ROUGH DRAFT--NOT FOR CITATION. THE PUBLISHED FORM OF THIS WORK APPEARED IN RESEARCH NEWS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 3.8 (April 2003): 10.
"‘Project Steve’ has Evolutionists Laughing: Tongue-in-Cheek List Mocks ID and Remembers Gould"
Who says that scientists don’t have a sense of humor? Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and self-proclaimed activist for science education, had the crowd howling with laughter at the February meeting of the American Association for the Advancement Science when he unveiled Project Steve with a striptease act. After giving a spirited rebuke of the creationist agenda and without any prior warning, Krauss sent his coat, tie and shirt flying and revealed his black Project Steve T-shirt below.
Although Krauss would be the last to deny his own highly-evolved sense of humor, Project Steve is only a partial jest. The project, sponsored by the National Center for Science Education, is designed to honor the late Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) by creating a list of science professionals named “Steve” who support the teaching of evolution as “a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences” and who oppose the introduction of “creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to ‘intelligent design,’…into the science curricula of our nation’s public schools.”
The project is a self-described mockery of the lists of scientists regularly produced by advocates of creationism and intelligent design. The creators of Project Steve are specifically targeting the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, the Institute for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis for ridicule. According to the U.S. census, approximately 1.6 percent of males and 0.4 percent of female have names which qualify them for the list (“Steve,” “Stephen,” “Stephanie,” “Stefans,” etc.). As of the Feb. 16 unveiling of the project, 220 “Steves” had enlisted their names.
Although the classic creationist debate has largely been won by science, the ID debate (which has made frequent appearances in Research News) appears to have more longevity. Even though Krauss’ position on the issue is characteristically unambiguous (he dismisses ID as “closed-minded, dishonest and unfair”), Krauss was not the only voice at the association’s meeting. Ironically, Raymond L. Orbach, director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, addressed the association with a plenary address entitled “Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time.”
In his unapologetically theistic address, Orbach sought to demonstrate how two stories—the story of big bang cosmology and the story of Genesis 1-3—could be read along side one another without compromising the integrity of either. Even though Orbach avoided the designation “intelligent design,” his address was clearly informed by the arguments of the ID movement as he discussed the immense improbability that a universe like ours would emerge. In an echo of ID language, Orbach explained that the emergence of our universe was a “very close call.” For his part, Krauss, who avoids direct criticism of theism, warned that such harmonization of science and the biblical text is “dangerous because it leads to misconceptions.”
Even though Krauss, 220 “Steves,” and AAAS have rejected ID, the debate doesn’t appear to be going away. To learn more about the Steve Project (including signing up as a “Steve” and ordering a T-shirt), visit (cite now removed).
Thomas E. Phillips is assistant professor of New
Testament and Greek at Colorado Christian University.
| Articles | Biblical & Theological Resources | HOME |