A War On Science

There is a new movie theatre in Toronto, the Brunswick Theatre, which screens predominantly socio-political documentaries. Among the movies they’re currently screening are a few science-oriented docs: “The God Delusion”, “Living Amidst The Pine Beetle”, “Big Bucks, Big Pharma”, and the BBC documentary “A War On Science”. I went to the “A War On Science” screening last Friday, and it was quite interesting. It started out with an introduction of where the Intelligent Design proponents are coming from, and for a few minutes they even seem to make some sense, until the word is given to their debunkers and it’s clear that their arguments just don’t hold up at all. For example, Behe’s “irreducible complexity” idea uses the premise that the flagellae of bacteria are only functional as 50-part machine and none of the components have a function of their own. If that was true he may have had a point, but Ken Miller easily proved that this wasn’t even true to begin with (some components do have independent functions), collapsing the whole argument.
Another part of the movie focussed on the Dover case, interviewing the concerned parents and teachers who immediately recognized ID as creationism (which isn’t allowed to be taught) and took the Dover school board to court.
There was also an interview with the head of the Vatican astronomy observatory. He explained that the scientific facts were just so overwhelming that the catholic church in general could simply not deny the validity of the arguments and has overcome any issues it had with evolution.

After all screenings, the Brunswick Theatre encourages discussion about the topic of the documentary, and last Friday’s discussion was quite lively. Interestingly, while all people present (about ten people stayed for the discussion) seemed to identify as atheist, and agreed without a doubt that evolution is real, there was a lot of disagreement on how to get this message across to proponents of ID. (It reminded a lot of the current “framing” debate in the science-blogosphere…) Discussions and opinions varied from “science is just the final answer to everything, and religious people should simply accept that there is no God the same way we accept it” to “why is this only an issue in the US?” and “what if there is a biological explanation for religion?” and “what if people need to have everything explained and they can have a “God of the Gaps” that might fill in the gaps of what we don’t currently know, but as we get more scientific knowledge the gaps will get smaller until there are no more gaps and there is no more need of a God”.

For Torontonians: “A War on Science” screens at the Brunswick Theatre Apr 21 at 4:30pm, and Apr 26 at 5pm. You can also catch the related “A God Delusion” on April 24 at 9:30pm, but that’s just Dawkins again, and “A War on Science” has Dawkins plus other people’s opinions.
The Brunswick Theatre also has all movies they screen available to borrow from them if you become a member, and since they just started up they could really use some memberships. They’re located just south of Bloor Street on Brunswick, and are tiny, but marked clearly with coloured documentary announcement flyers.