w/ Randy Olson
7:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: Randy Olson
Cinematographer: Peter LoGreco, Shane Seley, Joseph Trinh
Cast: Michael Behe, John Calvert, Jack Cashill, Tom Givnish, Randy Olson
Running Time: 84 min

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” — Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Dr. Randy Olson, former evolutionary biologist turned filmmaker, returned to his home state of Kansas, Ground Zero in the “Intelligent Design vs. Evolution” debacle, to explore the origin of this particular species of specious argument. A Flock of Dodos (so named, presumably, because Battle for the Planet of the Apes was already taken) is a feature-length and partially animated documentary which fairly and judiciously examines both sides of the public argument.

Befitting his Harvard education under Stephen Jay Gould, Dr. Olson approaches the issue from the hall of science, not the temple of faith. He wishes to explore why “Intelligent Design” (ID), a thinly-vieled repackaging of Creationism recently described by a federal judge as “breathtaking inanity”Â?, appears to be gaining traction in the U.S.

In Olson’s view, it is not, as the ID proponents might have you believe, because there is any crisis of self confidence in the evolutionary field. Quite the opposite; evolutionary scientists are so profoundly certain of their reasoning that they become both dismissive and arrogant when confronted with opponents of their scientific principles.

ID advocates, by contrast, find their cause bankrolled by a massive and resourceful Seattle-based advocacy group called the Discovery Institute and fronted by affable and articulate spokepersons. Instead of arguing outright against evolution, these experienced media managers have tapped into the atmosphere of political correctness and carefully crafted public relations strategies to push their agenda, offering bumper-sticker phrases (”Teach the Controversy”) to imply that there are other valid theories out there besides evolution, and that evolution is an imperfect theory that cannot account for everything.

This disparity –the bombastic and overbearing scientists against the smiling and sincere supporters of ID –marks the academics as the imperiled Dodos of the title … flightless birds that became extinct after failing to adapt to a changing environment.