Judgment Day Accurate, NCSE Reports

Judgment Day Accurate, NCSE Reports

November 13, 2007 – The National Center for Science Education congratulates the producers of Judgment Day, a documentary about the seminal Kitzmiller v. Dover trial of 2005, for its accurate portrayal of the case that showed intelligent design to be a specific religious viewpoint. Judgment Day premiers on November 13, 2007, on PBS stations nationwide.

NCSE served as a consultant for the plaintiffs’ successful legal team in the case, and three members of its board of directors – Kevin Padian, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley; Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University; and Brian Alters, professor of education at McGill University – testified as expert witnesses at the trial.

Research in the NCSE archives played a crucial role in demonstrating the links between intelligent design and previous forms of creationism. “They tried to make an end-run around an earlier generation of legal rulings by switching the word ‘creation’ to ‘intelligent design’ in drafts of a creationist textbook,” commented Nick Matzke, NCSE’s scientific consultant for the Dover plaintiffs and now a doctoral student in integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “We found documents in the NCSE archives which were ‘missing links’ in this evolution of creationism.”

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