The insulted and injured
The letters in response to PBS’s ‘Judgment Day’ that the ombudsman publishes make depressing reading. They’re so infatuated, so wrong, and above all so narcissistic. It’s all about them. They’re offended, they’re insulted, they’re in a snit. Because of course a scientific theory is about them. It’s not about what it’s about, it’s about them. Religion my ass; vanity is more like it. I’m not related to monkeys, I’m special, and you better say so right now or I’ll stop watching PBS.
I realize that PBS has always treated the neo-Darwinian theory of Evolution as sacred and beyond question but last night’s dose of Darwin-worship was so strong and so contrary to any genuine search for truth that I can no longer consider support of public television a morally defensible practice. For years, I have defended public television among my fellow Christians for its many fine offerings for family viewing, but PBS has become so strident and so relentless in its disrespect for fair debate and dialogue on the subject of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, that I can no longer do so.
Because there are always exactly Two Sides to any subject; not three, not one, not eleven, but Two; and Both Must Be Heard. If, at the end of any given television program, one Side seems to have more evidence to back it up than the other seems to have, then The Fix Was In. It was a cheat, and it’s time to get out the old purple-with-rage stationery and fire off a note to those anti-family demons at wherever it is this time.
I have been a faithful watcher of PBS and the NOVA programs over the many years and have always stood up for those who would say that PBS was too liberal in its programming. Your program insulted me and my family with your very jaundiced view and recreation of facts that were slanted heavily towards Darwinism. You did have one science teacher who was pictured in a Roman Catholic Church, as a presumed Christian who said that IF GOD does exist — No more needs be said. Dan Fahey, Greenwich, CT
The program insulted him and his family. That was the point, of course – the Nova producers sat down and said ‘How can we go about insulting Dan Fahey of Greenwich Connecticut, and while we’re at it, insult his family too? Let’s be thorough here – if we’re going to go to all the trouble of insulting Dan Fahey, let’s insult his family. Otherwise our Victory would be incomplete.
The recent Nova special on Intelligent Design vs. Evolution was one of the most blatantly biased pieces of so-called “journalism” or scientific documentary. It was extremely insulting to the idea of Design. The whole tone of it was very sarcastic against Intelligent Design and completely victimized evolutionary thought by the evil villains of religious ignoramuses. It gave precious little air time to ID scientists who have plenty of legitimate research, but gave plenty of time towards evolutionary research…I propose that evolutionary thought is a religion in and of itself, and this program was its equivalent of a televangelistic sermon…Nova has lost all reasonable credibility through this piece. I have long known that they espouse Darwinian doctrine, however, this piece was biased, inaccurate, insulting, sarcastic and ultimately, due to its primarily cultural and political content, was outside of the scope of Nova’s “scientific” programming.
And did I mention that it was insulting?
I find the Nova episode that aired on Nov. 13 titled Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial was presented in a clearly biased manner. I was offended by this episode and I am a substitute for the public school system.
I was offended, I was insulted, I’m pissed off, I’m in a foaming frothing fury, and what do you atheist elitist snobs at PBS plan to do about it? Eh? Eh? Are you going to pay for my therapy? Send me an economy-size box of Prozac? Relocate me to Mecca? What? Awaiting your reply.
‘I propose that evolutionary thought is a religion in and of itself’
I propose your views aren’t worth listening to, then.
I recently watched an airing of ‘When We Were Kings’ and was deeply offended there was no serious rebuttal offered and that Ali ‘won’ that fight was accepted without question, as a religion in itself..
This is essentially a faith based position, which shrinks from taking on the Foremanist arguments. Has any devout Ali-ist been able to prove that the water didn’t taste a bit funny?
My family and I were deeply insulted by this one-sided presentation.
I think Ophelia has hit on the right word “vanity” and the need to always be right and certain, an unwillingness to accept the changes and chances of life. We probably won’t see the NOVA programs here in New Zealand but we recently saw the English “Horizon” documentary on the Dover case. I was a bit concerned about the time the ID’ers (Behe etc) got to make their case, until on reflection I realised that Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough were able to be clear and precise in few words. It reminded me of a comment attributed to Lord Rutherford (with deference to grand mothers) “If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, you don’t know what you are talking about”.
Well mocked, OB.
Last night saw a terrific spectacular programme called Earth: The Power of the Planet on BBC2 with plenty of footage of volcanoes and a resounding conclusion of what lies behind the planet’s existence – volcanic activity pushing up land in equilibrium with water that attempts to erode and cover it. That the life that emerged was through evolution over billions of years was taken for granted – as it always is in those Attentborough style programmes. What do the ID crowd make of these programmes? Could they or would they make such programmes themselves which have this awed wonder at the variety of life and the astonishing forces that are behind its existence? Or would they simply say, God did it, and leave it at that? It’s been said here before how the ID attitude closes the doors of inquiry and curiosity.
KB,
I seem to recall that when a Dutch (religious) TV station broadcast one of Attenborough’s series they edited it heavily to remove references to age of the earth etc.
I think the BBC black-listed them.
Don:- Censoring the great David Attenborough! That’s outrageous. May they drown in bat shit.
Don’t understand what you mean by BBC “black listing” a Dutch religious station.
“I was offended by this episode and I am a substitute for the public school system.”
I didn’t realize that the public school system was capable of taking offense.
Or for that matter that it accepted substitutes for itself.
KB,
Apparently, they will no longer sell it Natuaral History programmes.
Don
Thanks for the explanation. I couldn’t see how the BBC could be in the position to black list another station. I wonder if they could have sued on some grounds of copyright. If you make a programme and then sell it to another broadcaster/distributor who then alters it without consultation I thought you would be entitled to some damages.
Off topic: re David’s comment:
>It reminded me of a comment attributed to Lord Rutherford (with deference to grand mothers) “If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, you don’t know what you are talking about”.< Of course Rutherford was an experimental, not a theoretical, physicist. -:)
I have tried (and failed) to imagine Schroedinger explaining quantum mechanics to his grandma. (Or, going back before Rutherford’s time, Maxwell explaining his electromagnetic equations.)
G. Tingey wrote:
>The Rutherford quote is a new one to me, but it reminds me of a R. Feynman one along similar lines… “If you can’t explain it it first-year undergraduates, you don’t understand what’s really going on” (He was talking abour QM, I think).< On the other hand… Feynman on quantum theory:
“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it. … That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
Heisenberg: “The most difficult problem concerning the use of the language arises in quantum physics. Here we have at first no simple guide for correlating the mathematical symbols with concepts of ordinary language: and the only thing we know from the start is the fact that our common concepts cannot be applied to the structure of the atoms.”
Allen, but have you tried to imagine Mileva Marić explaining it to her grandmother?
Hee hee hee