PBS Offers Intelligent Design Documentary

CREATION - Evolution Headlines ^ | 04/28/2003 | Illustra Media/CREATION - Evolution Headlines

[Remedy]

According to Illustra Media, the Public Broadcasting System uploaded the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life to its satellite this past Sunday. For the next three years, it will be available for member stations to download and broadcast. In addition, PBS is offering the film on their Shop PBS website under Science/Biology videos (page 4).

The film, released a little over a year ago, has been called a definitive presentation of the Intelligent Design movement. With interviews and evidences from eight PhD scientists, it presents strictly scientific (not religious) arguments that challenge Darwinian evolution, and show instead that intelligent design is a superior explanation for the complexity of life, particularly of DNA and molecular machines. The film has been well received not only across America but in Russia and other countries. Many public school teachers are using the material in science classrooms without fear of controversies over creationism or religion in the science classroom, because the material is scientific, not religious, in all its arguments and evidences, and presents reputable scientists who are well qualified in their fields: Dean Kenyon, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Steven Meyer, William Dembski, Scott Minnich, Jed Macosko, and Paul Nelson, with a couple of brief appearances by Phillip E. Johnson, the "founder" of the Intelligent Design movement.

Check with your local PBS Station to find out when they plan to air it. If it is not on their schedule, call or write and encourage them to show the film. Why should television partly supported by public tax funds present only a one-sided view on this subject, so foundational to all people believe and think? We applaud PBS's move, but it is only partial penance for the Evolution series and decades of biased reporting on evolution.

This is a wonderful film, beautifully edited and shot on many locations, including the Galápagos Islands, and scored to original music by Mark Lewis. People are not only buying it for themselves, but buying extra copies to show to friends and co-workers. Unlocking the Mystery of Life available here on our Products page in VHS and DVD formats. The film is about an hour long and includes vivid computer graphics of DNA in action. The DVD version includes an extra half-hour of bonus features, including answers to 14 frequently-asked questions about intelligent design, answered by the scientists who appear in the film.

This is a must-see video. Get it, and get it around.

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Intelligent Design Gets a Powerful New Media Boost 03/09/2002
Exclusive Over 600 guests gave a standing ovation Saturday March 9 at the premiere of a new film by Illustra Media, Unlocking the Mystery of Life. This 67-minute documentary is in many ways a definitive portrayal of the Intelligent Design movement that is sweeping the country. Intelligent Design is a non-religious, non-sectarian, strictly scientific view of origins with both negative and positive arguments: negative, that Darwinism is insufficient to explain the complexity of life, and positive, that intelligent design, or information, is a fundamental entity that must be taken into consideration in explanations of the origin of complex, specified structures like DNA. The film features interviews with a Who's Who of the Intelligent Design movement: Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Paul Nelson, Stephen Meyer, Dean Kenyon, William Dembski, and others, who explain the issues and arguments for intelligent design as the key to unlocking the mystery of life. The film also features nearly 20 minutes of award-quality computer animation of molecular machines, manufacturing plants, and storage libraries of elaborate information - DNA and proteins at work in the cell, climaxing with a dazzling view of DNA transcription and translation.
In his keynote address, Dr. Paul Nelson (who appears in the film), gave reasons for optimism. He said that Time Magazine, usually solidly Darwinian, admitted just last week that these Intelligent Design scientists may be onto something. U.S. News and World Report is also coming out with a piece on I.D. And Stephen Meyer, who also appears in the film, could not be at the premiere because he was on his way to Ohio (see next headline), armed with copies of the film to give to the school board members. Nelson said that scientists should not arbitrarily rule design off the table. "Keeping science from discovering something that might be true is like having a pair of spectacles that distorts your vision," he said. "It does profound harm to science." He described how Ronald Numbers, evolutionist, once told him that design might be true, but science is a game, with the rule that scientists cannot even consider the possibility of design; "that's just the way it is," he said. (See this quote by Richard Lewontin for comparison.) Yet design is already commonly considered in archaeology, cryptography, forensics, and SETI, so why not in biology? Apparently this arbitrary rule has become a national controversy. Intelligent Design, says Nelson, is finally removing a "rule of the game" that is hindering science. If the reaction of the crowd at the premiere luncheon was any indication, Unlocking the Mystery of Life has launched a well-aimed smart weapon at the citadels of Darwinism.

We highly recommend this film. Copies are just now becoming available for $20. Visit IllustraMedia.com and order it. View it, and pass it around. Share it with your teachers, your co-workers, your church. You will have no embarrassment showing this high-quality, beautiful, amazing film to anyone, even the most ardent evolutionist.

 

 

[Remedy]

Now we can call PBS the "Creationist Network."

 

Brilliant Irrefutable Evidence ...It is an extraordinary production, highly recommended by MOVIEGUIDE®."
Unlocking the Mystery of Life recently received MOVIEGUIDE's top rating.

The science is solid and the computer animations are superb. Unlocking is a great film."

Philip S. Skell, Ph.D., Member, National Academy of Sciences
Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University

Outstanding computer animations. Some of the best I’ve ever seen.
I am a cell biologist and I want to congratulate you."

Marvin J. Fritzler, Ph.D., M.D.
Professor of Molecular Biology, University of Calgary

"It’s as good as anything I’ve seen on NOVA. The program is a delightful presentation that will be of interest to scientists and laymen alike."

Edward T. Peltzer III, Ph.D.
Senior Research Specialist
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

"Extremely thought provoking
(and a lot of fun to watch).
Unlocking the Mystery of Life highlights the big questions about the origin of life here on earth."

Guillermo Gonzalez, Ph.D.
Astrobiologist
Assistant Professor of Astronomy
Iowa State University

"This video does an excellent job of presenting some of the hot issues in modern biophysics. In recent years we have begun to really understand how the machinery of the cell works and no physicist who has studied this field can avoid a sense of amazement at the delicately balanced designs."

David Snoke, Ph.D.
Co-Director Nanotechnology Center
University of Pittsburg

"It is tremendous! I really enjoyed it."

Bijan Nemati, Ph.D.
Senior Engineer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA

"Unlocking the Mystery of Life is a fascinating documentary. Visually stunning. Everything about it was just top notch."

Art Battson
Executive Producer
University of California TV
Director of Instructional Resources
University of California, Santa Barbara

[Dimensio]

Your little theory of history as a man-made, self-starting explanation might have propped up your rebellion against God for a generation or two...

Aah, dishonest creationist tactic #378, pretend that evolution is really an attempt to rebel against the One True God, assuming that everyone really does believe in the Christian deity and they're really just looking to find a way to lead people astray.

[BMCDA]

Yeah, isn't that a hoot? The ToE is responsible for both, Communism and Laissez-Faire Capitalism ;)

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Sorry about that. I'm replying to too many threads. Anyway, I've never seen an argument made by evolutionists wherein they did not assume that their basic premise was beyond reproach. Rather than address the actual issues (and use the good ones) by those critical of parts of the evolutionary theory, they have a bad habit of attacking instead.

Why not just admit that there are problems with, for example, the evolution of information, or that they cannot successfully test the validity evolution without using ID tools?

[RomanCatholicProlifer]

This one.....



René Descartes's Proof that God Exists

Meditation III




A First Start

1. Ex nihilo nihil fit

(from nothing comes nothing; something does not come from nothing; more reality cannot come from less reality)

2. The cause of an effect must have as much reality as (or more reality than) its effect.

3. The cause of an idea must have as much reality as the idea itself.

4. I have the idea of God, as something perfect and infinite. [the reason for this?]

5. The cause of this idea of God must exist. [by (1)]

6. The cause of this idea of God must have as much reality as the idea of God (its effect).

7. The idea of God has infinite reality.

8. The cause of the idea of God has infinite reality. [by (3) and (7)]

9. Only God has infinite reality. [I don't!]

10. God is the cause of the idea of God (and exists).



Note the contradiction between steps (7) and (9): according to (9), only God has infinite reality, but according to (7) the idea of God also has infinite reality. We can reconcile steps (7) and (9), improve the argument, and remain more faithful to Descartes's reasoning, by acknowledging that in Meditation III Descartes employs two notions of "reality": formal reality and objective reality.




A Second Attempt

Definitions:

--D1: The formal reality of X is the reality X has in virtue of being what it is.

--D2: The objective reality of X is the reality it has in virtue of representing something else.

Examples:

--Some things have only formal reality: a mountain, a hair. A mountain has more formal reality than a hair.

--Some things have both formal and objective reality: these are things that represent other things. Mountains and hairs do not represent anything else, so they have only formal reality. But photographs, painting, and ideas do represent other things. Photographs and ideas have formal reality as photographs, ideas. A big photograph has more formal reality than a tiny photograph. Photographs and ideas have an additional kind of reality (objective) in virtue of the thing that they represent.

Principles:

--P1: The objective reality of a representing thing is a direct function of the formal reality of the thing it represents. Hence a photograph of a large, complex item (a city) has more objective reality than a photograph of a small, simple item (an apple), because the large, complex item has more formal reality than the small, simple item. Corollary: the idea of an infinite thing has infinite objective reality.

--P2: The cause of an idea must have as much reality, formally, as the idea has both formally and objectively. (This is an application of ex nihilo nihil fit.)

Given these definitions and principles, we can refashion Descartes's argument for the existence of God:

1. That I have an idea of a horse (for example) does not entail that a horse really exists. Why not? A horse has only finite formal reality, so the idea of the horse has only finite objective reality. The cause of this idea, then, need have only finite formal reality. I need not postulate that God exists for me to have this idea; I need postulate only that something exists that has finite formal reality. That might as well be me, or my mind, or perhaps something in the external world that has as much formal reality as a horse. Many things fit that bill other than a horse.

2. In the case of God, and only God, matters are different: this is the only idea of X in which the existence of the idea of X necessitates that X itself exists.1 Why? God has infinite formal reality. Hence the idea of God has infinite objective reality (by [P1]). So the cause of this idea must have infinite formal reality (by [P2]). And only God fits the bill.

Note 1: The only case, that is, other than the existence of I, who is not God.

http://www.uno.edu/~asoble/pages/dproof.htm

[Dimensio]

Anyway, I've never seen an argument made by evolutionists wherein they did not assume that their basic premise was beyond reproach.

And I ask once again, can you provide a specific example?

[Aric2000]

Touche indeed...;)

I am sorry to not agree with your last point.

You seem to think that evolution is a religious belief.

Not sure how you come to this conclusion.

ID is a religious belief, Creationism is a religious belief, but evolution is a scientific theory.

Let us keep our facts straight here.

Nothing about the theory of evolution is religious.

It is based on scienctific fact and speculation.

Therefore it is scientific, religion on the other hand, god did this, or an intelligent designer did this, that is religion. Statements without scientific basis.

When you can prove scientifically that god exists, then we will both be talking the same thing, because then ID and Creationism will join the ranks of science, but until then, we are indeed talking 2 different things.

Creationism/ID= religious belief based on biblical writings.

Evolution= Scientific theory based on facts and scientific speculation, that speculation being based on scientific facts and physical laws.

[Last Visible Dog]

There is as much evidence for evolution having occurred as there is that the earth goes around the sun.

I would love to see the supporting evidence for that bold unsupported claim.

[newcats]

God created man in His own image.
So God is a bi-pedal being? Has two eyes just like us? Same external appendages (arms and legs and ears)? What about internal organs? Does He ahve the same need for air and food as us? Or is the similarity just superficial? Just in physical apperance?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Does God have a sewer running through a recreational area? Does God have a back-structure that is more suited for quadripedal locomotion?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Note what I said. I indicated that if you believed in evolution but didn't believe in ID, you cannot test for evolution.  Now why would I say something as dogmatic as that?

Because if this is your belief, you cannot use ID tools without introducing ID bias into your equations.  Since there is *no* such thing as a non-ID tool, this means that evolution (under these conditions) is untestable.  You can't, under any circumstances, get rid of the ID bias inherent in any experimentation.

[Not Insane]

"Aah, dishonest creationist tactic #378, pretend that evolution is really an attempt to rebel against the One True God, assuming that everyone really does believe in the Christian deity and they're really just looking to find a way to lead people astray. "

Label it any way you like, I'm with WinstonChurchill on this one. The Bible is quite clear on this subject.

Mans basic condition of rebellion is, "any excuse to deny God and his power over my life is worth exploring."

We all have to reach our own personal "low point" to understand and choose. Hopefully, you just haven't hit yours yet.

[whattajoke]

I don't think Christians are threatened by evolution. They find it assinine.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for christianity. An entire branch of science brushed off as assinine. A curious lot, these christians... "I refuse to believe 150 yrs of research which explains the diversity of life very well in favor of an old story written by various folks 2000 yrs ago with an extremely limited worldview."

puh-leeze. ID is inherently cloaked in deception, which runs antithetical to what christianity is supposed to be about. It's a trumped up trojan horse with duplicitous intent: That is, so called "scientific creationism" didn't work because we were too up front regarding the Faith part of the deal. Lets dress it up, give it a new name, and try again."

Why these fools continue trying in forums other than actual scientific ones seems to be lost on the believers. Public debate, AiG/ICR comics, poorly formatted websites, and bright colored videotapes do not a scientific revolution make.

[Remedy]

I have a copy of this video, and have almost worn it out from watching it so much!!!!!

Loan it to an ardent evolutionist, and maybe he can cause it to evolve into a DVD.

[ggekko]

This is fantastically good news; thank you for the post.

[f.Christian]

The GOD of the Old and New Testaments claims that HE inhabits eternity, and that there is no God before HIM.

HE also explains that HE created all that there is.

An Entity that is capable of creating the universe around us, and has the power to propel a galaxy 200,000 miles per hour, probably doesn't expect us to put HIM in a neat little box that we can completely understand.

For HIS clear and simple message relating to this, try the Book of Job. You will get HIS perspective on your question.

P.S. The Book of Job, thought by most theologians to be the oldest Book of the Bible, has been acknowledged by literary scholars as one of the finest pieces of literature to date.


256 posted on 04/28/2003 5:10 PM PDT by bondserv

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Interesting - except for one minor detail. Most of the Robber Barons started in the early to mid part of the 19th century. Darwinism didn't come about until somewhat later. A good case could be made that Darwin was more influenced by the Robber Barons than vice versa.

Anyway, I could (and have) agree that from a micro sense there is Darwinism within the U.S. But there has not been a macro sense of it.

[BMCDA]

Well, I never heard that a video tape is an imperfect replicator.

[Not Insane]

Actually, I agree with much of your post. I think much of evolutionary theory is based on fact and speculation as well. Unfortunately, many, but not all, apologists for evolution theory do not seem to leave room for the possibility that they are wrong. Now, creationists don't either, but then, they ADMIT they are a religion.

These evolution apologists confuse the concept of a theory based on "interpretation and speculation based on facts" with the concept of "evolution IS a fact."

It is with those people that I admit I get a bit frustrated. I do think it is a religion to these individuals.