Scientists enlist clergy in evolution battle

American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies -- the clergy.

And they have taken their battle to a new level, trying to educate high school and even elementary school teachers on how to hold their own against parents and school boards who want to mix religion with science. "It's time to recognize that science and religion should never be pitted against one another," American Association for the Advancement of Science President Gilbert Omenn told a news conference on Sunday.

Intelligent design proponents see the hand of God behind evolution because, they say, life is too complex to be random. But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy. "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," they wrote.

Catholic experts have also joined the movement. "The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer," said Vatican Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained. "The God of religious faith is a god of love. He did not design me."

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Creation "Science" Debunked
A growing number of recent attempts to remove evolutionary theory from the schoolroom, in favor of a "scientific" version of the Biblical Genesis story, demonstrates that the anti-evolutionist movement is still alive and well in America.

The popular image of creationists tends to picture a group of rural hayseeds with not much education, who continually thump the Good Book as they speak. Modern creationists, however, are very slick, are usually well-educated, and are very skilled in the techniques of debate and sophistry.

The scientific arguments of the creationists, while nonsensical, are very intricate and detailed, and can sound very convincing to people who do not have enough scientific knowledge to make a good judgement (such as local school board members). Much of the creationist case is based upon intellectual dishonesty. Creationists depend heavily on quotations from evolutionary scientists and writers which they have pulled out of context and twisted to sound like something other than what the writer intended.

Despite their arrogant claims to represent the "Christian point of view", the creationists and their fundamentalist friends constitute a very tiny minority in mainstream religion. Every mainstream Christian denomination in the United States rejects the paranoid and ultra-literalist world-view of the creationists, and sees no conflict at all between Christian faith and modern science.

In a democratic society, the religious beliefs of this or that person are nobody else's business. The creationists are free to believe whatever religious tenets they like. What they are NOT free to do is dismantle the wall between church and state and use the public schools to proselytize the rest of us to their religious interpretation.

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Creationism versus Science
Creationists seemingly dismiss virtually all of the geological, paleontological, and astrophysical research that shows that the Earth is billions of years old. The creationist movement is very powerful in America because it's so well funded. That funding, plus a weak education system and a gullible public, has led to a very successful misinformation campaign for the oxymoronically named "Creation Science" lobby. Click on the link to learn more about this insidious attack on science, and in some cases, on religious freedom in society.

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Creationists Creations
The debate over the theory of evolution continues.  Some people tend to labor under the misconception that evolution is a controversial theory, when in fact it is, in the scientific community, less controversial than such theories as gravity or quantum mechanics.

The only "controversy" comes from those who claim that evolution contradicts their religious beliefs.  By itself, that is not a problem to the scientific community.  People are perfectly free to believe whatever they wish.  What is a problem, however, is when creationists, especially the "Young Earth" variety, attempt to have evolution removed from public school science curriculum -- or have evolution replaced with biblical creation.

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