The Exorcism of Emily Rose: and ID? — Well, it's not your average pitchfork opera

The Exorcism of Emily Rose begins with SONY corp. warning viewers that the views expressed in the film are not the corporation’s.

Diametrically opposite views are expressed in the film, so I suppose we can deduce that the corporation is somewhere in the middle? Or somewhere off to the side? Or nowhere? Or just waiting for the quarterly statement?

My attention was first attracted to Emily Rose because severalcritics had seen fit to link the film to the intelligent design controversy, for reasons that seemed very unclear to me.

The reasons still do seem very unclear to me, but I now have a better idea of what unsettled the critics, and it is worth elucidating, in the interests of understanding the ID controversy.

Excerpt: The brilliant summation scene - easily the best scene in the film in my view - pits the prosecutor, a “man of faith” against the priest's defense lawyer, a “woman of doubts.”

But the man’s faith is in a Christianity that Jesus Christ would certainly not recognize and the woman’s doubts spring from the discovery of ...

Read more.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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