people
FREEDOM WATCH
 Online 
January 2007 www.citizensproject.org
In This Issue
MLK Jr. Holiday Events
Evolution "Only a Theory?"
Voting Rights Threatened
Martin Luther King, Jr Celebration Events
 
Join CP for Candlelight March
RSVP to [email protected]
or
719 520 9899
 
MLK 
 

Wednesday - January 16, 2008
Opening Ceremony
City Auditorium 10:00 - 11:15 AM

Sunday - January 20, 2008
Candlelight March to Shove Chapel
Begins at downtown YMCA at 5PM 

Closing Ceremony
Colorado College Shove Chapel 6 - 7:30 PM

For more information on MLK scholarship applications, sponsorship
and how you can support the dream in the Pikes Peak region, contact:

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Save the Date:
The Divine Award
 

Thursday February 7th
5:30-7:30 at
The Warehouse
25 West Cimarron
Colorado Springs
 
 

Quick Links

 
Three Cups of Tea 
Greg Mortenson to Speak at Shove Chapel
 
Tuesday, Jan. 15th, 2008, 7 pm 
 
After a failed attempt to summit K2, Greg Mortenson was found and nursed back to health by the people of a remote, impoverished Pakistani village.  When Greg, a former Army Medic, asked what he could do to repay their kindness, the reply: "We need a school." Since 1997 he has helped build more than 60 co-ed secular schools in rural Afghanistan
 
Evolution "Only a Theory?"
 
By Steve Mahone
 
When was the last time you heard the phase, "It's only a theory"? If it came from your teenage son, daughter, or grandchild it might be that they're just repeating what they heard in their high school science class and you'd be well advised to sit up and take notice! Such a phrase reveals a misunderstanding of how science goes about its business and there's little doubt that it's masking an underlying agenda that is unduly encroaching on your child's education.
 
This "encroaching" is precisely what has happened at numerous school districts all around the country and the target of each is the same: the teaching of biological evolution. Not coincidentally, the justification used by these school boards to challenge evolution almost always comes at the urging of organizations that have a religious allegiance. The criticisms never come from objective scientific institutions and the reason for this is quite simple, it's because there is no "evolution controversy" within the sciences. This is what school board officials at all levels need to be reminded of before the next election cycle and certainly before they render any educational decisions that affect the teaching of science.
 
It's unfortunate, but one of our best scientific institutions has found it necessary to take the time to publish a manual defending science from pseudo-scientific claims. The National Academy of Sciences (whose membership is composed of our nations most accomplished scientists) released a guidebook in January 2008, that is intended to clarify for citizens and school board members alike why evolution is scientifically sound and alternatives such as creationism and intelligent design have no business being included in the standards for any state's science curriculum.
 
It wasn't that long ago when science had to answer to the religious sensibilities of the day. What a burden this must have been to the genius of those like Copernicus, Galileo, and the countless others who were unable to persevere. Times have changed, but supernatural and superstitious beliefs are still finding a way to influence public policy. In the end, however, science only answers to the facts and, unlike religious beliefs, the invariant physical laws of nature apply equally to the Presbyterian as they do to the Polynesian. There may be many who wish for science to affirm their particular Designer, but scientific inquiry never plays favorites.
 
It is a rare event when a truly new discovery is made in science. It is even more rare when that discovery turns out to be revolutionary. A coherent and verifiable scientific theory that explains our human origins would certainly qualify as such and Darwinian evolution has withstood the test. It has been unaffected by faith, politics, and hearsay and it cares not what any school board votes to sanction or to censor. The reality is that our DNA and the fossils found in every geologic stratum on earth all say the same thing: we are a "brother to dragons, and a companion to owls" (Job 30:29).
 
vote 
Voter ID Laws Are Set to Face a Crucial Test
 
By Ian Urbina from the New York Times - 1/7/2008
 
INDIANAPOLIS - In April 2006, a federal judge upheld Indiana's law on voter identification, the strictest in the nation, saying there was no evidence that it would prevent any voter from having his ballot counted.
 
But on Election Day last November, Valerie Williams became that evidence, according to lawyers in a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. After Ms. Williams grabbed her cane that day and walked into the polling station in the lobby of her retirement home to vote, as she has done in at least the last two elections, she was barred from doing so.