Scientific American: John Horgan: I’m teaching Darwin again this semester, in two separate courses, and I’m confronted with a familiar dilemma: How should I respond to students who reject evolutionary theory on religious grounds?

One course is a freshman survey of the humanities and social sciences, and the other reviews the history of science and technology.

I asked both classes to write a paper on the following question: Why do you think Darwin’s theory of evolution still encounters so much opposition today?

I encouraged the students to personalize their responses—that is, to discuss how they reconciled their own faith, if any, with evolutionary theory.
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