Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Evolution Controversy at Los Alamos

In December of 1993, the Los Alamos National Laboratory sponsored a talk by Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The title of the talk was, “The Evolution Controversy: Why It Isn't Over.” To a room full of scientists, Johnson attacked evolution as being unscientific and suggested that the theory of evolution was merely a religious dogma of naturalism that denied supernaturalism.

The reaction was predictable. It spawned a series of back and forth articles and letters to the editor of first the Los Alamos National Laboratory News Letter and subsequently in the city’s newspaper, the Los Alamos Monitor that went on for nearly three years.

Johnson had gone home but a LANL geophysicist, John Baumgardner, picked up the cause like a lone crusader. He wrote articles and other scientists criticized what he wrote. Had no one responded to Baumgardner, the controversy might have subsided except that it was heating up as an educational issue. What was to be taught in the public schools?