Religion & Law

Rat Dreams

By John Pieret

You may remember David DeWitt, the neuroscientist from Liberty University who thinks that the chance death of an organism somehow "begins to unravel the idea of natural selection." Well, it seems he takes his students in his ironically named Advanced Creation Studies class (what exactly is there after "then God poofed it into existence"?) on a field trip. They go to the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History once a year. It seems that Dr. DeWitt doesn't feel any need for an "academic freedom" law mandating a "balanced" treatment of evolution to protect his student's tender minds:

"There's nothing balanced here. It's completely, 100 percent evolution-based," said DeWitt, a professor of biology. "We come every year, because I don't hold anything back from the students."

[I]n the hall of mammals, which reopened in 2003 after a $23 million renovation, evolution assumes center stage, and the Liberty students grew a bit more subdued. They openly admired the well-lighted, meticulously designed dioramas. But they lamented that the texts and videos give no credit at all to a higher power for the wondrous animal variety on display.

Near the end of the "Evolution Trail," the class showed no signs of being swayed by the polished, enthusiastic presentation of Darwin's theory. They were surprised, though, by the bronze statue of man's earliest mammalian ancestor [that very handsome gal above].

"A rat?" exclaimed Amanda Runions, a 21-year-old biochemistry major, when she saw the model of a morganucodon, a rodent-like ancient mammal that curators have dubbed Grandma Morgie. "All this hype for a rat? You're expecting, like, at least an ape."

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).