<p>All,</p>
<p>I thought we had a really interesting topic posted by collegeperson12 a few weeks ago. The thread however, eventually digressed into topics that should have been on a separate thread. In any case, I'd like to revive the original post by collegeperson12 (I hope you don't mind). It was very interesting to see everybody's take on this, but I was particularly surprised at how many people considered anything Bible-related or "religious" as anti-intellectual.</p>
<p>collegeperson12:
"I think this is really bad news for the scientific community. A Berkeley professor is spearheading the "creationist" movement and is denying the validity of evolution. The arguments for intelligent design are simply preposterous, and goes against all the ideals of the Enlightenment. Science is based upon empirical observation of the natural world, not on the Bible. This Berkeley professor is waging a war of ignorance against science.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from the article in Newsweek:</p>
<p>"Soon thereafter, I.D. burst into public awareness with the publication of "Darwin on Trial" by Phillip Johnson, a Berkeley law professor who underwent a midlife conversion to evangelical Christianity. As a scientific theory, I.D. is making only slow progress in overcoming evolution's 150-year head start. Johnson and his followers seek to overturn two of the central precepts of evolution. The first is universal common descent, the idea that every living creature can trace an unbroken lineage back to the same primitive life forms, which arose billions of years ago from nonliving matter. Biologists, armed with the powerful tool of molecular genetics, overwhelmingly accept this view. Nevertheless, I.D. proponents are seeking to undermine it, mostly through popular books like "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells. Wells dissects some of the most famous textbook examples of evolution, such as the way peppered moths adapted a new color pattern for better camouflage after pollution killed the lichens on tree trunks. "There is a lot of ambiguity and dissent about the lines of evidence," insists Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. "It's in the scientific literature, and we think students should know about it."</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6884904...ewsweek/page/2/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6884904...ewsweek/page/2/</a>"</p>