Evolution Creation Debate

A pro-Intelligent Design lawyer, Larry Caldwell, has sued the operators of a University of California-Berkeley web site designed to help teachers teach evolution. He says portions of the web site amount to a government endorsement of certain religious groups over others. Because the site is partly funded through a public money grant from the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0096613) that violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the religious freedom clauses of the California Constitution.

The website is Understanding Evolution For Teachers

On Nov 24, the Listen Up television program on Trinity Broadcasting Network will look at Evolution versus Intelligent Design. Guests are Gary Chiang, Professor of Biology, Redeemer University College; William Dembski, Associate Research Professor, Conceptual Foundations of Science, Baylor University; Pamela R. Winnick, author of 'A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion'; Alanna Mitchell, author of 'Dancing at the Dead Sea'; Robert Mann, Chair of the Physics Department at the University of Waterloo.

Comments to Gary Chiang can be left at http://gchiang.blogspot.com/2005/12/intelligent-design-is-not-intelligent.html

The Rev. George Coyne, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.

In an 6 August 2005 article, God’s chance creation, in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, he said"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."

Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.

"God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," he wrote. "He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."

( Father Coyne, an American Jesuit, is an astronomer who divides his time between teaching astronomy at the University of Arizona and directing the Vatican Observatory. The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world. It is headquartered in Castelgandolfo, Italy and operates a 1.8 metre telescope atop Mount Graham, Arizona.)

"Evolutionists do not want students to know about or in any way to think about scientific criticisms of evolution. Evolutionists are the ones minimizing open scientific inquiry from their explanation of the origin of life." - Steve Abrams, chairman of Kansas' State Board of Education.

"How many people are there today who, fooled by atheism, think and try to demonstrate that it would be scientific to think that everything is without direction and order" Pope Benedict XVI, at a general audience at the Vatican Nov. 9, 2005.

"Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs - religious or otherwise - about the origin of humankind, but science teachers should not be forced to replace experimentation and observed data - the very definition of science - with faith-based or supernatural ideas." - the Minneapolis, Minn., Star Tribune, in a Nov. 11, 2005 editorial.

The American Museum of Natural History will mount what it calls the most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on Darwin from November 19, 2005 to May 29, 2006 .

The exhibition will feature live Galapagos tortoises and an iguana and horned frogs from South America, along with actual fossil specimens collected by Darwin and the magnifying glass he used to examine them. Also featured is an elaborate reconstruction of the naturalist's study at Down House and a time-lapse animation of the Sandwalk, the path Darwin strolled many times a day.

After it closes in New York the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Science, Boston; The Field Museum, Chicago; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and the Natural History Museum, London.

1925 - High school science teacher John Scopes (1900-1970) is found guilty of breaking the Butler Act, a Tennessee law against teaching "any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The Butler Act remained on the books until 1967.

1968 - Epperson v. Arkansas - The Supreme Court kills a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution as an unconstitutional violation of the legally required separation of church and state.

1982 - McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education - A federal court rules against a balanced treatment of "creation science" vs. "evolution science." The court found that "creation science" is not science.

1987 - Edwards v. Aguillard - The Supreme Court finds that laws requiring the teaching that a supernatural being created humans improperly endorse religion.

2005 - Selman v. Cobb County School District - A federal judge finds that biology textbook stickers stating "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" violate the First Amendment. It is currently under appeal.