I just saw the show last night. I had to tape it on Tuesday night because the only way I could see it was on WCTS Seattle and that was too late for me to stay up [Judgment Day Is Coming]. The show was very good. I was impressed with the way it was edited and with the lack of unnecessary hype. The courtroom scenes were a bit silly but I can't think of any way to improve them short of making them look too theatrical. At least this way you weren't under any illusions that it was anything but a simulation.
I liked the emphasis on the divisions within the community. What it shows us is that no courtroom victory is going to make this issue go away. The creationists simply don't accept the results of the trial as having any relevance to their religion. Americans are going to have to go through this trauma several more times in the next few years.
I'm still a bit sad that programs like this have to go out of their way to show that evolutionists can be religious. There were obligatory scenes of Ken Miller in church and of one of the Dover evolutionist supporters teaching Bible class. This is a debate about science and religion. The whole point was to show that Intelligent Design Creationism is religion and not science. Evolution is science. So why is it necessary to focus on the religious beliefs of evolution supporters? Shouldn't their personal beliefs be irrelevant?
There are lots of interesting things on the Judgment Day website [NOVA: Judgment Day]. One of them is a brief talk by Ken Miller on "Science and Religion" (follow the link "Defining Science"). I wonder if most people agree with Miller's explanation of the supernatural and how it impinges on science?
Am I correct in understanding that he's saying science can't investigate things thought to be supernatural? If so, I think he's way off base. Attributing something to the supernatural has historically been the default for things we don't understand. His reasoning would have stopped the scientific revolution in its tracks.
ReplyDeleteThere are very good reasons for showing Miller and discussing his religiosity in this case, the best reason being that Miller co-wrote (with Levine?) the textbook to which Dover school board members objected.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is interesting, then, because, as in Catholic colleges around the nation, Catholic Ken Miller has no problem with evolutionary science. Now, one may discuss whether or not Miller is right about Xian religion and biology not interfering with each other (since religion is just made up anyway, I don't see why it has to interfere with science), but IMO it does no harm to our side for a Xian to be seen to accept evolution simply because it is science.
More importantly, I really don't think that the NOVA program went out of their way to display Miller's religiosity. They brought it up because he wrote the textbook, and because the NCSE and other groups have chosen to push Miller forward as a spokesman for biology due to the facts that he's both religious and a good scientist. Some would argue against the message that NCSE is sending (it's doubtful that traditional Xianity is as compatible with evolution as Miller claims), yet it is they and other groups who are responsible for Miller's prominence in the debate.
I don't think that NOVA did any more than accurately portray the situation.
Glen Davidson
I agree completely, Larry, that it is very annoying and in fact inappropriate to make sure that a certain percentage of the evolutionists are good Christians.
ReplyDeleteby the way, that last anonymous comment was me.
ReplyDeleteScience vs. Religion? I’m always suspicious of black vs. white renderings of reality, especially the social realities to which these subject domains pertain. Life is seldom that simple. True, a single battlefield with just two opposing sides reduces the focus fragmentation overhead as the single-minded (simple-minded?) can support one or the other sides.
ReplyDeleteBut if games theory has taught us anything then life seldom throws up two opposing sides with diametrically opposed interests; the more realistic picture is of various parties with blends of interest.
Moreover, I don’t think we have this clear-cut domain called ‘science’. Different objects of different complexity have different levels of epistemological tractability; that’s why I doubt that the historian’s methods are as clear cut and unambiguous as say the methods of the particle physicist. Although for both workers empirical evidences are relevant (documents for historians, experimental ‘protocols’ for the physicists – and both use texts in their research), the logical and ontological complexity of history gives for a far great margin of ambiguity.
Although I agree that empiricism is a general method that covers the whole of life, the conceptual constructions with which we attempt to make sense of the empirical are not subject to a naive falsification view of science. The open endedness of reality ensures that falsification methods are only going to be effective in degrees depending on the objects under study. For example, in a police or historical investigation, ultimate falsification of a variety of scenarios may be impossible; in fact cases may remain unsolved. Therefore a more general empirical epistemological theory is required, especially when those complex objects we call ‘world views’ are at stake.
Even when it comes to something like God which you might think to be beyond the empirical, it is clear that people make observations about the world that are relevant to the question of deity: For example, whether or not evolution is a fact or whether a omnipotent personal God would preside over a world of suffering.
I am not sure I agree with Miller’s dichotomization of the supernatural and natural (once again this seems to me to be a suspicious black vs. white rendition of reality), but leaving that on one side let me say that I deeply respect Miller’s faith and his abilities and feel we need people around like him to show us that the debate on theism and evolution doesn’t easily reduce to an ‘us vs. them’ contention. This isn’t one of your straightforward battlefields Larry.
Dave S. said...
ReplyDeleteThe case was about more than a dispute about science vis intelligent design and evolution. It was also about the community, and the culture that pervades it, and how the school board shenanigans affected them. Like it or not, religion is part of that community and played a role in how the case played out. I think it entirely appropriate to point out that even if religion was the basis for the school board's actions, that same religion was also present in some of those on the other side. This was part of why the community was torn apart in the first place, and to understand fully the agony of Dover, you need to understand that.
Mt opinion.