Evolution Creation Debate

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans has said that only evolution should be taught in science classes. In an article published March 21 in The Guardian newspaper Dr Williams says also teaching creationism diminishes rather than enhances the biblical story of the origins of the world.

"I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said.

What do science and scientists have to do with the Shroud of Turin, an old piece of cloth which folklore describes as being the very linen that wrapped the body of Jesus as it laid in the tomb over 2000 years ago?

This article shows the extent to which some scientists will ignore scientific evidence to ensure that scripture is not historically accurate, and that all physical phenomena can be explained by natural, not supernatural, causes.

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In the fall of 2004 Michael Zimmerman, a professor of Biology and currently Dean, College of Letters and Sciences, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, along with some Wisconsin clergy prepared a statement for clergy to sign in support of teaching evolution. It currently has more than 10,000 signatures of clergy from across the United States at The Clergy Letter Project. The letter reads:

"Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible - the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark - convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.

"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."