ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question of whether people such as offended student and people whose outlook is scientific can ever come to a meeting of the minds in regard to questions about the origin of species. A discussion of the relationship of religion and biology, however, requires some prefatory definitions. A religion is, or at least aspires to be, a totalized worldview. It makes commands about how people should behave that are justified with reference to an ultimate ontology. The argument between the partisans of scientific biology and the partisans of creationist education has been profoundly frustrating for the scientists. They expect reason, or at least their version of reason, to prevail. A scientist might ask that Intelligent Design (ID) people come up with some sort of device to opertionalize their central concept, to directly register the "design force". As organizations and as individuals, many denominations either acquiesce in or enthusiastically endorse the theory of evolution.
