Another ridiculous moment in the film is where Stein gets Richard Dawkins to posit what he thinks the “first cause” might have been, and the film treats it as a “got-you” moment trying to make Dawkins look ridiculous, when in fact he is positing basically the same thing ID-proponents claim.

I’ve not seen the movie, pretty much for the same reasons you stated. The whole teaching of evolution vs. intelligent design has been a hot topic in Texas this week – it’s being addressed by the Texas School board and something like 98% of Texas science teachers said not to teach about problems with the theory of evolution. The real problem here is the black/white view that the school board, teachers, and populace seem to be taking.

I glanced through a string of comments to an article on the Houston Chronicle’s website and found this one thing to be true: people are being idiots and shouting at each other out of spite, with no real reasoning being their arguments. There were numerous comments along the lines of “what’s next? question the atomic theory or gravity or relativity?” To a scientist the answer is a resounding YES. It’s by questioning atomic theory that we have discarded a half-dozen flawed models and come to the present one in use. It’s by questioning everything, not taking any assumption for granted, that discovery and advances in knowledge are made. In the Texas school board case, it comes down to not teaching evolution and the problems with it but down to not teaching ID at any cost. But the two are not identical actions, and no one wants to hear this.

Sorry for the venting here, but you raised a good forum for it.