"Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial", PBS/Nova, captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools.
In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called "Intelligent Design" [proved to be Creationism in a new package], the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent/ creator/ god. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
This is the trial where Prof. Behe, of the Discovery Institute, admitted that if the definition of science was broadened to allow ID, it would also sweep in Astrology. This is the trial which saw Prof. Kenneth Miller completely dismantle Behe's "Irreducible Complexity". This is the trial where Buckingham and Bonsell went from saying "we don't know where the books came from" to the revelation that Buckingham had taken up an offering in his church, banked the money, wrote a cheque to Bonsell, Bonsell gave it to his father and his father bought the ID books. They had comitted perjury in court denying that they had anything to do with the purchase of the books. This is the trial where a number of key witnesses from the upper echelon of the Discovery Institute pulled out at the last minute and therefore would not defend the claims of intelligent Design under oath.
This PBS/Nova documentary is also about how the good christians of Dover were capable of deception, lying and issuing death threats to anyone not in favor of their cause, and even threatened the federal judge of the case.
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