Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
by Nova
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DVD details
Actor: NovaDirector: Nova
Brand: WGBH HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: WGBH Boston
Product features:
- In a tiny town of Dover in eastern Pennsylvania, in 2004, the local school board ordered science teachers to read to their high school biology students a statement that suggested there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called "Intelligent Design." NOVA captures the emotional conflict in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, which was closely
DVD Reviews of Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
DVD Review: Should be required viewing in all science classes.
Summary: 5 Stars
I had to buy a second copy because I gave my original DVD away. I live in a ultra conservative small town in the midwest and am really tired of hearing over and over " I don't believe in evolution - it's only a theory". If these people knew anything about science they would know that evolution happens. It is a fact. The food you eat the medicine you take is all produced by our knowledge of changing things genetically - artifically creating an "evolution" of a plant or animal. The only theory about evolution is exactly how it happens on a cellular level. That is why it is a "theory". We still do not know everything about how evolution occurs. I will continue to show this DVD over and over because the Nova DVD really lays out the theory of evolution so everyone can understand it. It also shows clearly how the theory of intelligent design was made. Best yet it is all from court transcripts! Well done NOVA!!! DVD Review: A brilliant documentary that exposes the strength of the case for evolution
Summary: 5 Stars
This documentary about the lawsuit brought by parents to overturn the policies put in place by the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania is an exceptionally fine summation of the fake debate between evolutionary thought and intelligent design. I say "fake debate" because there really is no debate. Evolution simply is science. To call it merely a theory is unbelievably deceptive, because there simply are no creationist scientific theories. As several people explain so well in this documentary, science always by its very nature falsifiable and makes predictions. Evolution, though falsifiable, has constantly been verified and supported by new evidence. It has also created many predictions that have been proven reliable as time has passed. None of this is true of Creationism. It is more or less an assertion that explains little and cannot really be verified, though in fact as a number of scientists have pointed out, the "design" of many animals seems quite unintelligent, as any human with an achy back can attest.
Intelligent Design is clearly Creationism, which is clearly an attempt to insert religion into science and courts have repeatedly upheld this. I really have no problem with the idea of a creator. In fact, I am a Christian who believes that God created life by establishing the method of evolution. In fact, there are many Christian scientists who believe this, perhaps most famously Francis Collins, formerly head of the Human Genome Project and currently the head of the National Institutes of Health. The roots for this are not really dealt with in this documentary, but those interested might consider looking at the really fine academic book THE DEATH OF ADAM: EVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON WESTERN THOUGHT. The book shows how Christians have resisted adjusting their beliefs -- beliefs that really are not central to the redemptive story of the death and resurrection of Jesus -- despite the growth of evidence for a different understanding of human origins.
The show details how Intelligent Design was deliberately repackaged from Creationism after it was declared unconstitutional in court decisions. Philosopher Barbara Forrest gives absolutely damning evidence that books were rewritten to try to skirt the court decisions. This testimony revealed the hypocrisy driving the Intelligent Design movement, which insists that it is science, while Creationism as clearly religious. Forrest also brings forth a document called The Wedge that promotes a strategy to remake society in religious terms. What disturbs me is that they can't do this in reasoned, balanced debate, so they have to do so by devious, deceptive methods. At a certain point my fellow Christians simply need to acknowledge the truth and adjust to it. Evolution has been proven as true as the vast majority of scientific theories. For me, as a person of faith, it doesn't lessen or challenge my belief in God, but apparently the faith of a huge number of Christians have an incredibly fragile faith.
The documentary features a dramatic reenactment of the trial as well as a host of the participants in the trial. The result is a brilliant accounting of the conflict between Christians who can't let go of a literal reading of the earliest chapters of Genesis (the first of which was written, by the way, as a creation hymn, not as science) and science. This is easily one of the best documentaries on the Dover School Board incident.
The film does leave out one important aspect of the trial and that is the influence that outside groups advocating Intelligent Design exerted in the event. Because the school district was sued, it had to pay the legal fees, doing enormous financial harm to the school district. Some on the Christian Right advocated an appeal, but the financial cost to the school district would have been devastating. Yet throughout it all, the Creationists (do we really need to continue to call it Intelligent Design?) simply fail to see the case. The problem they have really is not with Evolution, but with modernism. There is actually a broad-based counter-enlightenment at work in the work, that runs across a large number of irrationalist movements, from Christian and Islamic fundamentalism (both of which have arisen because of their adherents inability to cope with the modern world) to astrology to New Age thought to Jungian thought. The Creationists in this trial are one example of people unable to come to emotional terms with the modern world (and I do believe that the cause is psychological and emotional rather than rational). I have wondered how and if things will ever get better. Not everyone has had trouble adjusting. Most Europeans seem to have had no such problems. Nor most Canadians and Australians. The biggest problems really do seem to be in the United States, Latin America, African, and the Arab World. Institutions grounded in rationality, such as the court system, have proven bulwarks against emotional reactionaries. Let us all pray that at some point in the future we will get past this. But in the short run I'm not optimistic.
DVD Review: Case Closed
Summary: 5 Stars
As far as I'm concerned Judgement Day is to the evolution-ID debate what Posner's "Case Closed" was to the Kennedy assassination. Game over.
Oswald did it. We evolved. Now let's move on.
DVD Review: Science for the Win
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll try to keep this short, but I have a vested interest in this subject. "Judgement Day" is a well-told documentary about the Dover trial and the cases specifically made in court. It spotlights the continual dishonesty of the Creationist movement, especially striking hard with the Creationists' own words. I was particularly amused by the fellow who, at the start of the film, was eager to have the judge decide on what was and wasn't science. When the court ruling went against him, he announced that the judge had "overstepped" by deciding what was and what wasn't science. The credibility whiplash was almost painful to watch.
So once again the Creationists and their leaders have been set back on their pins. Not long afterwards they changed their tune to "Let's Teach the Contraversy!", and I am quite sure that it won't be long before they once again charge into the courts to try to ram their religious dogma into science classes.
They just don't get it. In order for something to be accepted as science, all that must be done is a collection of evidence, a hypothesis drawn from that evidence, and then a test or series of tests designed to discover the accuracy or inaccuracy of the hypothesis. That done, the hypothesis gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, where experts in the relevant field examine the hypothesis and the tests for flaws, and try to replicate the results. If the hypotheses passes all this, then it becomes an acceptable scientific theory.
The Creationists keep trying to skip all that and want to go straight to the textbooks. They provide no evidence beyond personal incredulity, have no tests that can produce any verifiable results (and in fact don't do any research at all), and have not ever tried to submit their efforts to peer review. "Judgement Day" is a textbook demonstration of this in action, and illustrates the hollowness and idealized ignorance that characterizes the Creationist movement.
DVD Review: Victory of scientific method, secularism and justice over ignorance, distorted thinking and religious fundamentalism
Summary: 5 Stars
This documentary DVD reenacts in a very interesting way the events in 2004 and 2005 at Dover High School USA and the related court trial. It concerns the attempt of directors of a high school to try to sneak in a religious interpretation of the origin of the species into the science class of the Dover High School. Some parents and teachers reacted by filing a legal suit on gounds that what was termed as " Intelligent Design " an alternative to Charles Darwin's scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, was in fact " Creationism " in disguise i.e. a religious explanation of the origin of the species that refuted Darwin's theory that mankind is a descendant from apes.
While watching the DVD we learn in detail both about what Darwin's theory and the allegations of Intelligent Design are all about. The reenactments of testimonies of both sides in the court are very interesting. The verdict was the conviction of the school directors on grounds that they had lied in court, did in fact have ulterior motives to bring religion into education of science, which is forbidden by the American Constitution article requiring the secularity of the state and of education. The insistence of the defendants that they had no religious intentions that Intelligent Design was just an alternative scientific theory which they wanted the students to learn about besides Darwin's theory falls flat on its back when their most trusted "scientist" testifies in court that his definition of the scientific method includes Astrology...a proponent of Intelligent Design and the author of a book titled Darwin's Black Box.
For those who are not familiar with the Darwinian theory and Intelligent Design claims; according to Darwin all species have a common root and branched out into different species over time under the influence of environmental circumstances, some species adapted to the environment and others couldn't adapt and became extinct. Intelligent Design by contrast claims that some aspects of species are too complex to have arisen by evolution alone. Those aspects must have been designed by an intelligent agent ( God ). Different species came into existence suddenly and independently, they did not branch out from a common root. In court they present as evidence for Intelligent Design the complex motor of a bacteria as something too complex to arise simply from Darwinian evolution. However, they can not prove their case. By contrast, the proponents of Darwin were able to show some fossils in court as evidence of Darwinian theory. Moreover, even though there maybe non religious believers in the Intelligent Design concept, in the particular case at Dover religious motives were hidden behind it. Because the religious intention to refute homosapien evolution from apes was served by a concept that called itself Intelligent Design. In essence it turned out to be Creationism.
By the same line of reasoning those who believe in Darwinian Evolution don't necessarily have to be atheists. To theorize that the species evolved by natural selection from a common root is not to deny the existence of God. The Intelligent Designer of the Universe i.e. God may have designed evolution the way Darwin explained it, not the way Intelligent Design proponents claim. Moreover, the scientific community admits that there could be mistakes in Darwin's theories just like in any scientific theory. But those mistakes are to be discovered and changed by scientifc methods, not by throwing out the scientific method and replacing it by some kind of irrational religious thinking.
Scientific methodology and thinking have been the primary enemies of religious fundamentalism ever since Galileo challenged it centuries ago. Since decades, many countries in the world including the USA have been requiring a secular state and educational system as an indisputable article in their constitutions. Yet even in the 21st century in many countries and religions there are still significant numbers of people who want to overthrow the secular systems and replace them by religious fundamentalism. They are not necessarily bad intentioned people. They believe that what they want - a state based on religion and lifestyles controlled by religion only - are the right things to do. The sad thing is that their thinking is distorted and deprived of scientific enlightenement.
***Subsequent note*** March 16th 2009
By an interesting coincidence just one week after I watched this film anti- Darwinist Islamist Creationists made a move against Darwin in Turkey ; the monthly magazine of a government sponsored Turkish Scientific Research Organization in Turkey put Darwin's picture on the cover of the March 2009 issue and devoted 16 pages to him in commemoration of Darwin's 200th birth year. Immediately after this,the director of the organization purged the editor from the organization and had Darwin erased from the cover of the magazine. His justification was that the current situation in Turkey was too sensitive to tolerate Darwin on the cover of the magazine. For many days after this event a strong reaction continued from the secular organizations and press in Turkey and internationally. Some Turkish secular organizations conducted protest demonstrations demanding the resignation of the directors of the government sponsored Scientific Research Organization who they claimed were Islamist Creationists. The directors backed down and denied they had anything against Darwin. But the editor of the magazine who was purged subsequently claimed that the directors were lying, that she was told that she was fired for putting Darwin's picture on the cover of the magazine and that she would take the matter to court. The issue is still hot in Turkey on the newspapers everyday as I write these lines.
Description of Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin s theory of evolution called intelligent design the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state.Now, NOVA explores 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 Is intelligent design a scientifically valid alternative? Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants and expert scientists, this gripping program presents the celebrated case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.
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