Nova

Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
$19.95
This documentary about the lawsuit brought by parents to overturn the policies put in place by the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania is an exceptionally fine summation of the fake debate between evolutionary thought and intelligent design. I say "fake debate" because there really is no debate. Evolution simply is science. To call it merely a theory is unbelievably deceptive, because there simply are no creationist scientific theories. As several people explain so well in this documentary, science always by its very nature falsifiable and makes predictions. Evolution, though falsifiable, has constantly been verified and supported by new evidence. It has also created many predictions that have been proven reliable as time has passed. None of this is true of Creationism. It is more or less an assertion that explains little and cannot really be verified, though in fact as a number of scientists have pointed out, the "design" of many animals seems quite unintelligent, as any human with an achy back can attest.

Intelligent Design is clearly Creationism, which is clearly an attempt to insert religion into science and courts have repeatedly upheld this. I really have no problem with the idea of a creator. In fact, I am a Christian who believes that God created life by establishing the method of evolution. In fact, there are many Christian scientists who believe this, perhaps most famously Francis Collins, formerly head of the Human Genome Project and currently the head of the National Institutes of Health. The roots for this are not really dealt with in this documentary, but those interested might consider looking at the really fine academic book THE DEATH OF ADAM: EVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON WESTERN THOUGHT. The book shows how Christians have resisted adjusting their beliefs -- beliefs that really are not central to the redemptive story of the death and resurrection of Jesus -- despite the growth of evidence for a different understanding of human origins.

The show details how Intelligent Design was deliberately repackaged from Creationism after it was declared unconstitutional in court decisions. Philosopher Barbara Forrest gives absolutely damning evidence that books were rewritten to try to skirt the court decisions. This testimony revealed the hypocrisy driving the Intelligent Design movement, which insists that it is science, while Creationism as clearly religious. Forrest also brings forth a document called The Wedge that promotes a strategy to remake society in religious terms. What disturbs me is that they can't do this in reasoned, balanced debate, so they have to do so by devious, deceptive methods. At a certain point my fellow Christians simply need to acknowledge the truth and adjust to it. Evolution has been proven as true as the vast majority of scientific theories. For me, as a person of faith, it doesn't lessen or challenge my belief in God, but apparently the faith of a huge number of Christians have an incredibly fragile faith.

The documentary features a dramatic reenactment of the trial as well as a host of the participants in the trial. The result is a brilliant accounting of the conflict between Christians who can't let go of a literal reading of the earliest chapters of Genesis (the first of which was written, by the way, as a creation hymn, not as science) and science. This is easily one of the best documentaries on the Dover School Board incident.

The film does leave out one important aspect of the trial and that is the influence that outside groups advocating Intelligent Design exerted in the event. Because the school district was sued, it had to pay the legal fees, doing enormous financial harm to the school district. Some on the Christian Right advocated an appeal, but the financial cost to the school district would have been devastating. Yet throughout it all, the Creationists (do we really need to continue to call it Intelligent Design?) simply fail to see the case. The problem they have really is not with Evolution, but with modernism. There is actually a broad-based counter-enlightenment at work in the work, that runs across a large number of irrationalist movements, from Christian and Islamic fundamentalism (both of which have arisen because of their adherents inability to cope with the modern world) to astrology to New Age thought to Jungian thought. The Creationists in this trial are one example of people unable to come to emotional terms with the modern world (and I do believe that the cause is psychological and emotional rather than rational). I have wondered how and if things will ever get better. Not everyone has had trouble adjusting. Most Europeans seem to have had no such problems. Nor most Canadians and Australians. The biggest problems really do seem to be in the United States, Latin America, African, and the Arab World. Institutions grounded in rationality, such as the court system, have proven bulwarks against emotional reactionaries. Let us all pray that at some point in the future we will get past this. But in the short run I'm not optimistic.

Nova Volume 5: War Of Kings TPB
$16.99
War of Kings brings a new era! Who is the new Protector of the Universe? Stripped of his Nova powers and facing death, Rich Rider must stop the Worldmind's plans before it's too late. But he needs power to do it, which may come from a source that will change his very identity! It's another unpredictable episode of the comic Ain't It Cool News calls "awesomely jaw-droppingly cool stuff." Collects Nova #23-29.

NOVA: Fractals - Hunting the Hidden Dimension
$24.95
"The book of nature is written in mathematics." Galileo

A tree, a bush, a cauliflaur, a brain, a lung system, what all these organic structures share in common is the use of repeating patterns to create a whole that in its macroscopic view is just like its microscopic view.

Called fractals they have also been employed mathematically to describe forces of nature and also knowledge itself.

In one of my very favorite quotes of all time, the late Isaac Asimov observed that "Knowledge has a fractal like structure. No matter how much we learn, whatever remains, no matter how seemingly small, is infinitely complex."

Amazingly though artists had already informally discovered them, fractals came to the fore mathematically only in 1979 when Benoit Mandlebroit began writing about them and their ubiquity in nature. Mandlebroit had been a Jew trapped in France during WWII. He had survived to quickly earn his Phd. and then acquire a reputation as an academic very willing to follow his own hunches.

Lucky for us Mandlebroit overcame early disdain for his discovery and pursued fractal research zealously. As alluded earlier in this notice, examples of both organic and inorganic uses of fractals have dominated research since 1979.

For its part this DVD does an excellent job of discussing the history and various applications of fractals and it also inspires the viewer to further study and exploration of this important area of mathematics which actually turns out to be an example of creation itself.

While nature's "book" may be written in mathematics, this DVD at least allows you to view a synopsis of this chapter on film.

NOVA - Origins
$29.95
Neil Degrasse Tyson is a fascinating lecturer and teacher. You can tell he loves what he does and he is highly informative. he has a wonderful teaching style that makes the subject come alive and inspire wonder.