Death Before Sin: Evolution’s Trojan Horse?
In Christian circles the debate over common descent (a.k.a. evolution) has lead to an offshoot debate over the presence of death before sin. The Christian evolutionists have no qualms believing death existed before the sin of Adam. They see death before sin to be compatible with both evolutionary science and the interpretation of scripture. In contrast, Young Earth Creationists (YECs) argue the Bible precludes belief in either common descent or death before sin because Genesis describes a chronological order of events organized by 24 hour days that is irreconcilable with either of these views. Indeed, if death did not exist before Adam sinned, then they are correct to maintain that scripture can in no way be reconciled to an evolutionary process that has creatures dying millions of years before Homo sapiens like Adam ever arrived (of course the assumption is that Adam was indeed a Homo sapien and not an intermediate form).
Among many articles written on this topic there are two that I think summarize the issues rather well. Advocating for the Young Earth view is James Stambaugh, author of the article titled “Death Before Sin?” Weighing in for the theistic evolutionist viewpoint is Gary Emberger who authored a response paper to Stambaugh (and other YECs) appropriately titled “Theological Analysis of Selected Recent Creationist Assertions Concerning the Occurrence of Death before Sin.” In short, Stambaugh believes death did not occur before Adam’s sin, and Emberger believes death did occur before Adam’s sin. What follows is an account of the debate and a summary of the arguments put forth by each man.
Fittingly, the controversial relationship between death and sin begins in the book of Beginnings. Here are what appear to be the main points of contention. In Genesis chapter 1, we read that God repeatedly declared his initial creation to be “very good.” Then in Gen. 2:17, upon creating the heavens, earth, and Adam, we read that God warned Adam of the consequence if he were to ever eat the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “…in the day that you eat of it you will surely die” (v.17, NKJV). In the very first verses of the next chapter we are then told that both Adam and Eve partook of that forbidden fruit. Following this act of defiance, the third chapter concludes with an account of the punishment God placed on his rebellious creatures and on the world they inhabited. Interestingly, and despite God’s ominous death threat, this curse does not bring with it the immediate death of either Adam or his accomplice.
Stambaugh (the YEC) finds in the very first lines of the creation account enough evidence to convince him that death could not have occurred before Adam’s sin. He takes God’s declaration of “very good” to mean there was a peaceful coexistence between all life-forms prior to the sin of Adam. If this is true, it is obvious that Genesis cannot be compatible with the modern evolutionary model which has new life-forms resulting from a cruel and violent struggle to survive. However, Emberger takes Stambaugh’s interpretation of the phrase to be a bit anthropocentric. He says we cannot assume God’s definition of good is our definition of good. Good might in no way connote the absence of death and the struggle for survival. Good may simply mean that the creation is a suitable setting for God to work out his acts of redemption as he directs the history of mankind toward its ultimate purpose.
Another critical point of this debate regards the nature of the death which was threatened to occur if Adam ever ate of the forbidden fruit. To understand death, Stambaugh says it is necessary to realize Adam was created sinless. It follows then, for Stambaugh, that if he was sinless he was not intended to die. Stambaugh does not think it odd that Adam did not physically drop dead the day he sinned. Instead, he argues that Adam’s sin ushered in deadly physical decay as well as instant spiritual death—the physical body, he says, took a while to catch up to his spirit. Stambaugh concludes that if death came after the fall then death was not in God’s original plan for creation. Surprisingly, Stambaugh does concede the point that plants created before Adam’s sin did die, as intended by God. Stambaugh defends his belief in this one particular instance of pre-sin death by pointing out that the ancient Hebrews did not think of plants as being alive because plants lack souls; only humans and some animals were alive in the Hebrew sense of the word.
I do not think Stambaugh realizes he has left room here to include many other animals in the category of death which he admits occurred prior to Adam’s sin; there seems to be no justification for stopping with the plant “kind”. If God declares his creation to be “very good” while soulless plants are withering away, what is to stop one from including soulless bacteria, parasites, insects, fish, or birds to the fray? Is he implying that all these creatures have souls; or that the Hebrews believed such? Stambaugh leaves us with too many questions when he allows for the death of plants at the exclusion of other “lower” life forms.
Emberger, the theistic evolutionist, thinks Stambaugh’s position is weak. He points out that although scripture links Human death to Adam’s sin, this is never the case for animals. He says there is no clear biblical teaching that says animals die as a result of Adam’s sin. Furthermore, Emberger argues that when God warned that sin will bring death, there is ample support in the gospel of John and epistles of Paul to justify the conclusion that the death God spoke of was a spiritual rather that physical death. The portions of scripture Emberger refers to make the paradoxical statement that God gives life to people who are biologically already living. He argues that unless these statements are to be taken as nonsense they must mean that God gives spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead.
The discussion of death and sin eventually leads Stambaugh into contemplation over the logical underpinnings of the atonement. He reasons that since sin was the cause for unnatural death, then death was in no way part of God’s intended plan for Humanity. God, in order to put his creation right, devised the atonement so that death could be eradicated. The implication for Stambaugh is this: If we adopt the view that death occurred before Adam’s sin, then the concept of sin itself is called into question; for, if sin did not cause death then there is no sin, and therefore no need for Christ’s atonement. Stambaugh’s logic is that the presence of death before sin would negate the very need for the Christian message. If this isn’t making sense, you’re not alone. Here are Stambaugh’s own words:
“If we believe that death has always existed, then we make a mockery of the death of Christ. This is exactly what evolution means…If death is not the penalty for sin, then Christianity is meaningless. The death of Christ was made necessary because of man’s sin. Man’s sin brought death, which in turn brought God’s Son to pay the penalty in our place.”
This is why, says Stambaugh, Christianity must fight evolutionists until the very end if they are to save their faith. However, Stambaugh makes the error of attributing causal powers to Adam’s sin. He cannot conceive of death occurring before sin because he believes sin is the cause of death, and the cause never follows the effect. If he really wanted to be literal, Stambaugh would do well to realize Genesis does not claim sin caused death. This perilous effect is attributed to the curse of God rather than the actual act of sinning. But perhaps death is analogous to the rainbow after Noah’s flood. No one claims God invented the rainbow for Noah; it was merely pointed to by God as a reminder of a promise to never agian flood the earth. In the same way, maybe death had always been present, but after Adam it served as a reminder that God had not failed to punish Adam’s rebellious act.
Contrary to Stambaugh, Emberger does not follow the Creationist rules of logic. He accepts the presence of sin but denies that scripture teaches that all death at all times in all animals is traceable to Adam’s sin. Regarding the atonement, Emberger points out that Creationist language about the death of Christ reflects their belief in a particular theory of the atonement not accepted by many Christians: “Various models include Christus Victor, Ransom Theory, Satisfaction Theory, Penal (Punishment) Theory, Moral Influence Theory, and the Governmental Theory. Recent creationist language describing the atonement suggests adherence to the penal theory of atonement of the Calvinist-Reformed tradition.” The idea is that Stambaugh’s contradiction originates from a misappropriation of a theory, since scripture is rather vague on the exact meaning of Christ’s death.
How can these two men fail to see eye to eye on such a rudimentary issue? What are they bringing to their reading of the texts that causes such discord?
Let me point out now that Emberger openly admits he interprets Genesis in light of the modern sciences. He points out that astronomy and geology have already added clarity to the scriptures, so the next natural step would be to incorporate the evidence from biology and paleontology as well. But why does Emberger allow himself to waver from a strictly literal interpretation of scripture? Emberger believes that Genesis was not meant to be taken as literal truth or historical narrative. He holds that many of the stories contained within the book are mythical accounts which convey truths deeper than what a literal account would have been able to communicate. So, within this framework, death can be interpreted as spiritual death—I should also point out that Stambaugh himself mythologizes the text since he too believes a spiritual death took place, although there is no justification for this under a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Furthermore, the figurative reading of Emberger is supported by modern Biblical scholars who use the Documentary Hypothesis to explain the figurative meanings of the creation account. This hypothesis uses textual analysis to argue that the Genesis creation account is a hybrid of at least two separate texts written by two different rabbinical schools of thought during separate periods of time (overall, Genesis is said to have been authored/edited by at least four schools). This modern method is a more lenient way of interpreting the creation account. For example, when God said, “You will know good and evil” the word for “know” also means “experience” and “become intimate”. Perhaps this means natural evil was always occurring outside the garden, but Adam and Eve were never to experience it unless they disobeyed. They even point out that God is never said to have created all physical matter, only the Earth and heavens; perhaps he formed them from existing material? This last interpretation may sound figurative, but in fact it is quite literal as there is no textual reason to assume otherwise.
Of course, this is not a view of Genesis endorsed by Stambaugh. Stambaugh rejects any modern or figurative interpretation because he believes his young earth position is the true Christian position that must be protected from secular science. He supposes scripture must be read in a literalist manner. This reading forces a young earth interpretation and thus forbids any figurative non-historical interpretation of Genesis. Since his suppositions allows for so little variation, it is inevitable that Stambaugh, unlike Emberger, will keep a much tighter grip on his own interpretive conclusions. So while contradicting Stambaugh is, in his opinion, akin to calling God a liar, contradicting Emberger means you simply see things differently.
Our End Time Scenario
During the 1920s the Soviets made amazing progress in the disciplines of genetics and evolutionary biology. They were responsible for uncovering some of the mechanisms responsible for adaptation and evolution among organisms; their efforts gained them worldwide fame. However, by the 1930s, Stalin and his ideologues deemed evolutionary biology and agricultural genetics harmful to the well being of the Soviet Union. What followed was the tragic persecution, and even killing, of the country’s leading scientists. The wholesale abandonment of agricultural genetics brought along with it a disastrously wide-spread crop failure and subsequent food shortage.
This national travesty was made possible through the efforts of one man, Trofim Lysenko, a Lamarckian (after Lamarck who taught the transmissibility of acquired, rather than genetic, characteristics) who convinced Stalin that Darwinism was a capitalist bourgeois invention which posed a threat to the Soviet state—all this despite the fact that Marx and Engels wanted to dedicate their Manifesto to Darwin. Now infamous, Lysenkoism has found its place in history as an example of what can be expected when pseudo-science mingles with paranoid ideology and state power.
This episode in Soviet history proved it could be quite dangerous to have a citizenry unfamiliar with the principles, progress, and significance of evolutionary biology. But is there a movement that exists today, similar to Lysenkoism, which poses a similar threat to modern day science? Is there a modern-day Lysenko in our midst who, if successful, could possibly spoil the quality of American science?
Consider creationism. Creationists hold that evolution is bogus science because the Bible clearly teaches that God created animals as they exist in their modern forms. Creationism is a hybrid of both ideology and pseudo-science. It is thus a candidate worthy of being compared to Lysenkoism which was itself a three-fold combination of Lamarckian pseudo-science, communist ideology, and state power.
Like Soviet Communism, creationism breeds religious zeal in the lives of believers. This religious underpinning allows creationists the convenience of totally evading the scrutiny of established scientific facts. Creationism is, however, even more anti-scientific than Lamarckianism in that its incredulity towards modern science reaches to almost every one of the major scientific disciplines (more on that later). The only major difference (for the purpose of our analogy), between the modern creationist movement and its Lysenkoist counterpart is that creationists currently lack state approval; they are left to themselves when it comes to enforcing their doctrines upon the ignorant masses.
Speaking of ignorant masses, creationists such as Kent Hovind (currently in prison for tax evasion), Ken Ham, and those at both the Institute for Creation Research and the Discovery Institute (the headquarters for the Intelligent Design movement) believe — and rightly so — that there is a conspiracy to discredit the biblical truth of creation. Their paranoid distrust in science has lead these creationists to formulate the most arcane theories like the theory that the speed of light has been in a constant state of decay over the last ten thousand years. Like all creationist theories, this theory is supported first by biblical texts and only then through quasi-scientific research.
Creationists present theories such as this not to academic journals, but to churches all around the world. Perhaps even worse, they have millions of followers funneling millions of dollars into their ‘creation ministries’ in hopes of one day overturning the current evolutionary paradigm and replacing it with a creationist one. But why are creationists so interested in the speed of light? Their reasoning is this: If light from stars millions of light years away is just reaching the Earth, then it follows that the universe must be at least millions of years old. However, it cannot be the case that the Earth is millions of years old; for the Bible teaches that the universe is only six to ten thousand years old. Thus, because the error would not be in the Bible—as it is the inerrant word of God—it must be in the secular scientific establishment which has presumed the speed of light in a vacuum to be an unerring constant.
This reasoning allows for the creationists to explain why distant light can be visible in a young universe. Such ways of thinking would rest well in medieval Europe where the Bible doubled as a lame science textbook, but it obviously has no place in our modern world and especially no place in our public school classrooms—but in the classroom is exactly where creationists are trying to go.
If creationists were to gain the advantage of state power (the state power they have so desperately failed to attain through the courtrooms of Kansas and Pennsylvania), we could reasonably expect to have our children, upon being indoctrinated into this ignorant and backwards ideology, come home from a day at school to tell us that they learned from the Bible that the speed of light is slowing down and Einstein was wrong about his theory of relativity. Not only this, but if evolution is impossible, then we can forget about advances in evolutionary biology that would lead to the eradication of evolving super-viruses like MRSA and HIV, not to mention crop-killing insects and harmful bacteria. These are valid examples of evolutionary change taking place on a daily basis. Understanding such changes through evolutionary theory (mutation, co-evolution, and natural selection) has enabled scientists to gain the upper hand over many of these challenging organisms.
Without doubt only disastrous outcomes can be expected from a scientifically illiterate culture—a culture given over to ideology and comforting answers rather than truth and reason. Through paranoia and religious zeal the creationists have dawned a movement which is strikingly analogous to Lysenkoism. Ours is a society where schools are faced by thousands of irate parents insisting that evolution is godless, harmful to society, blatantly dishonest, and laden with liberal bias. Could a society, once again, turn on its scientists and overturn science because it believes evolutionary thought to be damaging to the common good? Do we really run the risk of repeating one of the most tragic episodes in the history of science? With the historical precedent set by Lysenkoism it is not hard to imagine this scenario playing out; especially given the current popularity of creationism as it has taken on a new form calling itself the Intelligent Design movement.
Culture Wars: A Family Matter
During an era of progressing secularism it is inevitable that long-held, faith-backed taboos will become the subject of tumultuous public debate. Once these taboos are illuminated by the light of reason, questioning begins, and its effects are often irreversible; for what we have seen can never be unseen, what we have heard can never be unheard, and what has been judicially struck down can never be un-struck.
Or can it? In 2000, Californians voted 69% to 39% against the legalization of same sex marriage. On May 14, 2008, contributing to the great American struggle for civil rights, the California Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision to strike down that initiative on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to deny marriage to someone based on their sexuality – doing so violates the constitution’s equal protection guarantee. For the majority decision, Justice Ron George wrote, “An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.” Homosexuals, he concluded, have the fundamental right to marry.
And so our state continues to re-make itself in the imago Illuminatio, the image of Enlightenment, as it attempts ts to walk down the path of liberation blazed by the early revolutionary Jacobins who vigilantly advocated for their newborn republic to remain steadfast in the ideals of the French Revolution, a revolution which was at once both a cultural and political revolution in thought and praxis, holding the values inimical to a democratic republic above the oppressive traditions handed down by religion and monarchy.
But not so fast Justice George! “The Guards die but do not surrender,” to quote Napoleon’s General, Pierre Cambronne. There are always those ready to “stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop!‘,“ steadfast in their belief that marriage must only denote a union between a man and woman.
These traditionalists have wasted no time in proposing a new ballot initiative, Proposition 8, attempting to amend the California constitution itself. This proposed amendment states that the marriage in California can only happen with one man and one woman.
But should this counter current strike anyone with surprise? Even the progressive Jacobins found themselves facing opposition from the Anti-Jacobin counter-revolution whose job was, in the words of their founder, George Canning, “to be full of sound reasoning, good principles, and good jokes and to set the mind of the people right upon every subject.” These men admitted to being unabashedly “prejudiced in favor of [France’s] Establishments, civil and religious.” One can easily assume they would have imagined themselves carrying out this public relations campaign in a manner considered by reasonable folk to be fair and balanced.
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Recently, discussing marriage matters on public radio was Karen England, a lawyer of the Protect Marriage Coalition, an organization in favor of the proposed amendment against homosexual marriage. Poised to contradict her was Geoffrey Kors, Executive Director of Equality California, a non-profit fighting to defend the equality and dignity of homosexual and trans-gendered people. Kors tried his best but was taken off guard by the ternary offensive unleashed by his opponent. Sadly, this battle for the public mind was rather one-sided, so I intend here to launch my own counter-offensive against this modern day Anti- Jacobin. Allow me to recount the particulars.
Miss England began the conversation by stating that her coalition not only disagrees with gay marriage but also has a problem with four California Supreme Court judges “legislating from the bench” and overturning the will of the people. Thus she and her coalition are out to ”reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage”. She claimed, “This is about whether or not the people of California have the right to define ‘marriage’.” Speaking to Mr. Kors she then asked, “Is it okay for two men and one woman, or two women and one man to be married? Why are you limiting it to two people? Why can’t we open the doors to love and commitment between three people?” She later stated, “I am for equality, but I don’t want them stealing the word marriage,” adding that she is not against equal rights for gays, but that “marriage is marriage and this traditionally means one man and one woman.”
As you can see, Miss England put forth many assertions. She began by asserting that this issue is about the legal rights of Californian voters, then followed with the assertion that this issue is about her political group’s moral beliefs, and ended with the assertion that her group’s beliefs about our nation’s cultural tradition is the one we ought to be preserving.
Tradition. Morality. Legality. In recent weeks, as seen here, these three distinct ways of knowing have been drawn upon and exploited to no end by various public interest groups utilizing zealous religious rhetoric to unleash emotions and circumvent rational dialogue (not only the Capitol Resource Group represented by Karen England, but also cultural forces such as Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and conservative talk-show hosts). Groups such as these are dedicated to reasserting their collective will at the state level and national and will spare no fear mongering tactic to doing so. And those who stand for civil rights and the unheard people of our society must fight to counteract this campaign to co-opt morality, the law, and our wonderfully diverse culture.
What can be said against this formidable trifecta of tradition, morality and legality? Let’s begin by first noticing that Miss England is battling for one particular traditional meaning of marriage among many. Her bowdlerized reading of our cultural and legal tradition is comical in its daring assertion that the definition of marriage favored by her and her like-minded political brethren stands as the single authoritative version. A more honest rendering of our history would point out that our tradition has also defined marriage as a bond only between members of the same race. This traditional definition was the one upheld by California’s anti-miscegenation laws which were only declared unconstitutional as recently as 1948. From ‘48 to ‘78 the definition for marriage became a “contract between two people.” Moreover, only since 2000 has marriage been explicitly defined as between a “man and a woman.” The point is that Miss England’s tradition is not the tradition, but only a tradition that so happens to be her tradition. Seeing that our nation has only had ‘one man one woman’ marriage for eight years, this severely undermines her overall argument that outside the ’one man one woman’ tradition a society is left without a means of adequately defining the boundaries of marriage (e.g. her claim that we are headed for polygamy).
An implicit assertion put forth by Miss England is that we must strictly delineate the scope of marriage to traditional heterosexual unions or our state will inevitably slip further down a slope that ends with legalized polygamy. On the face of it this might sound rather convincing. I have even heard an acquaintance of mine, a well-read and nimble-minded Aerospace engineer, take up the same slippery-slope position — except he one-upped Miss England and added to the list of forthcoming unions that of human-beast and that of adult-child. Besides the problematic act of cherry-picking history to come up with one’s own version of tradition, this argument, being of the slippery-slope variety, is a logical fallacy. But this does not stop anti same sex marriage advocates from motivating the masses to action, and one suspects that the law-schooled Miss England must be aware of this fallacy and yet intentionally continues to use it to her advantage.
What I found to be the most profane part of Miss England’s on air performance was her duplicitous grand-strategy. When speaking about the legality of gay marriage, Miss England imports the loaded and irrelevant rhetoric of morality instead of dealing at length with more germane legal notions like equality, liberty or discrimination. Asking if it’s “okay” for three people to be married is supremely ambiguous wordage to employ while in the throes of a supposed legal debate. Okay to who? God? Mormons? The government? Nonetheless, asking such a question and insinuating that the opposition should answer it in moral categories is Miss England’s covert way of disorienting both the opposition and the radio listener through conflating moral notions with legal ones and bringing into the discussion widely held negative emotions over the morality of polygamy and associating them with the legal debate over homosexual marriage. Had she resisted this urge to crudely manipulate our moral sentiments, Miss England might have instead asked her question more clearly: “Is it morally okay for polygamy to take place?”, or “Is it legal for polygamy to take place?“ And in doing so the question would have appeared as a blatant non-sequitur, having no relevancy to the legal issue at hand: same sex marriage.
Under the logic of Miss England’s thinking, one could add that Muslims should not be allowed to marry because marriage has traditionally been between a Christian man and a Christian woman, and that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution should be repealed because in broadening citizenship to include African-Americans it redefined the traditional meaning of the word ‘citizen’.
Political Simulacra in an Age of the Hyper-Real
Peggy Noonan, conservative writer for the Wall Street Journal, trots out the truth behind the worries over Obama’s missing lapel pin. In her article “The View From Gate 14“, she suggests that it may not be for lack of patriotism that Obama neglected to undertake the symbolic act of fastening upon his collar an emblem of our nation’s flag (i.e. attaching to himself the signifier of a signifier).
Notice that this fuss over the lapel pin has resulted in the exaltation of the pin; the pin succeeds the flag and has supplanted it with an entirely new meaning. The flag itself, once the symbol of our national unity, becomes detached from its original meaning as it takes on a new significance, being redefined through its copy – the pin. The pin is itself a third-order simulacrum, a counterfeit representation of a representation, but now absent of the content and meaning found in the thing it was intended to mimic. As a result, our nation’s flag no longer embodies the essence of our nation, but is an essence unto itself which can in turn be embodied in yet further items of mass-production. This simulacrum, this subversion of the original, occurs when a simulation, a copy, replaces the original and becomes treated as though it were in fact the reality, what Baudrillard terms the hyper-real. The new meaning of our flag – a meaning to be found within the context of the pin – becomes clearer as the Noonans of the world reinterpret it through the narrative of Obama’s mishap.
According to Noonan, the absence of the pin signifies an absence of a certain species of patriotism. She fears that Obama may not love America for the right reasons; more to the point, she says Obama may not love Henry Ford or George Washington or the Wright brothers (more simulacra) the way that the rest of America does and apparently should. However, Noonan does give attention, in a rather insincere way, to what Obama does praise America for: its racial progress. And, somehow, by the end of her rather sophisticated article (sophisticated in that Noonan is less abrasive, emotive, and reactionary, and much more subtle and tactical than the typical conservative savant) we are left with the feeling that racial progress is only a marginal attribute of the American people. We feel this way because Noonan apparentley finds more to love in the Henry Fords, George Washingtons, and Wright Brothers of this country’s history than in the Martin Luther King Jr.s, Rosa Parks, and Jackie Robinsons. The former were, by all official accounts, the men who made America. America is their country – simple folk like us simply live in it. Is this the reason why Noonan acts as though there are two histories, separate and unequal?
In her defense, Noonan’s skepticism of Obama’s love for America is not without basis. He was, after all, raised in a different culture. This can hardly compare to McCain who was birthed on a U.S. Naval base in Panama–the most all-American way possible, approprately trademarked with the Imperial hubris the rest of the world loves to hate. Noonan further surmises that McCain’s all-American upbringing means he carries ‘in his bones’ the right kind of love for America; Hilary does as well, though not as thoroughly. Interestingly, Noonan doesn’t mention that McCain was against legislating into existence MLK Day; in fact so opposed that he voted against it in 1983 while a member of Congress. I’m sure America will come to see this as only a minor indiscretion, unimportant in the greater scheme of things and in no way indicative of the type of guy McCain really is.
In stark contrast to the Noonanesque/Wall-street way of interpreting American life, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! has something of her own to say about what Americans are thinking.
It seems that both wrote their articles after traveling a bit and observing day to day life, but each came to drastically different conlusions regarding the concerns of the average American. And yes, Goodman, like Noonan, talks of lapel pins, but in a slightly more disinterested tone.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Liberal Studies and Women’s Studies programs of Cal State University, Fullerton bring you…
Evil, Evil Woman: What It Was Like to Be the Only Female Witness in the Dover Intelligent Design Trial
A Lecture featuring: Dr. Barbara Forrest
Monday, March 3, 2008
7:00pm TSU Pavilion C at Cal State University, Fullerton
Dr. Forrest provides a detailed look at her work in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Board intelligent design trial as well as an overview of the history of the intelligent design anti-evolution movement.
Barbara Forrest is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University; she is also a member of National Center for Science Education’s board of directors. With Paul Gross, she is co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design.
Sponsored by the Liberal Studies Student Association and the Department of Women’s Studies.
No Charge for admission. Daily parking permits are $5 or you can park at a nearby strip mall and walk a block (Note: This advice is not endorsed by any CSUF organizations or affiliates and is solely the recommendation of the author of this blog. CSUF does not accept any responsibility for stolen or towed vehicles parked off campus).
Read this article “The Flagellum Unspun” by Dr. Ken Miller and decide for yourself if Intelligent Design theory has the explanatory power its advocates attribute to it.
Click Here to read the Dover trial ruling by Judge Jones. Its language is very clear and easy to follow. The Judge really did an amazing job of pulling together all the expert testimonies. In the ruling you will discover why Judge Jones ruled that Intelligent Design is not science and why he believes its advocates lied on the stand.
