Free Republic

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools. Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools. "I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory...

Students pushing for intelligent design Secondary pupils in Northern Ireland are spearheading a campaign to introduce a scientific concept, banned in the United States, into the curriculum. Students from both secondary schools and some of the province’s most prestigious grammar schools claim that so-called intelligent design will give a “more balanced view of how the world came into being”. Intelligent design is the concept that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an “intelligent cause” – the existence of God. Its leading proponents say it is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing...

2-day event running in Lauderdale By James D. Davis Religion Editor Posted March 18 2006 Hundreds gave a rousing ovation Friday night to the Rev. D. James Kennedy's proclamation that the nation can be won for Jesus. "I'm telling you, America is going to be changed," Kennedy boomed on the first day of the Reclaiming America for Christ conference in Fort Lauderdale. His listeners needed little persuasion. Hailing from 38 states, the 796 conferees had come to the 10th annual conference to learn how to be conservative Christian activists in their hometowns. "It was inspirational," said Paul K. Blair, a...

AN EXAMINATIONS board is including references to “creationism” in a new GCSE science course for schools.

In the recent skirmishes over evolution, advocates who have pushed to dilute its teaching have regularly pointed to a petition signed by 514 scientists and engineers. The petition, they say, is proof that scientific doubt over evolution persists. But random interviews with 20 people who signed the petition and a review of the public statements of more than a dozen others suggest that many are evangelical Christians, whose doubts about evolution grew out of their religious beliefs. And even the petition's sponsor, the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says that only a quarter of the signers are biologists, whose field is...

A Seattle think tank launched the modern intelligent-design movement with a simple memo. The idea has evolved into a media sensation. And the cause has mutated beyond rational control. In 1998, members of a Seattle nonprofit think tank drafted a secret five-year plan with an ambitious goal: to "defeat scientific materialism" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."By the end of the stated five-year period, the benevolent conspirators had seen much of their goal accomplished. There was widespread public debate with materialist Darwinists. Dozens of books had been published presenting...

Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might, according to the director of the Vatican Observatory. Science is and should be seen as “completely neutral” on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results, says Father George V. Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, while noting that “science and religion are totally separate pursuits.” Father Coyne is scheduled to deliver the annual Aquinas Lecture on “Science Does Not Need God, or Does It? A Catholic Scientist Looks at Evolution” at Palm Beach Atlantic University, an interdenominational Christian university of about 3,100 students, here Jan. 31. The...

Prof. Johnson is considered to be the father of the Intelligent Design movement. What follows is known as The Wedge Strategy, authored by Johnson. In the words of the recognized father of the ID movement...ID is religion.

Creation and Evolution in the Schools A few years ago it was "Creation Science" they were trying to teach in the schools. Creation Science was an attempt by fundamentalist Christians to give the Genesis account, as interpreted by them, a scientific veneer. But it was only that -- a thin surface -- and any student who actually believed that Creation Science had anything to do with science would have been educationally crippled. Now the controversy is between advocates of the theory of Intelligent Design vs. strict Darwinists. And some people want you to think it's the same argument. It isn't....

Darwinists must be an endangered species. How else to explain their 80-year need for court protection to ensure their survival? In 1925, an ACLU-driven defense team in the Scopes-Monkey Trial wanted a court to declare that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional. In recent weeks, in a courtroom in Dover, Pa., the same organization applauded a judge’s ruling that the teaching of ideas contrary to evolution, in this case Intelligent Design, were unconstitutional. The same ACLU that once advocated for free and open discussion in schools is working to see it stifled today. Its website boasts, “Intelligent Design...

The leaders of the intelligent design movement are once again holding court in America, defending themselves against charges that ID is not science. One of the expert witnesses is Michael Behe, author of the ID movement’s seminal volume Darwin’s Black Box. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, testified about the scientific character of ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the court case of eight families suing the school district and the school board in Dover, Pa., for mandating the teaching of intelligent design. Under cross-examination, Behe made many interesting comparisons between ID and the big-bang theory —...