Judgment Day, the PBS special on the Dover Trial, just finished airing. I have a few somewhat coherent (compared to my live blogging, see upstream) comments.
[see also LiveBlogging on Pharyngula. PZ's excellent insider remarks and lots of great comments]
Mostly, I think it was great, I'm glad they did it, they did a good job, yadayadayada.
I want to make a few constructive criticisms but these comments should not be taken as an indication that I did not like the show or would not recommend it. I liked it and I recommend it.
The show recounts the trial, so much of the show is the trial (reconstructed) itself. At one point, the narrator notes that just during this trial, there was a major fossil find that related to one of the major criticisms that creationists have of evolution ... the supposed (but not real) lack of "transitional fossils." The documentary then takes a side trip to the field, we see helicopters flying around and paleontologists digging around, etc. etc., and low and behold they have a transitional fossil.
Now, the way they presented this seemed to be indicating that this evidence influenced the trial, but as the documentary eventually notes, it did not. It was a distraction.
This relates to my other main criticism. According to the documentary, Darwinian Evolution was really proven, nailed down as it were, by the discovery of certain details of human and chimp chromosomes that proved that humans and chimps are related, and the discovery of modern genetics in the 1960s, which allowed an understanding of the mechanism of evolution.
This is simply not true. The genetic mechanism of evolution was understood more than sufficiently to nail down Darwinism way earlier in the 20th century ... that is not to say that subsequent research has not been incredibly important ... but there was no sigh of relief or catharsis or anything in the 1960s that now we finally understood that pesky and mysterious mechanism of inheritance.
The relationship between chimps and humans has not been disputed at all in many, many decades, and this recent chromosomal research answers a key question, but it is a detail ... an important detail, but not a detail that nails down this relationship.
Here's the problem that I'm having with this presentation of the evidence: It makes it seem like Darwinian Theory/Evolutionary Theory was hanging by a thread until just now ... when suddenly we have transitional fossils, we understand DNA, and we discover that we really are related to chimps. It makes it seem like if the Dover Trial had happened five, or ten, or twenty years ago that the evolutionists and the IDers would be on more equal footing.
That is my main critique. My main criticism of the trial itself: No one was charged with perjury.
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Yes, religion with many is based on blind faith, and that is good, but there are also many who have experienced communiciation with God and loved ones who have passed. I am one of them, so those who find it necessary to be non believers should re-evaluate their position and begin praying very hard to God and to Jesus Christ. You will eventually be answered, but you need to request a sign and be sincere...It will come and it is breath taking
Bill,
Around the world, different people with different religious traditions have similar experiences. Each of them is equally as convinced as you are that this experience was sent by their god or demi-god. What scientific tests have you performed to make sure you were not visited by one of these other gods? What scientific test have you done that shows that this is not just a "defect" in the way a brain works under stress?
In fact, how do you know that God doesn't really prefers to remain hidden and wants us not to believe in him, and that Satan, that clever little devil, keeps putting forth these mini-episodes in order to drive you away from what God really wants? (And he's done the same with the Bible, making sure that the version that survives today tells the story that Satan wants. And of course Satan is tricky enough to change all the existing historical copies, too.)
"According to the documentary, Darwinian Evolution was really proven, nailed down as it were, by the discovery of certain details of human and chimp chromosomes that proved that humans and chimps are related,"
I didn't quite get that impression--it was presented at the trial as important test of the theory that gave a really compelling result, perhaps played a little dramatically for the benefit of the audience. But a whole complicated explanation of the history of genetics was clearly beyond the scope of the program.
Major props to the judge, though. Good job of putting aside his personal politics and being willing to keep an open mind and listen to what was being said. And yeah, the perjury thing is really not a good way to make points with the judge, no matter what your politics.
It would be really funny if the creationists where slapped with purgery charges for telling lies under oath. That would really make me laugh... but I would imagine that there would be a big mess afterwards.
I read somewhere and am too lazy to track down at the moment, that Judge Jones recommended that perjury charges be levied (which is all he can do under our legal system, judges are not part of the prosecutorial arm), but the appropriate authority (I think the U.S. attorney for the district) did not not think it worthwhile to file charges. I can't get too exercised about it. If they prosecuted every lie by creationists and/or fundamentalists, our judicial system would be totally grid-locked.
Jim: It would only be gridlocked for a while then they would all either be in jail or be silent (or more quiet anyway).
Let's take one year and switch all the effort say, on busting potheads and put it into busting creationists. This of the shift that would occur.
Oh, ant tax the churches.
Bill: I did that for ten years or so and nothing happened. I was saved by my adolescence. And don't tell my I was doing it wrong. I come from a family of nuns and priests. I had a lot of advice.
(Or was it that I was a Catholic and thus only baptized once?)
Jim: It would only be gridlocked for a while then they would all either be in jail or be silent (or more quiet anyway).
Let's take one year and switch all the effort say, on busting potheads and put it into busting creationists. This of the shift that would occur.
Oh, ant tax the churches.
Bill: I did that for ten years or so and nothing happened. I was saved by my adolescence. And don't tell my I was doing it wrong. I come from a family of nuns and priests. I had a lot of advice.
(Or was it that I was a Catholic and thus only baptized once?)
I live in the UK and so have not seen the program. However I have read a fair bit about it, both pre and post broadcast and one things has stuck me as being rather odd and it is this: Everyone on the pro-evolution side seems to regard the case and some sort of great victory.
I find that odd because the case did not actually change anything. It ensured that creationism could not be taught under its new guise of ID but that is all. It did nothing to actually change the numbers of Americans who are either deluding themselves that evolution does not happen or are profoundly ignorant of what the theory of evolution is actually about. The Battle of Dover is one that had to be fought, but the very fact it had to be fought suggests that the pro-evolution groups are not winning the war. If that were the case there would not have been moves to have ID taught as science and no need for the court case. All Dover did was maintain the status quo. As someone who thinks the US is generally a force for good in the world I find the dissapointing that so many pro-evolution groups seem to think that is all that is needed. Greg, I do not include you amongst those but I suspect you know several scibloggers that would apply to.
Matt: I share much of what you are saying, and beyond that it is pitiful that for the most part this is about the First Amendment, not about what is correct and likely true and real vs. unicorns and leprechauns.
Dover has had a huge impact in one area ... As far as I can tell, the way that school administrators handle this issue has undergone a sea change in the US. Dover school district spent millions on this. That is a LOT for a school district.
So, we have a couple of school shootings and suddenly school admins are arranging to have a cop present in every school all the time (this is widely true, I'm not sure if it is universal) and metal detectors go up in some schools, etc.
Now, we have a creationist attack leading to trial. So now, when life science teachers are interviewed for jobs, it is more common to have a question about evo-creo as part of the interview process, and creationist teachers are walking around very much oppressed and much much less vocal.
That is not a sweeping social change, of course, but I think it is important. Kansas did not have this effect. Kansas seemed mainly about embarrassment and school administrators are used to being embarrassed. Dover was about the threat of an event causing the school board and the admins to lose a huge portion of their funding in a day when US schools are funded by referenda. Bit effect (but yes, very circumscribed).
I was also bothered by the sense (not explicitly stated, granted) that somehow we just got the evidence. After all, Darwin really presented sufficient evidence, and this was without what we traditionally (but wrong in the precise sense) call transitional fossils. For, we always had transitional fossils between early chordates and amphibians--these are called "fish". We always had transitional fossils between amphibians and mammals--we call these "reptiles" (fish and reptile fossils do show the sorts of transitions that evolution predicts).
And by no means were we lacking in transitional fossils between even fish and amphibian during the last few decades, Ichthyostega being only one of several. Tiktaalik was sought out largely to study limb evolution during the transition.
The evidence for the fusion that produced our #2 chromosome was an excellent example for Miller to bring up. Still, I worry that people will make two assumptions from that, one being that there was any doubt about evolution prior to that evidence being found (as Laden points out), and the other being that telomeres in the middle are inevitably predicted for fused chromosomes. Naturally, Miller simplified (and the documentary probably did even more), but it's risky to make the kinds of precise predictions that the portrayed Miller suggests were made using evolutionary theory. Had vestigial telomeres not been present in the midst of our chromosome 2 (with all else remaining the same), I doubt that we'd have concluded that chromosome 2 didn't fuse in humanity's ancestor.
Fortunately, fairly precise predictions are more possible for relatively recent evolution, such as the fusion of chromosome #2 was.
The fact of the matter is that evolution (by which I mean cause-effect evolution such as MET is, not Behe's "effect evolution" sans meaningful cause) makes sense of nearly every complex biological system ever studied, in a way that nothing else ever could. It predicts a range of phenomena, while rarely being capable of predicting precise elements, like telomeres in the middle of chromosome 2. We do have very robust evidence from these predictions (cladistics, homologies, the derivative nature of the flagellum), but these are more statistical than classically "deterministic".
So while I'm not criticizing Miller or the others, particularly not from PBS's documentary, it would have been nice if Nova had made the issue of evolutionary evidence somewhat more nuanced than it did.
That said, it was quite well done, and by any judicial or scientific standards, the IDists should be considered to be quite well roasted. The fact that they're operating roughly on the same level as advertisers do, however, by vague sensation and an odd coupling of incredulity and slack-jawed credulousness, means that they can continue their PR campaign, which has now shifted into full-fledged yelps of persecution with Expelled (I like that Nova brought up the censorship imposed on the schools by these "freedom fighters").
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I didn't get that impression either from the segment of Miller's testimony that they used. I thought they showed it was just another piece of the puzzle that shows how evolution works, (even though he did say "if we didn't find that.") I think the fact that they used a recently discovered example also served to show that genetics continues to demonstrate the forces of evolution, even though the "Fellows" at the Discovery Institute claim to be "post-Darwinist."
Yes, yes, your critiques (all of you) of my critique are all correct, but my point, I think still stands.
For the person who knows very little about the history of evolutionary studies or genetics, and watches this, and parses out the information given, we go from Darwin to a few weeks ago without much happening in between.
I agree that using the most current science is, of course, the best thing to do. But the point that evolution has been in the bag for many decades and that creationism never, ever has been was not made.