"My only enemy is right-wing religious fundamentalism." – Clinton per Marquez (Jerusalem Post 3/28/99)

Washington Post 7/95 Stephen Higgins (Director BATF – WACO) "…The day has long passed when we can afford to ignore the threat that is posed by individuals who believe they are subject only to the laws of their god and not those of our government…. …."

Universal Press Syndicate 4/30/99 Joseph Sobran "... Christians in America have been slow to grasp that they live under a regime whose unspoken major premise is that we don't have immortal souls. Liberal indoctrination teaches children that all earthly evils derive from our Christian heritage -- the source of intolerance, superstition and bigotry. "Medieval" has become a liberal devil-word, disparaging the high civilization of the Middle Ages. The chief practical result of the theory of evolution is the belief that human life isn't particularly special or sacred. This belief has found expression in mass murder, in the bombing of cities and in abortion clinics. Today new implications are still being found in it, as witness the career of Dr. Jack Kevorkian...."

The Daily Oklahomon 9/21/99 Cal Thomas "…About what Christians prophetically call "the last days," the Apostle Paul wrote they would be "terrible times. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ... " (2 Timothy 3:1- 4) Such behavior may be seen in abundance today reported in this newspaper and all around us. Elsewhere, Paul again sees into the future and writes of depraved people: "They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil ... They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless." (Romans 1:29-31) Have not these prophecies become current events? We are seeing the progeny of three wasted decades of imposed secularism. If God is only in the mind of the beholder and not at the heart of a people, then why should anyone treat others with respect? Princeton's newest professor, Peter Singer, believes the concept of human life as "sacred" is outmoded, and he would do away with it. His ideological disciple, Larry Gene Ashbrook, merely practiced what Singer teaches. When people learn that life is cheap and 30 million (and counting) abortions prove it; when marriages split up at the first sign of difficulty; when violence oozes from every cultural pore; when younger and younger children regard sex the way another generation thought of recess; when violent video games graphically depict blood and guts; when evolution is taught as fact and humans see themselves as more complex than a cabbage but of no greater moral significance; when any expression of public prayer or faith in God is treated as cursing and contraband used to be, surely this explains why America has run amok. How rich we are in things. How poor we are in the things that matter most…."

CNSNews.com 9/22/99 Thomas Jipping "...Why has this cultural jihad occurred all of a sudden? According to the Associated Press, officials of the pageant organization, which is headquartered in New Jersey, are afraid of violating the state's anti-discrimination law. What judges did to the Boy Scouts they could do to Miss America.... If you think that judges' decisions don't matter, just read the papers and look around your neighborhood. Judges told the people they cannot protect preborn children. Judges told the people they must tolerate pornography flowing through their communities, across their television screens, and even sold on military bases. Judges told school children they could not even look at the Ten Commandments, could not participate in prayer even if they wanted to, could not hear a passage from the Bible, and could not have God's blessing when they graduated. Judges have now told school children they may not pray before football game and told their parents they may not pray before school board meetings. Judges told the people they may not encourage citizen legislatures with term limits and must use their tax dollars for welfare for illegal aliens. Judges told people who do not want to discriminate by race that they must do so. Judges told the people that the only explanation about human origins that may be taught is Darwinian evolution. Judges told the people that men and women are the same and that any other view is an impermissible stereotype. Judges told the people that any moral objection to homosexuality is nothing but hate. And judges are telling the people that the last vestiges of morality, propriety, and tradition are simply exercises in discrimination and have to go as well. Folks, the most damaging cultural, social, economic, and political developments of the last two generations have come not from the statehouse but from the courthouse. Judges are twiddling while our culture is burning. I hope it's not too late....."

ACLJ.ORG 6/01/99 "...The American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm, today filed suit in State District Court in Rice County, Minnesota on behalf of a high school biology teacher who has been barred from teaching biology because of his religious beliefs. "School officials are engaging in a type of 'educational McCarthyism' in this case which cannot go unchallenged," said Francis J. Manion, Senior Regional Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice - Midwest. "Teachers must be able to tell students information they need to make up their minds about issues such as evolution." Manion said that Rod LeVake, who holds a Masters degree in Biology Education, was told in 1998 he could no longer teach biology at Faribault High School in because, according to the school's curriculum director, LeVake has a deep conflict between his religious beliefs and the teaching of evolution. The lawsuit contends that LeVake, who describes himself as a Christian, denies that such a conflict exists and repeatedly has assured school officials that he could and would teach the theory of evolution. The suit contends that LeVake has told his superiors that he is not interested in teaching creationism in biology class, but simply wants his students to be aware that not all scientists accept evolution as an unquestionable fact and that there are numerous, scientific, non-religious critiques of the idea ..."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "...In the past two decades, creationists have undergone their own process of evolution. After a series of court decisions from 1968 to 1987 barred the movement's efforts to have biblical creationism taught in the schools, activists changed their strategy. They began to focus instead on attacking evolution as an unproven theory, picking apart such basic building blocks as fossil records and geological dating..... The movement's recent success may in part be a reflection of the fairly widespread sympathy for some of its basic principles. According to Gallup polls, about 44 percent of Americans believe in a biblical creationist view, that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." About 40 percent believe in "theistic evolution," the idea that God oversaw and guided the millions of years of evolution that culminated with humankind. Only one in 10 of those surveyed held a strict, secular evolutionist perspective...."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "...Some creationists offer what they consider to be positive scientific evidence for biblical explanations of the origins of life..... To prove Earth's relative youth, they search, for example, for evidence that dinosaurs lived far more recently than the millions of years ago cited by paleontologists. "One of our staff members went to Alaska recently and found dinosaur bones that were not yet fossilized," said Looy, of Answers in Genesis. "If dinosaurs perished 65 million years ago, how could one have been around in the last few hundred years? That matches with what the Bible teaches - that dinosaurs lived recently." .."

MSNBC 8/11/99 Reuters "...The Kansas Board of Education rejected evolution as a scientific principle Wednesday, dealing a victory to religious conservatives who are increasingly challenging science education in U.S. schools. The 10-member board, ignoring pleas by educators and established scientists, voted six to four to embrace new standards for science curricula that eliminate evolution as an underlying principle of biology and other sciences.... "

Wall Street Journal 8/13/99 "...And on the seventh day, He rested. Whoa, no way! "Adam" evolved many millennia ago from a series of random mutations. Whatever. It is not our purpose today to throw in with either the Kansas Board of Education, which voted this week to drop biological evolution from its curriculum guidelines, or with the biologists now screaming that the creationism movement is driving out serious science. We do, however, very much want to discuss driving important things out of public life. Specifically, we have in mind the Supreme Court decisions way back in the early 1960s that led over the years not merely to banning prayer from the schools but to wiping God and religion out of textbooks, graduation ceremonies and anywhere else the ACLU and its ilk could find Him hiding inside a public school. This is what we think is the message these Kansans are sending into the world: "About 35 years ago, you folks banned our religion from the public schools. So we've just voted to drop your religions from the public schools. Now maybe you'd like to sit down and negotiate a deal."..."

Associated Press 8/14/99 "...Gov. Bill Graves and some legislators are talking about abolishing the State Board of Education or stripping it of authority because of its vote to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. "It's going to be an issue in the legislative session," Mr. Graves, a moderate Republican, said Friday of the board's 6-4 vote this week. On Thursday, Mr. Graves said the decision was "so out of sync with reality" that it minimized the board's credibility. Legislators say the controversy over evolution could create support for changes that have been sought for years by lawmakers in both parties. ..."

Fox News 8/14/99 John Hanna AP "...The American Civil Liberties Union says school districts could face lawsuits if they attempt to teach creationism in wake of the state school board's recent decision to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. The ACLU, in a letter Friday to school superintendents, warned the districts about adopting "religiously-based standards'' in teaching science. The ACLU also noted U.S. Supreme Court decisions that forbid the teaching of creationism, the belief that a higher power created the universe, because of its religious foundation. People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separation of Church and States also said they would consider lawsuits if religion-based standards were implemented....."

New York Times 8/15/99 George Johnson "...Whenever setbacks like the one in Kansas occur, scientists leap forth to point out the fallacy of the reationist position: There is no compelling reason to single out the evolution of life or the cosmos as being less than absolute. It would be just as sensible for school boards to affix a warning inside physics books: "No one has directly observed the detailed substructure of matter. Therefore, any statement about it being made of atoms should be considered as theory, not fact." The problem is that the dynamic view of science doesn't come across strongly enough in the classroom. For reasons of expediency, scientific theories are presented as done deals. Little appreciation is conveyed for the intellectual struggle that went into interpreting the data or examining the assumptions -- always open to question -- that lurk behind the experiments. Lost from most explications is the exhilarating possibility that a theory that seems undeniable today could be overturned tomorrow. With science presented almost as though it were received wisdom, it's little wonder that some legislators and school board members confuse it with a competing religion, and misconstrue a religious belief like creationism as an alternate scientific theory. They're encouraged to do so by a new wave of creationists who, in an act of intellectual jujitsu, promote their belief in absolute knowledge by invoking the relativistic arguments of post-modern philosophy: While creationism is built on belief in a caring, all-powerful, constantly intervening creator, who completed his work thousands of years ago, evolution has its own tenets of faith. The most fundamental is the belief that the world consists of insentient matter unfolding on its own over vast eons of time -- eons that can only be inferred from indirect evidence. One is still free to believe in a deity, but it's not a necessary part of the equations..... For something to be called a theory, it has to be falsifiable, capable of being overthrown. Students could also be taught the dangers that come when a scientist mistakes a theory for eternal truth, shoring up flimsy hypotheses by contorting the data. They could learn of cases in which a religion flexibly adjusted its doctrines because of new social realities, allowing, for example, homosexuals into the ministry. But slowly, by giving creationism equal time with evolution, the class would see a powerfully subtle difference. Science is, foremost, a method of interrogating reality: proposing hypotheses that seem true and then testing them -- trying, almost erversely, to negate them, elevating only the handful that survive to the status of a theory. Creationism is a doctrine, whose adherents are interested only in seeking out data that support it. In making sense of the world, one is always free to start from different assumptions. But part of a good education is learning what you are trading off in the bargain...."

Wall Street Journal 8/15/99 Phillip Johnson "...A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin's theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin." That point was illustrated last week by the media firestorm that followed the Kansas Board of Education's vote to omit macro-evolution from the list of science topics which all students are expected to master. Frantic scientists and educators warned that Kansas students would no longer be able to succeed in college or graduate school, and that the future of science itself was in danger....The root of the problem is that "science" has two distinct definitions in our culture. On the one hand, science refers to a method of investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that insists that all claims be carefully tested. Science also has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. Students are not supposed to approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it on faith. The reason the theory of evolution is so controversial is that it is the main scientific prop for scientific naturalism. Students first learn that "evolution is a fact," and then they gradually learn more and more about what that "fact" means. It means that all living things are the product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture, and humans (like everything else) are the accidental product of a purposeless universe..... All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so. Carl Sagan had nothing but contempt for those who deny that humans and all other species "arose by blind physical and chemical forces over eons from slime." Richard Dawkins exults that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," and Richard Lewontin has written that scientists must stick to philosophical materialism regardless of the evidence, because "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Stephen Jay Gould condescendingly offers to allow religious people to express their subjective opinions about morals, provided they don't interfere with the authority of scientists to determine the "facts" -- one of the facts being that God is merely a comforting myth.....So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching. An even more compelling reason for keeping the lid on public discussion is that the official neo-Darwinian theory is having serious trouble with the evidence..... "

National Post (Canada) 8/19/99 Philip Mathias "…I don't believe in evolution. That's why, for a moment, I was pleased the Kansas Board of Education voted last week to delete any mention of evolution from the state's science curriculum. But my delight was only momentary, because I believe even less in creationism, which teaches God created each species by miracle at different stages in the history of the world….That's not for me. But I don't believe in evolution either, for two reasons. The first is that evolution has become a faith, a kind of scientific religion, whose dogmas you must believe if you are to be treated with respect as a thoughtful person. I have tried to debate evolution with many scientists, and their reaction is always the same -- at first the discomfort felt by a believer faced with an unbeliever, and then, when the light dawns, contempt for somebody they believe must be a religious nut. In fact, I graduated some time ago with a degree in chemistry, physics, mathematics and biology (including evolution theory) from London University. ….My second reason for not believing evolution is that, for the most part, it is not proven and is even, at times, nonsensical. At this point in the argument, I must make a careful distinction between macro- and micro-evolution. There's no doubt species do adapt to local conditions. A bird's beak will change to deal with different nuts, and gazelles will run faster to escape cheetahs that are also evolving into faster runners to catch the gazelles. That's micro-evolution. But macro-evolution is another ballgame. The process of natural selection that changes birds and gazelles is gradual. But the fossil record is not continuous, as natural selection would require. The elephant and the whale appear relatively suddenly. Some argue the huge gaps in the fossil record are caused by genetic mutation. An individual in one species is born with a mutation that forms the beginning of quite another species. Nothing in between. The problem with this idea is that mutations are almost always a handicap, and only occur in one individual at a time. Are we to believe the same mutation appeared spontaneously in enough individuals of one species to enable the mutants to form the breeding base for another stable species? That would truly be a miracle. As astronomer Fred Hoyle put it, that's like believing a hurricane could blow through a junkyard and assemble a Boeing 747. Another popular theory is that species evolved by micro-adaptation, but in rapid bursts, and in places far from the locations where we find fossils. That's why there's no record of the gradual change from one major species to another. That's like saying we know there are people on Mars, but we have no evidence yet….. Science has theories for all these phenomena, but they are just that -- theories, and often poor ones at that. I believe there is a mechanism behind the development of species through the ages that has not yet been discovered. What is it? I have no idea. But logic demands there is something we do not yet know …."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 8/26/99 Mary Mostert "…Yesterday's New York Times lead story was titled "Evolution Struggle Shifts to Kansas School Districts. Earlier this month the Kansas Board of Education deleted any mention of evolution in its state 7th-12th grade science tests…. "'They'll get evolution here,' said Elaine Pardee, who teaches at Washburn Rural High, where the science classroom walls are lined with various animal skeletons that, by their very appearance, testify of the evolutionary theory of a common ancestor among mammals. 'We're not going to cheat our kids.'…. " 'I don't think it's relegated to Sunday School,' Mrs. Mills said. 'If you present the material to students with critical thinking and they come to you with a paper supporting creationism, or arguing against the evolutionary theory from a creationist point of view, you should accept that.'" ….It doesn't bother me that either of them believe what they believe. It DOES bother me that evolutionists claim their belief system is not "religion." They dub it "science" and expect the rest of the world to swallow it hook, line and sinker. And, strangely, much of the world DOES swallow it if it's called "science" regardless of how absurd it actually is on examination….What really bothers me is that so much religion is being taught in school, religion that I once taught as an agnostic humanist in Sunday School. Just because agnostics don't believe in God doesn't mean their beliefs are not "religion." Satanism is a religion and it isn't God that they worship. Atheism is a belief system and, when forced on public school students in the guise of "science" it's still a belief system, it's still a "theory" and not a fact. Agnostic Humanism is a religion and it is rampant in public schools…."

UPI 8/27/99 "…The White House said (Friday) that President Clinton, while generally favoring the right of school boards to set curriculum, accepts the 1987 Supreme Court ruling that schools are not free to teach creationism. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart was asked for Clinton's position one day after Vice President Al Gore refused to take a clear stand on whether public schools should be required to teach evolution rather than creationism…."

Savannah Morning News 8/28/99 Audry McCombs "…Ever questioned the biblical creation account and felt guilty? Bob Lefavi has. When this trained scientist, former competitive bodybuilder and now professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University, began his spiritual journey back to God in 1992, he needed answers to questions. He wondered, did he have to throw out science to believe in God? Could the two co-exist? So, Lefavi began searching for answers. Is belief in the Bible's creation account completely at odds with science's explanation of the origin of the universe and life? Can spirituality affect the body? Why do bad things happen to good people? Would he become a fanatic evangelist if he got "religion?" Lefavi kept detailed notes of his conclusions and the result is his book, "Reasons to Believe." The slim volume of six chapters, published in July by Hope Publishing House in California, has sold approximately 4,000 copies, primarily through the Internet bookseller Amazon.com. ….."The culmination of my journey was the discovery of harmony and reconciliation between matter and spirit," he continues. "This allowed me to overcome the denial of God and my spirituality, enabling me to see reality through eyes of the spirit and truth." Lefavi, who says he no longer needs reasons to believe in God, is pursuing a master of divinity degree at Erskine Seminary in South Carolina. …."

Charlotte Observer 8/25/99 Jesse Rogers "…If supporters of teaching the theory of evolution were intellectually honest, they would not oppose teaching the scientific evidence that refutes it. After the Kansas Board of Education's decision regarding the teaching of evolution, lines are once again being drawn between supporters of evolution and Christianity. As expected, both sides of the debate engage in a war of words, and neither side acknowledges what the war is about. First of all, Christians are not opposed to science. Being neither moral nor immoral, science is definitively amoral. Discovering stars, cures for diseases, uses for chemicals, or devices to simplify tasks has no bearing on morality. Research into these and other areas must carry on and is frequently performed or directly supported by Christians. Further, Christians are not necessarily concerned with the theory of evolution. It is a theory, like many others, that is explored by many scientists…. However, these same scientists quickly state their unwavering belief that natural processes brought about the origin of the species, that God had nothing to do with it, and that God does not exist. This is where Christians get concerned with the teaching of evolution. At this point, evolution moves from a theory of science, supported by evidence, to a doctrine of faith, supported by belief. Based on faith, believers in evolution quickly move from teaching a scientific theory to teaching a naturalistic world view that denies the existence of God. This is what the war is about: conflicting world views…."

Charlotte Observer 8/25/99 Jesse Rogers "…If supporters of teaching the theory of evolution were intellectually honest, they would not oppose teaching the scientific evidence that refutes evolution. The fields of information theory, genetics, probability analysis, physics, chemistry and others offer much evidence to suggest that evolution is impossible. Yet, this evidence is nowhere to be found in the textbooks presented to our children. Why? If honest in their motives, supporters of teaching evolution would remove from science textbooks the many statements that have been proved false. For example, the theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny was disproved decades ago and its author discredited for falsifying data. Yet, today's science textbooks present this theory as if it were factual. Why?…"

Charlotte Observer 8/25/99 Jesse Rogers "…Christians conclude this lack of honesty is motivated by the desire of those who control the science education curriculum to indoctrinate children to a naturalistic, God-less world view. The many statements of faith about evolution in a child's textbook and the comments of those responsible for developing science curriculum are evidence supporting this conclusion.…The public school science curriculum is now faith-based rather than fact-based in order to promote a faith that excludes God. This is a clear violation of the laws requiring separation of church and state, and an affront to our faith….. "

The Wanderer Press 8/26/99 Joseph Sobran "…Science took it on the chin this week, and liberals are howling. The Kansas state board of education has dropped the requirement that the theory of evolution be taught in public schools. Even such "conservative" pundits as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Mona Charen have deplored the board's decision as benighted. Time magazine has already devoted a cover story to reaffirming Darwinism. Not that Kansas has banned Darwin; only that other views of human origins may be discussed in its schools, including so-called creationist theories. Aren't we all in favor of "diversity" in education? Not when it comes to the sacred doctrine of Darwinism! In other words, Darwinism has hitherto enjoyed the status of an established religion. It has been taught as dogma to children in public schools who are incapable of assessing it for themselves. It would be one thing if children were taught the scientific method and shown how it applies to biology. But they are not taught a method; they are taught a conclusion. And the conclusion, not the scientific method, is what stays with them after they leave school. This conclusion is presented as beyond rational doubt, contradicts religious teachings of man's origin, and smuggles into young minds a philosophy of atheistic materialism…."

Edmonton Sun 9/5/99 Ted Byfield "….North America's liberal media enjoyed another orgy of Christian bashing last month after the Kansas Board of Education removed evolution as a required subject in the state science curriculum. We were fed the usual dose of fulmination. How the Kansas board had forbidden the teaching of evolution in schools. (Which it did not.) How Kansas schools were ordered to teach only the biblical account of creation. (Which they were not.) How the change was dictated by "the Christian right." (Which it wasn't.) And how (in the words of the Edmonton Journal) "there is not one credible scientist on the planet who questions the fundamental truth of Darwinian evolution." Which of course tells us far more about ignorance in Edmonton than ignorance in Kansas. For an increasing number of scientists all over the planet are questioning "the fundamental truth of Darwinian evolution." It's a theory whose gaps and deficiencies are becoming so evident that embracing it unreservedly requires the sort of blind, unquestioning faith that only liberal editorialists are capable of….’

Edmonton Sun 9/5/99 Ted Byfield "….Thus by absolute happenstance life evolved from the "simple cell." But there must have been no exterior intelligence causing these changes. If such were shown or implied, said Darwin, "my theory falls." From the start, certain essentials in his theory bothered some scientists. For it to be true, they said, the fossil records would have to show boundless evidence of "transitional species," that is creatures that are, say, half way between lizard and bird. Don't worry they'll turn up, said the Darwinists. They have been frantically searching for 150 years and have found not one that isn't subject to serious doubt. Why is this? ….….There's another problem. A fully developed wing, for example, gives a creature undoubted power. But what is the evolutionary advantage of 1% of a wing, of a bump? There has been no convincing answer to this.

Edmonton Sun 9/5/99 Ted Byfield "….Two years ago came another bombshell. Darwin could speak of the "simple cell," wrote Pennsylvania biochemist Michael J. Behe in his book, Darwin's Black Box, because in his day the cell was like a "black box" that no one could open. Well now it has been opened and it's about as simple as a Boeing jet. There is no chance whatever, he concludes, that it happened by accident. Considerations like these, not the "Christian Right," led the Kansas board to let local school districts decide whether and how to teach evolution. The board was not, in other words, living in the past, but very much in the present. And who knows? Maybe one day that editorial writer will do the same.

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "… I've been watching the reaction to the decision of the Kansas state board of education to make the teaching of evolution optional in public schools. The liberal side has been furious to the verge of hysteria. It attacks the board and the Christian Right as if they had banned the teaching of science. But it doesn't address the merits of Darwinism itself; it merely assumes that Science Has Spoken and that we all have a duty to submit. The conservative side has concentrated on the difficulties posed by the theory: Where is the fossil record of intermediate species? How can a lower form of life beget a higher one? How can mutations -- understood as benign birth defects -- be genetically transmitted, to the point where a line of apes eventually produces a Mozart? The liberals seem less interested in teaching kids to think for themselves than in giving Darwinism a monopoly of authority….. Our liberal overseers have long since decided that religious teachings have no place in public education. While Darwinism is mandatory, religion is not even optional: It's "unconstitutional." …."

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "…But in almost every known society, education has meant initiating the young into the heritage of their ancestors. The Jews taught their young the story of the Chosen People; Christians did the same, adding the story of Jesus; the Chinese taught the wisdom of Confucius; the Greeks and Romans taught the great myths of Olympus. Education has always meant more than instilling knowledge; it has also meant cultivating the moral habits necessary to continue a tradition. One of the marks of tyranny is its desire to cut the young off from their ancestors….. This is why the communists in Russia banned and persecuted Christianity, while rewriting the history books to impart the lesson that communism was the highest stage of history. The Chinese communists not only banned Confucius, but adopted the Roman alphabet so that the young would be unable to read the ancestral wisdom that was preserved in the old ideograms -- in effect making the heirs of an ancient civilization illiterate…..

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "… Our "liberal" regime is not so different from the communist regime….. They share communism's materialist philosophy, its hostility to religion, and its ambition to use the state to transform traditional society. Secularist education is part of the liberal agenda, and Kansas has given it a bloody nose by stripping the theory of evolution of its hitherto privileged position in the curriculum….. Christian parents have correctly intuited the hidden agenda behind so much state education. Their children have been weaned from Christian culture and taught a godless cosmology in the guise of biology. Through sex education, in which aggressive advocacy masquerades as knowledge, the public schools have also undermined Christian morality. They need not attack Christianity frontally; they merely have to keep the young ignorant of their Christian heritage. And they do this very well. …."

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "… The battle over evolution and religion is really a battle between state and parental authority. The obvious way to resolve it is to cut the state out of education, making all schools private. Parents who really wanted their kids to absorb the Darwinian philosophy would be free to have their own schools; Christian parents would have their own schools too. What would be different? Obviously the statists would lose their privileged status and their huge captive audience. They would be forced to compete on equal terms with people they prefer to rule as intellectual serfs. It's odd that Darwinians should be so afraid of competition!…"

The Korea Times 9/22/99 Roger Richards ".... In the wake of racial violence in the U.S. leaving a Korean student and a black university basketball coach dead, I was asked where racism in the U.S. comes from. Why would otherwise perfectly intelligent people decide to hate and harm others because they are a darker shade of brown? The answer, as is often the case with intercultural problems, is rooted in history. It's been blamed on the Bible, but even a cursory review of history shows that is patently false. The concept of race is found no where in the Bible, which instead teaches that "all nations are of one blood". Indeed, biblical Christians in the U K and the U.S. worked tirelessly for slavery's abolition and to get African-Americans recognized as fully human with equal rights..... The idea of race really came in vogue in the 1790s with the then daring (though ancient) idea of evolutionism. It was Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles himself, who helped promulgate the idea of an elite race surviving and overcoming the "savage" races.[3] The results of such thinking were horrendous, just as the results of Charles Darwin's racist ideas were to be. Contrast the description of Tasmanian natives given by a Christian sea captain, Captain Cook, in 1777 with the description of a similar native tribe given by evolutionist, Charles Darwin in 1832 while on his journey around the world in the HMS Beagle..... Contrast this with Charles Darwin's description of a similar tribe, following 3 or 4 decades of evolutionary teaching by his grandfather and others of like mind that not all humans were fully human. They taught that some "savages" were closer to monkeys. On his first view of the people inhabiting Tierra del Fuego, South America, he repeatedly wrote of them as 'miserable degraded savages'. [5] He described them as being much closer to animals than to Europeans.[6] Later, in clear racist derision, he compared this tribe of people to devils he had seen in plays and said that their habits were animal-like. [7] He was shocked to find out that a missionary had gone in afterwards and taught them to read and write and that many had become Christians. .....The Tasmanians were hunted down like wild animals by men who viewed them through Erasmus Darwin's "primitive-savage" ideology. They were treated with unspeakable cruelty only equaled by Hitler's Mengele. Darwin's grandfather was one of the first researchers to dig up an aborigine from the grave to stuff for exhibit. According to Ali Gripper in The Daily Telegraph Mirror, Sydney, the stolen body was the first of up to 10,000 desecrated and it was placed in the Royal College of Surgeons. The purpose of this was "...was to try to prove their racial inferiority" and that they were the "missing" link between stone age men and fully evolved whites. King Hele, Desmond, in his biography of Erasmus Darwin said that "After 1794, statements of the principle of natural selection and evolution came fairly thick and fast". These were used to justify the belief that the black tribes found in Australia and South America were savages and not fully evolved. [8] Tasmanian and aborigine skulls became very popular for evolutionists to collect, driving the market. Bounties were put on Tasmanian heads. Mutilations and rapes were common. Settlers would cut off the sexual organs of the males and watch them run away and bleed to death, while round ups and mass exterminations were common. [9] By the time the Tasmanians were totally wiped out, Darwin had predicted their end in his "Descent of Man". He said 'At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world'. Twenty years later this came true in Tasmania, in large measure due to thinking based upon Darwin and his grandfather's own writings.[10] ..."

WorldNetDaily 10/7/99 Craige McMillan "... People of faith often get tangled up in the details when arguing to expand their views outside the four walls of a building. Thus we are led into the opposition's forest, and get lost amongst the trees. We end up about arguing about their details, become entangled in separation doctrine and are silenced by our own First Amendment guarantee of free speech. In the passage above [Romans 1:18-20], God sweeps aside the details and gets right to the point. "In squelching the truth about Me they have conspired to get rid of Me." Perhaps that's the real reason intelligent creation can't be taught in schools alongside evolution? Because if it were -- people might recognize the message? And if they believed it, they might reason that such a Creator was worth listening to -- and maybe even following? The paternalistic, all-wise state has never been keen on competition for its self-appointed position as our god. The people who set up our government had a rather different view. They understood that their government operated at the pleasure of the Divine Sovereign of the Universe. Thus our "rights" didn't come from them; they came from Him. It was simply their job to protect those rights. But for governments that aspire to dominate and control people, God is a major problem. If He exists, then he would have to be listened to and obeyed. And if He had to be obeyed, that would limit the power of the self-appointed elites who had usurped His position. It would mean that in God's eyes, the governing elites were no more important than the people they were governing. It would also mean that they were accountable for their actions. It would, in short, be a disaster! ...."

Reuters 10/5/99 "....A change in Kentucky school curriculum guidelines eliminating the word ``evolution'' has touched off the second uproar over U.S. science education in less than two months. The Louisville Courier-Journal first reported the change in Tuesday's editions, saying the phrase ``change over time'' had been substituted for the word ``evolution'' in guidelines for middle school and high school science courses. The curriculum guidelines were posted on the state Education Department's Internet site. Under the heading ``Diversity and Adaptations of Organisms'' they state, for instance, ``Biological change over time accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations.'' ..... "

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese "….. But the man I quoted as saying that spontaneous generation of a living cell is as improbable as a tornado building a Boeing 747 was Sir Fred Hoyle, a renowned astronomer, mathematician and astrophysicist. I don't think that Sir Fred's math skills are in doubt by anyone smart enough to know the multiplication tables…."

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese "…..So, for the fun of it, here are a few more quotes showing that Darwin's theory of evolution is in tatters: "Through the use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been demonstrated which is not the case." (Italics mine.) Pierre Grasse, page 6, The Evolution of Living Organisms.

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese "…..T. Kemp, curator of the University Museum at Oxford, said, "Paleontology is now looking at what it actually finds, not what it is told that it is supposed to find. As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly . . . . Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record." "Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmological myth of the 20th century. Like the Genesis-based cosmology which it replaced, and like the creation myths of ancient man, it satisfies the same deep psychological need for an all-embracing explanation for the origin of the world . . . ." That's Michael Denton, a biologist and physician, in his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis…."

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese "…..David Raup, a paleontologist, stated in an article, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles and so on. Also there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found -- yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." Now, not one of the scientists quoted above, is a creationist or advocate of the Genesis theory or, so far as I know, even religious. But evolution is a myth. This myth is pushed off on the public in popular articles and textbooks as if it were scientific fact. …."

The Register Guard 10/10/99 James Glanz "….Nearly overlooked in the furor over the Kansas Board of Education's decision in August to remove evolution from its education standards was a decision on the much wider realm governed by the science of the cosmos. Influenced by a handful of scientists whose literal faith in the Bible has helped persuade them that the universe is only a few thousand years old, the board deleted from its standards a description of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins, the central organizing principle of modern astronomy and cosmology. The Big Bang theory, based on decades of astronomical observations and physics research, suggests that the universe originated in a colossal explosion of matter and radiation some 15 billion years ago. But ``young Earth creationists,'' as they are generally known, have come up with their own theories to explain how cosmic history could be condensed into mere thousands of years. They are making this case in books, pamphlets and lectures, as well as on a number of Web sites. Mainstream scientists consider their theories to be wildly out of line with reality, even though books describing them are often liberally sprinkled with references to authorities such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. As a result, physical scientists now find themselves in a fight in which they have seldom played a public role. They have responded with a mixture of disdain, disbelief and consternation, and the reactions have not been limited to physicists and cosmologists in Kansas…….. But advocates of the creationist view say alarm over their theories is overblown. Steve Abrams, a member of the Kansas board and veterinarian in Arkansas City who was among the leaders of the push to make the changes, said there are legitimate scientific doubts about whether the universe is more than several thousand years old. ``There is sufficient data to lend credibility to the idea that we do not have all the answers for teaching the origin of our universe.'' …… "

The Register Guard 10/10/99 James Glanz "….The biggest problem for the young Earth creationists is explaining the time that has apparently passed since the light we see from distant galaxies was emitted. Given the constancy of the speed of light and estimates of the distance between Earth and faraway galaxies it is difficult to explain how Earth and the cosmos could be young. But D. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear weapons engineer at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., who is also an adjunct professor at the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego, thinks he has an answer. He said that Einstein's equations of relativity, the basis of the Big Bang theory, could be used to construct a universe in which the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Abrams said that in thinking about the Kansas standards he had been struck by Humphreys' book, ``Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe'' (Master Books, fifth printing in 1998). Humphreys' ideas ``seem to be right there on the cutting edge, so to speak,'' Abrams said. …."

New York Times 10/12/99 Anthony Lewis "…..The creationist position is certainly not a fringe belief nowadays. A Gallup poll taken in June for CNN and USA Today found that 68 percent of those surveyed favored teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools; 40 percent favored dropping evolution altogether and teaching children only the biblical version of creation…….. Of course evolution is a theory. The whole ethos of science is that any explanation for the myriad mysteries in our universe is a theory, subject to challenge and experiment. That is the scientific method. Those who take the biblical account of creation literally reject the scientific method, offering instead a doctrine of faith. There are "creation scientists" who argue that the Bible can be squared with scientific observations of, for example, the age of the universe. But they are not taken seriously by most scientists. The interesting question is why a large body of opinion in the United States supports a view at such odds with contemporary scientific understanding. No other Western country has anything like it. Religious fundamentalists have played an important part in America from the earliest settlements. And religious belief is much stronger in the United States today than in other Western societies. But belief does not usually, elsewhere, lead to opposing the teaching of evolution….."

FOX News.com 10/12/99 David Miles "….Two months after voting to downplay the theory of evolution in its public schools, the Kansas Board of Education is still trying to figure out what its new science curriculum should say. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled more than a decade ago that states cannot teach creationism, the belief that a divine power created the universe. It's no simple task: Three national science groups are refusing to let the board use their copyrighted materials, which are part of the state's current testing standards, because of the board's stance……. Kansas' new standards omit much of evolution as a subject for statewide testing, including the theory that man and apes evolved from a common ancestor. Although teachers are not required omit evolution teaching in their classrooms, critics fear that many schools will adjust their lesson plans to avoid subjects that won't be part of the new tests, to be given first in spring 2001…… Last month, the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science said the board couldn't use their materials because Kansas' new standards don't reflect their goal of advancing science education. …."

AP Wire 10/12/99 Anjetta McQueen "…..Three state education boards -- in Alabama, Kentucky and Bingman's Kansas -- have clouded the issue by giving school districts the option of introducing creationism into their classrooms alongside evolution. A fourth, Colorado, has dropped questions on evolution from a standardized test it gives students. Such actions could leave science teachers caught in the middle, particularly those in small districts where creationism advocates are better organized to exert more influence over local board decisions. …… But Gish, a biochemist who published ``Teaching Creation Science in Public Schools'' in 1996, argues that teachers should be able to discuss with students the questions that he says evolution can't answer. ``There are a tremendous number of very complex invertebrates that appear abruptly in fossil record and they supposedly had evolved,'' he said. ``There were no human witnesses; our public schools are not the private property of evolutionists or creationists.'' ….."

World Magazine 10/15/99 Lynn Vincent "..... When "Kelly," a woman who claimed to have been an AGF "technician" like Ms. Ying, approached Life Dynamics in 1997, the pro-life group launched an undercover investigation. The probe unearthed grim, hard-copy evidence of the cross-country flow of baby body parts, including detailed dissection orders, a brochure touting "the freshest tissue available," and price lists for whole babies and parts. One 1999 price list from a company called Opening Lines reads like a cannibal's wish list: Skin $100. Limbs (at least 2) $150. Spinal cord $325. Brain $999 (30% discount if significantly fragmented). The evidence confirmed what pro-life bioethicists have long predicted: the nadir-bound plummet of respect for human life-and the ascendancy of death for profit. "It's the inevitable logical progression of a society that, like Darwin, believes we came from nothing," notes Gene Rudd, an obstetrician and member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society's Bioethics Commission. "When we fail to see life as sacred and ordained by God as unique, this is the reasonable conclusion ... taking whatever's available to gratify our own self-interests and taking the weakest of the species first ... like jackals. This is the inevitable slide down the slippery slope." In 1993, President Clinton freshly greased that slope. Following vigorous lobbying by patient advocacy groups, Mr. Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, effectively lifting the ban on federally funded research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue...... But, this being the land of opportunity, fetal-tissue entrepreneurs soon emerged to nip at NIH's well-funded heels. Anatomic Gift Foundation, Opening Lines, and at least two other companies-competition AGF representatives say they know of, but decline to name-joined the pack. Each firm formed relationships with abortion clinics. Each also furnished abortionists with literature and consent forms for use by clinic counselors in making women aware of the option to donate their babies' bodies to medical science. According to AGF executive director Brent Bardsley, aborting mothers are not approached about tissue donation until after they've signed a consent to abort. Ironically, it is the babies themselves that are referred to as "donors," as though they had some say in the matter. Such semantic red flags-and a phalanx of others-have bioethicists hotly debating the issue of fetal-tissue research: Does the use of the bodies of aborted children for medical research amount to further exploitation of those who are already victims? Will the existence of fetal-tissue donation programs persuade more mothers that abortion is an acceptable, even altruistic, option? Since abortion is legal and the human bodies are destined to be discarded anyway, does it all shake out as a kind of ethical offset, mitigating the abortion holocaust with potential good? ...."

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... author of "Did Darwin Get It Right?" Does God exist? You can answer that question in at least two ways, including, notably, "yes." But how do you argue for that particular answer? A new cottage industry among the religiously minded is the re-articulation of the so-called "cosmological argument" for the existence of God. Its proofs work backward. They start with visible creation and reason that it can only be the work of an uncreated First Cause. Such proofs were once compelling to educated people. Now the average college graduate can do without them. He doesn't know exactly why this is so; he simply believes that Darwin and Stephen Hawking have somehow managed to explain creation without reference to a Creator. Darwin and Hawking, of course, have done no such thing. Science can never answer the question: Why is there something rather than nothing? The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... As one staunchly atheistic 20th-century astronomer put it: "A common sense interpretation of the data suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology." How do you get around such a "common sense" interpretation? Darwin supplied the answer: Any "design" in nature is only apparent, the work of blind mechanisms.... Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the full text of the Encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces...."

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... At a recent conference in New York put on by the Wethersfield Institute, "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe," a number of philosophers and scientists argued that it is time to restate the case for intelligent design. The more science unpacks of material reality, the panelists contended, the harder it is to claim that mechanisms like natural selection can achieve the "irreducible complexity" of, say, the human eye. Much of the afternoon was spent bringing William Paley's classic, 18th-century argument from design into the late 20th century. ...."

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... William Dembski, a mathematician, began by admitting that "chance and necessity" are clearly at work in nature. If you see a cloud shape itself into the image of a horse, you do not need any more explanation than wind currents. If, however, you see written in the sky, "Yankees Win World Series," you would reasonably infer that some intelligent agent had been at work. The trick is to identify the threshold between chance and necessity, on the one hand, and intelligent design, on the other. The thrust of the conference was that much in nature points to skywriting rather than coincidence.

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... Michael Behe, a biochemist and the author of "Darwin's Black Box," took a hard look at Darwin's famous assertion that the human eye had evolved at random from a "light sensitive spot." A "light sensitive spot" seemed a simple thing to Darwin; but modern biology shows that the chemical process needed simply to register a photon is extremely complex. Remove one step and it breaks down. In short, whatever biochemical gizmo preceded the "light sensitive spot" would have registered no light at all and so presumably would be rejected by Darwinian selection. So how did nature "build" the eye?

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston "..... But the admission by scientists like Stuart Kauffman that there are mysteries that elude a Darwinian explanation would seem to leave open the door to intelligent design for anyone interested in such an idea...."

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston ".... One scientist who is decidedly not interested is Steven Weinberg, who won the Nobel Prize for physics. In the current New York Review of Books, he dismisses talk of a "fine-tuned" universe as a dangerous regression to Greek myths. He also attacks religion, especially Christianity. To keep his view coherent, Mr. Weinberg--and physicists like him--must somehow explain the breathtaking specificity of what followed the Big Bang. Picture a wall with hundreds of dials; each must be at exactly the right setting for carbon-based life to emerge eventually in a suburb of the Milky Way. If the cosmic expansion had been a fraction less intense, the universe would have imploded billions of years ago; a fraction more intense, and the galaxies would not have formed. How to explain this remarkable exactitude? Mr. Weinberg favors the multi-universe theory, in which the Big Bang is just one of innumerable other big bangs. The idea is that if there are billions of universes, then the odds are pretty good that one would finally get it right so that man could dwell in it. This would be "cosmic natural selection" and so there is no need to worry about the appearance of design. The only problem with the notion of a plurality of big bangs is that there is not a shred of evidence to support it. The multi-universe theory also violates elementary logic. All these universes either interact or they don't. If they do, they constitute one universe. If they don't, they are mutually unknowable. Mr. Weinberg, in fact, is guilty of what he accuses religious people of doing: taking refuge in the unobservable....."

The Wall Street Journal 10/15/99 George Sim Johnston "....It is unlikely, of course, that the Wethersfield conference would have won over Mr. Weinberg had he been there. Scientists usually don't see the evidence differently until they change their interpretive framework. And the current framework, for most scientists, is anti-theistic. But for the rest, this new school of intelligent design is appealing and a far cry from the crude polemics of the creationists....."

AP 10/16/99 Martha Hodel "…A county school board is considering a proposal to lift a ban on teaching the biblical story of creation, the latest step in a growing national debate. The proposal, introduced by Kanawha County board member Betty Jarvis, was submitted for comment this week to principals and teachers of the 87 schools in the state's largest county. ``We have to present all theories,'' Jarvis told The Charleston Gazette. ``Creationism is a theory. A lot of science books deal only with evolution. Teachers are afraid to stray from the track.'' Jarvis did not return telephone calls from The Associated Press. The county board will vote on the proposal in December. ….. ``The part that really disturbs me is the argument that `this is the other theory,''' said Hilary Chiz, director of the West Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``Creationism is not a scientific theory. It is a religious idea about human development, and this is simply a transparent scheme to teach religion in our schools,'' she said. Gov. Cecil Underwood, a former teacher, said he does not oppose teaching creationism in public schools. ``I think education is search for the truth. We need to look at all theories to decide what is the truth,'' Underwood said Thursday…."

Fox News Wire/via Drudge Report 10/16/99 AP Julia Lieblich "….Rodney LeVake, science teacher, says believing in evolution is as absurd as thinking the Earth is the center of the universe. …. "I'd like an evolutionist to look me in the eye,'' he says, "and tell me one thing about evolution that is true.'' Though LeVake calls evolution a godless philosophy, he told local school officials that he wanted to teach the subject, anyway, to 10th graders in biology class at Faribault Senior High School. Without conveying his own religious views of creation, he says, he hoped to point out what he calls overwhelming scientific evidence against evolution. …… He was assigned instead to teach freshman science, which does not take up the theory. LeVake felt this was a deliberate move that violated his right to religious freedom, and the American Center for Law and Justice, a religious-rights advocacy group, agreed to represent him in a civil lawsuit against the school district……LeVake sees himself not as a renegade, but as part of a movement of educators skeptical of evolution. …..The courts had made it hard to teach creation science, Scott says, so "If you can't ban evolution, you can present the evidence against evolution.'' The Faribault case, says Scott, is significant because it's the first time "evidence against evolution'' has been directly addressed in a court case. ……In an effort to explain how he would teach evolution, LeVake drew up a six-page document which, he says, relies heavily on biochemist Michael Denton's book, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.'' LeVake wrote: "The process of evolution itself is not only impossible from a biochemical, anatomical, and physiological standpoint, but the theory of evolution has no evidence to show it actually occurred.'' …… Scott, of the science education center, calls it bad science. "It's anomaly-mongering. He takes a bunch of observations out of context, and he gets a lot of them wrong. He misstates the implications and uses this as evidence that evolution is all washed up. He completely ignores an enormous number of observations that can be explained only by inference of common ancestry. "If kids get a curriculum like this and think it represents scholarly consensus, they're in for a major shock when they learn that evolution is the organizing principle of biology and at the college level is completely noncontroversial.'' …… "

Discovery Institute 10/99 Rob Crowther "….Viewpoint discrimination, academic freedom and free speech will be on center stage Thursday, Nov. 4, when several of the nation's top scientists and legal experts will come face-to-face to discuss the issue of teaching evolution. Discovery Institute Fellows Dr. Jonathan Wells, Dr. Steve Meyer and Dr. David De Wolf have been invited to participate in a special roundtable discussion "Creation, Evolution and The First Amendment," at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 4, in White Concert Hall on the Washburn University campus, in Topeka, Kan. …… "Public schools have no business indoctrinating students in biblical religion," states biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells. "But they also have no business indoctrinating students in a materialistic philosophy that claims to be scientific but ignores contrary evidence. In science classes, students should be taught the essentials of Darwin's theory, the evidence for it, and the evidence against it." ….."Threats from the ACLU in this context are particularly Orwellian," says Jay Richards, program director for the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture. "To threaten teachers and school districts for this is to defend the notion that science teachers can only teach a dogmatic Darwinian orthodoxy. That doesn't sound like civil liberty to me." ….."

The Daily Republic 10/27/99 Dr Jonathan Wells "….Wizard of Oz jokes are in vogue as the news media scramble to ridicule Kansas for downplaying, eliminating, or even banning evolution in its public schools. But the people who are writing such stuff apparently haven't read the Kansas Science Education Standards. The truth is that the August 11 School Board decision actually increased public school emphasis on evolution…. But the 390 words approved by the Board include many of the provisions recommended by the Committee. For example, the Board adopted verbatim the Committee's summary of Darwin's theory: "Natural selection includes the following concepts: 1) Heritable variation exists in every species; 2) some heritable traits are more advantageous to reproduction and/or survival than are others; 3) there is a finite supply of resources available for life; not all progeny survive; 4) individuals with advantageous traits generally survive; 5) the advantageous traits increase in the population through time." It would be difficult to find a better summary of Darwin's theory of natural selection; Kansas students will now be tested on it…….."

The Daily Republic 10/27/99 Dr Jonathan Wells "….Even more interesting than the details, however, was the Committee's bid to inject Darwinian evolution into the very heart of science. According to the 1995 standards, science embodies four general themes: Energy/Matter, Patterns of Change, Systems and Interactions, and Stability and Models. Furthermore, it is the nature of science to "provide a means for producing knowledge," using processes such as "observing, classifying, questioning, inferring,...[and] collecting and recording data." The Science Education Standards Writing Committee proposed to add a fifth general theme, "patterns of cumulative change," an example of which is "the biological theory of evolution." As a biologist myself, I find this strange. Why list a specific theory such as biological evolution among general themes such as "systems and interactions," or basic processes such as "collecting and recording data"? That's like inserting a specific law into a constitution designed to establish a framework for law-making…… The Committee's proposal was a product of recent nationwide efforts by people who believe that Darwinian evolution is indispensable to biological science. A rallying cry for these efforts is Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous maxim, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." But Dobzhansky was mistaken. There are entire areas of biology that have no need for evolutionary theory, and there is evidence that the most sweeping claims of Darwinism are wrong. More importantly, there can be no such thing as an indispensable theory in science. A true scientist would say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evidence……"

The Daily Republic 10/27/99 Dr Jonathan Wells "….Faced with national pressure to include Darwin's theory in its description of the very nature of science, the Board courageously resisted, stocking the shelves with more evolution but refusing to hand over the store. News commentators who ridicule Kansas for downplaying, eliminating, or even banning evolution from its schools not only misrepresent the truth, but they also miss the real story. Why do Darwinists go ballistic at the thought of high school students questioning their theory? Why do biology textbooks continue to cite evidence for evolution that was long ago discredited? How many qualified scientists have lost their teaching jobs or their research funding just because they dared to criticize Darwinism? How many millions of your tax dollars will be spent this year by Darwinists trying to find evidence for a theory they claim is already proven beyond a reasonable doubt? There's enough here to keep a team of investigative journalists busy for months….."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Law professor Phillip Johnson is a legal philosopher whose books on Darwinian speculation have shaken the liberal establishment and embarrassed doctrinaire naturalism……… Johnson accepts microevolution, the changes that take place in living organisms that make possible horse breeding or that cause bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics. But he calls macroevolution the notion that species change over time to become other species (that reptiles developed feathers, becoming birds, for example) pure speculation on the part of scientists. What disturbs Johnson most deeply about current evolutionary theory is that it assumes God isn't necessary to explain existence and that nature alone is sufficient to explain how we (and the universe) came into being. This "naturalistic" approach to scientific knowledge Johnson deems intellectually dishonest because it begins by saying only nature itself can produce natural things and only after it asserts that proposition does it add: Therefore, God isn't necessary to explain how things came into being. Insight sat down with Johnson the morning after his Washington talk……. "

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: You became seriously interested in Darwinism on a 1987-88 sabbatical in London? Phillip Johnson: I was generally aware of evolutionary science and curious about it. It just so happened that on the way from the bus stop to my office at University College in London was a scientific bookstore and in the window was prominent British Darwinist Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker. It was new at the time, and I gradually picked up one book and then another about evolution. I became fascinated with the whole subject. I saw that it purports to be a scientific theory. It is that, but it's also something that is broader. Evolution is a creation story and as a creation story, it's the main prop of the materialist explanation for our existence. It gives the biological history on how you get life, the part that materialists found unsolvable before Darwin…. Before Darwin, for instance, there were atheists. They were a marginalized group. After the triumph of Darwinism, you have the invention of the word "agnostic" by Darwin's disciple T.H. Huxley, who described the agnostic view as one that says you can get knowledge from science, but you can't get knowledge of God that way, so God is something we inherently can know nothing about so there's no point in talking about the poor fellow. Agnosticism is a more effective dismissal of God than atheism. The atheist raises the issue by saying that God does not exist. But the agnostic very simply has nothing to say on the subject, so you don't discuss it. …."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: How did you, a professor of criminal law, master the science necessary to debate the Darwinists? PJ: Naturally, I get asked all the time, "How can you do this when you're not a scientist?" The answer is that it is not mainly about science. It is about a certain way of thinking. The science part of it is easy to learn. It's very repetitive. All the books cite the same examples: the fossil examples, the genetic examples and so on. A relative handful of them is used over and over….."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: So they've predetermined the answer by excluding God from the question and requiring an answer that is entirely naturalistic. PJ: So long as there is only the one question on the table, "How does nature do it all alone?," the neoDarwinian answer stands, no matter how much refutation it encounters, because any alternative would have to be fundamentally different and would have to involve a creator or a preexisting intelligence, a life force, something that is involved, a directing intelligence, which would be by definition supernatural and hence unacceptable to the world of scientific naturalism. So there you have the standoff….."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: What do you regard as the strongest argument of Darwinism? PJ: Their strongest argument isn't really an argument in the strictest sense. It's authority. These are all the people our culture regards as wise. They're the scientists and engineers we rely upon to make sure our airplanes don't crash and to see that our diseases are cured. So how could they be wrong about something so fundamental? Naturalism is identified with the scientific culture and forms its basis. It's assumed that it's because of their naturalistic assumptions that these wizards are able to work their wizardry. So to undermine their naturalistic assumptions is to try to undermine all science, and all science can't be wrong because it has achieved such wonders….."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: You have lived in two very different worlds, that of the highly esteemed university and that of a committed Christian. PJ: There's a great cultural divide here. It is the cultural arrogance of intellectuals that I think is one of their big problems. And it's always the case with the Christian Gospel that it is more attractive to people on the bottom of the ladder than to people on the top of the ladder. Paul says in First Corinthians, "Not many of you are wealthy, not many of you are of high rank, not many of you are wise as the world counts wisdom." That's always been true about Christianity, and that's why the Gospel is often denigrated as slave religion. There's an element of truth in that. It's the slaves who really see this reality, so it is nothing peculiar to me that a person who is intellectually gifted and well rewarded for it would think more highly of himself than he ought to….."

Insight Magazine 10/27/99 Stephen Goode "….Insight: Why is the intellectual world so attracted to naturalism and agnosticism? PJ: It follows along on my own experience of the intellectual arrogance that comes naturally to an academic winner, an academic goldmedal winner such as myself. Scientific naturalism is a thing that's attractive to that sort of people because it says that the secular intellectuals are the people to whom the world should look for all wisdom. The secular intellectuals become the priesthood…"

Answers in Genesis 11/1/99 Storrs Olsen ".... Letter from National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington, D. C. 20560 to Dr. Peter Raven, Secretary ..... National Geographic Society Washington, DC 20036 ...... With the publication of "Feathers for T. rex?" by Christopher P. Sloan in its November issue, National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism. But at the same time the magazine may now claim to have taken its place in formal taxonomic literature....... Because this Latinized binomial has apparently not been published previously and has now appeared with a full-spread photograph of the specimen "accompanied by a description or definition that states in words characters that are purported to differentiate the taxon," the name Archaeoraptor liaoningensis Sloan is now available for purposes of zoological nomenclature as of its appearance in National Geographic (International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, Article 13a, i). This is the worst nightmare of many zoologists---that their chance to name a new organism will be inadvertently scooped by some witless journalist. Clearly, National Geographic is not receiving competent consultation in certain scientific matters.......Sloan's article takes the prejudice to an entirely new level and consists in large part of unverifiable or undocumented information that "makes" the news rather than reporting it. His bald statement that "we can now say that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that humans are mammals" is not even suggested as reflecting the views of a particular scientist or group of scientists, so that it figures as little more than editorial propagandizing. This melodramatic assertion had already been disproven by recent studies of embryology and comparative morphology, which, of course, are never mentioned. More importantly, however, none of the structures illustrated in Sloan's article that are claimed to be feathers have actually been proven to be feathers. Saying that they are is little more than wishful thinking that has been presented as fact...... Sincerely, Storrs L. Olson Curator of Birds National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington, DC 20560 ...."

Electronic Telegraph 11/5/99 Ben Fenton "…..Stan Roth, who taught biology to the equivalent of British sixth-formers, had to retire at the age of 64 a few weeks before the Kansas state board of education removed evolution from the obligatory part of the curriculum. Mr Roth said yesterday that his dismissal arose from his treatment of a 16-year-old Christian fundamentalist pupil who asked him in class: "When are we going to learn about creationism?" He said he became exasperated and told her that the subject was not worthy of being taught. Miss Harvey, one of nine children, said: "He told me, 'When are you going to stop believing that crap your parents teach you?'" Mr Roth's former students and other teachers have leapt to his defence, arguing that he was used as a scapegoat to appease a growing religious movement in Kansas….."

Daily Oklahoman 11/18/99 "….Disclaimer text A message from the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee: This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present as scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact. The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things. There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life, which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth….."

Daily Oklahoman 11/18/99 "…."By adopting a disclaimer that has serious errors of fact, you're misleading the young people of the state of Oklahoma as to the scientific status of evolution, and we think that's a bad idea," said Ken Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Rhode Island….. The statements come two days after 675 teachers and church parishioners near Tulsa signed a petition thanking the committee for its "gutsy stand." …… "

AP wire 11/11/99 "….A state committee has voted to require a disclaimer in new biology textbooks saying evolution is a ``controversial theory.'' Last week's decision by the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee makes Oklahoma the latest state to officially challenge the way evolution is taught. This summer the Kansas Board of Education passed new testing standards, minimizing the importance of evolution. And last month, Kentucky's Education Department deleted the word ``evolution'' from its standards, replacing it with ``change over time.'' ….."

Answers In Genesis Jerry Bergman 1999 First published in: Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 13(2):101-111, 1999 "…… Leading Nazis, and early 1900 influential German biologists, revealed in their writings that Darwin's theory and publications had a major influence upon Nazi race policies. Hitler believed that the human gene pool could be improved by using selective breeding similar to how farmers breed superior cattle strains. In the formulation of their racial policies, Hitler's government relied heavily upon Darwinism, especially the elaborations by Spencer and Haeckel. As a result, a central policy of Hitler's administration was the development and implementation of policies designed to protect the 'superior race'. This required at the very least preventing the 'inferior races' from mixing with those judged superior, in order to reduce contamination of the latter's gene pool. The 'superior race' belief was based on the theory of group inequality within each species, a major presumption and requirement of Darwin's original 'survival of the fittest' theory. This philosophy culminated in the 'final solution', the extermination of approximately six million Jews and four million other people who belonged to what German scientists judged as 'inferior races'. …… Of the many factors that produced the Nazi holocaust and World War II, one of the most important was Darwin's notion that evolutionary progress occurs mainly as a result of the elimination of the weak in the struggle for survival. Although it is no easy task to assess the conflicting motives of Hitler and his supporters, Darwinism-inspired eugenics clearly played a critical role. Darwinism justified and encouraged the Nazi views on both race and war. If the Nazi party had fully embraced and consistently acted on the belief that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve and equal before the creator God, as taught in both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures, the holocaust would never have occurred….."

London Times 12/12/99 Leake Dennis "…. WE are as good as it gets. The human form has reached evolutionary perfection, according to one of Britain's most respected geneticists, and has nowhere else to go. Research by Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, suggests that Darwin's theory of evolution no longer works in modern society. Natural selection - the process described by Darwin where nature favours society's fittest and weeds out the rest - does not apply now, he says, because the weak reproduce just as efficiently as the strong. "Human evolution is over, at least in the developed western world," he said last week in a lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine. …."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....Michael J. Behe, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a fellow of the Discovery Institute, is the author of Darwin's Black Box; The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press). ...... In 1995 the National Academy of Sciences, through its National Research Council arm, issued a set of national science education standards calling for "dramatic changes" in the way science is taught in grade schools and high schools. Several years later the Kansas State Board of Education appointed a panel of scientists and academics to advise it on bringing state guidelines into conformity with the national standards. As the time drew nigh for the board to vote on accepting the revised guidelines, however, a problem cropped up. Alerted by concerned parents, the board discovered that the National Academy had aggressively promoted evolution into a central "unifying concept" of science education, on a par with such fundamentals as "evidence" and "measurement." Students were to be told definitively that "Natural selection and its evolutionary consequences provide a scientific explanation for the fossil record of ancient life forms." Even in the murkiest areas of biology such as the origin of life, the academy made clear in its pamphlet Science and Creationism (free when you order a copy of the science standards) that skepticism was not to be countenanced. The academy explicitly warned schools that "'biological evolution' cannot be eliminated from the life science standards." Last August the Kansas board balked....."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....What is it about the topic of evolution that drives so many people nuts? Why does a change in a farm state's high school examination policy call forth damning editorials all the way from London, England, and have normally staid editors threatening children? The answer is convoluted, but several tightly intertwined factors can be teased apart. The first, of course, is religion. Some nonbelievers and adherents to minority faiths hold Christianity in contempt, and fight frantically to minimize the public influence of America's majority creed. The second factor is politics. Since activist opponents of evolution are as a rule politically conservative, any move against Darwinism is treated by some overwrought folks as the first step on the path to fascism, with a flat tax and a ban on abortion soon to follow...."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....A final factor is more fundamental than the others, and more fateful. It's a question about knowledge itself a clash over what we think we know and how we think we know it. Although seemingly esoteric, it can spark real trouble. People can get supremely irritated when other folks just won't listen to reason, especially if they think they have the unvarnished facts on their side. One reason for agitation is that a person's self image is often wrapped up in what he thinks he knows about the important questions of life. Richard Dawkins, the prominent Darwinian popularizer, wrote that "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," and few people give up their intellectual fulfillment quietly. At a more banal level, many manage to feel good about themselves by feeling superior to creationists. While one may not have a clue about the subtleties of the evidence for or problems with Darwinism, he is automatically part of the smart set when he accepts evolution.

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....Darwin fleshed out his theory in several hundred pages of The Origin of Species, but the main idea is easily summarized. Darwin saw variation everywhere in lifesome individuals of a species are bigger than others, some faster, some brighter in color. After reading Malthus, Darwin realized that there was not enough food to allow all animals that were born to survive. So he reasoned that those members of a species whose chance variation gave them an edge in the struggle to survive would tend to live to adulthood and reproduce. If the variation could be inherited, then over time the characteristics of the species might change. And over eons, whole new kinds of animals might arise. It was, and remains, an elegant theory....."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....A classic Darwinian problem is the fossil record. In his own day Darwin recognized that it did not square with his expectation of innumerable transitional forms. It still doesn't. Although Darwinism expected anatomical differences between classes of animals to start out small and then get greater with time, the opposite is often true as a rule very different forms of life appear within a brief time, and only later do variations within the deeper categories show up. New forms of life typically appear in the geological record with no obvious precursors, persist essentially unchanged for a time, and then disappear. Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Aghast at Gould's bluntness, in Science and Creationism the National Academy made a stab at damage control. It quoted Gould calling persons who cited his remark "dishonest," because he intended " to discuss rates of evolutionary change, not to deny the fact of evolution itself." Yet whatever he personally wanted to affirm or deny, his factual observation of the lack of transitional fossils stands.

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....Recently Darwinism has suffered a series of embarrassments as textbook examples of evolution have turned out to be not what they seemed. The most serious reversal was in developmental biology. Based on nineteenth century drawings, the embryos of fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals were thought to look virtually identical. Much was made of the resemblance as evidence for evolution. Probably the majority of American schoolchildren in the past 50 years have seen drawings of the embryos in their biology textbooks. Carl Sagan once wrote in Parade magazine (circulation in the tens of millions) that human embryos have "something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian." And eminent scientists declared that the great similarity only made sense in the light of evolution. But the embryos don't look like that...... In trying to decide what we know about evolution and how we know it, the embryo fiasco is quite instructive. The scientists and textbook authors who touted the nineteenth century drawings with utter confidence are now exposed as clueless. (They include the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts, whose textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell prominently cites Haeckel's work.) They assured the public that they had strong evidence for evolution, but they didn't even know what the embryos looked like. Their " facts" didn't come from nature, but from their Darwinian premises....."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....The dry results with plant diseases have implications for a livelier subject sex. It turns out that sex is a big puzzle for Darwinian theory. In fact, a literal interpretation of the theory predicts that sexual reproduction should not exist. Here's the problem. Given two organisms, if both are asexual, both can reproduce. If both are sexual, only one (the female) can bear young. A little math shows that asexual organisms should rapidly outbreed sexual ones and dominate the world. But since sexual species actually dominate, Darwinism has some explaining to do. In the past century dozens of guesses have been made as to why, against straightforward expectations, sex predominates. The current favorite is that sex helps in a putative arms race against parasitic diseases. But if the idea of an arms race is itself in doubt, then sex, the core of Darwinian evolution, remains an enigma. A theory of evolution that predicts most species should be asexual is like a theory of gravity that expects things to fall up....."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....The audacious claim that unguided natural forces organized nonliving matter into cells and then produced the complex biological systems we see today is as solid as Swiss cheese. When treated with even the mildest skepticism, the mighty Darwinian citadel fades into a Potemkin village. No wonder that the National Academy brooks no discussion of the theory's premises premises are just about all it's got. Yet some people are eager to join the Darwinian team, even though that means going well beyond the facts taking a leap of faith. ..... .....Several years ago I argued in Darwin's Black Box that many of the exceedingly complex molecular machines that science has unexpectedly discovered in the cell appear to have been purposely designed, because of the way their parts work together. On the PBS show "ThinkTank," Ben Wattenberg asked Richard Dawkins Mr. Darwinism for his response. With his trademark charm, Dawkins choked that I was being " cowardly" and "lazy" for invoking a designer. Nonetheless, he admitted that since he wasn't a biochemist, he couldn't answer the argument. Yet if he doesn't know how evolution might have made the basic machinery of life, how can he be sure that Darwinism is a complete explanation for life? And if Richard Dawkins doesn't know, who does? And if nobody knows, why teach children that we do? ...."

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....Most Americans have long recognized that claims by scientists about global warming, nuclear winter, overpopulation, stem cell research, and so on can't just be taken at face value. Scientists are people too and suffer from the same defects as everyone else, including hubris, self interest, and wishful thinking. This goes for science organizations as well......A Gallup poll taken after the Kansas decision showed only a minority of respondents wanted the teaching of evolution eliminated from schools. A strong majority, however, responded positively when asked if both evolution and creation should be taught. It's likely that the response to the canned poll question translates into an attitude something like "be less dogmatic about teaching evolution; point out problems of the theory and include alternative views." Yet this entirely sensible position is anathema to most evolutionists, who seem to argue both that Darwinism is a compelling explanation and that it has to be shielded from rival ideas......"

American Spectator 12/99 Dr Michael Behe ".....The National Academy of Sciences has a plan to end the conflict over the teaching of evolution. Taking a page from Daniel Dennett's book, they want to put religions in cages. Not abolish them, you understand just make them safe, and stop them from misinforming children about the natural world. The idea is to get anyone who still wants to believe in something to subscribe to " theistic evolution" which to the academy means that whatever some god may or may not have done, it had to have happened before the Big Bang, left no physical traces, and be indistinguishable from the random working of natural law. As the academy encouragingly points out in Science and Creationism, " Many religious persons, including many scientists, hold that God created the universe and the various processes driving physical and biological evolution." Happily, theistic evolution "reflects the remarkable and inspiring character of the physical universe revealed by (science)." Best of all, though, is that "this belief...is not in disagreement with scientific explanations of evolution."...... The most worrisome aspect is that a quasi governmental agency with substantial influence on public policy has gotten heavily into the religion business. Not content to advise the public on mundane matters of how the physical world works, the academy is acting to promote a theology that causes the least trouble to Darwinism. While adults may be able to tell the academy that they will make up their own minds about their religious beliefs, thank you very much, the academy will help make up the minds of schoolchildren. Although not an official part of the national science education standards, the academy's religious philosophy expressed in Science and Creationism will get wide distribution among science teachers and will influence many a lesson plan. Reasoning from the academy's premises, the more consistent students will see that, if God is forbidden to act in history, miracles are out..... Indeed, since the Resurrection itself must be a myth, then as Saint Paul says, their faith is in vain. Better to leave such irrationality far behind. Eventually the fight over teaching evolution will be over....."

The Kansas City Star 1/9/00 Kate Beem "….Presenting the theory of intelligent design in science classes does not necessarily violate the separation of church and state, several lawyers said Saturday. A teacher or school board's intent is key in determining whether teaching the theory violates a First Amendment clause prohibiting government from endorsing or advancing religion, lawyer Jason Sneed said……. Sneed who is trying a First Amendment case in Kansas, said courts had never ruled on intelligent-design theory. But using precedents from other cases, design supporters can determine whether the theory constitutes religion……. "The teacher needs to be very careful that she's not indoctrinating, but educating," Richardson said…… Evolution supporters often charge that intelligent-design theory is religious because it implies a supernatural designer. But design supporters say evolutionary theory is religious, too, because it relies on naturalism, the belief that everything has a natural explanation. That could be interpreted to preclude the existence of a supernatural being such as God. "Our ultimate goal is to develop a level playing field in schools," Calvert said. "At least teachers should be able to show intelligent design as a criticism (of evolution)." …."

Ottawa Sun 1/9/00 R Cort Kirkwood "…. "In my opinion, Cort Kirkwood is a blithering idiot." Thus begins just one letter the Ottawa Sun received after my column on evolution ("Black Box pokes holes in Charles Darwin's theory," Dec. 5), and it proves a point I have made about the theory of evolution both in writing and to my evolutionist friends in casual conversation: Modern scientists and believers in evolution are not receptive to honest questions about it, for Darwin's theory has become hard orthodoxy from which dissent is not permitted. Asking a skeptical question about evolution is akin to asking the witch doctor to explain his medicine. Metaphorically speaking, you might be burned at the stake.…."

Ottawa Sun 1/9/00 R Cort Kirkwood "…. Contrary to what some respondents to my column imply, "creationists" are not responsible for the controversy now raging over evolution. Science is responsible because science cannot prove its theory. And contrary to other objections, the fossil record does not prove the theory of evolution. It suggests some kind of relationship between some animals and plants, but it does not reveal the gradual change of one species to another or the evolution of prokaryotes to human beings.

Ottawa Sun 1/9/00 R Cort Kirkwood "…. But let's suppose the fossil record (which says little about organ structure or the means of reproduction of the fossilized animal, which is another kettle of coelacanths, as one skeptic notes) lends credit to gradual evolution. It remains silent on evolution at a biochemical level. Again, I defer to biochemist Michael Behe. One correspondent says Behe has been "utterly discredited," and like a true Darwinist, offers no proof for the statement. He simply expects me to believe it. Anyway, Behe asks how blood clotting, a complex process he likens to a Rube Goldberg device, could have evolved….. Well, a creature such as a mammal with a circulatory system must have a blood clotting mechanism or it will bleed to death when injured. Yet for the blood clotting mechanism to work, it requires a myriad of components, meaning proteins and enzymes, that are inextricably linked and work in a concatenation of tightly ordered and sequenced events. Remove one of those proteins or enzymes, and blood won't clot……Further, because a biochemical process such as bloodclotting requires not just that first component but many more, the process itself cannot undergo "natural selection" because it is incomplete until all the component parts are present and working. In other words, before the blood clotting mechanism has been perfected, nature has no advantageous process to select……... "

Ottawa Sun 1/9/00 R Cort Kirkwood "….Ask a hard-shell Darwinist to explain the evolution of the avian wing and you'll get quite a discourse on fossils and Archaeopteryx, as I did in two letters about my column. But the Darwinist cannot explain how a transitional species could survive with a limb that hindered walking or grasping because it was turning into a wing, but did not permit flight because hadn't quite become a wing….. So how, exactly, did the feathered wing evolve, considering that natural selection would not preserve a useless or possibly harmful structure apart from the functional whole? The evolutionist can only hypothesize ... and unconvincingly at that. If the wing evolved as a complete structure, what miraculous evolutionary event explains it? Perhaps, as one scientist speculated, a bird hatched from a reptile egg….."

Ottawa Sun 1/9/00 R Cort Kirkwood "….Textbooks propound it. Careers are based upon it. Everything in modern science assumes evolution to be true, but skeptics are not permitted to ask whether it is true. Everything modern science tells us about nature tells us everything in nature evolved. If evolutionists had to admit their "fact" is unproved, their world would implode. Those textbooks would have to be rewritten. Those theories would have to be discarded. Those reputations and careers would suffer. But something more profound would happen, too. The theory of evolution, you see, made it possible to discard from the discussion of our natural world. That, in turn, meant much of what we know as traditional morals and values could be discarded as well, especially those forbidding certain kinds of behaviour between consenting adults. After all, if a man is merely an accident of nature, an intelligent beast with no soul, then morals and values have no meaning for him. Not surprisingly, one of the most prominent evolutionists proclaimed that Darwin made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist." In short, the Theory of Evolution is metaphysical and ideological in nature, and holds profound ramifications far beyond those that it holds for science. Evolution should dispose of religion and God altogether….."

Touchstone 7-8/1999 William Dembski "….. Intelligent design examines the distinction between three modes of explanation: necessity, chance, and design. In our workaday lives we find it important to distinguish between these modes of explanation. Did she fall or was she pushed? And if she fell, was it simply bad luck or was her fall unavoidable? …..

…..But was science right to repudiate design? My aim in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998) is to rehabilitate design. I argue that design is a legitimate and fundamental mode of scientific explanation on a par with chance and necessity. since my aim is to rehabilitate design, it will help to review why design was removed from science in the first place. Design, in the form of Aristotle's formal and final causes, had after all once occupied a perfectly legitimate role within natural philosophy, or what we now call science. With the rise of modern science, however, these causes fell into disrepute.

….. If design is so readily detectable outside science, and if its detectability is one of the key factors keeping scientists honest, why should design be barred from the actual content of science? There's a worry here. The worry is that when we leave the constricted domain of human artifacts and enter the unbounded domain f scientific inquiry, the distinction between design and non-design cannot be reliably drawn. Consider, for instance, the following remark by Darwin in the concluding chapter of his Origin of Species:

Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created . . . . Nevertheless they do not pretend that they can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa in once case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases.

It's this worry of falsely attributing something to design (here construed as creation) only to have it overturned later that has prevented design from entering science proper.

This worry, though perhaps understandable in the past, can no longer be justified. there does in fact exist a rigorous criterion for discriminating intelligently from unintelligently caused objects. Many special sciences already use this criterion, though in a pretheoretic form (e.g., forensic science, artificial intelligence, cryptography, archeology, and the Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence,[SETI]). In The Design Inference I identify and make precise this criterion. I call it the complexity-specification criterion. When intelligent agents act, they leave behind a characteristic trademark or signature-what I call specified complexity. the complexity-specification criterion detects design by identifying this trademark of designed objects….."

Scripps Howard News Service via Albuquerque Tribune 1/00/00 Lawrence Spohn "....Rape is not typically the crime of male domination as it has been portrayed by sociologists and feminists in recent years, says a University of New Mexico biology professor. Instead, UNM's Randy Thornhill and Colorado anthropologist Craig T. Palmer have developed a new theory that rape is a complex sexual crime with strong roots in human evolution. Moreover, contend Thornhill and Palmer, rape "prevention efforts will founder until they are based on the understanding that rape evolved as a form of male reproductive behavior." "We have to get real about rape," Thornhill said in a recent interview. The two scientists have co-authored an article entitled "Why Men Rape" in the current issue of the journal The Sciences..... In the article, Thornhill and Palmer take aim at the prevailing societal notion that rape isn't about sex but about male power and is "a symptom of an unhealthy society in which men fear and disrespect women." ...... But they do not equate "natural" as good and agree that their public mission is to make rape extinct as a trait in human beings...... In an interview, Palmer said the article aims to convince "those who accept evolution but don't see it as applying to the brain and behavior and particularly the behavior of rape....... The two scientists contend that current thinking about what causes rape is so bankrupt that it ignores the reality that by definition rape requires sexual arousal of the rapist....... "Nothing in our approach means that rape is inevitable just because it's biological," Thornhill said. "In no way does it imply that (rape) is morally correct or acceptable....."

FOX News 1/21/2000 Elaine Kurtenbach "…Xu Xing, an eminent paleontologist in Beijing, said he has found fossils that prove the fossilized turkey-sized creature unveiled last year may not be the evolutionary link some thought it was. Xu's claim has forced paleontology circles, which greeted the find with some fanfare, to take a second look. And the controversy has highlighted the pitfalls of international research projects involving fossils that are often smuggled out of China and sold overseas……. Now National Geographic magazine plans to publish a note in its March issue saying that CT scans of the fossil appeared to confirm Xu's observations and had "revealed anomalies" in the reconstruction, said National Geographic Society spokeswoman Barbara Moffet. She added that more information was needed. …… Xu contends the Archaeoraptor is a combination of two fossils: one of the body and head of a birdlike creature and the other of the tail of a different dinosaur. He said he has found another fossil, in a private collection in China, that contains the mirror image of the supposed tail of the Archaeoraptor. Fossils often break in two when the rocks containing them are split in excavation. ….. "

Saturday Oklahoman 1/20/2000 Professors Jeff Harwell, Bob Reed and Michael Scaperlanda "….Berkeley law professor Philip Johnson reports of a Chinese paleontologist who has traveled the world presenting fossil discoveries that contradict the standard theory of evolution: new species appear suddenly without evolving from common ancestors. When this upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin." Our Chinese colleague is perceptive: In 1988, Scientific American withdrew a job offer to science writer Forrest Mims after discovering he was an evangelical Christian. When exposed by the Houston Chronicle, the journal admitted it feared embarrassment over Mims' beliefs. Such bigotry chagrins most working scientists….."

Saturday Oklahoman 1/20/2000 Professors Jeff Harwell, Bob Reed and Michael Scaperlanda "….Science progresses by challenging existing theories, no matter how well established. Should evolution be treated differently? Some argue it should. Zoologist Richard Dawkins says that naturalistic evolution would be true even if there were no supporting evidence because the only viable alternative requires God and science by definition excludes God. We know most scientists disagree. Science should be an objective, systematic, observation based approach to finding the truth. Period. Consequently, we were disappointed that our colleagues at OU publicly protested the evolution disclaimer of the textbook committee without addressing how evolution should be presented or proposing any productive discussion. After all, the textbook committee did not call for a ban on teaching evolution. We believe that teaching evolution in the public schools is necessary and that no educated person should be ignorant of this theory. There is no reason to think that the committee does not share this belief. Instead, the committee wants evolution taught not as a dogma but as a scientific theory, able to explain some data, not yet able to explain other data. Our Chinese colleague knows that contrary data exist, as do most scientists. This doesn't mean that evolution is wrong. It simply highlights that evolution is a work in progress, like most other major scientific theories. This is a very reasonable request……"

Access to Energy 12/99 Dr Arthur Robinson "…..Norman Podhoretz, in his excellent lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 1999, p A12, entitled "Science Hasn't Killed God"' answers this question. Podhoretz traces, with scholarly thoroughness, the historical development of this issue from antiquity to the present - and provides a good explanation of the apparent (but not real) paradox that most of the greatest scien-tists of the second millennium were also deeply religious men……. Great progress in science began when scholars with more humility (Podhoretz identifies Galileo as one of the first of these) recognized that they were capable of making progress on the how - but not on the why and where, issues that they relegated to their personal faiths. The greatest of these (and clearly the greatest of all physical scientists) was Isaac Newton, who laid the basis of physics for the next three centuries, and yet devoted about half of his time throughout a long life to the study of the Scriptures. He wrote three books - two about physics and the other about the Biblical prophecies. This book is still in print because we publish an exact replica of Thomas Jefferson's personal copy ($19.95 postage paid from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, P0 1279, Cave Junction, OR 97523). How could Newton, a deeply devout Christian during his entire life, reconcile the Bible with his science? The reason was simple - he approached science with humility. He knew that his brain was capa-ble of understanding only limited aspects of how things worked. He demanded complete rigor and absolute honesty. He only published the truth. His certainty that his science was true depended upon strict adherence to the scientific experimental method - which allowed him to correctly describe the how because it requires that every hypothesis be tested with experimentally observable facts.

Newton wrote, as did Francis Bacon, that science could actually reinforce religious faith because it revealed to man more clearly the wonderful beauty of the universe that the Lord had created. ……"

Access to Energy 12/99 Dr Arthur Robinson "…..As the list of successes in basic and applied science grew, the egos of many men grew as well. They for-got the limiting conditions of the scientific method' and pretended to know much more. They even invented vast overreaching "sciences" where very lit-tle real science could be done - such as the so-called "social sci-ences." These efforts produced the "science" behind Communism and Nazism - with disastrous effects. Above all, they pretended to now know the why and where from of the universe -basing their claims on the fact that they were "scientists" rather than upon the experiment requiring scientific method. ……. We entered an era, however, in which many mediocre "scien-tists" loudly proclaimed that they now understood the origins of the universe and the origins of life. Never mind that their hypotheses were entirely beyond the reach of experimental verification. They be-gan to worship reason, themselves, and their own minds. As Linus Pauling, one of the most famous of these, stated (nearing the end of a life that began in excellence and ended in mediocrity), "I don't need to do experiments. People believe me because of who I am." …….Humanity has been treated to the sorry spectacle of "scientists" pretending to understand the universe and "theologians" pretending to understand science...."

Access to Energy 12/99 Dr Arthur Robinson "…..Podhoretz points out that, after 200 years of difficulties, there has arisen a sort of uneasy truce between physical scientists who are atheists and scientists of faith. Noted exceptions, however, are those very mediocre scientists (about whom we often write in Access to Energy), who are now trying to misuse science in support of their enviro religion - a human aberration involving the worship of plants and animals and the vilification of man that dates back thousands of years.

No such truce exists, however, with the new crop of know-it-alls in the biological sciences…… So now we have biologists (who usually, but not always, are soft scientists of less rigor) using this progress as the basis for claims that they understand the why and the where - and are themselves become as new Gods who will change the nature of life itself They claim that scientists are now equal to the task of deciding who shall live and who shall die - and, moreover, of designing new men in accordance with their own superior specifications. Humility is definitely not the "in" thing in the fields of genetics and molecular biology…."

Yahoo Science 2/1/2000 Reuters ".....The U.S. Interior Department said on Tuesday it would try to carry out DNA analysis on a 9,300-year-old skeleton unearthed in Washington state, risking the wrath of American Indian tribes who claim the remains are the sacred bones of an ancestor. The department, which worried that any testing of ''Kennewick Man'' could offend local tribes and yield useless results, said such analysis could help it figure out to whom the ancient resident is related. ``We believe that DNA analysis will help determine the biological and genetic racial ancestry of the remains. This has been the subject of controversy in this case from the beginning,'' Frank McManamon, chief archeologist for the National Park Service, said in a statement. ....."

Anti-Defamation League website 2/10/00 "….."Creationism" -- the belief that humankind was created by a divine being according to a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis -- is a pseudoscientific collection of religious ideas based on varying interpretations of the Bible. Any attempt to supplant or supplement the teaching of evolution in public schools in order to promote creationism would have a religious purpose…… The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from endorsing any particular religious belief. This prohibition ensures that our public schools remain places in which students of all faiths -- or no faith -- may learn in an atmosphere free from divisive theological debates and sectarianism. In banning organized prayer in the public schools in 1962, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court said that "[w]hen the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain." Our public schools must fulfill the First Amendment's mandate of separation of church and state and remain free from the influence of religious dogma in order for students of all faiths to attend school without fear of coercion. …..In 1968, in Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court held unambiguously that it is unconstitutional to restrict a public school teacher's right to teach evolution. More recently, in Aguillard v. Edwards, 482 U.S. 595 (1987), the high court decisively held that it is unconstitutional to require educators who teach evolution to also teach creationism. These two important rulings form the basis for a fair and sensible approach to the teaching of science in our public schools……"

Anti-Defamation League website 2/10/00 "….Since any attempt to ban evolution or to include creationism in a school curriculum would run counter to the Supreme Court's rulings, creationists have developed new tactics to promote their goal of undermining the way biology is taught in the public schools. For example, in 1999 the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee mandated that publishers doing business with the state be required to place a disclaimer in all biology books. The disclaimer states, among other things, that evolution is "a controversial theory which some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans." It goes on to say that evolution is "the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things." Although couched in the language of scientific skepticism, the disclaimer is plainly designed to encourage students to doubt the evidence underlying the process of evolution -- for religious reasons. Indeed, some supporters of the disclaimer have openly stated that its purpose is to give creationism an equal chance in the schools. ….."

Reuters 2/4/00 "…..A requirement by Oklahoma's textbook committee that state science textbooks include a disclaimer against evolution has been thrown out, a spokesman for the state's attorney general said on Thursday. Attorney General Drew Edmondson ruled that the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee had overstepped its bounds in trying to dictate the content of textbooks and violated Oklahoma's open meeting laws by failing to notify the public that it was taking the action, spokesman Gerald Adams said. "It will be up to the district attorney (in Oklahoma City) to determine if they violated the law," Adams said. …."

TrueOrigin.com 2/3/00 Gary Achtemeier PhD "…. Scientists, professionals, and academics appealed to the Board on behalf of modern science that removing an important concept like evolution from life sciences and biology would intellectually cripple students. Nothing in biology, it was claimed, makes sense except in light of evolution. On the other side were mostly parents who were concerned with what their children were being taught. As soon as the decision was cast, the propaganda war began. Darwinists have discovered that the best way to silence those who question evolution is to marginalize them through ridicule and character assassination. They characterized those who supported the new guidelines, including parents, as bible-thumping fundamentalists, dangerous pseudo-scientists, flat earthers, etc. Unfortunately, much of the stereotyping was done by journalists who did not stop for an instant to find out what the issues were, who the parties were or what they believed. The Chicago Tribune chanted, "intellectual chicanery." The Boston Globe saw "evolving creationist" fundamentalists. The Washington Post decried "literal belief in biblical creation stories."

TrueOrigin.com 2/3/00 Gary Achtemeier PhD "…. The issues discussed at Kansas, however, go beyond disagreements with church doctrines to concern for the safety of children. After the Littleton massacre, parents testifying before a congressional subcommittee on the matter claimed that removal from the classroom of prayer, the Ten Commandments, and other biblical teachings on human behavior created a climate favorable for murderous behavior. That may be true, but I believe it is not the whole story. The congressional testimony did not adequately explore the thought systems that have replaced the abolished biblical doctrines. Science, real science-the work that ferrets out empirical facts about the nature that surrounds us-has been co-opted by an ancient philosophical/religious doctrine the origins of which can be traced back to at least 400-700 years before Christ. Known today variously as scientism, evolutionism, metaphysical naturalism, and Darwinism, this doctrine has been so effectively interlaced with science that it is often difficult for the scientist, much less the layperson, to separate the two.

TrueOrigin.com 2/3/00 Gary Achtemeier PhD "…. Many religious leaders have bought the ruse. However, as is so often the case, those with the most the lose are usually the ones who take the effort to become the best informed. Conservative Christians have discovered that while science may be neutral on religious issues, Darwinism is not. The real conflict is between two equally religious belief systems. Darwinists, however, with assistance from misguided media, have been astonishingly successful at painting the issue as one of a small group of ignorant fundamentalists pitting their outdated biblical myths against the studied results of empirical science. Thus, by making it appear to be nonreligious, Darwinism can appear to be no threat to religion and by making it appear to most churchgoers that there exists no conflict between Christianity and evolution, Darwinists have effectively mollified the opposition and have been free to rob the store. ….."

TrueOrigin.com 2/3/00 Gary Achtemeier PhD "…. Though the date of the Kansas Board of Education's rather insignificant decision still rings loudly through the propaganda mills of the media, another date, June 25, 1999, will eventually ring louder, I believe. Writing an editorial in the magazine Science, the frontispiece of the prestigious National Association for the Advancement of Science, Stephen Jay Gould launched a direct attack on religion thereby exposing the true religious nature of Darwinism. After quoting Psalm 8 "Thou has made him a little lower than the angels...thou madest him to have dominion...thou has put all things under his feet." Gould went on to state, "Darwin removed this keystone of false comfort more than a century ago, but many people still believe that they cannot navigate this vale of tears without such a crutch." Ending the article, Gould admonished his readers, "Let us praise this evolutionary nexus, a far more stately mansion for the human soul than any pretty or parochial comfort ever conjured by our swollen neurology to obscure the source of our physical being, or to deny the natural substrate for our separate and complementary spiritual quest." Here Gould has gone much farther than the occasional witty jabs of fellow high priest, Richard Dawkins ("Evolution has made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist") or the late Carl Sagan, who, writing in the introduction of Stephen Hawkings book, A Brief History of Time, claimed naturalistic evolution leaves "nothing for a creator to do." Gould has proposed to substitute for Christianity and other religions, "a far more stately mansion for the human soul...." …."

TrueOrigin.com 2/3/00 Gary Achtemeier PhD "…. The question that confronts us and is the focus of the remainder of this essay is: Why did Professor Gould choose this hour to break with Darwinism's tenuous accommodation with religion? …….. One reason why Gould may have departed from the ruse of accommodation with religion is Darwinists' perceived loss of control of the scientific and educational world. Three events have come together lately to make this possible. First, deep from within the biological sciences there has arisen a group of scientists who are promoting intelligent design (ID), the concept that a intelligent agency was involved in some stages of life's origin and dispersal. Drawing from recent advances in molecular biology and information theory, the ID theorists have come to recognize that purely naturalistic evolution cannot possibly explain every step in the emergence of living organisms. The discovery of minimum irreducible complexity in bio-molecular structures utterly falsifies the foundational premise of Darwin's theory, namely that biological organisms arise through gradual accumulation of small mutational changes. Furthermore, there is no known source of information apart from intelligent design. Darwinists have been unable to imagine how the immense information content of the highly specified DNA genetic code might have arisen by chance, let alone design a scientific experiment and collect data to explain it……..So far, the ID scientists have resisted attempts by Darwinists to silence them. Vilification has not worked. Marginalization has not worked because many of the IDers are biological scientists who actually do the research. Attempts to stereotype them as fundamentalists seeking to promote biblical creation stories, which may play well with the media and others predisposed to Darwinism, have served to radicalize the ID scientists. ………….Second, with the breakup of the iron curtain and the parting of the bamboo curtain, the biological sciences are enjoying a global renaissance of sorts. Biological scientists in Asia, particularly China, do not hold blind allegiance to Darwin as do their colleagues in the West. They seem disposed to requiring the theory to fit the data rather than making the data fit the theory. Hostilities with American Darwinists during a recent biological conference held in China prompted one Chinese scientist to remark, "In China we can question Darwin but we can't question the government; in America, you can question the government but you can't question Darwin." ……….Third, though they nearly completely control educational institutions from kindergarten through graduate school and virtually monopolize all forms of the media, Darwinists have discovered through recent polls that fewer than ten percent of Americans believe in the totally random, unsupervised, impersonal, godless origin-of-life story promoted by the Darwinists. Many more Americans believe in some form of evolution directed by a supernatural agency. Fully half of Americans don't believe in macro-evolution at all. Seven of ten