The Supreme Court overturned all ban against teaching of evolution in 1968, ruling that religious views could not enter the schoolhouse. In 1981 Louisiana passed a law mandating equal time for evolution and "creation science," but it was promptly struck down by the high court.

Still the biblical view of creation isn’t about to disappear. Evolution became an issue in the Florida governor’s race in 1990 when Republican candidate Bob Martinez campaigned for creationism to be taught alongside evolution in public schools. ( A poll that year found that 56 percent of Floridians agreed with Martinez.) Edward J. Petuch, a professor of geology at Florida Atlantic University, is incredulous:

"I thought this stuff had gone out 50 or 100 years ago. Evolution just means ‘change through time.’ It doesn’t mean ‘anti-God’ or "Jesus is dead.’ Everything evolves. Why is this term so horrible?"

What is threatened, however, is the literal interpretation of the Bible’s stories. For example:

According to DeRosa, "The Creationist movement began with the idea of the flood." He points out that hundreds of cultures around the world have flood stories as part of their creation myths. "All these legends affirm that there was a vessel of safety, that here was destruction by water, and that the human seed was saved. When you have world wide flood legends, you have to come to the conclusion that there’s got to be something there. You can’t dismiss this."

According to DeRosa, the Old Testament states that God was dismayed by the evil ways of man and destroyed the world in order to remake it. He told Noah of an impending flood and gave him 120 years of warning (Noah lived to be 950 years old.) Noah’s task was to collect one male and one female of "every living thing of all flesh" (Genesis 6:14). Creationists estimate that the ark could hold 125, 000 animals the size of sheep.

There are, however, more than 1.5 million species of animals on Earth. Petuch wonders how Noah could travel all over the world, even if he had 120 years, and collect wallabies, emus and tree kangaroos from Australia, flightless birds from New Zealand, Kodiak bears from Alaska, giant Pandas from isolated regions of China, monkeys from Madagascar, tortoises from the Galapagos, as well as every snake, insect, crab and bird distinctive to each island chain in the world. "Noah had to take the ark out of the water and carry it up rivers into the mountains," Petuch says. "Then, afterward, poor old Noah had to go back and dump these animals on every island."

According to Petuch there are thousands of creation myths, each one equally valid. He believes that if creationism is to be taught, it should include the creation myths of American Indians, Shinto Buddhists, Tibetan Lamaists, Hindus, ancient Greeks and other cultures. "It’s all based on belief. Creationism is a branch of religion."

Although creationists concede that evolution did take place amongst the same species, they deny that one species can evolve into another. They call this "variation in kind." It occurred in England when white moths eventually turned black as air pollution darkened the trees that were their habitat, and it also occurred when the beaks of different Galapagos island finches adapted to different shapes, depending on whether they ate seeds, insects, or cactus. But the creationists contend that the bird is still a bird. An ape cannot turn into a human. As for the discovery of Lucy, the remarkable 9 million year old Australopithecus skeleton who walked on two legs, DeRosa remains unimpressed. "I believe that was an extinct ape."

The largest bone of contention remains still to be discussed. Current scientific theories suggest that evolution proceeds not by an ordained pattern but through a series of chance occurrences. The creationists believe that the universe has an orderly design, but Petuch, speaking for science, believes that "God is not ordered at all. God works through chaos in our universe. That’s the new way that science is going." In his mind DeRosa is out of touch with new scientific thinking.

In recent years, science has explored the concept of chaos theory to examine the effect of irregularities in everything from planetary orbits to the puff of wind beneath a butterfly’s wing. DeRosa sees this as irrational because its key mechanism is luck. "They’ve come to the conclusion that for life to exist, it would have to take a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a 747." . . . "To me, chance is the antithesis of science. Chaos theory will lead to chaos."

Perhaps the question should be asked, does the belief in evolution inevitably lead to a denial of God? According to DeRosa, "Karl Marx saw Darwin’s ideas as a denial of God." Marx sent Darwin an early copy of Das Kapital, asking him to write an introduction. Darwin politely refused. Stalin also used the theory of evolution to perpetuate communist belief. Hitler endorsed the idea of the survival of the fittest. "Darwinism leads not only to Hitler," contends DeRosa, "but once you exclude the basic ideas of God, you deny that there’s anybody to be accountable to."

Petuch is offended by this. "I don’t like this us-versus-them mentality.