The Creation vs Evolution Controversy

Dutch Interested in 1925 Scopes Trial

by Crevo Press ~ July 1st, 2009

Several years ago I was surprised to discover that Canadians were ‘treated’ to repeated showings of “Inherit the Wind” in their public schools and media. Since then, I’ve seen announcements of showings (movie and play) in the United Kingdom, Japan, and other countries.

The Dutch newspaper, Nederland Dagblad picked up on this today…and one should expect to see a flurry of news reports and showings as we approach the July 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Scopes Trial.

Hard tegen hard in het apenproces
by Willem Bouwman
Nederlands Dagblad
July 1, 2009

Dayton was in 1925 een suffig en saai stadje in de Amerikaanse staat Tennessee, waar de Butler Act bepaalde dat alleen de Bijbelse scheppingsleer op school onderwezen mocht worden. Plaatselijke ondernemers die Dayton uit zijn sluimerstaat wilden wekken, probeerden een proces uit te lokken over de wet. Zij vroegen een leraar natuurkunde van de plaatselijke High School, John T. Scopes, enkele prijzende woorden over de evolutieleer te zeggen. Dat wilde Scopes wel doen. Hij noemde de evolutieleer een wetenschappelijk gegeven en de schepping een flauwe grap waarin alleen domoren geloofden. Scopes werd meteen gearresteerd wegen overtreding van de Butler Act. Het proces tegen Scopes werd een sensatie, die Dayton een zomer lang tot het hart van de natie maakte. Scopes werd aangeklaagd door William Bryan, een vaardig redenaar, driemaal presidentskandidaat, bijzonder Bijbelvast en overtuigd van de schepping in zes dagen van 24 uur. De verdediging lag in handen van Clarence Darrow, een ongelovige topadvocaat, die betoogde dat miljoenen christenen hun geloof verenigden met de evolutieleer.

Cincinnati Meeting of Paleontologists Visit Creation Museum

by Crevo Press ~ July 1st, 2009

As anyone who has visited the Creation Museum knows, Professor Arnold Miller’s comments about “being demonized” are over the top. Nowhere in the Creation Museum (examples please, Dr. Miller) are evolutionists identified as “…responsible for all the ills of the society.”

Frankly, his comments need to be translated to understand his real complaint:

“This is a very well done museum that shows how wrong Darwin and evolutionists have been for the past 150 years.”

Paleontologists visit enemy turf in evolution debate with field trip to Creation Museum in U.S.

The Amherst Daily News
June 25, 2009

PETERSBURG, Kentucky – In one of the largest gatherings of critics since the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky opened two years ago, six dozen paleontologists in the area for a conference Wednesday took a field trip to get a glimpse of the marketing tactics used by the other side of the evolution debate.

Paleontologists spend their careers studying evolution, and here they were visiting a place where nearly every room is dedicated to disproving it through Creationism, a fundamentalist Christian belief based on a literal interpretation of the Bible that contends God created the universe just a few thousand years ago.

“ The real purpose of the museum visit is to give some of my colleagues an opportunity to sense how they’re being portrayed,” said Arnold Miller, a professor of paleontology at the University of Cincinnati, which is hosting the conference. “ They’re being demonized, I feel, in this museum as people who are responsible for all the ills of society.”

The Guardian On Clarence Darrow

by Crevo Press ~ June 12th, 2009

Despite some exaggeration, the UK’s Guardian G2 magazine insert featured a rather nice piece on Clarence Darrow. The occasion was the 85th Anniversary of Darrow’s defense of the notorious Leopold and Loeb. Like many other liberal views of their crime and Darrow’s defense, the UK applauds Darrow for his emotional appeal to spare their lives and his tirade against capital punishment.

See www.ScopesTrial.org for a critique of the movie, Inherit the Wind.

Defender of the Damned
G2 (The Guardian), UK
by Donald McRae
June 11, 2009

Eighty-five years ago, on 2 June 1924, during a blistering early summer in Chicago, a ravaged courtroom bruiser stepped into the future. Clarence Darrow, with his seamed face and stooped shoulders making him look every one of his 67 years, was America’s greatest and most controversial defender of the lost and the damned. But, as he hunched over his desk to write to the secret love of his life, Mary Field Parton, the old lawyer felt breathless.

Earlier that day, Darrow had agreed to represent Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two teenage lovers and the sons of Chicago millionaires, after they confessed to the world’s first “thrill-killing” of a 14-year-old boy with whom Loeb had sometimes played tennis. Darrow, the Ohio-born son of an abolitionist father and suffrage-supporting mother, was himself a leading civil libertarian and vehement opponent of the death penalty. In this case, however, he confronted seemingly insurmountable odds; his disturbing and disturbed young clients faced certain execution in what newspapers would soon call the trial of the century.

Origin of Life ‘Proof’ Back in Evolutionary Thinking

by Crevo Press ~ May 14th, 2009

It’s been some time since we (creationists) have heard much from the evolutionist camp about origin of life experiments. New York Times science reporter, Nicholas Wade, fills us in on the latest research showing Darwin was right after all. Life started in a warm pond.

The United Kingdom newspaper, The Independent, gave it full page coverage and declared the problem solved!

Key to the origin of life?
By Nicholas Wade (New York Times)
Star Tribune, p. A4
May 14, 2009

The first living cells. “It is precisely because thiswork opens up so many new directions for research that it will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry,” Jack Szostak of the Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in a commentary in Nature, where theworkwas published today. How did RNA molecules form?

Scientists have long suspected that the first forms of life carried their biological information not in DNA but in RNA, its close chemical cousin. Though DNA is better known, RNA performs many of the trickiest operations in living cells. If the first forms of lifewere based on RNA, then the issue is to explain how the first RNA moleculeswere formed.

read more…

Scientists solve the mystery of how the Earth was transformed
By Steve Connor (Science editor)
The Independent (UK), p. 15.
May 14, 2009

OF ALL the scientific mysteries, this is probably the greatest one of all – how did life on Earth begin? We are not talking about how it evolved into the diversity of lifeforms we see today. We are talking about how it originated in the first place.

For all his immense insight into evolution, Charles Darwin himself was stumped. He suggested that whatever the mechanism was that had led to the first replicating lifeforms, it most probably arose in some “warm little pond”, a primordial soup of pre-biotic ingredients where the seed of life first germinated on the early Earth.

Francis Collins and Theistic Evolution

by Crevo Press ~ May 12th, 2009

As Hugh Ross is to progressive creationism, Francis Collins is to theistic evolution.

Evolving faith can mess with the mind
by Kathleen Parker
Chicago Tribune, p. 21.
May 11, 2009

KEY WEST, Fla. — If only William Jennings Bryan had known Francis Collins.

Maybe Bryan, who died just five days after leading the prosecution in the Scopes monkey trial, might have lived longer. Although he won the case, his sudden death suggests the proceedings, during which he was savaged by the press, may have taken a toll.

And who knows? We might never have argued at all about whether evolution should be taught in public schools had Collins been around. Timing.

If Collins is not familiar, he should be. He is the physician-geneticist who led the Human Genome Project for the National Institutes of Health and is noted for his discoveries of disease genes. Alas, he came along about eight decades too late for Bryan. But he may have entered the zeitgeist just in time for thousands (millions?) of others who have trouble embracing both Darwin and God without, as Collins puts it, their brains exploding.