Schools
Over 70 Attend HHS Showing of 'No Dinosaurs in Heaven'
Science Alliance-sponsored event about the imposition of intelligent design on biology also features a speaker from the National Center for Science Education
Over 70 people, mostly adults, attended a film screening Monday night at the Black Box Theater at of a documentary about the intrusion of creationism on biology classes.
The event, sponsored by the also included a question-and-answer session with Steve Newton, public information project director for the National Center for Science Education and an interview subject
in the film.
“The debate itself is really interesting, but I kind of wish more students had shown up to the movie because it’s affecting us and our education,” said HHS junior Hank Smith.
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The 53-minute movie, written and directed by Greta Schiller, features a group of scientists and educators hanging out at the Grand Canyon.
According to the group members's statements in the film, the Canyon's towering sedimentary walls are evidence of the evolutionary process because of their layers of distinctive rock deposits.
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Those deposits indicate thousands of years of geological shifts behind the canyon’s formation -- as opposed to Noah’s flood interpretation offered by the Bible and included in creationist ideology.
In the film, the evolution advocates discuss why creationist theories are incompatible with modern-day science; the film also features several intelligent design proponents.
During the question-and-answer portion, Newton discussed the pervasiveness of the intelligent design movement and how the NCSE is working to keep it at bay. He noted that there are more teachers in California promoting intelligent design than in any other state.
“One broad thing we’re trying to deal with is making evolution a more integral and (pervasive) part of our biology textbooks –- and, indeed, evolution is integrated structurally throughout biology, so it makes sense to do –- instead of putting it in just one chapter,” Newton said.
“It would be a lot harder to say, ‘don’t teach biology,’ rather than just, ‘don’t teach this particular chapter,’” Newton said.
For more information on “No Dinosaurs in Heaven,” go to www.nodinos.com.
Newton's organization, the NCSE, promotes the teaching of evolution in public schools and contends that teaching intelligent design as a valid scientific theory violates the separation of church and state.
