A Flock of Dodos

I did get a chance tonight to attend my first Green Mountain Film Festival movie, and it was a real good one - Flock of Dodos. Dodos is former marine biologist Randy Olson's examination of the growing "debate" between those who want schools to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution, and scientists.

The crux of the ID proponents is that there are some holes in Darwin's Evolution science. In other words, evolution doesn't explain everything that we've found in the development of life on this planet. Because evolution doesn't have all of the answers, ID proponents want to promote Intelligent Design as a potential "alternative" theory to evolution. The only problem is that ID doesn't have holes, it has wide, yawning chasms in its explanations. The other problem is that, given that ID does not stand up to any actual scientific scrutiny. It is a theory with literally no data to support it, therefore it does not belong in a high school science class.

The other pillar that ID stands upon is the supposition that some things are so elegant and so perfectly-constructed that they couldn't have happened by environmental adaptation and chance mutations. Some power must have thought these things through. Just as some power obviously designed Mount Rushmore. ("A person designed Mt. Rushmore" the filmmaker points out to a Pennsylvania School Board member.) The problem with this argument is that we have strong evidence that some genetic advancements were the result of environmental adaptation, and we have strong evidence that genes have mutated in the past, whereas we have no evidence of the existence of an intelligent designer. So why would we assume that those evolutionary advances that don't fit neatly into some of the premises of evolution that we know exist, instead are better explained by a phenomena of which there is no documentable scientific evidence? Indeed, the existence of an Intelligent Designer is something that one has to accept on faith. And while the ID folks will argue up one side of you and down the other that ID does not promote religion, the fact is that the words "faith" and "religion" are often used interchangeably in our society.

One question that gets examined toward the end of the movie is, why, in the absence of scientific support, is ID gaining steam in this country. One possible answer - Americans don't like to think that much, and ID (actually, I think we can call it "Creationism" now) doesn't require a lot of hard thinking. It's a neat, easily digestible answer. Another answer is that those who are in the best postition to debunk Creationism - the scientists - aren't interested in the debate. They see Creationism as non-scientific hokum and not worthy of debate, just as we no longer debate whether or not Earth orbits Sun. The scientists exacerbate the issue by failing to treat the Creationists with much respect. "They are ignorant," is a commonly-stated viewpoint. The Creationists, on the other hand, are in the position of having to respect the scientific validity of Evolution, and therefore only need to focus on the gaps in what evolution can explain. And, unlike the scientists, they are motivated to actually engage in the debate. And, frankly, I believe that they have an audience that wants to believe in Creationism, because many of us have spent a lot of energy in our lives believing that we have to accept, on faith, the presence of a higher power.

It's all heady stuff, but a topic that Olson handles fairly even-handedly even though we are aware early on of what his opinion is on the matter. There is a great deal of humor in the film as well. Most memorable is the discussion of how rabbits have to ingest their food twice (in other words, eat their own poop) to extract the nutrients from it. As one scientist asks, "who would design that?" And the scientists are not always portrayed in a positive light, particularly in a roundtable discussion of PhD convened by Olson. Okay, the roundtable is actually a poker table, and Olson films the scientists playing cards, getting drunk and obstinately denouncing Creationism. They are having fun, but they clearly are not respecting the Creationsists.

In the end, it is Olson's own mother, "Muffy Moose," who steals the show. A lively, eccentric octagenarian, Muffy lives around the corner from leading Creationist lawyer John Calvert. Molly has lived a full life, and has tried on lots of sprituality hats over the years, but she's a devout Evolutionist. When she is on screen, she never fails to fully engage the audience. She also has the line of the movie when, consulting a toy, she says "let's see what the Intelligent Eight Ball has to say."

Flock of Dodos is getting a lot of non-theatre play, and it will be coming to Showtime in May. The DVD public release is set for August of this year. I'm certain that most of us are so clearly entrenched in our beliefs that this movie is unlikely to change anybody's mind on the subject, but it's a fairly thorough and entertaining examination of the issue, and I highly recommend it to all.