Introduction by Ben Stein

It would be lovely to believe that while all kinds of groups think vilification, libels, and superstition rule the worlds of daily life, inside the university the search for truth is paramount. It would be sweet to believe that once inside the gates of academic Eden, man throws aside all party affiliation and ideology and proceeds only on the basis of what is true, shows sound thinking and can be proved.

Alas, it would be nice to think so, but it's a total myth. The academic world, as far as I can tell, is largely, though not entirely, ruled by party politics, the prevailing academic fashion, and loyalty to the most powerful faction within the academy. I saw this myself many years ago when I, a fan of then President Richard Nixon, was a teacher at the University of California at Santa Cruz and was treated like a freak from outer space.

Within the last four years, when I set out with the persons at Premise Media to make a movie about academic suppression in the arena of biology, life origins, cell biology, and the social effects of Darwinism, I was dismayed to see that the situation had become far worse than what it had been in 1972.

Despite lack of any clear evidence that Darwinism explains anything at all about the origins of life, no one is allowed to question that those origins had to be "Darwinist", that is, accidental. Despite the truth that no life could exist without the basic laws of gravity and physics and thermodynamics, despite the absence of any evidence that these laws came into being accidentally, one cannot question that they must have come about by chance.

Despite the fact of the incredible, mind boggling complexity of the cell, despite the truth that no one has ever been able to explain how a cell could have hundreds of thousands of interlocking parts that repair and reproduce themselves, no one is allowed to question that the cell happened by accident.

But a few brave people did question the unquestionable. A few brave people stood up to academic suppression and witch hunts. One of those people was Prof. Caroline Crocker. She dared to just suggest the possibility that there might have been an Intelligent Designer of the Universe and the cell. For this, she was tormented and thrown from the parapets of the academy.

But she did not die. She came back swinging hard, and she is still fighting.

She's really fighting for you, because if you picked up this book, you are probably at least a bit angry at the academic suppression of persons who suggest that there might be an Intelligent Designer. You are probably on the side of free speech about evolution vs. Intelligent Design--as Charles Darwin was himself.

Keep reading. This is a brave woman and her fight is your fight. It is our fight.