In the News

Skye Kincaid reports in the Mt. Shasta Herald that Members of the Butteville Union Elementary School District believe the issue of possibly teaching intelligent design at their school as discussed at a board of trustees meeting in August was "blown out of proportion."

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Sarah Delaney in the TimesonLine, reports that the day after the Church of England issued an "apology" for having "misunderstood" the work of Charles Darwin, the Vatican has announced that it will organise a debate on the thorny question of Christian belief and the theory of evolution.

Two Cambridge lecturers, the archaeologist Lord Renfrew, and the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris. will join an international line-up of scientists, theologians, philosophers debating faith and evolution at a Vatican-sponsored event in Rome. The five-day encounter, entitled Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories. A critical appraisal 150 after "The Origin of Species" has been timetabled to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin's seminal work on the theory of evolution. Forty-eight speakers will speak at the conference, which begins on March 3rd 2009.

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No Intelligent Design or Creationism proponents will be allowed to participate.

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Reported by the BBC...Professor Michael Reiss has quit as director of education at the Royal Society following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.

Last week Prof Reiss - a Church of England minister - said creationism should be discussed (not taught) in science lessons if pupils raised the issue.

So much for open discussion in schools...

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An excellent post by Jeremy Pierce on Parableman, should clarify the situation...and is definitely worth a read.

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Melanie Phillips opines in The Spectator (UK) about Sarah Palin.

Middle America has found its champion: someone who embodies its values and makes it proud to hold them. She has pulled off something that the left assumed was as likely a development as the sun rising in the west: she makes conservatism attractive, optimistic and fun. She is totally authentic, the real deal: she turns the values of small-town America that she so proudly embodies into a lethal boomerang against the sneering elitists who scorn them. The repercussions will cross the Atlantic: British Tories who have tried to reinvent conservatism as social liberalism may well be sucking their teeth if Sarah Palin actually makes it to the White House.

Well okay, say her detractors, so she's a good performer - but she's still way out there in fruitcake-land because she's a creationist...

But here's where the confusion among commentators kicks in. Palin is a Christian, which means she believes that the world had a Creator. She shares that belief with other Christians along with Jews and Muslims the world over. Unless one takes the view that all religious belief is certifiable, there is nothing remotely odd about a person of faith believing in God.

Then there is the further confusion - fomented in large measure by the astoundingly ignorant assertions made by lawyers and judges in the various US court cases over the teaching of creationism in American schools - that creationism is the same thing as Intelligent Design. It is not.

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As students around the country gear up to head back to classes and homework, some of them will be learning the complete story of evolution for the first time.

Adopted by secondary schools and colleges, Explore Evolution (Hill House Publishers, 2007), the first biology textbook to present the arguments for and against neo-Darwinism, is invigorating the study of biology for a new generation of budding scientists.

Discovery Institute is marketing and selling the book.

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Austrailian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the ordered nature of the cosmos convinces him of the existence of God.

Mr Rudd, a regularly practising Anglican, says that "For me, it's ultimately the order of the cosmos or what I describe as the creation."

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