Following on from the reference to the Dover trial in my last post – this site has a link to the pdf of a review article, which looks at the Dover case & its implications for teaching evolution in the US. It’s an interesting overview of the case & there’s a lot to learn from it, even though we’re not the 53rd state. (Or should that be 52nd?)
6 thoughts on “darwin, dover, & intelligent design”
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Ken says:
I watched a talk by the presiding Judge Jones (Darwin Series; Judge John E. Jones III from the Year of Darwin Lectures from Case Western University) last night. Mainly about legal aspects but his comments on the Dover trial and some of the defendants were interesting.
Heraclides says:
I have to admit the size of the video and the work I have to do means I’ll have to give it a miss. (I guess there isn’t a way to download the video itself from YouTube and that you can only play them through their webiste. I can’t see an obvious way to do this, and I can see why they wouldn’t!, but it’s a pity as that I way I could hang onto it for later.)
I’m probably well behind you (Alison & Ken) in reading on his, but while looking for an alternative to the video, I ran into this interview of Judge Jones in PLoS Genetics: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000297
I know an enormous amount has been written about this, but I was nice to hear from the man speaking for himself.
It strikes me reading this, that the whole Creationist/”Creation Science”/Intelligent Design thing, within the USA at any rate, could be viewed as a legal battle, not a moral one. (I would possibly consider an immoral battle in some ways, but let’s not get side-tracked…) In one reply Judge Jones pretty much says this himself: It was quite clear to me that they viewed intelligent design as a method to get creationism into the public school classroom.
Alison Campbell says:
The video’s actually on the PBS website http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html & it’s broken down into 12 ‘chapters’ so you could always watch them one at a time 🙂 You may be able to download them as well, although I’d have to say that I haven’t investigated that step myself.
Heraclides says:
Arrrgh: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/01/louisiana-creat.html “Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for Teachers”
(via PZ’s blog, so Alison will have seen this already, no doubt.)
Is that country (the USA) crazy or what?!
Alison Campbell says:
Double arrrgh! (& it’s not even talk-like-a-pirate-day!). No, I hadn’t seen it; we’ve just got back from a day over at Mt Maungaui & I haven’t even visited Pharyngula.
The country itself (US) may not be crazy, but some sectors of it do seem to have a fairly tenuous grasp on reality.
Heraclides says:
Maybe this has something to do with having watched Pirates of the Caribbean recently…
You’re some, some sectors of the USA. My apologies.