As fodder for his lengthy prayer sessions, he found magazine and newspaper articles provided "an endless and astonishing vein of human misery from which to mine the elements for [his] nightly pleas."

At that point in his life, Chapman found his gay uncle, Ben Duncan, and his partner to be "the only truly civilized and loving couple [he] knew."

In that court case, eleven parents successfully sued the school district to prevent creationism (also called intelligent design) from getting equal footing with instruction on evolution in science classes taken by 9th graders.

The ruling in the case, issued by Republican Judge John Jones, reprimanded "the [Christian] fundamentalists and their scientific supporters for their intellectual dishonesty.”[2] During the trial, a journalism colleague from a Harrisburg newspaper reported on the fact that Matthew Chapman was a descendent of Charles Darwin.

This led to Chapman being "invited to homes and churches in the area to talk about [his] views, and on a couple of occasions to endure attempts at conversion.

[4] Chapman's most-famous film, The Ledge, which he wrote and directed, starred Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Terrence Howard, and Patrick Wilson.

The inspiration for starting Science Debate was Chapman noticing that many of the questions asked of candidates leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election focused on values and faith.

During that campaign season, Science Debates was able to obtain responses to 14 science-related questions from candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain.

He pointed out that scientific knowledge has lengthened human lifespans and eliminated diseases in only the past century while "religion has had thousands of years to prove its supernatural effectiveness" with no demonstrable results.

Yet, he concluded, the exact opposite is true, with incarceration and teen pregnancy rates being much higher in the highly religious United States than they are in the more secular nations in Europe.