A DANGEROUS DESCENT

"A Dangerous Descent"  is a new play by award-winning writer Colin Cox that takes on the highly controversial debate between evolution and the new "science" of intelligent design. This concept was first proposed in 1987 in a Supreme Court Case regarding the separation of church and state and the establishment clause of the first amendment.

Intelligent Design proposes that all elements of the universe and of life as we know it can be explained by telesis through the work of an "architect". In the case of Evolution, it is the process of natural selection that ensures the survival of the fittest.

In the play, we follow this argument through the characters of Sean & Sam (the first people) and Sienna, the first wife of Sean. The debate arises when Sean & Sam discover a pocket watch on the ground and discuss how it got there. Sienna arrives and joins the discussion by claiming the watch is hers. A challenge erupts between Sienna and Sam as to who is the true wife of Sean. Sienna proposes that if the watch has a creator, Sam is the true wife of Sean, but if the watch has no creator and got there by "accident" then she is the true wife of Sean and she gets the watch. What ensues is a march through the battlefields of modern science, theology, philosophy, sociology and pop culture until the culmination when the audience decides whether the watch belongs to Sienna or Sam and ultimately deciding which theory wins the day.

The author, Colin Cox, is a noted playwright and holds a PhD in Biochemistry, so there are aspects of the scientific and the theatrical throughout the show. Some of the topics that are covered are:

• The Math of The Big Bang
  
• The Science of God
  
• Backward Evolution?
  
• The Origin of Life, Religion, and Speech
  
• The Cambrian Explosion
  
• Pre-Cambrian Bunnies
  
• Irreducible Complexity  
  
• The hottest genes around - Fox 2 genes
  
• Darwin's Dilemma - The Fossil Gap
  
• Young Earth Creationism
  
• Shakespeare's Bible?
  
• Dawkins and "The Blind Watchmaker"
  
• The First Wives Club of Eden