Most of us are by now familiar with the usual discussions about evolution: the hard-core Creationists dogmatically assert that the universe as we know was created in six twenty-four hour days, six thousand years ago; the hard-core Darwinists dogmatically assert that life was spontaneously generated out of lifeless random chemicals billions of years ago. This type of debate has been going on for approximately two hundred years now.
Is there a third option? Increasing numbers of professors are embracing a view which, through observation and induction, frames the hypothesis that life is not the result of random coincidences.
At universities and colleges like Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Tulane, and all eleven of the Big Ten schools, professors in departments such as Astro-Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Genetics, Embrology, Dendrology, Bio-Chemistry, and Quantum Mechanics are being attacked by university presidents and administrators because they are skeptical about Darwinism.
Five hundred of them signed a petition, stating that they "are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
Althought they are being punished for questioning the claims of Darwinism, this group of researchers may be opening up a "third option" in a debate that has been locked up between two sides.
