Creationism debate brought to college campus

Aapta Garg Guest Writer

How was the world created? Did God make the earth as we see it today, with man, plants and animals? Did it start off as an empty space with no living organisms and transform over time?

The debate over whether to teach creationism beside evolution in public schools has gained steam once again. In Kansas, trials with the State Board of Education were held recently to examine whether or not the concept of “intelligent design” should be included in the biology curriculum. Kansas eliminated any traces of evolution from the school curriculum in 1999 and reinstated the teaching of evolution and earth origins in 2001. Pending an academic review, which should be complete in October, the most recent Board has voted 6-4 to allow alternative theories, such as intelligent design, to enter the classroom.

Visiting Assistant Professor Jason Jones of biology said he would not rule out the possibility of a class focusing on different ideas about human origins. “The existence of such a course is at the discretion of the administration and any faculty that would be willing to participate, because that’s what a college is,” he said. “It’s a place to come and talk and explore and express yourself.”

When asked about the likelihood of creationism being taught in Vassar science classes, Dean of Studies Alexander Thompson III wrote in an e-mail statement, “This would ostensibly arise as a curricular issue, which means the Vassar faculty would decide if and how such material would be covered in our curriculum.”

Kansas won’t be the first state to teach creationism or intelligent design. In 2002, Ohio mandated that students be taught about the controversy regarding evolution. The Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania voted in October 2004 to include intelligent design in the curriculum. The New York State Assembly introduced a bill last May that, if passed, would mandate that teachers instruct all public school students on intelligent design. Proposals in more than 20 states would make biology teachers challenge Darwinism in public schools.

According to www.ideacenter.org, intelligent design is not simply a synonym for creationism: “Intelligent Design is a scientific theory which holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and are not the result of an undirected, chance-based process such as Darwinian evolution.”

Intelligent design is distinct from creationism in that it posits that microevolution of DNA occurred, although it was not necessarily due to random mutations.

According to the May 30 issue of The New Yorker, about 80 percent of Americans believe that God either created human beings as we see them today or guided human evolution.

Those who support intelligent design contend that there are too many gaps in the theory of evolution by natural selection. Because scientists have not been able to explain all links between putatively related species, intelligent design advocates contend that there must be an intelligent designer who had a hand in the creation of those species.

However, this lack of evidence does not convince all members of the scientific communit of the merits of intelligent design. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” said Jones. “Just because science or natural selection or Darwin does not have an explanation for a particular phenomena does not mean that we won’t...Science works on positive evidence.

“[Creationism is] not science. It’s not testable. It’s not falsifiable,” added Jones. “It’s faith, and I am not going to sit here and denigrate someone’s faith, but I’m also not going to include it in my conversations about science...I don’t think it’s something worth our time in this class...where the presumption is that evolution happened.”

However, Jacqueline Law ’09 said creationism should be taught in schools. “I think that if they are going to teach evolution as a basic principle, or an explanation for how we got to where we are, they should teach creationism, and let people discern between themselves,” she said. “I think it’s extremely one-sided bias and I don’t think that education, especially public education, should teach that way...You can’t just give one side of the story.”

Law added that alternatives to evolution should be presented at Vassar. “If the College is concerned with well-educating the public...then it should be offered as a class so that people can take it and if evolution is taught in a class, it should also give both sides to both evolution and creationism,” she said.