{"id":924,"date":"2007-11-13T21:04:41","date_gmt":"2007-11-13T21:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2007\/11\/13\/judgment-day-post-game\/"},"modified":"2007-11-13T21:04:41","modified_gmt":"2007-11-13T21:04:41","slug":"judgment-day-post-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/13\/judgment-day-post-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Judgment Day: Post Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/a> 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 <\/em> … 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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