Huxley Memorial Debate

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The Huxley Memorial Debate took place on February 14, 1986 under the auspices of the Oxford Union a student debate club of Oxford University. The motion was "That the Doctrine of Creation is more valid than the Theory of Evolution". Speaking for the ayes were young earth creationists Edgar Andrews (a physicist) and A. E. Wilder-Smith (a chemist). Speaking for the noes were evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and John Maynard Smith. A few members of the Oxford Union were additional speakers. After approximately 3 hours of debate, the motion was defeated.

[edit] Debate

The debate is named after the historic 1860 Oxford evolution debate on June 30, 1860 when Samuel Wilberforce, then Lord Bishop of Oxford, opposed Thomas Henry Huxley, (Darwin's bulldog) during a session of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Oxford. The debate centered on the validity of Darwin's ideas as proposed in the Origin of Species.

A report on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) by John Durant lists 198 votes for the noes and 15 for the ayes.[1][2] Records for the debate outcome are copies in mp3 format of the debate tapes that can be downloaded from the Richard Dawkins website[3].

A. E. Wilder-Smith said in his book Fulfilled Journey that was written twelve years after the event that "In the end the creationists won some 114 of the votes from the voting public of about 300--which was quite surprising, as the Oxford Union represented the materialistic naturalistic evolutionary viewpoint of biogenesis."[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Thematic Areas: Evolution: Perspectives
  2. ^ the format for '15' is not the number fifteen, but lower case 'l', space, and the numeral five.
  3. ^ Oxford Union Debate on Richard Dawkins Web
  4. ^ Arthur Ernest, Beate Wilder-Smith, A.E. Wilder-Smith, Fulfilled Journey. Word for Today (1998), ISBN 0936728752 page?

[edit] External links