Creation Science Research Articles

Science, state, and spirituality: Stories of four creationists in South Korea.

This paper presents an analysis of the birth and growth of scientific creationism in South Korea by focusing on the lives of four major contributors. After creationism arrived in Korea in 1980 through the global campaign of leading American creationists, including Henry Morris and Duane Gish, it steadily grew in the country, reflecting its historical and social conditions, and especially its developmental state with its structured mode of managing science and appropriating religion. We argue that while South Korea's creationism started with the state-centered conservative Christianity under the government that also vigilantly managed scientists, it subsequently constituted some technical experts' efforts to move away from the state and its religion and science through their negotiation of a new identity as Christian intellectuals ( chisigin). Our historical study will thus explain why South Korea became what Ronald Numbers has called "the creationist capital of the world."

The Contingency of Creation and Modern Science

ABSTRACTThe Bible reveals a free, contingent act of the triune, personal God as the origin of the world. This paper explores the fruitfulness of taking the contingency of creation as the starting-point for our thinking about the natural world. We will see that the contingency of creation implies a conception of the natural order which is in harmony with modern science. It is the foundation for the experimental method and the use of mathematics, provides an understanding of contingent laws of nature, shows that natural order is open to historical evolution, and makes room for chance and novelty.

Origin of the Human Species by Dennis Bonnette

Reviewed by: Origin of the Human Speciesby Dennis Bonnette Earl Muller S.J. Origin of the Human Speciesby Dennis Bonnette, ed. Peter A. Redpath, 3rdexpanded edition (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2014), xxviii + 266 pp. T he third editionof Dennis Bonnette's Origin of the Human Speciesis substantially the same as the first edition, which came out in 2001. There has been a minor emendation of the text, and the footnotes and bibliography have been corrected where that was necessary. This expanded edition includes two articles by Bonnette published since this work first appeared: "The Myth of the 'Myth' of Adam and Eve," from a Polish publication edited by Mary Helen Klinge-Drucker, Humanistyka i realizm, which has not yet appeared, and "The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution," in Faith & Reason33:1–4 (2008): 55–67. The index has been revised to include these two appendices. This is fundamentally a philosophical and theological analysis of the issues underlying the theory of evolution from a Thomistic perspective. Bonnette is well-informed on the scientific data brought to bear on the question and the positions taken by atheistic naturalists and "scientific creationists." Intelligent design proponents are also represented—indeed, Michael Behe wrote the foreword to the second edition. Bonnette will side with paleoanthropologists on the antiquity of true humans. The artistry of the Acheulean tools, for instance, indicates true intelligence but is associated with Homo erectus(and not Homo sapiens). Recent earlier dating of these tools has proved awkward for some theories of evolution, and Bonnette reports the arguments from all sides with considerable detachment, tracing the debate from Darwin's original theory of gradualistic transformism to the theories of "punctuated equilibrium." As a philosopher, Bonnette examines the logical, epistemological, and metaphysical foundations of various, at times conflicting, claims of natural scientists. He notes that the process of classifying fossil remains, or of connecting them into a series, is itself a "mental, not an extramental, act," an interpretation imposed on the empirical data (11). This interpretation is based on a convergence of evidence that "persuades ' beyond a reasonable doubt'" (13). Bonnette does not challenge this as such (though he is conversant with the inconsistency in the evidence), but he points out that "perinoetic speculations, especially as they extrapolate from present data to prehistorical conclusions, forever foreclose the possibility of apodictic certitude" (14). [End Page 345]Metaphysics, on the other hand, is able to achieve such certitude. Thus, for example, metaphysics can establish that there is a Creator. Any theory of evolution that purports to do away with the necessity of God is philosophically incoherent. This does not preclude the possibility of an evolution that "may give greater glory to the First Cause by preserving the natural efficacy of secondary causes" (18). Bonnette's study begins in earnest in the second chapter. Anti-evolutionists are generally willing to concede that there is variation within a given species and that there can be development in these variations (intra-specific evolution). The problem enters in with claims that "a form has transcended its species" (extra-specific evolution). Bonnette sets himself the task of determining whether "natural species" exist and "how inter-specific transformism, if it occurs, can be compatible with traditional philosophical principles." The nominalist understanding of "species" as "only convenient words to describe mid-ranges of ever-blending series of unique individuals" (28) is rejected. The "biological species concept" is likewise set aside: "The biologist seeks perinoetic knowledge: knowledge in which, by purely descriptive substitute signs, we conceptually grasp an organism's sensible or common accidents. The philosopher pursues dianoetic knowledge in which, by careful examination of essential properties or proper accidents, we understand a thing's essence or nature" (30). He concludes that "several progressively more perfect natural species exist" and that "more than one natural species of animal exist" (38–39). This philosophical definition of species would place mice and elephants within the same species (possessed of five senses) but oysters (not possessed of those senses) in another. He examines only the most important natural species—plants, animals, and human beings—to determine whether they are truly distinct and to determine...

BELIEF AND SUNBURN IN THE WEIGHT ROOM

1 0 6 Y B E L I E F A N D S U N B U R N I N T H E W E I G H T R O O M B R U C E F L E M I N G Not long ago I had a conversation with a former student of mine from the U.S. Naval Academy, where I have taught for three decades , a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. I had some credibility with him, both as his professor of several years earlier and as a fellow weight-room user. Indeed, our conversation took place in the weight room we both use, which meant it didn’t last very long because serious conversation in the weight room is impossible. So that left me mulling over what we might have said and its implications long after the brief interaction was over. We had shaken hands and exchanged grunts, which is about the extent of weight-room conversation (there are places where words do not rule, and the weight room is one of them), and so I felt I could make a brief comment about the brick-red color, obviously the result of too much sun that weekend, of his normally beige face. ‘‘Slather on that sunblock,’’ I encouraged him, I hope in an avuncular tone. To avoid any appearance of telling him what to do – after all, I’m not in his chain of command now – I immediately added, ‘‘My mother has to go to the dermatologist every year or so to get stu√ cut o√ her face. And she never really even went in the sun.’’ 1 0 7 R The captain’s response was interesting. ‘‘I believe,’’ he said, ‘‘that heredity has as much to do with whether you get that stu√ as going out in the sun.’’ The captain was telling me what he believed. I immediately had a thousand questions, reasons why what he was suggesting might well be false – was heredity an equal player with sun exposure in producing skin problems? – or in any case could not be asserted without substantiation. He was o√ering me belief; my impulse was to respond with analysis. The distinction between belief and analysis is a distinction between two fundamental manners of doing things. It’s the dichotomy played out in the ongoing public discussion between matters of faith and matters of science. Currently in the United States, this is couched in terms of a conflict between teaching what the Hebrew Bible is held to say about the creation of the world and teaching what science, building on Darwin, says on the same subject. As one example of how timely this conflict is, the Creation Museum that opened in 2007 in Petersburg, Kentucky, makes clear that it is founded on belief. Its website opens with the words ‘‘Prepare to Believe.’’ It tells us, ‘‘The state-of-the-art 75,000square -foot Creation Museum brings the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form.’’ The site, to be sure, suggests that there is no conflict between belief and science – but only if you accept a di√erent sort of ‘‘science,’’ one based, in fact, on belief: Creationists love science! In fact, the word science means ‘‘knowledge.’’ We invite you to dive into the Bible and the scientific evidence with us to gather as much knowledge about God’s creation as you can. You’ll learn about the different types of science and discover facts and logical arguments you might have never considered. When you start with the Bible as your ultimate authority, your mind is unlocked and ready to discover creation science. By ‘‘di√erent types of science,’’ the museum means types that scientists would not consider science: they are not based on scienti fic inquiry. The museum suggests that there is at least one other kind: ‘‘creation science.’’ It speaks of ‘‘the Bible and the scientific 1 0 8 F L E M I N G Y evidence,’’ suggesting that the two are di√erent – but the Bible is the ultimate authority. ‘‘The Creation Museum shows why God’s infallible...

Catholicism and Evolution: A History from Darwin to Pope Francis by Michael Chaberek, O.P.

Reviewed by: Catholicism and Evolution: A History from Darwin to Pope Francis by Michael Chaberek, O.P. John Baptist Ku O.P. Catholicism and Evolution: A History from Darwin to Pope Francis. By Michael Chaberek, O.P. Kettering, Ohio: Angelico, 2015. Pp. x + 354. $21.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-62138-137-2. In Catholicism and Evolution, Michael Chaberek mounts a case against the theory of evolution in ten chapters and an appendix. He believes that the Catholic Church unambiguously ruled out the evolution of man's body but has, more recently, allowed a plurality of views, even mutually exclusive ones (3). He rejects Darwin's theory for philosophical reasons, because it appears to imply that a species has no proper end of simply being itself. That is, according to evolution, "each being by nature strives to become something else" so that "over time, a bacterium is supposed to turn into a plant, a reptile into a bird, a monkey into a man" (4). He also rules out evolution on scientific grounds, maintaining that "it is impossible to transform from one nature to another by way of small accidental changes" (3). The (theological) solution, as he sees it, is offered by intelligent design theory, which provides an "adequate scientific background for further development of the doctrine of creation within Catholic theology" (5). [End Page 453] In chapter 1, Chaberek reports on the birth of the evolutionary paradigm in the mid-eighteenth century among Charles Darwin and his less-well-known precursors, and examines the core neo-Darwinian principles of mutation and natural selection that explain the evolution of new species. Quoting Étienne Gilson, Chaberek reasons that because the term "evolution" refers to an unfolding of something preexisting, "creative evolution" is contradictory and impossible (7). That is, either there is something there already, with its potencies in place to unfold, or else there is a creator creating something new. In addition to challenging the principles of evolution, Chaberek exposes evolution's theme of strife, over against a view of an harmonious world, and Darwin's aggressive agenda. Chapter 2, "From Biblical Creationism to Intelligent Design," outlines the principal positions on evolution: young-earth creationism, progressive creationism, theistic evolution, and atheistic evolution. Chaberek traces the trajectory from young-earth or scientific creationism to intelligent design theory before discussing the emergence of theistic evolution. Young-earth creationism seeks scientific proof of Genesis's account of a six-day creation and of biblical genealogies that would establish the earth's age at less than 10,000 years. Intelligent design scientists "believe that natural selection and random mutations cannot explain the entire complexity of the organic world" (42). Thus, the intelligent ordering of things in the universe would require an intelligent producer. In chapter 3, "Early Statements of the Magisterium on Evolution," Chaberek comments on the 1860 Synod of Cologne, Vatican I's Dei Filius (1870), and Leo XIII's Arcanum (1880). Chaberek interprets the Cologne Synod to rule out the evolution of the human body in its determination that it is against the faith to hold that "man as regards his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect" (73). And Chaberek takes Dei Filius's assertion that "the world and all things which are contained in it … were produced, according to their whole substance," to be a challenge to the theory of evolution (79). Moreover, he understands Leo XIII's formulation that God "miraculously took [Eve] from the side of Adam" to preclude her evolution (82). Chapter 4, "The Rise of Catholic Evolutionism," presents six Catholic figures who published proevolution works: George Mivart (1871); Fr. Raffaello Caverni (1877); Fr. Dalmace Leroy, O.P. (1891); Fr. James Zahm, C.S.C. (1896); Bishop Geremia Bonomelli (1898); and Bishop John Hedley (1898). Caverni and Hedley stopped short of saying that the human body evolved. Caverni's, Leroy's, and Zahm's books ended up on the Index, and Bonomelli issued a retraction of sorts. In chapter 5, "The Pontifical Biblical Commission Decrees, 1905-1909," Chaberek determines that this Commission's decree of 1909 "claims that Genesis tells a true history of the creation of the world...

Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth: Qur’an and Archeology in a Creationist Documentary Film

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism.

Origin stories A Brief History of Creation Science and the Search for the Origin of Life Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves II Norton, 2015. 332 pp.

Looking back at our ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be alive

The evolution of antievolution policies after Kitzmiller versus Dover.

A phylogeny identifies ancestors of modern creationist legislation

Book Review: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

Book Review: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

THE CHRISTIAN CORE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

AbstractIntelligent design (ID) theorists assert that ID is a scientific theory that is merely consistent with some religious beliefs. Many critics point to the circumstantial evidence of the apparent development of ID from creation science and the affiliation of ID with mainstream evangelical organizations to assert its religious orientation. This article suggests that the position of ID proponents is a substantial understatement, and that beyond the circumstantial evidence of critics, fundamental Christian doctrine constitutes the essence of ID theory. The bulk of scholarship on ID is polarized into those for and against, as most focus on adjudicating ID truth claims, but this adversarial structure elides some important complexities. This article sets aside the truth claims of ID and focuses more broadly on the discourse in which it is situated to show the Christian core of ID and to examine several hallmarks of religion apparent from this perspective.

Life's blueprint: the science and art of embryo creation

In the span of just three decades, scientific understanding of the formation of embryos has undergone a major revolution. The implications of these new research findings have an immediate bearing on human health and future therapies, yet most nonscientists remain quite unaware of the exciting news. In this engaging book, a distinguished geneticist offers a clear, jargon-free overview of the field of developmental biology. Benny Shilo transforms complicated scientific paradigms into understandable ideas, employing an array of photographic images to demonstrate analogies between the cells of an embryo and human society. Shilo's innovative approach highlights important concepts in a way that will be intuitive and resonant with readers' own experiences. The author explains what is now known about the mechanisms of embryonic development and the commanding role of genes. For each paradigm under discussion, he provides both a scientific image and a photograph he has taken in the human world. These pairs of images imply powerful metaphors, such as the similarities between communication among cells and among human beings, or between rules embedded in the genome and laws that govern human society. The book concludes with a glimpse of promising future possibilities, including the generation of tissues and organs for use as spare parts.

From the Editors

Dear JAAL community, The title for this issue, “Enlightened Brotherhood,” refers to the cover image, a photograph taken by M. Denzell Moton from the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Although Moton does not consider himself a photographer, he has made it a practice to catch off-guard moments of his fraternity brothers with his iPhone. This particular photo illustrates the young men choosing a song to play at the reception where one of their brothers was “jumping the broom” with his fiancée. This issue pays homage to Walter Dean Myers in Alfred Tatum's commentary, “Writing Through the Labyrinth of Fears: The Legacy of Walter Dean Myers.” Tatum's commentary celebrates Myers's near-50-year body of work and charges writing teachers to develop the critical writing voices of adolescents, especially young black men during a time in U.S. history that needs to hear these perspectives. Guadalupe López-Bonilla's column, “Curricular Reforms in Mexico: Challenges for Developing Disciplinary Literacy in Upper Secondary Education” featured in Raul Mora's Policy and Advocacy department, describes the challenges and debates associated with recent educational reforms in Mexico that have extended national public schooling and disciplinary learning up to age 15. In this issue's Pop Culture/Digital Literacies department (edited by Jennifer Scott Curwood), Jill Castek and Julie Coiro summarize some key findings about online reading comprehension and share design considerations and challenges for capturing online research and skills to inspire new ideas about literacy instruction that uses digital literacies and new technologies. Sharon Pitcher's Literacy Lens, “Web 2.0 Reflective Inquiry: A Transformative Literacy Teacher Education Tool,” discusses a blog where teachers shared the challenges of incorporating digital literacies instruction in their classrooms. Benjamin Boche's feature article, “Multimodal Scaffolding in the Secondary English Classroom Curriculum,” illustrates how an English teacher used a variety of multimodal texts to help students understand complex texts as part of an interdisciplinary environmental studies curriculum in which English, environmental studies, and social studies were team-taught through thematic units. Anne Guerin and Brian Murphy discuss the reading fluency development of three young adolescent striving readers in a seven-week intervention program in Southern Ireland in “Repeated Reading as a Method to Improve Reading Fluency for Struggling Adolescent Readers.” Lee Mountain explains a content area assignment given to preservice teachers across various disciplines to better understand the connections between their content area vocabulary and comprehension in “Recurrent Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes: A Morphemic Approach to Disciplinary Literacy.” In “The Affordances of Blogs and Digital Video: New Potentials for Exploring Topics and Representing Meaning,” Jason Ranker describes how two ninth-grade adolescent males used blogs and digital video (among other media) to inquire into the subject matter of fast food in a self-chosen topic of a class-assigned inquiry project. Finally, male zine authors' composing processes are explored and analyzed, with implications provided for content area learning, in “‘Nomadic Knowledge’: Men Writing Zines for Content Learning” by Barbara Guzzetti, Leslie Foley, and Mellinee Lesley. Stergios Botzakis's Visual and Digital Texts review, “Smartphone Resources for Teachers,” describes apps that connect teachers to students and their parents. James Blasingame's Print-Based Texts column includes three book reviews: Bill Nye's (2014) Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, Ellen Hopkins's (2014) Rumble, and Jack Gantos's (2014) The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza. In selecting these texts, Blasingame presents topics and characters whose identities are often marginalized in mainstream literature and institutions. In the Professional Resources column, Marcelle Haddix further examines the significance of “Enlightened Brotherhood” as she reiterates the need to continuously and explicitly state that “Black Lives Matter.” This call is highlighted this month in reviews written by Darrell Cleveland Hucks of Trayvon Martin, Race, and American Justice: Writing Wrong edited by Fasching-Varner, Reynolds, Albert, and Martin and by Kenneth Fasching-Varner of (Re)Teaching Trayvon: Education for Racial Justice and Human Freedom edited by Evans-Winters and Bethune. Finally, Peggy Semingson's Meeting of the Minds asks JAAL users to name the literacy leader who most informs their thinking, wrapping up the issue with the important recognition of the connection between scholarship and practice. Happy reading, Emily Neil Skinner & Margaret Carmody Hagood

“Ye Shall Know Them By Their Fruits”: Evolution, Eschatology, and the Anticommunist Politics of George McCready Price

George McCready Price (1870–1963) is best known as the Canadian-born Seventh-day Adventist amateur geologist who pioneered the idea of a young earth in the early twentieth century. Price laid the foundation for modern “creation science,” which took off decades later, with the publication of Henry Morris and John Whitcomb Jr.'sThe Genesis Floodin 1961. Despite his extensive writings on the details of geology, however, Price admitted that his main objections to evolution were not scientific but “moral” and “philosophical”—the “fruits” of the “corrupt tree” of evolution. Historians have almost entirely neglected this aspect of Price's opus; yet, Price authored a series of works from 1902 to 1925 that, in increasingly alarming tones, blamed evolution for socialism and communism. This article analyzes these works by examining Price's Adventist background, his early experiences working and living in the United States, and the broader political context in which he wrote. It also assesses the impact of Price's political writings on subsequent generations of creationists and conservative evangelicals. Price should be seen as part of the long process by which a New Christian Right was forged from materials including creationism and anticommunism. He was not only a geologist but also a creationist politician.

Origin and Evolution of the Late-Cenozoic Uplift Creation Myth

The notion of geologically recent uplift of the Sierra Nevada is derived from Whitney’s 1865 geologic cross section, which is imaginary. There is no uncontested field evidence to support the late Cenozoic Sierran uplift paradigm. Highly accessible evidence contrary to Whitney’s geologic cross section occurs along Rawhide Road near Jamestown, in the range’s foothills. Nevertheless, Whitney’s interpretation fit the perception of his contemporaries and so was accepted as fact and was passed down, with elaborations added over generations. Sierran geoscientists generally believe that all uplift evidence was discovered early on, which was not the case. Across the entire range, field evidence exists that is inconsistent with the paradigm, and this evidence is unknown, unacknowledged, and/or unreferenced. The greatest problem with the paradigm is biological: under it, the Sierra Nevada would have been too low and warm for giant sequoias to have migrated southwest into the range. American geomorphology is considerably based on the Sierra’s uplift and glacial imagined evidence, and because in geomorphology there is no incentive to be correct and no penalty to be incorrect, this branch of the earth sciences may forever remain as mainstream creation science; that is, miracles, or implausible events, occur. Additionally, the origin and evolution of the Sierra’s uplift creation myth, which is the result of very intelligent geoscientists, is applicable to theological scholarship on how religions, propagated by intelligent and literate men, originated and evolved over time.

Professor Tyndale John Rendle-Short (1919–2010), British and Australian paediatrician: A life in two domains

Professor Tyndale John Rendle-Short (1919-2010), a British and Australian paediatrician, lived a professional life of considerable influence in two domains - academic paediatrics and fundamentalist theology. A Cambridge medical graduate (1943) and doctor-soldier, he was appointed as the Foundation Professor of Child Health at the University of Queensland (1961). In Australia, he was a pioneer in three paediatric developments ('rooming-in' for mothers in hospitals, autism research and cystic fibrosis). His A Synopsis of Children's Diseases was published in six editions, was translated into three languages and was used as a standard paediatric textbook on four Continents. Distinct from this clinical domain, as a passionate anti-Darwinist his fundamentalist theology was that variously self-described as 'theistic evolution' (believing in 'progressive Creationism') and later that of 'six-literal day young-earth Creation'. He established and was the Foundation Chairman of the Creation Science Foundation (UK) and was World Chairman of the US-based Creation Ministries International. This biography is a record of this perhaps paradoxical and unique life.

Evolution

At this point in the Culture Wars, or the War on Science, or whichever rift is restraining the success of American students, perhaps it is time to amend Theodosius Dobzhansky’s maxim to “Nothing makes sense in light of evolution; nothing in creation science makes sense.” In American Genesis, Jeffrey P. Moran deconstructs the schism that started with the Scopes trial and shows us that science, with science education on its coattails, has been maligned by an array of cultural influences that have created a divide in this country that may never heal.Moran starts by looking at how the anti-evolution movement convoluted the women’s rights movement. (He uses the term “anti-evolution” as opposed to “creationist,” because it began as an oppositional faction, and creation science was developed later in a series of repeatedly failed attempts to confront evolutionary theory itself.) By prescribing gender-based attributes to science and religiosity, the anti-evolutionists implicated the changing role of women in society. Even more so, Christian men were “pushed into fighting Darwinism as a way of solidifying their masculine identity.” Clearly, ideology fueled the development of the anti-evolution movement, as evolution was depicted as a liberal philosophy rather than an explanation of life’s diversity and unity. In a similar vein, the acceptance of evolution was entangled in the civil rights movement, as W. E. B. DuBois connected the future of his race to the secular forces of scientific progress. African American religious leaders were quick to point out their fundamentalism and press for their congregants to reject evolution. However, in both social conflicts, evolution can be applied as a force for fairness, with men equal to women, and all men created equal, with that verb used loosely.By the time 20th-century Southerners embraced their heritage to the point of calling themselves Neo-Confederates, the “problem” of evolution was not one of scientific veracity. Moran considers regionalism the third major thorn in the side of American progress. Not only did Northerners portray Southerners as rural and intolerant, but also, the South embraced the role with rampant anti-intellectualism. Isolationism was taken to the extreme, with racism, sexism, and religion leading to a South dominated by anti-evolutionist, white Christian males.While YouTube clips featuring confident scientists running circles around anti-evolutionists abound, it is hard to say whether the picture that Moran paints is reassuring or not. On one hand, there is an odd comfort in knowing that there is a history of backlash that should be able to be quelled with enough modern thinking in terms of civil rights and forward thinking. On the other hand, one may be concerned that this ideology may be too entrenched to confront, at least in the classroom.According to Moran (among others), the classroom is the battleground for this conflict. It is unclear what “genesis” he is referring to in the title of his book. Maybe the earnest confrontation of anti-evolutionist attitudes is setting the scene for a cultural revolution. Groups like the National Center for Science Education are now the watchdogs not only for fighting anti-evolutionism, but also for promoting reasonable science education. The Internet is ablaze with science blogs in the same vein; Moran even cites the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson’s inane character during an Intelligent Design flare-up in the 1980s. Would there have been a similar long-lasting skirmish over gravity or atomic theory, given the cultural influences? Considering the stubbornness of the anti-scientific opposition, one may conclude so. American Genesis is a fair presentation of the history of the “controversy” that is evolutionary theory. Seeing no need to address a debate over the science, Moran delves deep enough into the history to make a convincing case for a strident ideological wedge – the one that the Discovery Institute hoped to drive between Americans of all different backgrounds, regardless of intellect. His book belongs on the shelf of every science teacher and professor in this country, to remind us of the struggle that continues to lead us to fight for everything from curricular standards to open-minded students.

American genesis: the antievolution controversies from Scopes to creation science

American genesis: the antievolution controversies from Scopes to creation science

Imagination and reason: rival perspectives on science

Much of the flavor of this book can be drawn from its dedication to a short list of ‘‘Scientists of Dedication and Integrity’’, which includes some of the leading climate scientists of recent years. Writing for a general readership, Powell sets out to uncover ‘‘why only half the public accept[s the] ... evidence’’ for global warming, focusing upon ‘‘deniers [who] submit climate scientists to a modern inquisition conducted not in a courtroom but on the front pages of newspapers, on right-wing radio and television, on the blogosphere, and on denier websites’’ (3). Powell, a geochemistry Ph.D. and former member of the US National Science Board, generally does a good job of explaining the fundamentals of climate science and in illuminating the institutional and ideological character of climate denialism. Although not as detailed as Oreskes and Conway’s recent Merchants of Doubt, which focused on the ‘‘template’’ for contemporary denialism provided by the Marshall Institute, Powell’s coverage of denialism is broader and more up to date. While focused upon climate science denial, Powell is also fundamentally concerned, as were Oreskes and Conway, with the broader implications of the attack on established science that climate denialism involves and its intimate association with campaigns such as that of ‘‘Creation Science’’, those against AIDs treatments, and also the effects of tobacco smoke on health. I share these concerns but am inclined to believe that the naive positivist perspective that Powell shares with much of the science community tends to nourish denialism rather than challenge it. This review elaborates this argument in light of those made by Powell. In his introduction, Powell (4) clarifies his use of the term ‘‘deniers’’.

Cultivating a Constituency for Conservation

Cultivating a Constituency for Conservation

World literature and the creation of literary worlds

Based on the author’s work as general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, the essay develops an approach to world literature centered on world creation. The creation of literary worlds can be understood within the framework of possible worlds theory as developed by Thomas Pavel, Lubomir Dolezel and others. Taking its point of departure from possible worlds theory, the essay then focuses on specific genres that foreground the capacity of literature to create whole worlds, including world creation myths and science fiction. Three terms are used to analyze this body of literature: reference; scale; and model. While the category of reference accounts for the status of the worlds to be found within literary works, scale and model capture the particular challenges world creation literature faces.