[PW] Re: The Evolution of Creationism (Timothy PWEE)

[Michael Biltz]

All this talk of the evolution of creationism has made me smile.  I am a librarian who has studied the evolution/creationism controversy as a hobby and find that even supposed 'experts' are sometimes grossly ignorant of the history of the conflict.  First of all, Intelligent Designers are not really the same as Creationists.  They do not even like each other.  ID's roots can actually be found in the writings of agnostics Fred Hoyle and Michael Denton.  ID celebrities Philip Johnson and Michael Behe started out as Darwinists but changed their mind after reading Denton's Evolution-a theory in crisis.  Most IDers do have religious and political motivations, but the theory itself is stripped of religious trappings.  Critics see this as a 'Trojan Horse' version of creationism, but I am slow to adopt conspiracy theories about people's 'true' motives.

As a critic of the modern synthesis version of neo-Darwinism, but not an endorser of ID, I think people should be aware of what is known as the Salem hypothesis.  People with backgrounds in biology and physics tend to support evolutionary theory, while folks with backgrounds in math, engineering and computer science tend to doubt it.  For example, check this article out:
http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/mathint.html

Ok, let the sparks fly!

Michael A. Biltz
Public Services Librarian
Dodge City Public Library
1001 N. Second Avenue
Dodge City, KS 67801-4484
Phone: 620-225-0248 ex 239
Fax: 620-225-1931
Email: michaelb at trails.net
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God is good.  He just has a terrible public relations team.