In "Kitzmiller v. Dover" (2005), a court defined science to decide the legitimacy of teaching intelligent design to high school biology students. This study analyzes "Kitzmiller" in light of the complex and interrelated tensions between judicial, scientific, and democratic decision making that lie at the heart of modern…

Last summer, Governor Bobby Jindal signed the Louisiana Science Education Act into law. Although the name of the bill sounds innocuous, it is backed by the intelligent-design movement and will no doubt lead to yet another court case on teaching evolution and creationism in school and college classrooms. After all, courts and classrooms have served…

A variety of different arguments have been offered for teaching "both sides" of the evolution/ID debate in public schools. This article reviews five of the most common types of arguments advanced by proponents of Intelligent Design and demonstrates how and why they are founded on confusion and misunderstanding. It argues on behalf of teaching…

There are some who experience irreconcilable differences between their religious beliefs concerning a world created as is, on the one hand, and a scientific view of the world that has developed by means of natural evolution over billions of years, on the other hand. In this special issue, scholars from very different religions, backgrounds, and…

The Federal District Court decision in "Kitzmiller v. Dover" halted a school board's attempts to introduce an "intelligent design" account of human origins into science classrooms as an alternative to evolution. The judge's opinion judged the Board members' actions by implicit standards of deliberative democratic discourse, which this article…

In this paper I describe an in-class discussion activity aimed at helping elementary education majors in a physical science course think about issues surrounding the inclusion of "Intelligent Design" in public school science standards. I discuss the background instruction given, the content of the activity, and some results from its use in class.

Approximately one-fourth of biology teachers in public schools include creationism in their biology courses. Most of these teachers 1) present creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution, and 2) present only the biblical (i.e., Christian) story of creation. State science-education standards, position statements from professional…

Even though in the early years of the Republic of Turkey Darwin's theory of evolution was treated as a scientific theory and taught fairly in schools, despite all the substantial evidence accumulated supporting the theory of evolution since then, Darwin and his ideas today have been scorned by curriculum and education policy makers. Furthermore,…

Students whose high school biology course included evolution but not creationism knew more about evolution when they entered college than did students whose courses included evolution plus creationism or whose courses included neither evolution nor creationism. Similarly, students who believed that their high school biology classes were the…

In his article "Scientists at Play in a Field of the Lord", David Long (2010) rightly challenges our presumptions of what science is and brings forth some of the disjunctures between science and deeply held American religious beliefs. Reading his narrative of the conflicts that he experienced on the opening day of the Creation Museum, I cannot…

This article describes research on conceptions of preservice science teachers in their fourth year of undergraduate studies relating to: whether Earth is the center of the Universe; whether the sky is a literal vault or dome; whether Earth is flat or round; the timeline of the formation of the Universe; and the age of the Earth. The results, which…

Discussing themes from my paper "Scientists at play in a field of the Lord," three forum participants identify and discuss continuing social and epistemological issues which continue to challenge effective evolution education. I extend these themes and further amplify the vexing nature of an effective dialectic regarding evolution, especially for…

As part of the continuing series of the Reviewing Policy section, this article examines some of the recent literature on the creation-evolution controversy. These controversies are placed within a larger analysis of the growth of authoritarian populist movements in the United States. The article then focuses attention on debates both over a number…

Discusses the relativist apologetic strategy and describes a scenario in which the strategy could be adopted to give creationism intellectual respectability, thereby having the potential to create a climate where evolutionist arguments for an educational monopoly would not necessarily ring true. (DKM)

Provides answers to 15 Creationist arguments against evolution. (YDS)