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.

 

 

[Dataman]

Although everything in the universe must have a cause/beginning, Unsupported presumption, but I'll let it slide.

Please grace us with and example of something proven to not have a cause. This would be a violation of the law of cause and effect, another miracle! I am continually amazed at how you evos will point the finger at creationists and reduce their explanations to "goddidit!" while your explanations remain "itdidititself!"

Sure, his origin wouldn't be via anything *in* this Universe, but you've hardly "proven" that he therefore could exist without a "Cause" of some sort, from somewhere *other* than our universe.

For you, I'm sure there is no proof of anything but evolution. Please detail your thinking on how an Ultimate Being could have an origin.

It only proves that if they have a Cause (and as far as we know, everything *needs* a Cause), it lies somewhere *else*.

If everything needs a cause -- and I'm surprised to see that you agree with this law-- then what caused our universe?

[discipler]

Aren't you clever.

[PatrickHenry]

Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said ...

Ah yes. The old "quote out of context" game. Your Gould quote is most probably bogus.

Database entry #126
Quoted by: UCSD IDEA student club
Quoted in: The IDEA Club Fossil Record Quote Collection web page (Last accessed 2001/10/14).

Source: Antievolution Quotes and Misquotes: The Archive.

Your Einstein quote, even if accurate, is worthless. He was great in physics, and a bust just about everywhere else (he was, after all, a socialist). Count on Big Al for relativity; be skeptical about the rest of his output.

As for your Darwin quote, it may be bogus, but even if not, it's typical of the way he wrote. He would ask the question, which a skeptical reader might ask, and then he would go on to answer it. Such passages are a creationist's delight, as they are so frequently taken out of context.

Hoyle's "747 in a junkyard" is absurd. I'll leave it so some of the others to refute it. It's easily refuted. The Denton quote, if genuine, is flat-out erronious. I'll leave it to someone else to fill in the details (it's been done over and over in these threads, and I'm getting lazy).

[atlaw]

You missed my point. I was challenging shawne (a creationist) to provide an explanation as to why he accepts inland seashells as inferential evidence of continental drift. My statement (for shawne's benefit) was in the spirit of a devil's advocate. If you trace back in the thread, you will find a rather interesting discussion in which shawne accepts inferences for continental drift, but rejects inferences for evolution.

[atlaw]

Thanks. I really don't need that on my resume.

[metacognative]

"An increase in entropy causes an increase in information"!
We're talking different languages.

[BMCDA]

If you trace back in the thread, you will find a rather interesting discussion in which shawne accepts inferences for continental drift, but rejects inferences for evolution.

He did that already. Nevertheless, I think it's an excellent post, especially for those who even reject continental drift.

[BMCDA]

"An increase in entropy causes an increase in information"!
We're talking different languages.

Well, apparently.

[edsheppa]

To: f.Christian

Ping

481 posted on 05/04/2003 2:17 AM PDT by bondserv

Bringing in the weapon of mass disruption, eh? That's pretty low.

[atlaw]

I saw, but not before I posted. And I agree about Ichneumon's post. It's nice to see a thorough rebuttal of the no transitionals nonsense. It's a post worth keeping in your hip pocket for the next, unfortunately inevitable, re-hash of the point.

[BMCDA]

A good point to start from if one is interested in genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation: http://www.aic.nrl.navy.mil/galist.
There are also many links to other G.A. sites.

One of my favorites is a classic: the two-phase nozzle optimized by H. P. Schwefel.

[atlaw]

Oops. I was referring to Ichneumon's no transitional's post 401; you were referring to Ichneumon's continental drift post 368. Ichy is so prolific it gets hard to keep up. Nevertheless, I agree that both posts are keepers.

[longshadow]

lazy placemarker

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

If everything needs a cause -- and I'm surprised to see that you agree with this law-- then what caused our universe?

A well-placed bullet?

Hardly

FRegards, MM

[atlaw]

Thanks for that link. A while back there was a lengthy and preposterous discussion about George Washington Carver, with creationists holding Carver up as some paragon of Christian/scientific achievement, and chastising RightWingProfessor as a racist for not agreeing that Carver should be lionized. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation/evolution issue, and I could not for the life of me figure out where it came from.

Now you've inadvertently provided the answer. Creation websites are truly fascinating.

[tortoise]

Cool and interesting, but that sounds like primordial soup to me.

Yeah, it mostly is, but some of the assays and analyses of these things clearly show the prerequisites required, and that a lot of the catalytic bootstrapping that would need to happen actually is happening. Of course, a very simple single-celled organism emerging from this is highly improbable, but given billions of years, it at least seems plausible for these systems since they are constantly producing non-functional cell-like structures (sacks o' complex chemicals, really). As someone who was a theoretical chemist at one point in time, I would say that these systems exhibit all the potential required to accidentally produce a primitive organism, though whether it actually happened is up for grabs. It is a more thorough story than goop floating in the ocean anyway.

[tortoise]

Irreducible Complexity

This is not an meaningful argument. "Irreducible Complexity" is a new phrase invented to replace "I don't know". You cannot make any assertion from a null premise i.e. this does NOT support Design. The only valid assertion that can be made is that we do not know what process made a particular molecular construction. Note that all these things are chemically possible, but our technology still isn't all that hot at reverse engineering complex chemical systems (though it gets better every day).

Irreducible Complexity is just a restatement of the "God in the Gaps" argument, not a technical one. As history has shown, humans are pretty horrible judges of what is and isn't possible, so it is generally best to reserve judgment until we actually have the facts.

[tortoise]

As it happens, my father is pretty well educated theologian who knows quite a bit about this. I asked him about Newton's theological writings a number of years ago (because my father knows them), because my impression was that they weren't of much value.

The general conclusion of most theologians for centuries is that the theological work of Newton was almost pure gibberish. A lot of his writing was nonsense and does not work well with traditional Christian doctrine. Or "safely ignored" as he put it. Newton fancied himself a theologian, who dabbled in science and math as an adjunct to his theological studies. As it happens, his science and math work had great value even though the theological context in which they were discovered is widely considered to be garbage within theological circles. I find it fascinating that such a fundamentally influential figure in the math and sciences developed these theories almost as a historical accident that resulted from his "lunatic fringe" obsession with Christian theology. Apparently his mind served him much more poorly in his theological pursuits than in his accidental incursions into math and science, but then there are many that believe Newton wasn't entirely "right in the head". A mad genius perhaps?

[tortoise]

We're talking different languages.

The language I was using was math and science. What language are you using? Note that increases in entropy are increases in information by definition. Entropy is a measure of information content, so it shouldn't be surprising that when one goes up, so does the other.

If you are going to argue with the math/science/engineering fellas, you can't make up you have to speak the language that their assertions and theory are written in.