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.

 

 

[jlogajan]

Evolutionists argue that amino acids randomly combined to form proteins and then cells.

Abiogenesis is still speculative. DNA first appears in the fossil record about 3.5 billion years ago. No evidence has been found to directly explain how DNA came about.

Evolution of species, on the other hand, is well explained by DNA mutation and natural selection -- the diversification from the first single cell organisims then, through the dinosaurs, to the modern primates and mankind. The fossil record and contemporaneous observations prove beyond a reasonable doubt that DNA evolution is the explanation. Even the Catholic Church has made peace with natural evolution, deciding instead that God directly bestows a special status on each human individual.

The religious assualt on an natural explanation for the yet unknown methods of abiogenesis is this: "I can't understand how it could happen, therefore it is impossible." You can see right off that basing arguments of impossibility on the intellectual abilities of fundamentalists probably isn't going to get you very far in the discovery of reality.

[Aric2000]

Just because YOU can't imagine does NOT mean that it didn't happen that way.

It just means that you ignore science, and scientific facts, for pseudo religious myth, because you cannot yourself understand science.

This happens a lot with the pseudo religious mythical believing masses. They do not understand how it could have happened, therefore their answer is the ONLY one and we evolutionists had better shut up, because we shake up your comfortable little worldview too much.

[Not Insane]

"I'm not a biologist, but I don't believe that evolution has anything to do with how cells are formed. It's more about how cells (or multicellular organisims) reproduce (specifically that they reproduce imperfectly)."

I think most of the stuff covered by "evolutionists" is kind of like trying to come up with how rust affects a piece of steel left out in the rain.

ID addresses how the peice of steel came to be in the first place.

Creationists deal with "why" it was manufactured.

[longshadow]

Medved, is that you?

Doubtful; no ASCII bat or other signs of Medvedian Malarky.......

[Not Insane]

"...but all living things are descended from one living thing..."

Are not, are not.

Interesting THEORY, however.

[Dimensio]

Abiogenesis is still speculative. DNA first appears in the fossil record about 3.5 billion years ago. No evidence has been found to directly explain how DNA came about.

A rather disturbing trend that I've seen lately (and I don't want to point out any specific people guilty of this) is to claim that evolutionists are just now trying to distance the theory from abiogenesis, and that the attempt to seperate the two is some kind of cop-out. It's a rather dishonest tactic on their part, as it's pretty clearly an effort to 'justify' their claim that evolution isn't really a scientific theory but rather an attack on God and Christianity (or whatever flavour of theism that they might happen to follow) by inventing things that evolution "must" explain in order to fulfill their strawman purpose of it. Anyone who makes such a claim clearly cannot be trusted in any debate, as they've already shown that they've no interest in facts, their only interest is in tearing down their own strawman definition of evolution and accusing anyone who corrects their misstatements on the theory of trying to weasel out of the debate.

[AndrewC]

Did you have the same information 10,000 years ago, or do you merely infer that the earth orbited the sun 10,000 years ago? ;)

Ah, but you are smart enough to know the answer. However, this was the comparison. ---"There is as much evidence for evolution having occurred as there is that the earth goes around the sun.".

That does not mention 10,000 years.

[Dimensio]

Oh, I am the one who is ignorant.

If you think that evolution attempts to address with the means by which the first life forms came into being, then yes, you are ignorant.

[Not Insane]

Don't worry, we are all ignorant to some degree or another on all subjects. I'm sure he knows more than you on some aspects of the subject and you know more than him on others.

And I'm sure some of your, and his, sources are reliable, and some are not.

However, one of you IS right and the other wrong.

We'll all find out, after we die, won't we. 8-)

[forsnax5]

ID addresses how the peice of steel came to be in the first place.

If you read anything by the ID'ers, you'll find that they don't address HOW (or WHEN or WHO). They only address the concept of "this is so complex that it must have been designed."

That's the ID theory, in a nutshell...

[AndrewC]

Doubtful; no ASCII bat or other signs of Medvedian Malarky.......

Your wish is my command(in this case).

Splifford the bat says: Always remember:

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; especially on just-so stories
Just say no to narcotic drugs, alcohol abuse, and corrupt ideological doctrines.

[Dimensio]

However, one of you IS right and the other wrong.

Is it not possible that we are both wrong?

We'll all find out, after we die, won't we. 8-)

Only if there exists some means of continuing consciousness beyond physical death, 'we all' are given this extension to our consciousness beyond death and the relevant information is provided to all of us at some point after this extension of consciousness beyond death.

[Not Insane]

"That's the ID theory, in a nutshell... "

All theories can be put in a nutshell. Which shell is used depends on whether the person filling the shell agrees or disagrees with the theory.

[Dimensio]

If you read anything by the ID'ers, you'll find that they don't address HOW (or WHEN or WHO). They only address the concept of "this is so complex that it must have been designed."

Don't forget, they do a good bit of handwaving to "prove" that things are too complicated to be designed. What I have not seen, however, is a basis of comparison. I have not seen a single test for 'design' in the universe. The problem is that because they claim that the universe is designed, there's nothing 'not designed' to which they can point as a frame of reference.

[Not Insane]

"Is it not possible that we are both wrong?"

Caught me. I should have said, "At best, only one of you is right."

"We'll all find out, after we die, won't we. 8-)

Only if there exists some means of continuing consciousness beyond physical death, 'we all' are given this extension to our consciousness beyond death and the relevant information is provided to all of us at some point after this extension of consciousness beyond death."

Like I said...

[Sloth]

I think they are closer than people think to creating a strand of RNA that can make a like strand in a self-catalyzing reaction

Are "they" (the people doing this) intelligent?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mussolini, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung (or Zedong if you prefer), etc.