A survey by Teachers' TV shows that a majority of teachers support the stance of Dr Michael Reiss: that science teachers should engage thoughtfully with pupils who question evolution. Dr Reiss recently had to step down as the Royal Society's Director of Education after defending this view at the British Association.

The results of this survey are reported today in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent .

Nearly nine in 10 teachers agreed with Reiss that teachers should engage with pupils who raise creationism or intelligent design in science lessons.

Nearly three in ten said they either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the government's guidelines on teaching evolution which states that "creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science national curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science". Just over half agreed or strongly agreed with this statement.

Thirty-one per cent of the teachers surveyed said they thought creationism or intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom.

Truth in Science's opinion on these issues in the light of the recent controversy can be found here.

A conference will be held on November 3, 2008, in La Sapienza University’s Pathology Amphitheatre at the Umberto Policlinico in Rome to coincide with that of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) from October 31 to November 3. Both discuss the theory of evolution in the light of the up-coming 2009 Darwinian year celebrations.

Whereas the Pontifical Academy discusses data proposed for evolution, scientists at the Sapienza conference will present the scientific facts against the theory. The participants claim to represent thousands of qualified scientists who disagree with the popular view of evolution but whose voices are damped down by the evolutionist majority.

The scientists taking part who oppose evolution had originally sought admittance to the PAS conference. They did so following the appeal by Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, in Truth and Tolerance, that the arguments for and against evolution should be heard with objectivity. He wrote, “This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively and with a willingness to listen, by both sides—something that has hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent.” Unfortunately, the PAS ignored the scientists’ request. Consequently, and in order that the case against evolution be heard, the same scientists decided to hold their own conference. It should be emphasised that these scientists are not “creationists” and would be offended to be considered as such.

The arguments against evolution are rarely heard because academic institutions such as the PAS prefer to restrict their presentations to data that, in their view, support the theory. As a result the case against the theory is largely unknown to the public. For instance, the highly embarrassing fact that recent laboratory experiments have shown that stratified sedimentary rocks, containing the fossils alleged to prove evolution, formed very quickly. The experiments were conducted by one of the speakers at the conference, sedimentologist Guy Berthault, and published by the Russian Academy of Sciences. A paleohydraulic analysis in the field accompanying these experiments showed that major rock formations deposited not in millions of years but in 0.01% of the time attributed to them by the geological time-scale.

The effect of this conference on the global scientific community may well be comparable to the effect of the current financial crisis on the global economy: Nothing will ever be the same!

The disciplines represented at the conference are:

Sedimentology – Guy Berthault, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, France, a member of the French Geological Society and the Association of Sedimentologists. His experiments have been published by the French Academy of Sciences, the Journal of the Geological Society of France, and the Russian Academy of Sciences journal Lithology and Mineral Resources.

Biology – Pierre Rabischong, previous dean of the Montpelier Medical University and an expert in computer-aided surgery.

Genetics – Maciej Giertych, a population geneticist who holds an M.A. in forestry from Oxford University in England, a Ph. D. in tree physiology from Toronto University, Canada, and a D.Sc. in genetics from the Agricultural Academy in Poznan, Poland.

Geophysics - Josef Holzschuh, a geophysicist with a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in Australia. He works in the field of seismic processing.

Radiometric Dating - Jean de Pontcharra, head of the Research Group, CEA-LETI (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Informatique). He has a doctorate in solid state physics from the University of Grenoble, France.

In September 2008, Michael Reiss was defrocked and removed from his position as director of education at the Royal Society. What was his crime? That he suggested that Creation should be taught in schools? No, he believes firmly in evolution. That he had advocated alternatives be taught alongside evolution? No, for like many in charge of education today, he would not accept that there is any scientific alternative. What then was his thinking that caused such a cry for his scalp? Simply that creation should be treated as a worldview rather than a misconception, and be discussed openly in the classroom. For a newspaper report, see here.

The furore that this created demonstrates the bigoted nature of some who would close down all debate on the basis that they, as high priests, know the scientific truth. How ironic that the motto of the Royal Society is “Nullius in verba” ; that is “On the word of no one” or in more colloquial language, “Take nobody's word for it” . 

This motto was taken up in 1663, three years after the inception of the Royal Society at the behest of Charles II.  In the words of the Society’s own web site, the whole purpose behind the motto was ‘to withstand the domination of authority’ and ‘to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment’.

Not a few scientists who have no time for non-evolutionary thinking were deeply embarrassed by what the Royal Society did that day. Lord Winston, well known for his fertility work said:

I fear that in this action the Royal Society may have only diminished itself. This is not a good day for the reputation of science or scientists. This individual was arguing that we should engage with and address public misconceptions about science – something that the Royal Society should applaud.

“I am shocked about what happened with the Royal Society”, said Leslie Jones, a Professor of Biology at Valdosta State University in Georgia and even Professor Dawkins had to admit that “To call for his resignation ... comes a little too close to a witch-hunt for my squeamish taste”.

The Nature News article of 17th September which reported these comments states the view that Reiss was not out of step with the Royal Society (and thus its motto), but then goes on to quote Sir Harold Kroto who reveals unwittingly the prejudice at the heart of this matter.

Reiss's remarks, he says seemed fairly reasonable - if uttered by a freethinker for whom evidence-based philosophy is pre-eminent.

In other words according to Kroto, you have to be a freethinker to be a scientist and "Nullius in verba" only applies to throwing off the shackles of deistic/theistic belief. When the boot is on the other foot “Nullius in verba” does not apply”!

The Nature editorial of 25th September  wisely stated:

At such a moment, a much more effective approach is for the teacher to follow the route Reiss advocated: deal with the question without ridicule, but make it clear that in science, theories must be testable to be valid.

We at Truth in Science heartily agree. There is no fear in scientific debate from our side. It is not the place of the scientific classroom to bring in religious instruction but neither is it the place to propagate the blind belief in atheistic philosophy. It would seem very evident that some influential evolutionists seem to have a real phobia about genuine scientific debate.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, and a long-time advocate for the teaching of evolution, points out that in the real world, any such shut-up-and-take-it-elsewhere response from the teacher will inevitably be perceived by the student (and his or her classmates) as a humiliating personal put-down. It will obstruct rather than encourage enquiry and understanding. It will also invite complaints from outraged parents.

What is more, it will squander what experienced educators like to call 'a teachable moment'. All too often, that moment is the one opportunity that a school has to engage resistant students and introduce them to what science has to say.

Biology graduates who have not encountered up-to-date evidence of evolution in action - in fossils, in microbes, in genomes - have been ill-served by their training. Higher education in general and biology departments in particular, are at the front line of the battle between creation and evolution too.

It is all too often the case that a proper detailed knowledge of the actual fossil evidence is lacking. We at Truth in Science come to different conclusions than those advocated by the biology teacher and the Nature editorial, but we join with their wise counsel, that the evidence needs to be put before teachers and students.

We think, in fact, that many will actually see for themselves that the evolutionary hypothesis is not substantiated. We have already advocated in 2006 that the DVD "Where does the evidence lead?” be watched by all UK schools, and we encourage all science classes to consider carefully the evidence itself without prejudice to either view, rather than the philosophical interpretations by evolutionary thinkers imposed upon the evidence.

Natural selection is not the same as evolution. Natural selection is a verifiable fact of the biological world, but there is no power in natural selection ever shown experimentally in the laboratory to change and add machinery which was not there already, either in coded form or latently in the genetic information stored in the genomic template – that is what evolutionary philosophy has advocated but which is not consistent with the evidence. This is why the debate will not go away. Clearly we all know it has philosophical overtones, but the scientific debate has to be allowed to proceed to have pupils and students understand the scientific issues.

A most perceptive comment came on line after the Nature News editorial from Michael Buratovich on the 23rd September:

Removing him because he dared bring up the "C" word simply demonstrates that some of the British science intelligentsia fail to understand that we are not going to advance understanding of evolution by ignoring creationism. Patient engagement in the classroom is certainly one of the ways to address this issue. What is so wrong with that?

Indeed, we might well ask. What is it that the Royal Society and others are so afraid of in the classroom, if indeed the evidence is so powerful for evolution? What can possibly be lost by looking at the evidence without a priori assumptions of creation, design or atheism? Are our schools to become places of atheistic freethinking indoctrination? We are seeking in Truth in Science to redress the balance. For too long, educational materials have been heavily biased with philosophy (‘the words of others’) predisposing children to come to evolutionary conclusion based frankly on teacher and peer pressure.

It has never been the view of Truth in Science that Creationism be taught in Schools, rather that a critical appraisal of the evolutionary interpretation of the evidence be put forward so that the student can ‘follow where the evidence leads’ once they have been taught the basic laws of physics and chemistry and the fundamental, experimentally-verifiable biochemical laws. Then the student simply faced with experimental evidence can make a considered judgment as to which thesis best fits the evidence.

The more vigorously those of an evolutionary persuasion insist that the only correct paradigm with which to approach science is atheistic, the further away we have drifted from the Royal Society motto. Some of the leading scientists of the Royal Society down the centuries have been theists. Isaac Newton, Edward Boyle, Lord Kelvin – are all these to be relegated because they had this troubling belief in the divine? Why should today’s thinkers be any different? Has the evidence so indisputably removed the need for the divine, or is it just prejudice?

We would ask our readers to think carefully about the scientific evidence. We are ardent in our desire that the evidence should speak for itself.  Atheistic humanism is as much of a danger to true scientific activity as the overbearing scholasticism of the 17th century when the Royal Society was formed. If we stifle genuine scientific debate now we will lose the Faradays, Maxwells and Keplers of tomorrow.

The Royal Society has come under widespread criticism in the press since its Director of Education was forced to step down over creationism. Publications across the political spectrum are united in defence of Professor Michael Reiss, who succumbed to a campaign by Fellows of the Society who wished to have him removed.

Why did Reiss have to resign? -- The Guardian

The Royal Society has treated Michael Reiss badly -- The Times

The Royal Society is sadly unenlightened on creationism -- The Daily Telegraph

Secular Inquisition at the Royal Society -- The Spectator