ID movie exploits overblown Cambrian controversy

Have you heard about this yet?

Intelligent Design Documentary to Premiere at Smithsonian Affiliated California Science Center

Darwin’s Dilemma explores one of the great mysteries in the history of life: the sudden appearance of dozens of major complex animal types in the fossil record without any trace of the gradual transitional steps predicted by Darwin. Frequently described as “the Cambrian Explosion,” the development of these new animal types required a massive increase in genetic information.

Forget for a moment that there have been several cogent explanations for the apparent burst of speciation in the Cambrian period (that this film will undoubtedly misrepresent or ignore). Forget that even if the Cambrian issue were a more difficult problem than it actually is, it would not alone suggest that “Darwinism” as a whole was a “theory in crisis”. Disregard the fact that no single underdeveloped area in the theory of evolution could seriously eclipse its sufficiency to explain practically every other bit of scientific data thrown at it. Pretend that it’s realistic to expect that a theory as grand and sweeping in scope as evolutionary theory would have an answer at the snap of the fingers for every imaginable question.

Would it then follow that the alternative was Intelligent Design? How about just a little more research for scientific explanations for a scientific problem (if a “problem” it is)?

This is the quintessential Intelligent Design modus operandi: find an area of evolutionary theory that still appears to needs more work and then broadcast it as a fatal, insurmountable weakness for the entire theory, within earshot of everyone who already wanted to believe that evolution is a crock. And then, for the grand finale, rather than advocating ongoing scientific research for the refinement of the theory that elsewhere works astoundingly and elegantly, they declare that the only viable alternative is Goddidit. “Well, I don’t understand how evolution is going to explain that; ergo, there must be no explanation. Obviously, it was the work of an intelligent designer.”

My problem with Intelligent Design is not that it attempts to highlight weaknesses in evolutionary theory; that’s what mainstream scientists are trying to do every day, whereupon they go on to propose better explanations that clarify and refine our understanding of how evolution occurred. My problem is that they refuse to give evolutionary explanations a hearing, and then churn out popularist fare like this movie to proclaim a “Q.E.D.,” shutting and shelving the book a tenth of the way through.

The headline makes much of the fact that this film is set to appear at an institution with ties to the Smithsonian. This is being played up as an indication that mainstream science is seriously looking into ID as a valid construct. Rather, ID critics should emphasize that this contradicts the frequent charge of a conspiratorial blackballing of anyone who would dare question evolutionary theory.

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Update:

It turns out that I was a bit late on this story! A week before I published this post, it was announced that the premiere at the California Science Center was cancelled. Here’s some commentary on the resulting controversy.

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