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This chapter examines the way in which evolutionary biologists accomplish the goal of uncovering evolutionary history through the comparative method. This method is contrasted with that of the creationists, who claim that supernatural intervention was required to produce the complexly adaptive attributes of orchids and other organisms. Darwin’s views on this matter are discussed.

The debate between creationists and evolutionists stems from America's view of God and nature, of science, and of attitudes toward social elites and taxes. This chapter looks at events in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Tennessee. It compares the life of England's Charles Darwin and America's William Barton Rogers. It looks at the rise of “creation science” and the contemporary strategies of evolutionists.

Public events of 2000 illustrate the continuing social debate. The “intelligent design” movement emerges. Two predictions are made: (1) A sociological split over middle‐class values will swing the distribution “knowledge” class to evolution, the family‐based production class to creation; (2) Both apocalyptic creationism and orthodox Darwinism will decline. While both sides have challenges – evolutionists to justify morals and creationists to fit God to science – both may be appreciated as underdogs.

The creationist claim that evolution is inconsistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy in the universe increases, is discussed and refuted: local reductions in entropy can be offset against increases in entropy elsewhere, so that the net increase in entropy required by the Law is consistent with local decreases in entropy. It is explained how recent developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics have shown how physical systems can organize themselves into highly ordered states under the influence of natural laws alone.

In this chapter, the author presents some relevant biographical information about how a nonreligious mathematician like him developed an interest in evolution and creationism as well as his general views toward science and religion. He recalls listening to the preaching of the Christian evangelist Luis Palau while he was a graduate student in mathematics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Another incident that he remembers was when the Dartmouth student newspaper published an essay in its opinion section claiming that evolution was not only fallacious as a scientific theory, but was also a tool of Satan. He decided to learn more about evolution and creationism by reading books and articles. He came to understand the extent to which the creationists had distorted both the evidence for evolution and the views of scientists regarding it.

This chapter provides a primer on evolution, first by discussing those aspects of evolution that are most relevant to disputes with proponents of creationism. In particular, it considers two of the processes driving evolution: natural selection and genetic drift. It also explains natural selection as the process through which alleles conferring reproductively advantageous traits increase their frequency. The dispute between creationists and evolutionists arises when we pass from observable processes in the present to the broad sweep of natural history. The grand claim of evolution, rejected by creationists, is that the diversity of modern life is the result of natural processes like selection and drift operating over long periods of time, starting from an ancient population of unicellular, bacteria-like organisms. The chapter also notes one aspect of evolution that seems to cause particular difficulty: the complex nature of living organisms, as exemplified by the eyes or wings.

Probably no scientific discipline has been more contentious among creationists than geology. At the time Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, the concept of an old Earth with a complex history had been widely accepted among Christians. In his books on the history of creationism in America, historian Ronald Numbers documents the transition during the twentieth century from old-Earth creationists to the remarkable rise of young-Earth creationism. Today we see a different shift in the geological arguments being used by creationists. Proponents of intelligent design (ID) have dropped the demand for a young Earth and focused solely on evidence for a designer. Even before the rise of the ID movement, a group loosely called Progressive Creationists continued to accept the evidence for an old Earth while remaining skeptical about evolution. This essay reviews the geologic claims of modern young-Earth creationists, progressive creationists, and ID advocates and shows how they contrast with secular geology and with one another on their geological perspectives.

Both traditional creationists and intelligent design (ID) advocates argue that the methodological limitation of science to the study of natural agents and processes is equivalent to the denial of the existence and action of God. This is a reflection of their false claim that science as currently practiced is inherently atheistic. It is a fundamental confusion of methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism or materialism. ID proponents see methodological naturalism not as a description of the limitations of scientific inquiry, but as an arbitrary and unjustified prescription that prevents scientists from including supernatural action in their scientific explanations. Probably one of the best case studies illustrating how the nature of science has come under attack in recent years is the widely reported effort of young-Earth creationists and ID advocates in Kansas to rewrite the state science standards. In their more recent challenges to Kansas science education, ID advocates have explicitly attacked methodological naturalism as a description of the nature and limitations of science.

This chapter discusses global warming deniers's use of tactics that mimic those of the creationists. One of the most successful strategies of creationists has been to appeal to the good old American notion of fair play. When an issue is in dispute, should we not hear from both sides? This not only seems to represent common sense, it is the foundation of parliamentary democracy and our court system. But in science, almost never do two sides deserve equal attention. Nonetheless, state legislatures have now begun to follow the creationist model by demanding equal time for global warming denial in classrooms. Another strategy of creationists adopted by the deniers is to use the courts. In August 2009, as the Environmental Protection Agency got ready to rule that carbon dioxide was a public danger, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the agency to hold a “trial-style public hearing” on global warming so as “to make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science”.

In this chapter, the author discusses some of the scientific claims advanced by creationists, drawn from biology. He first reflects on his experience as a participant in the Creation Mega-Conference, held on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for one week in July 2005. He recalls attending a session called “What Is the Best Evidence That God Created?” by Carl Kerby, who launched an attack against evolution while elevating the Bible to a status above that of the physical evidence, along with his emphasis on certainty. He then considers the tendency of creationists to accuse scientists of simply making assumptions about evolution and then tailoring their hypotheses accordingly. He concludes by arguing that evolution has produced tangible progress for more than a century, whereas creationism offers nothing to rival it.

In this chapter, the author considers some of the scientific claims advanced by creationists. He reflects on his experience as a participant in the Creation Mega-Conference, held on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for one week in July 2005. He recalls attending a session called “In the Beginning Was Information,” presented by Werner Gitt, who arrived at six conclusions: God exists, which is a refutation of atheism; there is only one God, who is all-knowing and eternal; God is immensely powerful; God is spirit; there is no human being without a soul, which is a refutation of materialism; there is no evolution. The author discusses the role of “information” in the discourse of both creationism and intelligent design by citing a branch of mathematics known as “information theory”.

In this chapter, the author reflects on his experiences among the creationists and comments on their insularity and scientific ignorance. He recalls attending a conference for religious home-schoolers held in Wichita, Kansas which featured speakers from an antievolution organization called Answers in Genesis. During a session addressing the practical problems of starting a home-school, an issue that arose repeatedly was that of protecting children from the perverse influence of “the culture.” The keynote presentations were an odd mix of science and revival. One of the speakers was Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis. In June 2010 the author attended another conference for religious home-schoolers, this time in Richmond, Virginia. He was shocked at conservative Christians lecturing others about indoctrination as well as the incredible insularity of his fellow attendees. He notes how the stage and the pulpit have become the natural milieus for creationism and its supporting ideology.

In this chapter, the author reflects on his disagreements with proponents of creationism. In August 2008, he attended the sixth International Conference on Creationism held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The conference sessions featured disputes among the creationists themselves. One such session, “A Nuanced Lakatos Philosophy of Theology and Science,” had Doug Kennard, then a professor of biblical studies at Bryan College in Tennessee, as speaker. The author criticizes the creationists for their insularity and asks why they accept science on some questions and reject it on others, or why they are so confident in the inerrancy of the Bible. Nevertheless, he talks about those moments when he and the creationists can disagree in an agreeable manner.

In this chapter, the author considers basic aspects of creationism and some misconceptions about creationists that have been common in his experience. First, creationists are not biblical literalists; they understand, like everyone else, that the Bible includes many literary genres. They argue, however, that if you are going to interpret a passage non-literally there should be strong textual grounds for doing so. Second, young-Earth creationists do not err in thinking that Genesis is a science textbook—at least not in the simplistic way that is often suggested. They do, however, believe that the Bible is inerrant on any subject it addresses. Creationists also do not make an acceptance of their view of Genesis essential to one's status as a Christian. The author also cites two reasons why creationists are obsessively focused on Genesis: the first is that creationists genuinely believe that theirs is the only interpretation of the Bible that makes sense; the second is the slippery slope they perceive leading from a non-literal interpretation of Genesis to wrong-thinking on more central issues.

This introductory chapter offers a brief definition of entanglement and contrasts it with four other versions of the relationship between religion and secularity. Unlike these other four models, in which religion and secularity sit apart from each other as separate domains, entanglement presents a contentious but oddly intimate relationship. Neither side simply wins by displacing the other. Two examples flesh out this definition of entangled religious and secular interests. The first example comes from the so-called War on Christmas; the second comes from controversies surrounding stem cell research. In both of these cases, religious and secular elements entangle and complicate each other, even as they engage in adversarial conversation. The introduction then examines recent scholarly re-evaluations of the term “secularity” and connects it with the concept of entanglement.