PBS Offers Intelligent Design Documentary

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.

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.

That program was an attempt to prove that blind chance can create something in tangile form.

I don't think so. You created that requirement, not someone else, and certainly not Richard Dawkins or the author of that app. You seem to think that evolution does the equivalent of generating random strings and then checking to see if they are somehow meaningful. I assure you, it does not, and any program that did so would be a grossly inaccurate representation thereof. For all your code-reading skills, you seem to have completely missed the point of the applet - that evolution is not a purely random process, nor is it claimed to be by anyone but you.

Call them what you want, they do not represent the evolutionary process, becuase an end result is known. Is the end result known in evolution? No.

No kidding. Didn't I say exactly that in my last post? It's not an attempt to perfectly model biological evolution, it's an analogy intended to illustrate a point that you've managed to miss completely. The point is that biological evolution is not a matter of "blind chance" because it is driven by a fitness function. In this app, the fitness function is represented by the distance from the goal - once again, strings closer to the goal are defined as "more fit" and a preferentially preserved and propagated, just as more fit organisms are more successful at preservation and propagation in the biological world. You're so hung up on what you think it ought to show that you've completely missed what it does show - that the iterative nature of evolution converges on well-adapted organisms, and does so relatively quickly, contrary to claims (such as yours) that evolution cannot produce anything meaningful because it is purely a matter of "blind chance". It is not an entirely random affair - specific selective pressures act to produce specific evolutionary responses.

That program was an attempt to prove that blind chance can create something in tangile form.

Call them what you want, they do not represent the evolutionary process, becuase an end result is known. Is the end result known in evolution? No.

was busy but had to comment on this one.
[Consider yourself duly dismissed once and for all as a lightweight.]

not directed at me, but it certainly made me chuckle. Not because it is funny, but because it is sorry.

You are of course entitled to your opinion. As I am to the one I expressed above. And ironically, I note that both your opinion and mine are quite similar -- both express scorn at what we feel is the way that another poster hasn't held up their end of the conversation. So if my dismissal of someone's debate ability is "sorry" just by virtue of being a dismissal, isn't your dismissal of mine likewise?

There's an appropriate word here, and it starts with an "h"...

But let's do an instant replay, shall we? I didn't dismiss the person in question merely because I disagreed with them.

After prancing around the thread for a while, he made a post containing four specific contentious claims -- without a shred of supporting evidence or argument. Worse, two of them arrogantly contained implied accusations of dishonesty and/or incompetence towards his targets. (Hey, why didn't you call *his* attitude "sorry"?)

So, quite reasonably, I called on him to support his four claims. And because he has played these same games on many other threads, I put a challenge clause in my post:cl

Let's see if you've got anything better than empty accusations. Your reputation is riding on the quality of your responses.

This is always the case, of course, but I wanted it said explicitly. I also wanted him to take the time to make his reply a good one, *if he was capable of it*, one that actually supported his claims/accusations, *if he could*.

Knowing the usual cheap-trick debate tactics I'd seen before, I went on to say:

And to avoid the usual creationist tactic of posting a link to a scattershot list of 234,858 attempts to throw things at the wall in the hopes that 1 or 2 might stick, give us your single *best* example, in your own words, in response to each of the questions.

This was a specific challenge for the poster to a) do the best he was capable of, and b) don't try to muddle the answer by going off in a dozen different directions. If he had a case at all, one strong point would suffice to show it.

I wrapped up by saying:

That'll not only save everyone (including you) a lot of time, it'll let us dismiss you once and for all if your "best" examples are shown to be misfires.

I had *specifically* warned him that I, and most likely others, would judge him by the quality of his response. This wasn't a challnge out of the blue, on an arbitrary question -- this was a request that he do his best to back up his *own* claims and accusations, that he himself chose to make.

So, how good *was* his response? It: 1) Failed to even try to support three of his claims at all. 2) Despite being asked to give his *best* single example, he did a scattershot that went off in literally 19 different directions. 3) Despite being asked to do his best, his 19 "points" were so goofy and flawed that they appeared to be a troll -- at least I *hope* it was a troll.

He was asked to do his best on a test of his own claims so that his reputation in these debates could be assessed, and he rolled a gutter-ball.

Then, after telling him in advance that his answer was going to to be a test of his ability to support his own arguments, I followed through and announced to him that not only was his performance not stellar, it showed him to be "an intellectual lightweight". And indeed it did.

And you think this "sorry"? I gave him every chance and advanced warning. I told him it was "put up or shut up" time, so to speak. And he blew it. It's that simple.

I'm not going to apologize for then stating the obvious.

So, Ichneuman, what is it, a masters or Ph.D. in Biology? Or closely related?

Nope. Not even warm. I have a BS in Computer Science, from one of the top-ranked engineering colleges in the country. And let me tell you, a Comp-Sci degree from an engineering school is a lot different than one from a non-engineering school. Also, for what it's worth, I was just one credit away from getting an official "Minor in Philosophy" on my diploma.

I consider MS and PhD degrees to too often be a waste of life, unless one is going into pure academia or a career where they won't even let you in the door without extra initials after your name.

If advanced learning is your true goal, it's better done other places than locked up in a classroom for another 2-6 years. And I've been voraciously learning ever since I got out of school. It's my one true hobby.

You are hiding something.

Hardly -- I'm perfectly upfront with my scorn for people whose arrogance exceeds their abilities. The poster to whom I was responding has spent months on these forums dismissively putting down others while holding himself up as Mr. Logical-Who-Sadly-Must-Waste-His-Time-Correcting-The-Lesser-Beings. So when he repeatedly fails to rise to his own opinion of himself, it's hardly a sin to point out the obvious. And I'm hardly the only one who has been doing so.

Seriously. You have a hatred towards Christians, don't you? Its not just creationists, oh no, I think it goes a bit further.

You, truly, haven't a clue here. I've no animosity at all towards Christians. There are even a number of Creationists I have no issue with.

What *am* I cranky about? Willful, belligerent, obstinate, arrogant ignorance. I have no problem with the merely uninformed. It's the people who really go out of their way to *prevent* themselves from learning anything that annoy the heck out of me. Some people leave it at that and are merely irritating. But couple that sort of don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts behavior with a know-it-all attitude, and it really gets maddening.

The following was once said of writer Harlan Ellison, but the older I get the more I can identify with it myself: "it is said of some people that they don't suffer fools gladly -- Harlan doesn't suffer them at all."

And no, being a Christian or a Creationist hardly makes anyone a "fool" in my view. In order to qualify for that assessment, someone has to earn it.

One thing is for sure, you are not a college professor. At least I don't think so. How do I know that? Well, if you were, your attitude and dismissal of others opinions would have gotten you evaluations fine enough to get you fired by now.

I don't dismiss other's opinions. I do, however, dismiss people who think they know it all when they manifestly do not.

I'm not a professor, it's true, but I have taught one-day classes on certain subjects, and informally taught many things to many people over the years on a one-on-one basis. And no one's complained yet. I'm very patient with those who don't know something, or want to learn. Nor do I mind disagreement or opposing opinions -- I often learn from them myself.

That's different, however, from someone with either a passing knowledge in something (or worse, no knowledge at all and/or a gross misunderstanding of a field) trying to lecture me on something I've spent a lifetime learning about, while mangling it themselves.

I'm now old enough to not only remember, but to fully appreciate, the old saying, "don't presume to teach your grandpa to suck eggs, sonny".

Or to use a classic line from the "Red Skelton" show (which I watched when it first aired, hint hint) "Little do you know how little you know".

And everytime a student would have asked you to fill in a hole, you probably would have bitten their head off, unless, of course they agree with your view.

See above. I enjoy opposing views, actually. My officemate and I disagree on a great many things, but we have a blast arguing them back and forth on almost a daily basis. And I haven't bitten his head off yet.

Grad student maybe? I am just guessing.

Wrong again. I have gray hairs old enough to be grad students...

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