Latest Creation–evolution controversy Stories
High school and college students who understand the geological age of the Earth (4.5 billion years) are much more likely to understand and accept human evolution, according to a University of Minnesota study published in the March issue of the journal Evolution.The finding could give educators a new strategy for teaching evolution, since the Earth's age is typically covered in physical rather than biological science classes.Researchers Sehoya Cotner and Randy Moore, professors in College of...
LACEY, Wash., Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The evolution controversy rages hot as ever, with aggressive initiatives from popular secular scientists and best-selling authors like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in fighting deep-seated religious beliefs of Creationism and Intelligent Design. But according to Lawrence Wood, author of "Evolution's Fatal Flaw: The Inevitable Consequence of the Need to Ensure Species Survival" (published by iUniverse), evolutionists have failed to address evolution's...
A University of Minnesota study has determined high school biology teachers often shape their student's views about evolution and creationism. Professors Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner surveyed 1,000 university students taking introductory biology classes. They wanted to determine how biology majors view evolution compared with non-majors. The scientists said their results showed the two groups' views were similar and revealed high school biology teachers influence whether college students...
College students' views about evolution and creationism are often shaped by what they learned in their high school biology classes, according to a University of Minnesota study published in the May issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.Co-authors Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner, professors in the College of Biological Sciences, surveyed 1,000 students taking introductory biology classes at the University of Minnesota to learn how biology majors view...
By Steve Connor Creationism should be included in science lessons to reduce the confusion among the rising numbers of schoolchildren who have been brought up to reject the principles of evolution, one of the country's leading scientists said yesterday. Citing evidence that more than one in 10 children in British state schools now believes in creationism, Professor Michael Reiss, the director of education at the Royal Society, called for such beliefs to be discussed and debated in class by...
By Day, Matthew doi: 10.1017/S0009640708000863 Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design. By Peter Bowler. New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. x + 258 pp. $24.95 cloth. Rummaging around for a title to his now-classic study of the religious movements that rocked central and western New York state during the first half of the nineteenth century, Whitney Cross decided that he...
In many ways, much has changed since the famous Scopes Monkey trial of 1925. In recent years, US courts have consistently ruled that teaching explicitly religious alternatives to evolution in public schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. But in a new essay published in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, political scientist Michael Berkman and his colleagues show that despite these many legal victories, a surprising number of public high school biology...
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Educated as a geologist in her native Hungary, Eniko Farkas knows, understands and firmly believes in the science behind evolution. Still, she was caught off guard last year when a visitor to the Museum of the Earth where she volunteers angrily confronted her, denouncing evolution and insisting the museum teach creationism instead. "I had a difficult time getting out of the situation," said Farkas, a retired Cornell University librarian and volunteer at the museum...
An educational intervention that included reading books sympathetic to and opposed to "intelligent design" (ID) prompted students in a college introductory biology course to report that they had become more accepting of evolution as an explanation for life, according to a study in the November 2005 issue of BioScience. The intervention, which was studied by Steven D. Verhey of Central Washington University, encouraged students to read parts of an ID-friendly, anti-evolution text, as...
By Jon Hurdle HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Members of a Pennsylvania school board were motivated by their religious beliefs when they decided "intelligent design" should be taught to biology students along with Darwin's theory of evolution, witnesses testified in federal court on Tuesday. Eleven parents are suing the Dover Area School District to stop the teaching of intelligent design, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Proponents of the...
