As part of the "World Year of Physics 2005: Einstein in the 21st Century", an evolution expert will lecture on campus today.

Wesley Elsberry, information project director of the National Center for Science Education, will discuss "Physics, Physiology, Evolution: Cues for Accommodation and Adaptation."

Elsberry said he will discuss how the constraints of physics shapes and guides evolution.

"This is a continuing problem for science education, something that the leadership of tomorrow is going to have to grapple with," he said.

Elsberry is also teaching "Views on Creation and Evolution," a class for the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program, which began Wednesday.

Elsberry's class examines the concepts of current evolutionary biology, anti-evolution and the way creationism affects society.

"Students need to learn science without the confusion of non-scientific pseudo-alternatives being presented as if they were science," Elsberry said. "I do not see a place for intelligent design in the science classroom."

Though most scientists discredit intelligent design as a science, there are still proponents of the theory.

Intelligent design or creation science, an alternative to creationism and evolution, theorizes an intelligent agent organized the evolution of life.

"There are aspects of nature that require design to come about," said Thomas Russell Hunter, philosophy graduate student and president of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness club.

Intelligent design is based on the higher levels of math and philosophy as opposed to the existence of a God, said Hunter.

John Calvert, managing director for the Intelligent Design network, said that in evolution, the intelligent agent role from intelligent design is just an illusion.

"The only way to have an honest story is to require the story to be evaluated in the view of a competing claim," Calvert said.

Today, creation science is disregarded by most evolutionists.

"I don't buy it," said Andrew Wukman, Russian and Eastern European studies senior and vice president of the Atheists and Agnostics club. "The entire idea of God being the go-button is a bit, once again, far-fetched."

Evolutionists argue that religion is abstract and cannot be proven whereas science is testable and perceivable through the five senses.

"The idea of biological evolution is this branching tree of life," Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education and Elsberry's colleague said at a recent lecture in Norman.

Common misconceptions include the idea that man evolved directly from monkey and that individuals are self-evolving.

"You and I, my friend, do not evolve," Scott said. "The only thing that can evolve is a population."

Elsberry's lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in the Thurman J. White Forum Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is also hosting a series of lectures on evolution. The final lecture, "Evolution as fact and as theory: The power of an evolutionary perspective" will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 10.

Along with the lectures, students can visit the traveling exhibit, "Burgess Shale: Evolution's Big Bang," until Nov. 27.
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