Miami, USA - From a musty office building stocked with woolly mammoth thigh bones, fossilized shark teeth and a crumbling sabertooth tiger skull, Tom DeRosa is waging war on evolution.
''This is evidence of a worldwide flood,'' he said, holding up a fossilized fish set in sedimentary rock. ``This is a perfect example that the word of God is true.''
When he's not on fossil digs along the Peace River, DeRosa gives presentations at churches, schools and colleges and heads the Creation Studies Institute, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based ministry that promotes young earth creationism - the doctrine that God created the world in six days some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Now the 17-year-old institute is seizing territory creationists once ceded to scientists. This fall, CSI will open the Creation Discovery Center, a museum with exhibits on Noah's flood, the Ice Age and the dinosaurs (featured in the antediluvian room in a mural with Adam and Eve).
''Museums today have dethroned God,'' said DeRosa, standing next to a casting of a Tyrannosaurus rex head in the museum's unfinished entry hall. ``They have substituted man and naturalism instead.''
The museum is emblematic of a gradual shift in the anti-evolution movement. More than ever before, creationists are supplementing Scripture with the trappings of science - founding museums and research institutes, writing their own biology textbooks and pushing Intelligent Design - the theory that the complexity of living organisms shows evidence of a designer.
Eighty years after the Scopes ''monkey'' trial - a case that became an international spectacle when a Tennessee biology teacher was tried for teaching evolution - the fight over human origins continues with renewed fervor. Even President Bush joined the debate, saying this month that both evolution and Intelligent Design should be taught in schools.
Since January, 17 pieces of anti-evolution legislation have been introduced in 12 states, said Glenn Branch, deputy director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, Calif., a group that advocates teaching evolution in public schools. Just eight such bills were filed in five states in 2004, according to Branch.
Most bills are efforts to limit the teaching of evolution and include ''alternative'' theories in science classes, said Eugenie Scott, NCSE's executive director.
Scholars and scientists say Intelligent Design is simply creationism in disguise.
''The creationists had to come up with a new tactic, and the new tactic was Intelligent Design or what I call creationism light,'' said Michael Ruse, a philosophy professor at Florida State University and author of "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" (Harvard University Press). ``I see this as a political battle as much as an intellectual exercise. At the moment, I think the Intelligent Design people have the upper hand.''
While DeRosa and other conservative Christians preach young earth creationism, a doctrine drawn from a literal reading of the Bible, most mainline Protestants and Catholics accept evolution but teach that God played a role. Many believe evolution describes humanity's physical development but doesn't explain the soul's origins.
Advocates of teaching evolution argue that science classes should teach science only, and that the role of God is better left to religion, history and social studies classes. Creationists maintain that teaching evolution raises religious issues.
''It's unfair that children do not have the right to look at all the evidence,'' DeRosa said. ``When you teach origins, you're talking about teaching religion. The evolutionary war isn't taking place in the science lab, it's taking place in the public school classroom.''
DeRosa said he hopes the Creation Discovery Center will serve as a prototype for creation museums around the country. Christian groups in Ohio, Maryland and Palm Bay, Fla., have contacted DeRosa about starting their own, he said. Similar museums exist or are planned in Northern Kentucky, Glen Rose, Texas, and Santee, Calif.
The museum - on Calvary Chapel's sprawling Fort Lauderdale campus - will mainly serve as an educational center for believers. Christian kids will be able to dig for fossils in a sand pit and peer through microscopes in the museum's ''modern'' room.
Walking through the museum's brightly colored rooms, DeRosa explained how fossils will be dated according to a rudimentary Biblical timeline: pre-flood, flood and post-flood. Most were collected along the Peace River in southwestern Florida, where DeRosa has taken more than 10,000 Christians on digs.
''We prefer to talk about where they fit in in terms of the Bible,'' DeRosa explained.
Using the Book of Genesis, young earth creationists calculate the Earth's age at 6,000 to 10,000 years by adding up the life spans of Adam and his descendants. Mainstream scientists say the Earth is more than four billion years old.
In a pre-flood panorama, Adam and Eve will be pictured alongside dinosaurs - illustrating the Bible's claim that God created all the Earth's creatures in six days. (For those wondering why the mural won't picture T-Rex devouring our Biblical forbearers, DeRosa has a ready answer: Like Adam and Eve, dinosaurs were vegetarians before Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden.) Other exhibits will explain how the Biblical flood precipitated the Ice Age and the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Wearing wire-rimmed glasses and gray blazer, with his gray hair combed neatly to one side, DeRosa looks every bit the educator. A former Broward public school teacher who was raised Catholic, he is certified to teach all branches of science. Science was his religion, he said. ''I really thought that we came from apes and chemicals,'' he said.
But after he converted to evangelical Christianity in 1978, DeRosa began to question evolution.
''I started to read the Bible and make connections,'' he said. ``Before, when I looked at the Grand Canyon, I saw millions of years of erosion. Now I look at it and I see a worldwide flood.''
In 1988, DeRosa founded the Creation Studies Institute, now an arm of the Rev. James D. Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. As a leader in the nationwide movement to disprove Darwin's theory that species evolve through natural processes, DeRosa hopes to equip pastors and educators with the tools they need to rebut evolution.
The institute's goals haven't changed, but its tools have grown more sophisticated. Increasingly, young earth creationists like DeRosa are adopting ideas from Intelligent Design theorists, whose ranks include microbiologists, geologists and philosophers. I.D. adherents speak of a ''designer,'' not God, and argue that evolution alone doesn't adequately explain the complexity of living organisms.
Young earth creationists disagree with Intelligent Design on several counts, such as the Earth's age and the idea - held by many in the I.D. movement - that species share common ancestors.
''They are two completely different concepts,'' said John Calvert, the managing director of the Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network. ``Creation science says we don't start with the data, we start with the Bible.''
Still, many young earth creationists are supportive of the Intelligent Design movement, Calvert said.
Many blend I.D. arguments with the standard Biblical ones. DeRosa says when he addresses secular audiences, he uses arguments from Intelligent Design rather than the biblical points he uses with conservative Christian audiences.
"We don't consider it sufficient to say, `God said it, that settles it,''' said Tony Husemann, the chairman of the science department at Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale. "Creationists aren't a bunch of philosophers who say, `This never happened'; they're a bunch of scientists who over the years have asked questions about the evidence supporting evolution.''
Students at Calvary Christian Academy's K-12 school first learn the Biblical account of creation. Later, they study advanced chemistry and biology. Since no Christian equivalent to the AP biology textbook exists (Husemann says Calvary has one in the works), secular textbooks are supplemented with principles of Intelligent Design.
For the moment, DeRosa isn't taking on the public school science curriculum - a cause he says is too highly politicized. He leaves that to the Center for Reclaiming America, Coral Ridge Ministry's political action group. Still, he says he hopes to benefit soon from inroads made by Intelligent Design advocates.
''In the public school forum, we don't have to mention the Bible, but we could discuss a worldwide flood,'' he said. ``You have to start somewhere.''
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CREATION THEORIES
Evolution, 'young earth' creationism and Intelligent Design are three theories along a continuum of beliefs about the origin of life. There are also differences of opinion among those who subscribe to each of these basic beliefs, for example, on whether God played a role in evolution and, if so, what role; and on the exact biblical creation story.
_Evolution: In 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species," which challenged the prevalent belief that species are created independently from one another. Darwin argued that distinct species evolve gradually from common ancestors as genetic mutations give rise to new physical traits. Traits that improve a species' ability to survive and reproduce are passed to new generations, while those that hinder reproduction and survival are weeded out through natural selection. Over time, new species form.
_Young earth creationism: The belief, based on the book of Genesis, that the Earth and all its inhabitants were created by God between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Biblical literalists hold that God created each species individually in a period of six days. They point to what they say is evidence of a worldwide flood, in which Noah put two of each species on the ark to save them, to support their view.
_Intelligent Design: The theory that an intelligent designer guided species' development. Intelligent design advocates argue that humans and other animals are too complex to have evolved randomly through Darwinian processes of genetic mutation and natural selection.