Should courts decide what is said in schools?

I know many people will say this is a case of "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." But I am disturbed by news of a court case where the courts are deciding exactly what it is appropriate for school teachers to say about the Creation/Evolution debate. In this case, a student took an teacher to court for calling creationism "religious, superstitious nonsense". And he won the case.

Now, I am one who has challenged the assumptions behind evolution from time to time. I have read a lot of Creation Science, and a lot of Evolutionary Science as well. So, I am sympathetic to anyone looking to get equal time. But the courts do not belong in discussions like this. It can only lead to bad things. With rare exceptions, these kind of issues should be handled locally. Do you really want the Supreme Court taking a position on scientific issues?

Experiment flirts with the barrier between Life and Non-Life

One of the great unsolved mysteries of science has always been where Life and Non-Living Chemistry meet. Life is capable of reproducing itself, of consuming energy, and of growing with time. There have always been some aspects of chemistry which seem to fit this criteria - crystals for example - but they obviously did not really show aspects of life. Now, scientists in California believe they have found the dividing line by creating a set of RNA molecules from scratch which are capable of self-replication.

The system, created by Gerald Joyce and Tracey Lincoln at the Scripps research institute in La Jolla, California, involves a cross-replicating pair of ribozymes (RNA enzymes), each about 70 nucleotides long, which catalyse each other's synthesis. So the 'left' ribozyme templates the synthesis of the 'right', which in turn templates the 'left' and so on, building each other via Watson-Crick base pairing.

'This is the very end of the line, where chemistry starts turning into biology,' says Joyce. 'It's the first case, other than in biology, of molecular information having been immortalised.'

Some, of course, will say this another nail in the coffin of a Creator God. Others will say it is proof that scientists lie. Wiser heads will realize it says neither, but is another window into how Life works and perhaps the mechanisms that drive our own bodies.

Scientists claim to observe Evolution in action

I have tried to stay out of the Creaion/Evolution debate because in general I think it does more harm than good. But this article has the potential to drive the debate for the next decade. Evolutionary biologists claim to have actual observations of speciation in action. A species of fish in Lake Victoria appears to be diverging into two different species, based on pollution which is changing how they hunt and are hunted.

It should be noted that if this is true, then it is fundamentally different from the "coal moth" experiment which to now has been held up as the best experimental evidence of macroevolution in nature. That was simply a case where location conditions changed the proportion of dark and light moths in a population. This case instead may actually show one species becoming incapable or unlikely to ever interbreed.

Church of England apologizes to Charles Darwin

The Creation/Evolution debate continues to be a Hot War in America, and there are many who feel that Christianity and Evolutionary Theory are fundamentally incompatible. But it appears the Church of England no longer sees any problem here, and is offering a formal apology to Charles Darwin for the Church's overreaction.

The apology, which has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the Church's director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians, in their response to Darwin's theory of natural selection, repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo's astronomy in the 17th century.
"The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends."

I have been of the opinion for some time that the Creation/Evolution Debate is, at best, counter-productive most of the time.

Women Wobble But They Don't Fall Down

What do Weebles and pregnant women have in common? They may wobble, but they don't fall down. It turns out that men and women have a difference in the lower spine and hips that allows women to adjust their center of gravity so they don't fall over when the added weight of pregnancy come. Even though the article credits evolution instead of God, it's still an interesting article.