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Oxygen may be the clue to first appearance of large animals, says Queen’s prof The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago – a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as “Darwin’s Dilemma” – may be due to a huge increase of oxygen in the world’s oceans, says Queen’s paleontologist Guy Narbonne, an expert in the early evolution of animals and their ecosystems. In 2002, Dr. Narbonne and his research team found the world’s oldest complex life forms between layers of sandstone on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland. This pushed back...

Author Ray Comfort says TV satirist too insecure to accept offer A Christian author and TV host whose latest book, "Intelligent Design Versus Evolution: Letters to an Atheist," debunks Darwinism has challenged fellow television personality Bill Maher to a public debate on the origins of the Earth. Says Ray Comfort: "Mr. Maher, like all believers in the theory of evolution, simply has a blind faith in a theory-tale that can't be substantiated. It's just another opiate of the masses – a religion called 'Darwinism' that piously robes itself in what it thinks is 'science.' It is true science fiction." Comfort...

An examination board at the centre of a storm surrounding the teaching of creationism in UK schools has committed to re-visit its guidance to avoid the threat to science teaching that many feared, and to issue strict guidance to trainee teachers on their exam programme. The 'Gateway Science' specification had caused controversy because teachers were asked to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation).” But now the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) exam board has said they are “happy to commit to reviewing the wording of this part of the Gateway Science (Biology)...

The leaders of the intelligent design movement are once again holding court in America, defending themselves against charges that ID is not science. One of the expert witnesses is Michael Behe, author of the ID movement’s seminal volume Darwin’s Black Box. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, testified about the scientific character of ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the court case of eight families suing the school district and the school board in Dover, Pa., for mandating the teaching of intelligent design. Under cross-examination, Behe made many interesting comparisons between ID and the big-bang theory —...

KU prof's e-mail irks fundamentalists http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/living/religion/13252419.htm Associated Press LAWRENCE - Critics of a new course that equates creationism and intelligent design with mythology say an e-mail sent by the chairman of the University of Kansas religious studies department proves the course is designed to mock fundamentalist Christians.In a recent message on a Yahoo listserv, Paul Mirecki said of the course "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and Other Religious Mythologies": "The fundies want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies...

When Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn waded into a heated debate over evolution in the United States, his goal was not to persuade American schools to teach that God created the world in six days. Nor was it to condemn Charles Darwin and his "The Origin of Species," a book that Schoenborn, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vienna, considers a great work in the history of ideas. His concern, Schoenborn told Reuters at his episcopal palace in central Vienna, was to stand up for common sense in a debate that had become ideological. He wanted to make clear where the Church...

Exhibit on Darwin creates Bush bash at museum gala It was supposed to be a fund-raiser for the American Museum of Natural History. But a new exhibit on Charles Darwin caused the Wednesday evening gala to evolve into something of a rally against President Bush's preferred theory of intelligent design. "This is a time when those of us who care about science and Darwin have to take a stand," museum patron Tom Brokaw told the black-tied and bejeweled species, including Caroline Kennedy, Princess Firyal of Jordan, Viacom big shot Tom Freston, Michael Eisner, Eva Longoria, Jimmy Buffett, Jonathan Demme, Nora...

A brilliant piece by Krauthammer, as usual. The punch line: "How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too."

MR. GILLEN: All right. Good afternoon, Your Honor. I want to echo the sentiments of everyone who has appeared in these proceedings and thank you for your cordiality, your respect for the lawyers who appeared before you, and that of your staff. I would also compliment my opposing counsel and, of course, my colleagues. That said, I'd like to address the argument of plaintiffs' counsel. And I think that for all the magnificent vista of science and religious liberty that he has discussed in detail, what is missing is due attention to the facts of this matter. Because as I...

A column about Kansas Science StandardsMonday, November 14, 2005 By Steve Abrams, chairman, Kansas State Board of Education Evolution. Creation. Intelligent Design. Is there any truth or facts that can come out of what has been bandied about in the media in the last few days? Let me first comment a little about what my critics claim. Some of my critics claim it is nothing short of trying to insert the supernatural into the Science classroom. Others claim I am trying to insert creation into the Science classroom via the backdoor. A few claim that I know nothing about science...

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom. Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom." But on Saturday, the Republican said that, "Science leads you where it leads you." Santorum was in Beaver Falls to present Geneva College President Kenneth A. Smith with a $1.345 million check from federal funds for renovations that include the straightening and relocation of...

In an election in Pennsylvania this week, voters tossed out eight members of the Pittsburgh school board who wanted Intelligent Design theory to be taught alongside evolution in school. But should Intelligent Design -- the theory that living organisms were created at least in part by an intelligent designer, not by a blind process of evolution by natural selection -- be taught in public schools? In one way, the answer to this question is simple: if it's a scientific theory, it should; if it's not, it shouldn't (on pain of flaunting the Establishment Clause). The question, however, is whether Intelligent...

TOPEKA, Kan. - Risking the kind of nationwide ridicule it faced six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.

For the past six weeks, the debate over evolution and intelligent design has played out in a Pennsylvania courtroom. Today, Kansas gets the national spotlight back — and with it, the possibility of a federal lawsuit here. “What’s going on in Kansas,” said Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, “is much more radical and much more dangerous to science education” than the contested decision in Dover, Pa., to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in public school science classes. Intelligent design speculates that the world is too complex to have evolved without the help of an unknown designer — an...

Evolution's fate in Kansas schools has been an ongoing controversy for six years. Tomorrow Kansas Board of Education members will vote on new science standards that would allow for criticisms of evolution including the teaching of intelligent design. The standards are expected to pass and that worries science teacher Lisa Volland, who says this could change the way she teaches science in the future, "For one thing the proposals that they're talking about are not scientific theories, they haven't been scientifically tested and for me as a teacher to just lean back on that and say well this is what...