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Sunday, November 18, 2007

Dover Trial - Intelligent Design Get's It's Day In Court

I just watched this excellent episode of Nova. This show should be required viewing in every high school "civics" class in the country. It not only dismantles any foundation for intelligent design as science (a side benefit), more importantly, it shows what can happen in a community when authoritarian mythic religion clashes with rational science.

From a legal point of view, the lawyers fighting against intelligent design were able to find the "missing link" between creationism and ID that proves ID is just a repackaging of creationism. The manuscript of Of Pandas and People was revised following a 1987 ruling that banned creationism from the science curriculum. There is an actual manuscript where creationist is sloppily replaced with design theory, resulting in cdesign theoryists -- there were other similar examples as well. This was the smoking bomb in the case, proving that ID was simply a way to try to evade the legal ruling against creationism.

I have nothing against healthy religion -- in fact, I believe that religion is a vital and important element of human experience -- but fundamentalist religion is unhealthy. It is a closed system, unwilling to acknowledge any truths but its own. Healthy religion is not a closed system, and it can be open to new information. In this respect, Catholicism is healthier than many Protestant faiths because it can admit the truth of evolution without abandoning its faith.

I don't think the Dover trial is the end of the battle. The closer this nation gets to shifting its center of gravity out of mythic, authoritarian religion and into a more rationalist worldview, the more militantly those who cling to those older beliefs will fight for them. The battle will most certainly be political and legal, but as Jesus Camp proves, it could also be violent.

Since I can't find the Nova show online yet, here is a pretty good look at the trial from the BBC (the Nova episode is better).

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:


Part Four:


Part Five:



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