| Audience: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking. |
| Profanity: | None |
| Nudity/Sex: | None |
| Alcohol/Drugs: | Smoking |
| Violence/Scariness: | Holocaust images |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Movie Release Date: | April 21, 2008 |
There may be a good argument to make on behalf of teaching Intelligent Design in science class, but this documentary from Ben Stein does not make it. The movie itself is an example of design by faith and emotion rather than intelligence, defined as rationality grounded in proof. Instead of making a straightforward case for Intelligent Design as a scientific theory, Stein employs misdirection and guilt by very tangential association to try to make his case.
Intelligent Design advocates believe that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected or random or mechanical process such as Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Stein begins by interviewing scientists who lost their jobs for even mentioning the theory, baits some Darwinian scientists in selective clips from interviews, and then visits Dachau and the Hadamar euthanasia center, where the Nazis murdered thousands of disabled people. Stein tells us he is not saying that Darwinism leads to mass murder, but the connection he draws is unmistakable.
Like the tobacco companies once they could no longer question the legitimacy of the scientific evidence connecting cigarettes and disease, Stein quickly shifts the debate from a head-to-head assessment of analysis of data to frame the issue as one of freedom of speech. The movie opens with archival footage not of science labs or the animal life on Galapagos Island, where Darwin first began to develop his theory, but of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Stein tries to draw a parallel between the wall that divided Germany and the impenetrable wall that keeps Intelligent Design out of the science establishment. But he is also associating Darwinian science with Godlessness, communism, and totalitarianism, with detours into Nazi atrocities and atheism so over-the-top that it becomes shrill and irrational.
And irrationality is the opposite of scientific inquiry. Stein says that freedom of speech requires that both Intelligent Design and Darwin's natural selection should be taught in America's classrooms. But he never subjects Intelligent Design to the kind of scrutiny required by scientific analysis, which is based on observation and experimentation. Intelligent Design is based the fact that (1) there are questions that natural selection does not answer -- which Darwinian scientists admit, and (2) therefore, some intelligent force must be behind creation -- which cannot be proven by scientific means and therefore is more appropriately considered within the fields of philosophy or religion.
Science is all about challenging, refining, and refuting established theories, as the movie concedes, with Albert Einstein’s improvement of the theories of Isaac Newton as an example. But both Newton and Einstein agreed on what science was and how to evaluate scientific theories. As presented by Stein, Intelligent Design and Darwinian theory make the same observations, but come to different conclusions. Darwin says that life forms evolved through random mutation and natural selection, the survival of the fittest. Intelligent Design says that life is so complex that it is all the evidence we need to show that some intelligent (conscious, intentional) force must have created it. Stein never shows that Intelligent Design can go from theory to explanation as it must to be considered science. As a lawyer, he should understand that freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom not to have to listen to mangled, manipulative, and disingenuous rhetoric like this.
Parents should know that the movie has some disturbing themes, and some Holocaust images, including dead bodies and gas chambers. Some audience members may also be disturbed by the debate over how life was created.
Families who see this movie should talk about the difference between science and faith, particularly when it comes to matters of proof. They may want to explore resources on the intersection between science and religion.
Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy INDOCTRINATE U
Families who would like to know more about this issue should review the court's decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the first federal court case to address the question of whether Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. A Republican Christian judge appointed by President George W. Bush ruled that Intelligent Design is not science. He ruled, "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory...ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID...Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause [of the Constitution]." The school board, all of whom were elected after the decision to try to include Intelligent Design in the curriculum, declined to appeal. To find out more about Intelligent Design, see the Discovery Institute website and the resources it recommends and the website for the movie.
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Dan, the greatest strength of science is its insistance on being constantly challenged to present compelling facts and evidence. And it makes meticulous distinctions between what has been proven and what is likely based on experiments and observation. ID has not so far been able to come up with tests that meet the standards of the scientific method, but when it does, scientists will welcome the chance to see what they can prove.
"... any of us who know a thing or two about either science or philosophy will quickly point out how enmeshed all of science is with philosophy. So if science and philosophy have to be strictly segregated, all science will immediately come to a stop."
Agkyra, beautiful. No one else will address this. And beyond the philisophical assumptions of science, I would bet that science textbooks might even make some bold statements about the beginnings of the universe i.e. the big bang.
sorry, I meant to say "bold philisophical statements"
I hope MovieMom will address this article that proves a double standard exists when it comes to philosophical presuppositions with regards to the origin of the universe and of living things. Nell, you constantly have told me that design detection is not science so I want to give you a taste of the competition. Let’s see if you will admit that Ken Dill is not doing science, and instead think that his ideas are religious.
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/05/ncse-eyeing-id.html#more
I brought this quote up from the Pandas Thumb written by PvM as he was quoting Ken Dill.
This is an example of a blatant double standard that evolutionists like MovieMom employ. On the one hand evolutionary proponents say that science cannot infer design with respect to biochemical machines and the genetic code simply because we have not witnessed that particular code and set of machines come into existence, which is what you espouse Nell Minow. Yet here the atheist is, monopolizing science by claiming to "infer the evolution of a very complex organ...eye...by looking at intermediate stages preserved in animals alive today". This is pure hypocrisy, pure philosophy, pure religion based on your definition of religion Nell! What's worse is that Mr. Dill has no mechanism or set of causes that he proposes can produce a code. After all, the genetic code with complex, specified microscopic machinery built up the structure that is the eye, it didn't come from any place else. The statement Dill made: "And just as a baby’s eye is built up step by step over nine months in the womb, the eye evolved in small steps over millions of years.”" is religious, and I want you to admit that Nell, or at least explain why you do not think it is. The way I see it, Ken Dill wasn't around 11 million years ago, all the animals he is testing in reality only exist in the present, and he tells us all this in spite of reality showing us that it was the code in the original cell during inception that eventually produced the eye. Mr. Dill has come to the conclusion that he has looked into the deep past where no one else was, saw the evolution of the eye yet cannot demonstrate it or the mechanisms involved in its evolution, then told us it was really produced in a womb from a code and machine set (genetic code and egg cell). Where did the code and microscopic machines come from? Mr. Dill explains no mechanism or cause(s) for his eye that is natural an undirected (and not from a previously existing code). The eye came from a different eye, which doesn't explain where the original eye came from. Mr. Dill is spreading his own variation of an evolutionary religion, all the while hijacking science for his own Proslitization. He has not demonstrated a code could come into existence without an intelligent cause. He hasn't even shown that one eye could change into another distinctly different eye. What's more is that following this religious fanatic's logic, evolution would conclude that two eyes evolved the same way at the same time because no animal that he can compare will have just one eye. Organisms always contain either no eyes, or at least two eyes, never just one. This man believes in magic!
Read the whole article, it is very similar to Ken Miller arguing that the bacterial flagellum (which contains a rotary machine) evolved into the type III secretory system (again, another machine produced from a code) based on similar proteins and function. It's circular and also begs the question about how the original machine and code originated. Where did evolution come from?
Nell, you are a true religious believer in evolution. I don't think there is one thing you can think of that 'change over time' does not solve and explain when it comes to origins. If you think that 'change over time' with respect to the origin of a machine or code is going to happen without an intelligent cause, you are dreaming, and are practicing religion and quite possibly a believer in magic along with Ken. Intelligent design is science because it can be shown to produce machines and codes, while no other combination of mechanisms and causes have ever been shown to produce them. So I can logically infer design in biological organisms whereas Ken Dill cannot logically infer evolution because change over time does not explain the original code and machines that produced the eye. Ken Dill ignores that problem because he knows he cannot explain the origin of the code. Darwin could not have settled the evolution of the eye because his evolution didn't even predict that there would be a code that governs the organisms' creation to begin with. He didn't even know a code existed within all life during his. He was an ignorant foolish fundie of the non-creator type that interpreted his evidence into his narrow sectarian religious worldview. How else can you explain it when the man saw different beak shapes and concludes that all animals throughout all time and space are related to each other? It’s a purely religious extrapolation from the evidence. Pure philosophy. Not science based on your view of science.
The design inference is the inference to the best possibility, and is logically the most plausible. Codes can be shown to come into existence using ID. This is a fact. If you do not count the genetic code as a code, then you are an intellectual fraud. A holistic sequence of information that performs a function which has a physical symbolic representation is a code. I am sorry if it affects your worldview or ideology, but it’s the absolute truth, and the intelligent cause is supreme in dealing with their existence. I am waiting to hear otherwise.
If Design is excluded from the OOL research which is what you are implying when you say that there are no methods of detecting it, then science is in the business of validating atheism, because then only atheistic philosophical scenarios are allowed in science, which creates a sectarian religious viewpoint that excludes a designer i.e. abiogenesis. Following your logic Nell, you cannot explain how the computer came to be because if intelligent design is not detectable and therefore not science, then science is left with BS plausibility scenarios that do not lead to the truth with respect to the computer’s origin. i.e. The screw evolved to fit into the hole, which over time sealed the computer’s case, making the computer more survivable is a junket story that proves only that you have great imagination with no applicability.
You keep trumpeting that ID is not science yet I explained to you that humans perform Intelligent Design all the time, proving to whoever is reading these comments that ID does in fact exist unlike concepts such as black holes and dark matter (you do think astrophysicists are scientists right?). You also never answered my question when I asked you what causes a code to come into existence. When the origin is known, what has caused a code to exist Nell? Please answer that.
IntelligentDesigner, I think we have arrived at a point of irreducible disagreement. I appreciate the care you have taken to explain your position and I hope you will continue to comment on my blog. My best wishes to you and your family.
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