You can get "hundreds" of (people capable of passing themselves off as) scientists to assert that space aliens are visiting Earth for the purpose of abducting people and sticking probes up their nethers.
You can get "hundreds" of (people capable of passing themselves off as) scientists to assert that space aliens are visiting Earth for the purpose of abducting people and sticking probes up their nethers.
Meanwhile...
I refer you to project Steve, "literally hundreds" (696 at current count) of actual scientists (two thirds of them biologists) JUST WITH THE NAME STEVE who have endorsed evolutionary biology and rejected "ID" and other forms of creationism via signing the following statement:
"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools."There are more scientists JUST NAMED STEVE who endorse evolutionary biology than GRAND TOTAL scientists who the creationists can find to express some form of skepticism (the "400+" list the Discovery Institute likes to wave around have only endorsed a *very* mild statement of skepticism, nothing like the "rejection" of evolution that many try to claim about it -- hell, it's so mild *I* might have signed it.)
That alone makes the anti-evolution creationists' list of "skeptical scientists" look pretty foolish, but *this* one *really* blows their agenda out of the water:
The "Clergy Letter Project": An Open Letter Concerning Religion and ScienceBut hey, I guess the science-haters here know better than ~10,000 Christian clergy, eh?"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.
[As of 29 January 2006, there are 10,230 signatures collected to date]
Click the links that follow to see the alphabetical lists of clergy members who have endorsed this letter
A to E - F to J - K to O - P to S - T to Z
Listing by States
...or are they all part of the "vast Darwinian conspiracy" too