The Genesis of a Debate
Creationist Students Take Field Trip to Hotbed of Evolution:
The Smithsonian

By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Every winter, David DeWitt takes his biology class to the Smithsonian's
National Museum of Natural History, but for a purpose far different from
that of other professors.

DeWitt brings his Advanced Creation Studies class (CRST 390, Origins) up
from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., hoping to strengthen his
students' belief in a biblical view of natural history, even in the
lion's den of evolution.

His yearly visit to the Smithsonian is part of a wider movement by
creationists to confront Darwinism in some of its most redoubtable
secular strongholds. As scientists celebrate the 200th anniversary of
Charles Darwin's birth, his doubters are taking themselves on
Genesis-based tours of natural history museums, aquariums, geologic
sites and even dinosaur parks.

"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."

Creationists, who take their view of natural history straight from the
book of Genesis, believe that scientific data can be interpreted to
support their idea that God made the first human, Adam, in an
essentially modern form 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

A 2006 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 42
percent of Americans believe humans have always existed in their present
form. At universities such as Liberty, founded by the late Jerry
Falwell, those views inform the entire science curriculum.

Like the Liberty students, avowed creationists across the country are
making a practice of challenging the conventional wisdom at zoos
(questioning the evolutionary explanation of giraffe necks), the Grand
Canyon (dating the rock layers in thousands, not millions, of years),
and cave parks (describing the formations as evidence of rapid drainage
after the Great Flood).

In the upcoming issue of Answers, a leading magazine of the young-Earth
movement, the list of "creation vacations" includes the Lowell
Observatory in Arizona, the New England Aquarium in Boston and London's
Natural History Museum.

"Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?" asked
Bill Jack, a Christian leadership instructor who leads groups across the
country for a company called Biblically Correct Tours. "If Christianity
is true, it better be true in the natural history museums and in the zoos."

Creationists have been popping up in enough mainstream institutions that
one museum has produced a creation-vs.-evolution primer to help
volunteer docents handle their sometimes-pointed questions. When the
Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, N.Y., published its guide, more than 50
museums called looking for a copy, according to director Warren Allmon.

But creationists say the purpose of their visits to what some describe
as "temples to evolution" is to train themselves to think critically,
not to pick rhetorical fights with curators or other visitors.

"I'm not standing up and saying to everybody in the room, 'Gather
around,' " Jack said. "That would be disruptive. But I'm speaking loudly
enough for my people to hear and sometimes others join in."

At the Smithsonian, officials said they were unaware of any organized
visits by avowed creationists but said they are welcome. Still, all
visitors should come knowing that the museum -- like all mainstream
natural history institutions -- is fundamentally Darwinian, said
spokesman Randall Kremer.

"Evolution is the unifying principle for all the biology, past and
present, in our halls," Kremer said. "That is the foundation of the
research we conduct at the museum."

Actually, the field trippers from Liberty University didn't find much to
object to at their first stop, the museum's soaring hall of fossils.
DeWitt's main complaint was that the 1980s-era introductory film on the
beginning of life was woefully outdated (lots of dancing amoebas, no
mention of DNA).

"It's embarrassing," said DeWitt, who found himself filling in some of
the latest evolutionary thinking for his students. His PhD in
neuroscience is from Case Western Reserve University. "As an educator, I
want them to see the most up-to-date material."

Otherwise, the 20 students listened attentively as co-leader Marcus
Ross, an enthusiastic paleontologist who teaches at Liberty, expertly
explained about the world-class fossil collection and told ripping tales
of the towering tyrannosaurus rex that was casting skeletal shadows over
the group.

"I love it here," said Ross, who has a doctorate in geosciences from the
University of Rhode Island. "There's something romantic about seeing the
real thing."

Modern creationists don't deny the existence of dinosaurs but believe
that God made them, and all animals, on the same sixth day that he
created man. In fact, Ross's only real beef in the fossil hall is with
the 30-foot lighted column that is a timeline marking 630 million years
of geology. As a young-Earth creationist, he asserts that the vast
majority of the rocks and fossils were formed during Noah's flood about
4,000 years ago. Most paleontologists date the T-Rex to 65 million years
ago.

The group moved on, talking quietly among themselves. At a diorama of a
hominid burial site, a Liberty student described how the famous
Neanderthal brow ridge is really not that distinct from many found on
modern human skulls.

"The really big difference is between human and ape skulls," said David
Asfour, 28, a general biology major.

At one point, DeWitt called them together under a Nigerian proverb
stenciled on a wall. "The Earth goddess fashions the human body just as
the potter fashions her pot," DeWitt read. "So there is some religion here."

But in 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.

"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."

Before heading back to Lynchburg each year, DeWitt makes a point of
stopping by the Jefferson Memorial. The quotes on the wall there (his
favorite: "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed
a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?") make for a
better ending to the trip than the secular shades of the museum, he said.