on Jul 21st, 2008The “Dover Trial” — This should have been required viewing in Louisiana.
Anyone who missed Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, which aired on PBS’s NOVA in November 2007, can view the entire program on Google video (112 minutes). This Peabody Award-winning documentary of the first legal case involving intelligent design (ID) creationism, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005) is the story of the “Dover trial,” which ended in a decisive victory for the plaintiffs when federal Judge John E. Jones III, Middle District of Pennsylvania, declared teaching ID to be unconstitutional. Viewers will learn (1) how two school board members who claimed to be Christian lied in order to advance their creationist agenda, a fact that Judge Jones noted in the trial; (2) how eleven Dover parents who wanted their children properly educated and who value the separation of church and state stood up for what is right; (3) how good science and careful scholarship served the cause of justice and the Constitution in this case; and (4) how the Dover School Board’s attempt to promote ID wasted one million taxpayer dollars and ripped the small town of Dover in half, turning friends and neighbors against each other.
Below Judgment Day, viewers can watch videos of the April 17, 2008, Louisiana Senate Education Committee meeting and the May 21, 2008, House Education Committee meeting, in which legislators ignored Louisiana educators and scientists who respectfully asked them to vote against SB 733, the LA Science Education Act. These committees, like the House and Senate as a whole, approved this creationist bill. Gov. Bobby Jindal ratified their decision by signing SB 733 into law on June 25. The legislature and the governor chose instead to support the LA Family Forum and their creationist allies, which included faculty from Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist school, and representatives of the Discovery Institute, an out-of-state creationist think tank in Seattle, WA. These people have contributed nothing to public education in Louisiana and have never produced any science to support their claims. The citizens who actually do the work of educating public school students and conducting real scientific research were ignored. This is what passes for government in Louisiana.
JUDGMENT DAY: INTELLIGENT DESIGN ON TRIAL
LA Senate Education Committee Meeting, April 17, 2008 (RealPlayer)
LA House Education Committee Meeting, May 21, 2008 (RealPlayer)