Recently in Evolution and science Category

In 1911, when "heresy" wasn't such a dated term, as related at Mormon Organon. The whole episode (in which several BYU profs of that era came under suspicion for teaching the sort of things that are supposed to be taught at universities) sort of shows how heresy got such a bad name. Five out of six BYU students signed a petition opposing the action against the faculty members. The language of the petition is quite persuasive (although it obviously didn't persuade anyone in the LDS educational bureaucracy at the time). A couple of excerpts from the student petition:

At Mormon Insights, a post on the do's and don'ts of teaching evolution to college students.

The author:

I am a happy and content Latter-day Saint who teaches evolution at a non-LDS university. In fact, I have taught evolution in various forums and institutions for 30 years.

That and other interesting questions debated in the hundered-plus comments to "What do you think about Evolution?" at Mormon Matters. FYI, I would not rely on the way the quote that constitutes the bulk of the post tries to distinguish natural selection from evolution.

A survey came out a few weeks ago measuring belief in evolution across denominations. Mormons were close to the low end of the spectrum, at 22%; Evangelicals came in at 24%. See "Mormons Worse at Believing Evolution?" at Mormon Metaphysics for a nice graph and discussion.

As reported in the Salt Lake Tribune last month, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) moved its January 2011 meetings from New Orleans to Salt Lake City. The reason? The recently enacted Louisiana Science Education Act, which, according to critics, "allows local school boards to introduce creationist materials into the classroom under the guise of promoting 'critical thinking' toward the theory of evolution."

According to the article, Utah rejected a similar measure three years ago. So Salt Lake City gets the conference. The article also notes the skiing is better in Utah than in Louisiana.