[asa] Review of "Flock of Dodos" film screening

Tonight, there was a film screening for the relatively new documentary
film by Randy Olson, "Flock of Dodos", at the College of William and
Mary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_of_Dodos
http://www.flockofdodos.com

William and Mary was picked for a screening probably since one of the
biologists in the film, John Swaddle, teaches at William and Mary and
is a
friend of Randy Olson. The film ran for 84 minutes followed by a panel
discussion of some local biologists, some film experts, and a
representative from Answers in Genesis, David Dewitt, who teaches at
Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Since I am not a biologist, I can not comment on the science in the
film,
but I can make some observations that I hope will be helpful:

1. While Olson professes to be an agnostic who accepts Darwinism, he
presents a somewhat favorable view of evangelical Christians while
clearly
coming down against Intelligent Design. In fact, Olson succeeds in
portraying Intelligent Design proponents as real people with likable
personalities while poking a lot of fun at his former colleagues in
evolutionary science (Olson is a former evolutionary scientist turned
filmmaker). Even the Creationist on the panel after the film, David
Dewitt, applauded Olson's humourous and non-combative approach to the
issues.

2. In the film, Olson does a fascinating job of interviewing
evolutionary
scientists (he himself studied under Stephen Jay Gould and was
mesmerized
by him). Olson views his fellow evolutionists as basically intellectual
snobs who really need to do a better job at communicating the ideas of
evolutionary science to a skeptical public without resorting to the
childish ridicule of their ID opponents.

3. Olson also talked to a number of school board members involved in the
Kansas and Dover, PA Intelligent Design cases. He devotes a
considerable
amount of time to interviewing Michael Behe. Olson portrays these folks
as genuinely nice people, with lots of homespun, Midwest common sense
wisdom. Nevertheless, Olson argues that ID is flawed since it relies
more
on intuition than empirical data. For this reason, Olson favors Judge
Jones' verdict at Dover, PA that ID is not a science.

4. Michael Behe does a fair job of presenting the ideas of ID, but he
uses
a poorly crafted analogy that while we may not necessarly detect
design in
any regular old mountain, we can detect it in looking at Mount Rushmore.
Otherwise, Behe makes a reasonable argument (from this non-specialist's
perspective) for "irreducible complexity". Olson declined to use
this on
the film, but in his panel remarks Olson said that Behe made a bumbling,
half-joking comment that Behe said that he did not care much what
type of
impact ID has in public schools since he sends his kids to Catholic
schools and/or home schools. This was not terribly flattering and I am
sure Behe would rethink such a comment, but I think it was judicious of
Olson not to include that in the film.

5. The most compelling character to me who was interviewed is a science
cirriculum reviewer in Kansas who teaches at the University of Kansas (I
think), but I do not recall his name (does anyone know who it is?). He
quotes the famous Saint Augustine quote about not sounding like a fool
about scientific matters as well as criticizing ID for expousing a
"God of
the Gaps" theology that is detrimental to religious faith.

6. Olson was unable to get an interview on film with anyone from the
Discovery Institute. Nevertheless, Olson portrays the Discovery
Institute
as a well-funded organization supported by dozens and dozens of right-
wing
religiously oriented gropus, and who are able to hire the same public
relations firm who promoted the Swift boat veterans scandal. On the
other
side, the evolutionary establishment is not well funded and does a
horrible job at PR...... I confess that these observations were
bewildering. First, it shows that politics seems to continually get
wrapped up in these discussions and science often suffers -- for both
sides -- the right and the left. Secondly, I am not sure how believable
it is that the Discovery Institute is just floating in cash while the
evolutionary establishment is pleading poverty. I have often heard from
the Creation Science community that they are poor while the evolutionary
establishment gets all of the NSF grants they want. So I'm not sure
what
to think about this one (but what is probably really sad is that I am
afraid that my comment of about "politics" here might generate more
discussion on this mailing list than anything else -- if this is the
case,
then this would sadly probably only prove my point).

7. In the comments during post-film panel discusion, the Creationist
David
DeWitt made an interesting criticism of ID. He faults Behe for not
fully
following through on his own ideas. In fact, DeWitt thinks that
evolutionists understand Behe's implications better than Behe does, and
this is why evolutionists attack ID so much. The idea is that if Behe
were really consistent, he would become a 6-day, 24-hour creationist
like
DeWitt is.

8. DeWitt also brought up the argument that there is a difference
between
experimental science and historical science. Hypotheses can be tested
with experimental science, whereas they can not be tested in historical
science. It is impossible to travel back into the past to prove
something. You have to make certain untestable assumptions to do
historical science. Therefore, "evolutionary" science can make sense of
the data if someone holds to Darwinistic assumptions, whereas creaton
science makes sense of the data if you assume a literal
interpretation of
Genesis......DeWitt makes an interesting distinction between
experimental
and historical sciences, but it seems to be non-compelling to argue that
six-day literal creationism comes anywhere near consistent with the
existing empirical evidence.

9. Curiously, the topic of Richard Dawkins came up. Olson views
Dawkins
to be pretty much an embarassment to the whole traditional evolutionist
cause. Dawkins reductionist atheism is just as annoying to Olson as is
the covert religionism of ID and the overt religionism of
Creationists as
Dewitt (thought he likes the IDers and Creationists as more pleasant
people to be around than the evolutionists!!)..

Overall, the work that Olson has done with "Flock of Dodos" helps to
show
the huge gap between the scientific establishment and middle America --
particularly evangelicalism. Whether or not you agree with all of
Olson's
film, I think that the basic issues of how we can best present
scientific
ideas that are consistent with evangelical faith is an issue that
resonates with the general tenor of the film. Since this is close
to the
heart of the mission of the ASA, I heartily recommend seeing the film.

Blessings in Him,

Clarke Morledge
College of William and Mary
Information Technology - Network Engineering
Jones Hall (Room 18)
Williamsburg VA 23187

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Received on Fri Oct 27 01:14:41 2006