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NOVA program: Judgement Day, Intelligent Design on Trial

Enlighten

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"in which teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools was ruled to be unconstitutional"

Well, that's overstating the case a little. It was just not allowed in public school biology class from what I understand.
 
T'ai Chi said:
"in which teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools was ruled to be unconstitutional"

Well, that's overstating the case a little. It was just not allowed in public school biology class from what I understand.
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What you understand is very, very little.

The court found that it was religious indoctrination--not science. It was a means for getting creationism (particularly the Christian variety) in schools. Though fundamentalist Muslims are adopting IDs strategy for their own schools which don't have to be secular. They have no science of their own to offer. They're main goal is to try to get people to be as clueless about evolution as you are so that appeals to god sound rational.
 
T'ai Chi said:
"in which teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools was ruled to be unconstitutional"

Well, that's overstating the case a little. It was just not allowed in public school biology class from what I understand.
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What other class would it be allowed in? Looking over the course offerings of our local high school, I see no "Nutty Ideas 101" or "Fruitcake Concepts 102".
 
I one truly wanted to be informed about the subject matter and do a little reading ahead of time, one could visit:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/index.php?pageid=dover.

There are also informative threads in this forum dealing with the matter.

One note of cuation. Some of the PBS stuff dealing with religion has been rather shoddily researched as of late. Nova occasionally passes off a piece that includes poor scientific analysis. This Nova episode might be good, but I'm going to reserve judgment until I view it.
 
Jeff Corey said:
What other class would it be allowed in? Looking over the course offerings of our local high school, I see no "Nutty Ideas 101" or "Fruitcake Concepts 102".
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more like:

"Spotting Logical Fallacies 095 (remedial)"

They probably don't list that in the curriculum guide, as it's only offered on a 'special needs' basis.
 
I'm sure it could be taught in a religious studies/comparative religion class to show the misuse of xianity in modern times.
I find Tai's argument here interesing. Usually fundies argue the opposite, saying that you can't even mention religion in schools due to the bad, bad liberals. I had portions of the bible as assigned reading in my Senior year social studies/literature class. I just also had the bagavad gita, the koran, the tao te ching, and many other religious works in the same class.
 
Jeff Correy said:
What other class would it be allowed in? Looking over the course offerings of our local high school, I see no "Nutty Ideas 101" or "Fruitcake Concepts 102".
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But don't you have at least two or three "Content Free 101" courses?

~~ Paul
 
In My Spare Time said:
Usually fundies argue the opposite, saying that you can't even mention religion meaning specifically: that Xianity is the one true faith and that all the others are wrong, but in order to try to circumvent those Godless liberals we'll pretend to be tolerant...
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Fixed!

:D
 
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It got praised in Nature:

"Judgment Day gracefully avoids ridiculing intelligent design for the pseudo-intellectual fundamentalist fig-leaf that it is, by simply showing how the protagonists shot themselves in the foot," Rutherford adds. Acknowledging that the "intelligent design" movement is still alive in the wake of the trial, he nevertheless concludes that "the Kitzmiller vs Dover verdict, matched this September with the outlawing of intelligent design in the UK national curriculum, marked the official neutering of this unpleasant, sneaky movement in much of the western world. Judgment Day is just the sort of thoughtful programming that celebrates how sensible people -- faithful and otherwise -- can use science and reason to combat fundamentalism."
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http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2007/US/740_emjudgment_dayem_praised__11_8_2007.asp
 
I doubt if you could fit ID into a religion class, as few religious people actually take it seriously. ID amounts to a few discredited arguments which claim to show the universe has components that are too complex to have appeared by chance. Most people who believe the universe is designed take this for granted and are not interested in the bad math. The majority of ID proponents are actually out and out creationists, and do not actually even believe that the universe evolved a complexity greater than is expected by chance, but rather believe the universe was created with complexity already in place. Their only interest in ID was that they thought they could force it into science classes as it did have a few papers published in legit science journals.

You might be able to fit it into a sociology or law class, or an information theory class as an example of what information theory does not do.
 
articulett said:
What you understand is very, very little.

The court found that it was religious indoctrination--not science. It was a means for getting creationism (particularly the Christian variety) in schools. Though fundamentalist Muslims are adopting IDs strategy for their own schools which don't have to be secular. They have no science of their own to offer. They're main goal is to try to get people to be as clueless about evolution as you are so that appeals to god sound rational.
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I hate to find myself doing this, but his troll post was technically correct.

ID can be taught in comparative religion classes, etc. and I Kitzmuller doesn't say it cannot be. It just cannot be taught in biology class because it was religious in nature, and as you noted, not science, and therefore it violated the first amendment.

One of the most maddenly frustrating things about court cases from Scopes to Dover is that they have to be argued on the basis of the law and not on the science. Just once, and I mean more than something like Judge Jones inserting stuff into his decision, I'd like to see a head to head showdown on the stand between Creationism over the science.

I don't think even lawyer Phillip Johnson would have the stones to take the stand in that one.

I'm looking forward to this Nova and Frontline are some of the best shows on television.
 
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Philosophy classes also teach that all things are shadows of the reality of the forms that exist in some perfect dimension, as Plato thought. They also teach any old idea that the teacher likes. My philosophy teacher was an ID guy, but he went over Darwin's writings and even accepted some of them as philosophically viable. He eventually made it clear what his thoughts on the subject were, and he seemed to reject some physical evidence. I argued with him, but in the end I decided that there was no point in arguing with a 70 year old man who had power over my grade.

I have no problem with practically anything being taught in philosophy. Just don't teach it in the science classroom.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
Whoo Hoo!!! Less than 18 hours til air time!!!
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If you really want to get fired up, the website has some readings to get you in the mood. Phillip Johnson shows what an IDiot he is and how proud he is for creating the wedge strategy here.
 
I am irked. I get PBS through the Buffalo affiliate, and these guys are not going to show this episode! (At least not this week.)
 
Brown said:
I am irked. I get PBS through the Buffalo affiliate, and these guys are not going to show this episode! (At least not this week.)
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Looks like you're right. It's not being run on WNED, but it is being run on the HD WNED. But I don't get the HD verison of the channel, so I guess I won't be able to watch it either.

I say send them an e-mail complaining about the decision. I just might do that myself.

What's really stupid about this is that last week they ran the promo for this episode. Hello, WNED, if you're not going to run the episode, don't air the promos for it.
 
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