Creationism

From God’s Numbers:

Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. …Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific [sic] theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
….
Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist.

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I was at the Dembski-Shermer Debate at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater Virginia last night. I had the privilege of finally meeting both William Dembski and Michael Shermer for the first time in person. They spoke to a crowd of about 350 people from Bridgewater College, James Madison University, and the surrounding community. The crowd was diverse from high-school educated carpenters to PhD trained scientists and philosophers. Symbolic of the diverse mix of people was an American pastor of a rural church and his wife, a Russian laser physicist!

Dembski won the debate, but I must salute Shermer’s honorable and courageous performance in the face of overwhelming odds. Read More ›

Until today, I’ve been keeping quiet about this developing story about Marcus Ross, a creationist PhD graduate from Rhode Island University. I wanted to protect him from media scrutiny until the news story finally broke.

Now that the NY Times has reported it, I may as well publicly extend my congratulations to Marcus Ross. He serves as a role model for how ID proponents and even young earth creationists can matriculate through Darwinist controlled institutions.
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“I thought creationists were monsters, until I married one.” -Tatiana Hamboyan Harrison

Loving the Enemy -Special to Newsweek

Hat tip to the shimmying atheist Kristine for pointing to this article. Read More ›

1. Paul Nelson is such a cool and brilliant guy
2. I’ve never met him before
3. There are lots of extras at the event he is speaking at, such as:
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In preparing a letter to the editor of UVa magazine, I was researching the case of 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Richard Smalley. I was astonished to discover that he delivered an anti-Darwinian speech during a graduation ceremony and apparently received a standing ovation. I also thought it an appropriate time to remember this extraordinary scientist.

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The readers at Uncommon Descent are often a good source of feedback for the topics which interest them. To that end, I’d like to address a question asked by one of our readers, David vun Kannon, about the rift between ID and Creationist communities.
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Lauren Sandler’s new provocative book Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement is out in a bookstore near you (released September 7, 2006). I will comment some more on it since an entire chapter was devoted to Intelligent Design (entitled “Evolutionary Wars”) and quite a bit of that chapter was written about me. Her book will sell to the pro-Darwin crowd who think people like me are part of “a great national ill”.
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Casey Luskin has posted an interesting response (part II) to Barbara Forrest’s Kitzmiller Account, Here he addresses Dr. Forrest’s usage of quotations from ID proponents: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/response_to_barbara_forrests_k_1.html As is typical in the Evo camp, Dr. Forrest attempts to make the usual conflation of ID and religion by quoting Phillip Johnson and William Dembski. Many cite Johnson as the founder of the current ID movement. Popularizer perhaps, but founder he was NOT, nor can he authoritatively be credited with setting its parameters. Luskin notes (as does Dembski in ‘Cosmic Pursuit’, 1998) that Charles Thaxton and Dean Kenyon first wrote on the subject during the ’80s. But is concept even that new? “Throughout the centuries theologians have argued that nature exhibits features which Read More ›

Here is a press release from Answers in Genesis (AiG), second only to the Institute for Creation Research in influence among young earth creationists. It describes a $50,000 essay contest for a creationist paper by high-school and college students. Further down are the stated rules for the contest.

Although those rules seem to allow for a straight ID paper, in fact they do not. Liberty University, which is administering the award in the form of a scholarship, holds to a strict 6-day creation view, even requiring a semester course on creation-evolution from a young earth perspective. In consequence, the essays are expected to explicitly adopt this perspective.

For all the talk about intelligent design being “incredibly well funded,” we have nowhere near the resources of these creationist organizations. Moreover, they seem to be making sure to exclude ID’s distinctive contributions to the origins debate by requiring work that is not merely independent of the age of the earth but instead argues postively for a young earth.

This contest demonstrates that creationism and ID are charting separate paths.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 29, 2006
Contact: Cindy Malott, (859) 727-2222 ext. 461

$50,000 grand prize announced for “Research Paper Challenge 2007”

PETERSBURG, Kentucky. ­In a bold move sure to catch the eyes of students, Answers in Genesis today announces “Research Paper Challenge 2007.” The contest will encourage students to defend biblical authority in an unbiblical world. The grand prize is a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University, a premier Christian institution in Virginia with 10,000 students. Read More ›

The intelligent design movement has celebrated ID-friendly developments within the Roman Catholic Church. A comparably important development is the ascendancy of ID within the insular enclaves of creationism.
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Feature: The Intelligent Design Controversy in Higher Education
This week on The Coral Ridge Hour we look at Intelligent Design, a movement which is gaining adherents at colleges and universities around the world. But what about professors who dare to challenge evolution by presenting alternatives to students? As you are about to see, the consequences can be severe.

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