Answers in Science (AiS) is an educational organization founded and maintained by several faculty members in the science departments at Tufts University.  Its goal is to provide simple, reliable, active, and accurate resources, via the AiS website and in publications, dealing with the science supporting the fact of biological evolution.  AiS is committed to providing scientific information that, even though composed of diverse opinions within its specialized disciplines, represents the consensus of the majority of the world's scientific community on the broader and established areas of scientific knowledge. 

The establishment of AiS was prompted by attempts of several organizations, through political and religious channels, to influence the teaching, public perception, and support of science.  Most of these highly vocal groups are fundamentalist with the clearly stated goal of inserting a literalist scriptural interpretation of creation into science education or changing the definition of science.  These groups, identified in general as "creationists", deny biological evolution and the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting it.  Their beliefs are also in conflict with every major branch of science, physics, geology, astronomy, and chemistry, and with many mainline Christians. They espouse such demonstratably  false concepts as:
 

This small but vociferous group of fundamentalists and "creation scientists" believe that if the Bible and Science are in conflict then Science must be wrong.  Most of these groups are religious-based and hold to a literal interpretation of scripture including Genesis, and thus a young age for the Earth and a worldwide flood 4000 years ago.  A few accept an older age for the Earth, but believe that life was specially created and/or is continually being modified by a supernatural being.  (for a brief guide to creationist groups see: "The New Creationists" ) 

Creation "science" is not science since it relies on supernatural intervention to force-fit science to a specific religious belief system.  Using scientific sounding language and fancy websites, they have produced a large body of so called (and misnomered) “evidences” which they claim refute the basic tenets of evolutionary biology, geology, paleontology, genetics, biochemistry, astronomy, chemistry, and physics (ie, most of modern science!). In many cases their fraudulent or misleading statements have been widely disseminated and have become almost impossible to refute without spending an exorbitant amount of time and energy (here is just one example).

During a recent effort by the Ohio Board of Education to strengthen its science standards, the Discovery Institute released a "bibliography" that it claimed showed dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism. On closer examination it turned out that this was nothing but a deceptive effort, what would be called "quote mining". (Link here for the full account.).   The small group of scientists who support them represent a minor fringe element of the scientific community.  Many mainline Christians, including those within the scientific community, have no problem accepting evolution.

By selecting scientific hypotheses already disproved and known to be faulty, previously rejected data, misinterpretation, or in many instances outright fraud or deception, fundamentalist's “evidences” are presented as “proof” that current scientific knowledge about almost everything is wrong.  That, in effect, millions of scientists over hundreds of years from a multitude of countries and religions have conspired to fabricated scientific knowledge.  That million of hours of research and peer-reviewed publications don't exist or are fraudulent. That millions of scientists are idiots and have no idea what they are doing.

Even though their misnomered “evidences” are easily refuted by anyone knowledgeable in the specific disciplines (and in many cases by anyone with even a little rudimentary scientific training), they continue to attack evolution in hopes that the public will eventually accept them on equal footing with scientific theories (see "Why Attack Darwinism?").  More ominously, by aggressive legal and political maneuvering, and often outright deception, attempts are being made to introduced religious beliefs into science education under the deceptive guises of “creation science” or “intelligent (divine) design”, neither of which are science science but clearly are religion (see "What is Science?").  By making it appear that the only choice is between this interpretation of scriptures and materialistic non-theistic science, they have endeavored to force a wedge between accepted science and the public.

The goal of AiS is provide easily accessible resources to help scientists, educators, and the concerned public, combat these growing creationist attempts to distort and corrupt science education.  To this end, this site attempts to maintain the most reliable links to organizations, web-based scientific databases, and a number of point-by-point rebuttals to the claims made by creationists. We have also compiled an on-going list of recommended books.