PBS-Nova: "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial"

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[FeministRebel]

Last night, I watched an incredible documentary by PBS, through NOVA ("Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial"). And it was amazing to me that I wasn't more aware of it -- or that despite the publicity behind the trial in the documentary -- more people have not learned about the fallacy of Intelligent Design (ie, Creationism relabeled.) If you are someone who didn't learn much about evolution in school -- it is not your fault. Creationists/fundamentalists have been fighting hard for decades to keep evolution from being taught thoroughly, if at all, in schools, and keep the myth of 'evolution' being 'just an unproven theory, among many' alive, and well, within it's congregations. If you have doubts about what evolution is, and find yourself saying 'it's just a theory,' you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary in full... and educate yourself on the matter. It is a very balanced, fully explored documentary. Both sides got interviewed, and got equal time to express their contentions, views, and proofs. This documentary is NOT an argument for atheism. In fact, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, as well as the defendants, were ALL Christians, and the judge was a Conservative, Intelligent Design supporter, appointed by George W. Bush to his office. It's a bit long, but I assure you, it's an excellent exposé.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xyrel-2vI

[theresearchpersona]

Last night, I watched an incredible documentary by PBS, through NOVA ("Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial"). And it was amazing to me that I wasn't more aware of it -- or that despite the publicity behind the trial in the documentary -- more people have not learned about the fallacy of Intelligent Design (ie, Creationism relabeled.) If you are someone who didn't learn much about evolution in school -- it is not your fault. Creationists/fundamentalists have been fighting hard for decades to keep evolution from being taught thoroughly, if at all, in schools, and keep the myth of 'evolution' being 'just an unproven theory, among many' alive, and well, within it's congregations. If you have doubts about what evolution is, and find yourself saying 'it's just a theory,' you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary in full... and educate yourself on the matter. It is a very balanced, fully explored documentary. Both sides got interviewed, and got equal time to express their contentions, views, and proofs. This documentary is NOT an argument for atheism. In fact, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, as well as the defendants, were ALL Christians, and the judge was a Conservative, Intelligent Design supporter, appointed by George W. Bush to his office. It's a bit long, but I assure you, it's an excellent exposé.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xyrel-2vI

Hi FR,

I hate to break it for you, but "I.D." isn't a fallacy. My discipline was biology, with a smattering of history of science and its development. A good chunk I.D. grew out of the work of former atheists who couldn't believe in "a priori materialism" anymore. A lot of the country's biologists and scientists are also something like "hidden believers", not always Christians or even people who started out as atheists or anything like that, but some of the stupid "creationist" sayings that seem overly-simple etc., really just capture in simple terms what is plain, e.g. "a 747 can't assemble itself, but pales in comparison to molecular machinery". Further, you can't count on a sophistical self-referencing intellectually-shallow political system, or those who elect it, to provide rigorous "exposé" on anything. Our Supreme Court once noted that "secular humanism is a religion", yet everyone just explained it away as "non-binding"; hell, a majority accepts the Federal government claiming that it can lawfully interpret the bounds of its own power...despite the Founders of the country, who wrote the damn laws constituting that Federal government, explicitly elucidating otherwise, that it's a Creature of the States, and has only around 17 small enumerated powers and no more.

That said, it is important to note that plenty in the "I.D." camp who proclaim they have no religious interest, "just letting science lead where it leads", are perhaps as disingenious as GC declaring that the past is da past, that da past has no bearing on da present or the developments of the current organization, that its all in da past, no worries...don't you dare go to da website: no, we won't give da url as that would be facilitatin' you sinnun. There are also those with an interest beyond mere science who can honestly say...one can make the argument on neutral grounds.

Then there's evolution as conceived by Darwin; it's hailed as scientific, but Darwin himself called it a philosophy, gave conditions in his book that would invalidate it (which have all been fulfilled), but his followers won't let it die (they've also been mocked by many histiographers of disciplines since, and this is why Darwinians loathe philosophers of science). Darwin is hailed despite having nothing written-up even when Alfred Russel Wallace was ready to publish his papers on natural selection, which work when received by Darwin for review, Darwin suddenly declared "this is my idea too! You should wait for me to write somethin' up!" Wallace was excluded from fame for being non-noble (damn British class-ists) and other reasons, but Robert Nisbet pointed-out years ago that it likely had a lot to do with the fact that Wallace began speaking of the fact that God may have something to do with these things despite being an a-theistical non-Christian: historically also, comparing Wallace's original work with Darwin's own meanderings, Wallace was the better naturalist, scientist, and thinker: all-around Wallace has proven more correct (something else Nisbet in his time used to beat Darwinists over the head with, because beating cultic tyrants who use their connections to block people from getting places they merit is fun and righteous).

To give an example of what Darwin said, btw, he told one that "my work is a footnote to Malthus": that's the philosopher who wrote of scarce natural resources for which populations must compete and only the fittest triumph, the rest die. Of course, that may work for base animals, but men have begun learning otherwise, in that we can, of course, transform matter with energy, and with the right technology, for our purposes energy is unlimited: whether nuclear (though problematic) or even solar (for our purposes, long-term, unlimited). Even now, our food supplies are unlimited: the U.S. alone can feed the world several times over, yet Malthusianism was the force that darkened Asia with Marxism (another footnote to Malthus), a conservatively estimated 100,000,000 murders even of non-hostile (to the murderers) persons, and who knows how many unborn (under one-child policies afraid of running-out of resource): the U.S. model of innovation (and proving such theoretically determined rather than practically tested assumptions) even led Soviet leaders to write (internally of course) how shameful they were--and wrong, and eventually to the leader-mandated dissolution of the Communist party in the Soviet Union (after a predecessor began importing western food--a "shame"--and admitting their error), while today China's leadership is doubling-down on the errors. As another intellectual wrote, "Ideas have consequences". Malthusian Philosophy has proven to have some of the worst, and be some of the most overreaching and wrong: Darwin said his work was a footnote to this philosophy.

But a core tenet to modern scientists is that "Science" (as they apparently mean that to mean) "can be falsified", while every biology department has for decades taught that evolution essentially cannot be tested due to requiring aeons or more; confronted with this the rhetoric changed due to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, but then the argument started sounding exactly like similar ones of I.D. and creationism, which stated things like "we make distinctions like micro- from macro- evolution; micro-evolution is what produces breeds of dogs and other variations on a species within a kind"; this was once scoffed at, and later "Nature" posted an article online declaring "to prove the idjuts wrong we just need to start illustrating that when we say evolution, we even mean things like dog breeds" (some wiser commentators there tried to warn "no you fools, you'll give them ammo because they've been saying this..." and seem to have been removed).

There is nothing in "Evolutionary theory" that precludes God except the insistence upon origins that contradict the Genesis narrative: this men know, and is significant in intellectual history because "God" (vs. god or gods) is the only historical Deity that's actual eternal and absolute: whose name is "I AM" or "Self-Existent One" and therefore fearful. Zeus could be fought or tricked, but the omniscient omnipotent "I AM" cannot be done away with, if given more than short shrift, so easily. (It is also an unfathomable concept, however, that God constitutes, and I doubt many give that much thought). I used to watch hard-core atheists, however, come to something of a theism in their pursuits, just by studying more and more biology: I watched one stutter out "that's like intelligent design...intelligent design...design..." after seeing the results of the conformation of the human ribosome, and hearing an answer (by the professor) to my question, "how is it folded": "it's self-assembling" (she said). The thing that startled him (and an entire class) was that atomic properties are built-in to the structure to cause it to fold a certain way, and these thing aren't...specified by DNA, but rather that information is something like "implied", or rather, a consequence of their actual specifications for assembly, and so it adds orders of magnitude of...mathematical absurdity to the notion that biological organisms are material accidents: it's worth mentioning further that we even talk of "evolution-directing genes" now, because there are genes that create proteins that purposively alter sequences, variables, and expressive characteristics of other genes to "intelligently" (and that's the right term) adapt the genome and its products to suit environments, new circumstances, etc.

I used to be the guy, by the way, who would source quotes for a certain GC* pastor I am now opposed to, on these matters. It severely pissed-off the university's biology staff, and other departments that tried to teach "a prior materialism": many of which are probably filled with people who know something of "the history of science", but actually believe there is a metaphysically valid break between "philosophy" and "science" just because of an "unphilosophical" "method" whose maker actually called "the scientific method" a "philosophy" of obtaining "mechanical" rather than "historical", i.e. like geological history and Darwinian evolutionism, "science". They could never argue with the guy's presentations, or not very well, because I would do what any intelligent student who is outgunned by "consensus" would do: quote only eminent figures and names they would not dare to argue against, so they called for a ban on the group and on any use of university facilities by religious groups at all, and proceeded to go into angry tirades (such as in the evolution class) which became famous and...got people investigating, for which many became "I.D." ists themselves. : ) It was very comical: when you get folks looking into the origins of "knowledge" (all the science has ever meant and, if you examine it in-context, pretty much still means) disciplines and their bases, they stop believing the preaching and become very critical. There are not a lot of good reasons to either accept or reject the proposition "the earth is a few thousands years old" vs. "billion years old", for instance, on the basis or the Bible or on Dating methods used in science, given that the dating methods are chosen to fit a theory, and not vice-versa, and the fact that one system can explain its theory validly by those methods, while the other can explain how the characteristics of the natural phenomena employed in those methods and the theories about those methods that are used to justify their used to validate the other theory...are also accounted for by the "biblical" narrative.

And I have known scientists, famous ones--discoverers of really significant mechanisms who are not eminent in their fields, who use biblical assumptions...then back-fit material data to them, and they not only pass peer-review, but remain cutting-edge: similarly, I've known atheists who do grand work in the same department, and are none the wiser. The atheists can point-out stupid assumptions by "believers" (rather vague and nondescriptive) that have blocked scientific progress, and "believers" also point at (many mountains worth) of assumptions by "unbelievers" that were thought necessary (to materialism), like "chance-based" or "natural" (meaning "unguided, unintentional") "selection" that were totally wrong and which for a long time hindered searches and experimental discovery (e.g. like of evolution-directing genes). You can say "all cells share the same biological mechanism at root because they decent from the same common ancestor" and be correct (as far as evidence goes) yet make the same assumption based on "God made them all" and...not be theoretically incorrect. You know another assumption that was made about all this? Polyploidy is bad, therefore cannot be: so the extra X in females was left uninvestigated, only later to be proved to be at least significantly active; I had a scientific journal with the article about the research and experimentation showing this in-hand back in high school and tried to show it to my professor, and the significances to him went all the way to "impossible" and "I.D. like", and he physically turned his head and closed his eyes and said "I don't believe it and refuse to look at that": the article's own important conclusion was something like "this shows how divergent the sexes are, and necessary a re-evaluation of medical theory and distinct medical research centering on each sex, with different trials for each, and evaluation of the effects of drugs and therapy; it also suggests to us that current androgynous research means medicine is ill-tailored to both sexes, and that this may have been founded more on philosophical egalitarianism or equality than valid scientific observations which prove otherwise." Of course since, more and more research and sex-specific work (besides in birth control) has become acceptable, but we still saw the wrath of politically correct academics on this sort of thing when Larry Summers merely read through a listing of research work and researchers (prepared and handed to him) that happened to have a line-item that pointed to works showing significant and provable cognitive differences between the sexes, despite that famous female neuroscientists have even been writing about how this is a big "duh" given large structural differences between the brains of different sexes!

Of course that's a "threat" to egalitarian dogma because it forbodes "return to troglodytism where men drag women about by their hair", though I think Christians sort of laugh at that: we believe in the image of God, God made them male and female, male and female He created them, in His own image; equal in essence; made "him a help meet" (more literally "sufficient in Strength" or "comparable to Him").

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting for now, and I haven't been here a while so I have to re-familiarize myself and get up-to-date.

TTFN and I hope your GC* experience wasn't too long or awful.

[FeministRebel]

Way too long. Didn't read.

[theresearchpersona]

Way too long. Didn't read.

The actual history of natural science, arguments by its architects, and issues at stake are also very long: also very involved; also very technical (a modern journal article can be dense enough to include about 800 pages of mid-level language worth in just two or three pages)...and is also why I rant about cute little documentaries that glaze over things and pretend to do a serious presentation: they do not.

Just sayin'. : )

[FeministRebel]

It is not a 'cute little documentary.' It is a documentary on an actual situation that is going on, right now, in America. It covers an actual event, and how it went down. You can believe what you want to believe (which is a mere personalizing the facts to tell you what you wish to see in them, rather than what they truly are) -- but many scientists do not view the issue as you do, and you are no authority on the matter.

[araignee19]

Well, I didn't read theresearchpersonas reply very closely, as it's long and I'm tired, but I would have to disagree with what I saw.

I am a Christian. My faith is the most important thing in my life. But I am also a scientist (ecology/entomology). I struggled for many years with my faith and trying to disprove evolution. I thought that both creation and evolution couldn't be true, so I fought evolution. Actually, my original goal in going to college was to disprove evolution. I know the arguments against it. I know why many people think it is an invalid theory. But after many years of studying it and trying to disprove it, I have come to accept the theory as true. There is a lot of scientific evidence for it, and a lot of reasons to accept it as a framework for how species have arisen and how they are related. Evolution is also no longer a threat to my faith. It was a huge struggle to think things through and come to this conclusion, but that's where I'm at now.

I am not going to go into the details of why I believe what I believe. Arguing creation and evolution is not the purpose of this forum in the first place, nor do I believe I will convince anyone of my views. My point is that there are people, like myself, who are both Christians and evolutionists, and do not see a conflict there.

Also, I very much liked the "cute" documentary. Gave a good overview of a very complex issue in a way that was easy to watch and understand. And I do agree that ID is a repackaging of creationism. You are free to believe ID (and in some ways I think there are aspects of the ideas which are valid. When I study cell biology or biochemistry, I have a hard time understanding how that could have arisen without guidance). But please, don't call it science or a theory. It is not.

[theresearchpersona]

Well, I didn't read theresearchpersonas reply very closely, as it's long and I'm tired, but I would have to disagree with what I saw.

I am a Christian. My faith is the most important thing in my life. But I am also a scientist (ecology/entomology). I struggled for many years with my faith and trying to disprove evolution. I thought that both creation and evolution couldn't be true, so I fought evolution. Actually, my original goal in going to college was to disprove evolution. I know the arguments against it. I know why many people think it is an invalid theory. But after many years of studying it and trying to disprove it, I have come to accept the theory as true. There is a lot of scientific evidence for it, and a lot of reasons to accept it as a framework for how species have arisen and how they are related. Evolution is also no longer a threat to my faith. It was a huge struggle to think things through and come to this conclusion, but that's where I'm at now.

I am not going to go into the details of why I believe what I believe. Arguing creation and evolution is not the purpose of this forum in the first place, nor do I believe I will convince anyone of my views. My point is that there are people, like myself, who are both Christians and evolutionists, and do not see a conflict there.

Also, I very much liked the "cute" documentary. Gave a good overview of a very complex issue in a way that was easy to watch and understand. And I do agree that ID is a repackaging of creationism. You are free to believe ID (and in some ways I think there are aspects of the ideas which are valid. When I study cell biology or biochemistry, I have a hard time understanding how that could have arisen without guidance). But please, don't call it science or a theory. It is not.

I am always a little surprised to read non sequiturs like this, as they demonstrate little understanding of the histiography of the theory of evolution, or of the fact that there are varied and opposed forms of it or definitions of "evolution", do not explicate what "species" is or its origins, significance, and uses: it was Evol. 101 to go through about...50, which often trac more along with egos and prof.s trying to make names: phylogenetic, genetic, anatomical, compatibility...

"Evolution..." is an overly broad term mis-used and weaponized; in simple terms there are ways to distinguish significances, which are the points of discussion usually missing with biology circles, because if populated by a bunch of religious burned people turned to science as religion in its stead (and this is a frequent occurence at universities), then you don't have scientists merely seeking to understand, but seeking to create new significance and meaning for themselves as staunch atheists.

"Science" really is just an old word for knowledge and, despite pretensions otherwise, it is usually used that way; more careful folks use it (and usually explain) to mean "knowledge about mechanisms proved by experiment", following the tenor of thought within the Discourse on method; in the very strict form "evolution" is totally rejected because, as some of its biggest promoters stated quite frankly for years, in the significance as a theory undermining or contending with religious belief, as an origins-explaining concept, it isn't testable: one can only build a large body of speculative theorizing and build modles of supposed and assumed conditions and seek to prove the model is valid within the paramaters of its assumptions: yet somehow this becomes back-extrapolated to a historical rather than empirical and experimentally validated science. Less honest dealers in arguments, knowledge, and words, pretend to use the experimentally provable sense of "science" while they speak on things that are not or cannot (conceivably by current data and conceptions available) be; very dishonest ones often just use it for "things explained in material terms", which philosophers call "positivism", and it is not...respectable at all: especially as it uses concepts derived from theological ground as ordering principles, often without realizing it.

And you show you don't understand "theory": catastrophism, neo-catastrophism, heliocentrism, flat-earth-ism, Constitutional government, natural-law, "legal", "rights", "person[hood]", "humanity", and an endless litany of things unquestionable as well as dated are theories.

I can be a criticial ass, so I have this to say in addition and then I'll quite for today (on this thread): it is not so much important to attempt to reconcile things, or to disprove them: do that, and you just end-up as you do, "struggled to this conclusion..."; when instead you simple try to understand, not exactly what people are saying, but also where they're coming from, their assumptions, and the origins and developments of the knowledge categories and their supports, very different things (in my experience) occurs: you might come to be able to call the BS where you see it (and piss everyone off), even able to explain why, and point-out how someone doesn't know what they think they know (a lot of "education" and "learning" consists of mimicry and echoing, which happens to be a large field of study today, in which the person reproducing even "advanced" and "difficult" or "complex" subjects...doens't actually understand them well, and therefore can't deconstruct them well him/her self), and thus perhaps might end-up (as some) a Young-Earth Creationist sort (almost certainly hating Kent Hovind et. al. as much as the evolutionary biologists who have to correct such mis-teachings), or you end-up agnostic and realizing that there are various sides with aspects of truth in them or things worth knowing and saying, but something's got to give: I noticed that rather than try to "disprove evolution"--which as a bio student I certainly didn't want to do given that "evolution" can often be used to refer to observable mechanisms and processes of change that are undeniably scientifically valid in the strictest of senses--it was better to point-out (not only to others, but myself) unstated or dishonest assumptions, groundlessness, religiously controlling positivism, and search the origins of concepts and their development: just getting people to "drink deep[ly]" rather than what was merely presented by a given herd within the sciences, and I didn't have to disprove anything to anyone, the assertions of material development uncaused or unguided fell apart, and ID-ists started running around campus. It was quite funny.

[araignee19]

Wow. Oh where to start? Guess I won't get into it all that much other than a few comments.

By "evolution" I mean all that modern science means by evolution. There is not much disagreement by what is meant by "evolution" in the scientific community, although in various contexts it has various meanings. I accept the term in all contexts as presented by scientists in the field of evolutionary biology, ecology, and other scientific disciplines (see definition of "science" below).

By "science" I mean the field of study which uses the scientific method to find truth. By "scientist" I mean those who are actively involved in scientific research and either publish articles in peer reviewed journals or produce usable products through scientific study (e.g. industrial research).

Not sure what you mean by "do not explicate what "species" is or its origins, significance, and uses: it was Evol. 101 to go through about...50, which often trac more along with egos and prof.s trying to make names: phylogenetic, genetic, anatomical, compatibility..." But by "species" I mean "species" in the sense scientists use it (yes, I'm aware it can vary from scientist to scientist, and there are issues like ring species and such. But defining "species" that precisely doesn't do anything for this conversation anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species).

To say I don't understand the "histography" of evolution shows you don't know me. I understand it quite well, but don't see the need to go into it here. Again, I won't convince anyone of my views, and that is not the purpose of this forum.

I do understand the scientific usage of the word "theory," apparently quite a bit better than you. Again, not going to go into it as I don't see the point, but I recommend the Wikipedia article on "theory." Scroll down to the "scientific theories" section... Heliocentrism, flat-earth-ism, Constitutional government, natural-law, "legal", "rights", "person[hood]", etc. are NOT scientific theories.

And when you say, "it is not so much important to attempt to reconcile things, or to disprove them: do that, and you just end-up as you do, "struggled to this conclusion..."" I will just point out that clearly only one of us approaches life from a scientific mindset. Where my faith comes in is in knowing that when I fight to understand something, I won't always succeed, but I will hold to the choice I have made to follow Christ no matter what my knowledge base tells me. I will have faith that I will understand some day, even if that is in heaven. But I will always fight to understand and learn. I will continue to attempt to disprove things I see as false, and if they stand up to testing, I will readjust my views.


P.S. You could stand to work on your writing style a bit. I see a lot of big words in a lot of long run-on sentences with so many concepts in each I can't follow the train of thought. It reads as though you are trying to beat me in an argument (which I do not want this to be in the first place) with the quantity and size of words. I don't feel like taking the time to continue to muddle through your posts (I have enough tough reading - like scientific journal articles - to do without spending time on this), so this will likely be the last I post on this topic.

[EverAStudent]

To theresearchpersona,

I understand your frustration.  No, the rules of discourse and judgement are not evenly or fairly applied in such a debate.  For example, when the word theory is applied to a system of assumptions regarding certain postulations about as-yet unreplicated and untestable evolutionary processes the objection is unfairly raised that "evolution" is nonetheless above the level of being a theory and is already fact; so no one is permitted to call it theoretical.

Yet, when a system of hypotheses (derived from studying molecular biology) is advanced postulating the need for a coder to have been behind the creation of the genetic code then it is conversely objected that the hypothetical system is neither theory, nor fact, nor can be raised to the level of scientific inquiry.  Such a debating tactic where the opposition is frozen out of the discussion on the basis of unequally applied definitional semantics is not helpful as it is only meant to win arguments and to stall the free sharing of ideas, not to advance thinking or dialogue.

As for myself, I grew up as an adherent of evolution (what else could I be having come from the public school system?) though always a theist.  At age 14 I converted to Christ, becoming born again.  My belief systems changed and so did my skepticism toward evolution.  The weak point of the full and sweeping evolutionary model from my perspective was that it could not explicate any type of consistent model for the original energy from which the universe sprang (or exploded forth).  All the naturalistic evolutionary models required a blind faith in a godlike self-existing eternal universe.

Moreover, life itself (not to mention human consciousness and self-awarness) is inexplicable by any evolutionary model proposed to date.  At least, those that have been put forward I have found to be unsatisfying, composed of mere conjecture without accounting for the substance of the reality of the cause-and-effect paradigm that is so evidently at work in our observable world.

So, for me, while I contemplate the unresolved tension between Young Earth Creation and Old Earth Creation, I see no credible set of theories called evolution that adequately explain, much less prove, that life on this world had no Creator or spiritual guiding purpose.

[araignee19]

Alright, one more comment: The theory of evolution does not exclude a creator, designer, or any other supernatural being. Sure, it allows for a belief in atheism, but it does not require atheism. That is not its purpose.

[2xA Ron]

To theresearchpersona,

I understand your frustration.  No, the rules of discourse and judgement are not evenly or fairly applied in such a debate.  For example, when the word theory is applied to a system of assumptions regarding certain postulations about as-yet unreplicated and untestable evolutionary processes the objection is unfairly raised that "evolution" is nonetheless above the level of being a theory and is already fact; so no one is permitted to call it theoretical.

Yet, when a system of hypotheses (derived from studying molecular biology) is advanced postulating the need for a coder to have been behind the creation of the genetic code then it is conversely objected that the hypothetical system is neither theory, nor fact, nor can be raised to the level of scientific inquiry.  Such a debating tactic where the opposition is frozen out of the discussion on the basis of unequally applied definitional semantics is not helpful as it is only meant to win arguments and to stall the free sharing of ideas, not to advance thinking or dialogue.

Agreed.  There are a lot of definitions used to shut down debate in this area.  Though I suspect this isn't entirely one-sided, I have mainly experienced the definitions used to shut down discussion that runs counter to evolution and speak from that admittedly limited perspective.  One thing I see happening a lot is the implicit assumption being made the religion and science are mutually exclusive, and of course that only theistic beliefs can possibly count as "religion."  If you are at all religious, or imply anything that can be tied to Christianity in any way, you are a Bible-thumping Neanderthal no matter what you actually say or do.

Alright, one more comment: The theory of evolution does not exclude a creator, designer, or any other supernatural being. Sure, it allows for a belief in atheism, but it does not require atheism. That is not its purpose.

This is another definition thing to be ware of, I think, and perhaps one used unfairly by proponents of Creationism (which is, itself, perhaps a misleading term: Creationism in my mind is generally applied only to people who hold to a creator and reject evolution as his means of creating life on earth).  "Evolution" is generally used by many to cover not only the biological theory of speciation but the entire worldview of which it is sometimes a part, including atheism, Big-Bang cosmology, materialistic naturalism, historic gradualism, etc.  Properly this is simply the (or more, a) atheistic, naturalistic worldview, I think, but many use "evolution" as shorthand for it instead.  Whereas an atheistic, naturalistic worldview necessarily excludes a creator God, the biological theory of evolution does not.  It has even been argued that the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible (myself, I disagree with this interpretation, but that doesn't mean it can't be made, because it certainly has).  Belief in a creator or even the Christian God combined with belief in evolution is often termed theistic evolution, which may be an attempt to imply it is "tarnished" by the materialist worldview of "evolution" (going back to the improperly broad definition).

[2xA Ron]

By the way, watching the documentary and I'm not very impressed thusfar.    Sadly, up to this point it seems to be playing the "religion vs science" angle.  By that angle, of course intelligent design and creationism must not be valid, scientific, or worthy of thought by anyone who does not wish to remain steeped in antiquated religious traditions.  "Religion" is all things which in any way relate to theism, and since both of them do or very nearly do while evolution does not, therefore they can never be considered in any way scientific nor worthy of attention in a science classroom.

The documentary did make an attempt to be balanced by interviewing some ID scientists (and yes, there are real ID and Creationist scientists, just like there are real Christians who believe evolution), but then the narrator introduced Creationism as a religious belief that "rejects much of modern science."  Speaking as a Young-Earth Creationist, I think this is a biased and misleading statement to make.  While it's true that people like me reject some of the theories and conclusions held by many modern scientists, what we reject is by no means the majority of modern science: we believe in gravity and everything, after all.   Even those parts that we reject we do not fill in with unfounded religious speculation but with scientific theories (researched by the scientists among us, and yes, again, we do have them and they are real) which we feel better fit the evidence.  We are no more or less scientific than the average person who believes in evolution.

Logical fallacies pervade the popular debate on origins and I'm afraid this is one of them: the black-or-white fallacy that you must either be a scientific evolutionist or a religious creationist.  The reality is much, much more complex than that on both sides!  Added to that is a dash of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy, in saying that "no true Christian believes in evolution" or "no true scientist believes anything but evolution."  Both statements are equally false.