December, 1995

The Creationist Challenge to Teaching Scientific Evolution in the Schools

A panel discussion

This will be a panel discussion with audience participation to be presented jointly by National Capital Area Skeptics and Washington Area Secular Humanists. Here's your chance to exchange ideas on a recurring issue with panelists representing creationists, skeptics, humanists, teachers, political activists, and the media.

Panelists will include:

• Doug Barylski, engineer and recent candidate for the Fairfax County School Board --- Does avoidance of creationist ideas leave students from fundamentalist families with an incomplete understanding of issues and confusion about why an idea taught in science class gets trashed at home and in church?
• Richard Laterell, retired professor of biology --- The ``theories'' of evolution and creationism are not equivalent scientifically, and the bottom line is that evolution explains what we observe; creationism does not.
• Jim Giglio, former science teacher --- How can science teachers deal with the religious controversy that surrounds this issue?
• Doug McNeil, computer engineer and political activist --- Are creationists trying to win through the political process what they cannot win through the scientific process?

Saturday, December 2, 2pm
Bethesda Library
7400 Arlington Road
Bethesda, Maryland

Free admission -- Everyone Welcome

Call the NCAS Skeptic Line at 301-587-3827 for further info.

NCAS BBS

NCAS is available on capaccess and via the WWW at the address given above. Because of that, our own BBS server at 703-280-1446 will be discontinued sometime in the near future.

Future Meetings

The January meeting of NCAS is on the 27th of the month at the Bethesda Library. On February 17th we will have a regular meeting at the Davis Library instead of the NCAS weekend. Instead of the weekend, we are planning a special all day program for a Saturday later in the spring of 1996. Watch this space or consult your local psychic for further developments.

NCAS Jokes of the Month

The vocabulary of Yiddish is drawn from:

• German 72%
• Hebrew 18%
• Slavic tongues 16%
• The Romance languages (Latin, French, Italian) 5.60%
• English 3.55%

The fact that these numbers add up to more than 100% demonstrates the limitations of statistics. I know the figures are to be trusted; I made them up myself. -- Leo Rosten, "Hooray for Yiddish"

• A person who participates in the study of UFOs is known as a UFOlogist.
• A person who doesn't believe in UFOs is called a spy and is probably involved in the government cover-up.
• A person who buys this book and believes everything in it is called naive.