NOVA | Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

In 2004, the war over evolution came to Dover, Pennsylvania. NOVA captures the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists, and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al. With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as "What is evolution?" and "Does intelligent design qualify as science?"

Watch "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" Tuesday, November 13 on PBS.

Funding for NOVA is provided by The DOW Chemical Company, David H. Koch, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and public television viewers.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Penelope Obelix]

Because people, in the name of Islam, destroyed the Twin Towers. And from my own personal experience, I have found there are just as many bad people who are atheist as there are bad people who are Christian. When it comes right down to it, people are people, whatever they believe. I'm not trying to make you Christian. I just want you to stop judging Christians as a group, because we are no different then any other religion.

[danmoore5000]

As for MLK, sure. We'll ignore the fact that he had many non-religious allies in his campaign against racism, and that many of his opponents would also use religious texts to make their case in favor of racism. We'll just pretend that MLK did it all by himself and that he wouldn't have been motivated to do it without his religion.

"with or without religion those same people would have found something else to go extreme about"

How sure are you of that?

[danmoore5000]

If you're not careful you're going to wind up helping me prove my point. Look up "Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa" by Christopher Hitchens for a brief look at how Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor, so much as she was a friend of the suffering they go through. Her clinics provided sub-par care despite receiving vast contributions from the rich, she praised the Duvaliers in Haiti, and she railed against contraception in parts of the world in which family planning would alleviate suffering.

[Penelope Obelix]

Just because Steven Weinberg said that doesn't make it true. The truth is, without religion, we wouldn't have Mother Teresa, maybe not even Martin Luther King Jr. Religion empowers people to think about they're actions. Sure, it's caused some people to go extreme, but with or without religion those same people would have found something else to go extreme about.

[danmoore5000]

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

My point in a nutshell.

[danmoore5000]

"If there are no reprocussions from God, why not do whatever the hell you want?"

Because there are repercussions from society and, more importantly, your own mind. Could you be as proud of yourself for an accomplishment if you had to lie, cheat, and steal to get there? Could you live with yourself if you murdered your brother or anyone who wasn't deserving of it?

"And I'm not saying all atheists have no morality"

Indeed. Why aren't they all amoral or immoral? Perhaps God is not required.

[danmoore5000]

"religion is meant to establish morality in the first place"

Is it? Or is it meant to provide answers to difficult questions before we have the knowledge to answer them without religion? Case in point, in the documentary, the religious are extremely concerned with injecting creation science into the science class, giving the old religious answer to the question of where we come from - to the point that they behave in a patently immoral manner, committing perjury, vandalism and threats.

[Penelope Obelix]

I think you are excusing the fact that religion is meant to establish morality in the first place. That is the point of religion. Whether it be interpreted as something evil is up to the descretion of the individual. When a person has absoulutely no religion, they can also have absoulutely no morality.What's the point? If there are no reprocussions from God, why not do whatever the hell you want? And I'm not saying all atheists have no morality, I'm just saying that it is an individual choice.

[danmoore5000]

"There are all sorts of extremeist out there in the name of a religion. That doesn't mean they are the religion."

That's true, but the point is that there are certain things that otherwise moral people would not do except when they believe they have a religious excuse to do so. This specific example we like to call "lying for Jesus". It is a moral flaw the fault of which can be laid directly at the feet of religion itself, and for that reason (among others) it deserves ridicule, not respect.