RE: >Firing Line Debate Tonight (fwd)

Vandergraaf, Chuck (vandergraaft@aecl.ca)
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 19:15:35 -0500

Quirks & Quarks,

Managed to listen to this CBC program and found the treatment quite even
handed, even though it did have some sound tracks of what sounded like a
televangelist. The program ended on, what I thought, was a positive
note, with a choir singing "All things bright and beautiful."

Below is what I was able to copy from CBC's home page. It contains some
useful references.

Chuck Vandergraaf

Quirks & Quarks for December 20, 1997

Science and Religion -- Creationism

Since Galileo, theologians and scientists have wrestled to
reconcile the science of the natural world with the Bible. For much of
this centry that debate has been about how to resolve the biblical
account of the creation of Man with Darwin's theory of evolution. Dr
Ronald Numbers, a historian of science at the university of Wisconsin,
Madison has researched and written on the creationist movement (The
Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. Knopf, 1992) and
he says creationists try to rewrite science because they care so much
about it. Dr Douglas Futuyma, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the
State University of New York in Story Brook has written on the
scientific response to the creationists arguments (Science on Trial.
Pantheon, 1983) and he thinks creationists are simply confusing the
issue when they attempt to integrate the supernatural in science. Dr
Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of
Guelph (Monad to Man. Harvard University Press, 1996), thinks
creationism has had a revival in the 1990's with a new kind of critic of
evolution entering the fray. Professor Phillip Johnson, (Defeating
Darwinism by Opening Minds. Inter Varsity Press, 1997) a Law professor
at the University of California at Berkeley, is one of these new
critics, and he believes biologists are making a big mistake by choosing
not to include the possiblity of an active creator in their work. Dr R.
J. Berry (God and Evolution. Hodder and Stoughton, 1988) is a professor
of Genetics at University College, London, and he has managed to resolve
his belief in God and his belief in evolution.