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This chapter evaluates the standard social science model and postmodernist theories and methods for studying religion. It is argued that the theoretical inadequacies of the standard social science model has limited is explanatory power. Scholars’ acceptance of problematic assumptions about knowledge, scholarship, cultures, religion and human behavior from postmodernism has hindered progress in the field.

This chapter presents a wide though unsystematic review of formal educational resources of information about the hypothesis, at levels from grade school through to professional science. The focus in the early school years is on the Next Generation Science Standards, intended to be a national norm for science teachers, as well as two commercial programs meant to guide science teaching. At the college level, several books on critical thinking are briefly analyzed, although the emphasis is on a popular textbook that is designed to teach how to think scientifically. The chapter points up several possible adverse influences on public perceptions of science, including views on topics ranging from astrology to global climate change, that could arise from misapprehensions about the nature of science that are fostered by many of these sources. Finally, attention turns to the websites of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to sample resources available to professional scientists. In general, the information concerning the scientific hypothesis across all of these sources was inconsistent in depth, detail, and accuracy. The chapter offers a number of suggestions for improving science education in this area.

Documentation of anti-evolution initiatives in Florida is far from complete. Efforts in Columbia County are currently ongoing, and an organization called World Changers of Florida has vowed to pursue getting creationism into public schools. The issue of school vouchers and private schools that teach creationism still lingers. Also, improving or replacing the state's science standards will likely cause uproar again in the future. Because the evolution vs. creationism conflict is in large part a subtext for citizens wanting control over their own and their childrens’ lives, the debate will persist as a vehicle for expressing this goal for many years to come.

This chapter surveys a variety of creationism-related events in the mid-1990s, starting with a conflict between Stetson University in Volusia County and its benefactor, the Florida Baptist Convention. Manatee County yet again faced citizens trying to introduce creationism into classrooms by doing things like donating the creationist textbook Of Pandas and People to schools. Famous creationist debater Duane Gish, from the Institute for Creation Research in California, participated in a debate with Florida anthropologist Lorena Madrigal in Manatee County. After the debate, further conflict erupted when local school districts granted credit to teachers for attending. The creationism argument next popped up in Osceola County while a creationism bill was being filed in the state legislature. Creationism was an issue during several local elections across the state. The Business, Civic, and Ministry Coalition of St. Lucie County and Schools’ Superintendent David Mosrie had talks about creationism without the school board's knowledge. New state science standards neglected to mention evolution so as to avoid controversy. Finally, this chapter discusses a few Florida-based creationist organizations and personalities, especially creation-science evangelist Kent Hovind.

While sitting in a window seat during a flight from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. about twenty years ago, I had an experience that changed the course of my life. On the ground below, vast numbers of trucks and mile-long strings of railroad cars were moving along extensive networks of highways and tracks that threaded out in all directions, like a circulator system in some giant organism. Products from factories and farms were flowing through these arteries toward distant cities and coastal ports, and raw materials were flowing in the other direction to processing and manufacturing plants. In my mind’s eye, the web-like connections between electric power plants, transformers, cables, lines, phones, radios, televisions, and computers resembled the spine and branches of a central nervous system, and the centers of production, distribution, and exchange and all connections between them within the global economy. This conjured up the image of a superorganism feeding off the living system of the planet and extending its bodily organization and functions into every ecological niche. I realized, of course, that the global economic system is not an organism. It is a vast network of technological products and processes that members of our species created in an effort to enhance their material well-being. But this system does in ecological terms feed off the system of life on this planet and extend its organization into every ecological niche. After my plane landed at Dulles International Airport, I asked a simple question that required years of research to adequately answer. How did members of one species among the millions of species that have existed on this planet manage to increase their numbers and the scope and scale of their activities to the point where the capacity of the system of life on an entire planet to support their existence is being undermined? The answer is that our species, fully modern humans, evolved against all odds the capacity to acquire and use fully complex language systems.

While sitting in a window seat during a flight from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. about twenty years ago, I had an experience that changed the course of my life. On the ground below, vast numbers of trucks and mile-long strings of railroad cars were moving along extensive networks of highways and tracks that threaded out in all directions, like a circulator system in some giant organism. Products from factories and farms were flowing through these arteries toward distant cities and coastal ports, and raw materials were flowing in the other direction to processing and manufacturing plants. In my mind’s eye, the web-like connections between electric power plants, transformers, cables, lines, phones, radios, televisions, and computers resembled the spine and branches of a central nervous system, and the centers of production, distribution, and exchange and all connections between them within the global economy. This conjured up the image of a superorganism feeding off the living system of the planet and extending its bodily organization and functions into every ecological niche. I realized, of course, that the global economic system is not an organism. It is a vast network of technological products and processes that members of our species created in an effort to enhance their material well-being. But this system does in ecological terms feed off the system of life on this planet and extend its organization into every ecological niche. After my plane landed at Dulles International Airport, I asked a simple question that required years of research to adequately answer. How did members of one species among the millions of species that have existed on this planet manage to increase their numbers and the scope and scale of their activities to the point where the capacity of the system of life on an entire planet to support their existence is being undermined? The answer is that our species, fully modern humans, evolved against all odds the capacity to acquire and use fully complex language systems.