words, just about every branch of science), and even mathematics.

 

[Chris Hillman]

and even mathematics.

All too true I have had the singular misfortune to acquire two mathsci interests, in information theory and general relativity, which at the time (c. 1985) seemed as pure as the driven snow. I had assumed that creationism died with the Scopes trial, and was unpleasantly shocked to discover that both GTR and IT have been caricatured by anti-intellectuals seeking to return our intellectual life to the middle ages and our political system to the Salem theocracy. Indeed, at the present time GTR (via cosmology) and IT are probably the two most politically charged subjects in mathsci, as the result of the activities of the fundamentalist movement.

On a happier note, the thing I liked best about the NOVA episode was that it managed to convey the intense intellectual excitement which derives from modern understanding of Darwin's grand view of life. I recall a conversation (quite a few years ago) with a leading biologist in which I remarked "so under certain ecological circumstances, aphids might develop a soldier caste" and he replied that he'd just read a paper by a Japanese scientist who had found just such a phenomenon! Wow, was that ever a kick! As others have remarked, the theme of the NOVA episode was quite properly to contrast the predictive power of modern biology viz. the ID pseudoscientific "hypothesis".

 

[Moridin]

For those of you who have not been able to see the two-hour documentary "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial", either because you lived outside the US or were busy, PBS has posted the entire thing on their website, freely available to the general public:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

The two-hour program is split up into 12 chapters, each about 10 minutes. Have fun!

On a happier note, the thing I liked best about the NOVA episode was that it managed to convey the intense intellectual excitement which derives from modern understanding of Darwin's grand view of life.

Indeed. Hopefully it did (will do) more than, for a lack of better words, preach to the choir.

I'm going to watch it right now and I'll probably have something to rant about later. Oh well.

 

[Chi Meson]

Indeed. Hopefully it did (will do) more than, for a lack of better words, preach to the choir.

It will at least give verbal ammunition to the choir. Interesting image.


The folks who are pre-sold on ID, they are a lost cause. A Nova special is not going to sway many of them.

But even better, it will sway that portion of the population in the fuzzy middle. Rational, intelligent folks who have not had the full facts available to them can now make reasonable decision.

 

[Cyrus]

This video is very disturbing. What a bunch of morons the ID people are.