Meeting Abstract

S4-2.3  Friday, Jan. 4  Creation Science is Alive and Well SCOTT, Eugenie C; National Center for Science Education scott@ncseweb.org

Over the last five or 10 years, the scientific community has been concentrating on the Intelligent Design movement, a form of creationism that has garnered a great deal of publicity. Yet the traditional Young Earth Creationists (YECs) have neither disappeared nor even diminished. Arguably, there is more YECism in the United States than ever before: illustrated by the expansion of the two largest creation science organizations in the country, Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research. Intelligent Design, avoiding biblical literalist precepts such as the young Earth, has tried to be the �big tent� holding all anti-evolutionists together, seeking support from both the YECs and mainstream Christians. This strategy worked for awhile, but increasingly, YECs have pulled away from intelligent design, asserting their biblical literalist roots, and their independence from their better-publicized brethren. But this reflects the leadership: at the grassroots, the situation is likely to be quite different. As judged by a perusal of letters to the editor, and an analysis of the history of recent anti-evolutionary school board-level policies from NCSE�s files, in the general public there is a great deal of confusion between Intelligent Design and YEC. The general public � and students � tend to lump both positions into one general, creationist, anti-evolutionist position. Teachers and professors need to be aware that many students who may identify themselves as �Intelligent Design supporters�, may actually be YECs, a fact which will affect what approaches to teaching evolution would be most effective.