Subject: [Fwd: evolution sunday]

From: "R.Stephens" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 02:26:08 +0000

Well, the Alliance for Science gets back to us!

And with your "clue" that AOL emails were getting through, I decided 
that the DSL wire wasn't strangling ALL our emails.  So I restarted my 
computer in hopes of a new IP identity.  Maybe that was the reason I 
immediately got mail service.

  In any case, I'll restart the emailing now.

  - David

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	evolution sunday
Date: 	Fri, 24 Nov 2006 17:43:58 +0000
From: 	Irving Wainer <[email-masked]>
To: 	[email-masked]

Dear Dr. Stephens,

I would like to thank you for your support of the Alliance for Science and 
for you generous donation to our organization.  As you know, the AfS 
supports the efforts of DDC and the Clergy Letter Project to promote the 
establishment of an official day to celebrate science and humanity.  As a 
step towards that goal and on the request of Michael Zimmerman (Head of the 
Clergy Letter Project), the AfS will be sending the attached letter to all 
of the supporters of last year's "Evolution Sunday" events.  We are 
circulating this letter to you to ask your support in this effort.  If you 
wish, we can change the letter to include your organization as a co-signer, 
or I can attach a separate letter from your organization to our mailing.  We 
plan to send this letter out on December 1, so please let me know your 
response as soon as possible.

I would also like to inform you that I will chair a session at the next 
national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 
in San Francisco next February.  The outline of the session is presented 
below.  At the last meeting, we altered the program by adding 5-min 
presentations from a variety of groups and individuals.  If you are 
interested, I would like to offer you the opportunity to present such a 
talk.  In any case, I would hop that we will have the opportunity to meet 
during the meeting.

Thank you again for your contribution to the AfS,

Sincerely,

Irv Wainer

AAAS Symposium

EVOLUTION AT THE GRASSROOTS: BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN SCIENTISTS, CLERGY AND 
THE GENERAL PUBLIC

	Using a variety of strategies the anti-evolution movement continues to push 
for acceptance of its ideas, including the teaching of the ?controversy in 
evolution? within the classroom.  Many scientists and most scientific 
organizations have publicly and unequivocally stated their support for the 
teaching of evolution.  A number of non-professional organizations such as 
the National Center for Science Education, Clergy Letter Project and DOVER 
CARES have also played key roles in the debates surrounding this issue as 
well as the resulting court cases.  The efforts by pro-evolution supporters 
have resulted in a broad array of activities, many of which have been 
successful in increasing the support for the teaching of evolution in public 
school classrooms. These efforts have also produced a vast amount of 
practical experience as well as educational materials designed to educate 
the public on differences between science and religion.  However, the 
general public typically has limited contact with prominent scientists or 
with professional scientific organizations.  Thus, it is important that the 
entire scientific community and its supporters work closely together to 
present a clear, understandable, and unified message regarding the different 
but complementary roles of science and religion.
	The objective of this symposium is to summarize the recent experiences of 
the pro-evolution movement so that they can be used to help promote the 
general population's understanding of evolution.  The aim of this symposium 
is to build upon these experiences to develop a common strategy to educate 
the public about the different but complementary roles of science and 
religion; to improve the teaching of science in our public schools; and to 
restore the excitement about science and discovery that once characterized 
the U.S.
Proposed Speakers and Topics:

Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education,
Grassroots Organizing: From Committees of Correspondence to Citizens for 
Science
	During the late 1970s and early 1980s, scientists were leaders in local 
groups organized to keep "equal time for creation science" legislation and 
policies from being enacted. Referring to themselves as modern-day 
Committees of Correspondence, these groups stimulated the formation of the 
National Center for Science Education to act as coordinator. The CCs tended 
to fade away after the local crisis faded but the idea of grassroots groups 
fighting for good science education is an idea whose time has come again. In 
the 1990s and 2000s we are seeing the generation (sometimes spontaneous, 
sometimes cultivated) of "Citizens for Science" organizations, often led by 
scientists, who are again working at the grassroots to keep evolution in the 
science classroom and creationism(s) out. The CfS groups are similar in many 
ways to their CC predecessors, but one distinction is that some CfS groups 
have outlived the crisis that initiated them, probably because of the ease 
of electronic communications compared to the old CC days of telephone trees, 
faxes, and mail.

Peyton West, DoSER/AAAS
?A science seminar for local school boards: Lessons from Kansas City?
	Local school boards play a critical role in deciding how evolution will be 
taught in public schools.  However, there have been few concerted efforts by 
national science organizations to provide them with direct scientific 
support.  In 2006, AAAS and the National School Boards Association initiated 
a project to engage local school boards from the Kansas City region in a 
two-day seminar on science and science education.  A key goal of this 
project was to develop a strategy for creating sustainable local scientific 
advisory committees to provide ongoing support to local school boards.  This 
presentation will describe the design and implementation of this project and 
discuss the results and their implications

Barbara Hyde, American Society for Microbiology
?Communicating science messages effectively: Practical guidelines for 
dealing with the public and the media?
This presentation will address one of the key issues facing scientists as 
they begin to build bridges with the religious communities and general 
public, ?how to effectively deliver your message.?  It will discuss how to 
prepare and distribute information in the form of press releases and 
background material and will point out many of the problems scientists face 
in this process, as well as suggest possible solutions.
Michael Zimmerman, The Clergy Letter Project
?Evolution Sunday: A bridge between scientists and clergy?
The Clergy Letter Project has sponsored Evolution Sunday events in hundreds 
of congregations for two years.  In addition to providing clergy from a wide 
range of traditions with an opportunity to reach thousands of parishioners, 
Evolution Sunday events have raised the quality of the dialogue about the 
interface between science and religion.  Additionally, The Clergy Letter 
Project?s Web presence has permitted participating clergy to post resources 
they?ve found useful, including sermons they?ve delivered.  These resources 
have provided a grass roots sense to the information now available to clergy 
around the country.  Clergy who were willing to speak out on the topic of 
evolution and creationism in its many guises but who were nervous about 
their base of knowledge now have a place to turn for material written in 
language that is readily accessible to them.  Keeping this grass roots 
collection of clergy alive and active is the next challenge that needs to be 
faced.

Connie Bertka, DoSER/AAAS
"Evolution, Scientists, and Religious Communities: What to Bring to the
Next Potluck Dinner"
	We assume that religious communities are appropriate settings for informal 
theological education, but how about informal science education?  Religious 
communities may offer a captive audience, especially when the science 
discussed touches on religious concerns. Can scientists, especially as 
members of religious communities, be a resource for these communities on 
science?  This presentation will introduce a resource developed by AAAS, in 
conjunction with mainline Christian community clergy and educators, to 
encourage dialogue about
evolution.

Rev. Henry Green, Pastor, Heritage Baptist Church
?A pastoral perspective: How to approach the pulpit?
	Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.  Know your audience 
and develop your message in such a way that you establish a relationship of 
trust.  This is the role of the pastor with a heart and one with a desire to 
care for his or her congregation.  It is a relationship of trust and respect 
a pastor must exhibit to the congregation in order to be heard by the 
congregation.  The same can be said of any relationship.  If you want to be 
heard, you must exhibit respect.  We do not need to be afraid of truth if we 
believe that all truth is God?s truth.  We do need to be understood.  
Religion and science are only antithetical in the minds of those who do not 
understand both/and reasoning.  Creating material such as sermon material 
for a pastor to incorporate into their messages from the pulpit, pamphlets, 
Sunday school material for adults and children, Bible study resources for 
small groups, a web site designed to be interactive are ways to help bridge 
the gulf created in the minds of good people that have been given bad 
material.  We can and must overcome the fear talk and either/or reasoning of 
fundamentalism.  We can and must understand the political nature of this 
process and rise to the challenge to raise the resources necessary to 
accomplish these objectives.

Contact Information

Organizers

Irving W. Wainer, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
National Institute on Aging/NIH
5600 Nathan Shock Drive
GRC Bldg., Rm. 2B19B
Baltimore, Maryland 21224
[email-masked]

Mary Haskins, Ph.D.
President-Elect of the Missouri Academy of Sciences
Associate Professor of Biology,
Rockhurst University,
Kansas City, MO.
[email-masked]

Gregory Tinkler, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow,
National Institute on Aging/NIH
5600 Nathan Shock Drive
GRC Bldg, Rm. 2C03
Baltimore, Maryland 21224
[email-masked]

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