Asked about Darwin's theory, President Bush has said that "both sides ought to be properly taught." The question is both sides of what? More than 100 years of experimentation and observation have convinced mainstream scientists that evolution is a proven theory. The US Supreme Court has outlawed teaching Creationism as an alternative in public schools, because it's religion, not science, and since we first broadcast this program, a federal judge said the same thing about "intelligent design." Still, many people still resist the notion that complex organisms could have developed over millions of years by trial and error. "Intelligent design" proposes that there must have been some intervention. This archived edition of
To the Point illustrates that the debate is as contentious as it was when we first broadcast this segment in August.
- Making News: Banda Aceh and the Anthropology of Disaster
It's been just a year since a massive tsunami hit Indonesia and the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Anthropologist Susanna Hoffman, author of Catastrophe and Culture, was in Banda Aceh four weeks after the tsunami and discovered that women were especially hard hit. - Reporter's Notebook: A Zoological Guide to Democrats on Iraq
The family of Democrats once consisted of two basic types of politicians: those who supported the war in Iraq and those who opposed it. As the war has dragged on, new species of Democrats have evolved, "morphing and grouping on op-ed pages, in think tanks, and on Sunday morning talk shows." That's according to The New Republic's Michael Crowley, who applies the theory of evolution--tongue in cheek--to the Democrats and their views of the war in Iraq.
Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on
Edwards v Aguillard, US Supreme Court on (creationism, 1987)
Darwin on Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection
Intelligent Design Network
'A Zoological Guide to Democrats'
