“Darwin’s ideas are attacked as a dangerous threat to a God-centered understanding of mankind’s place in the universe,” began Dr. Patricia Princehouse.

Princehouse, one of Ohio’s foremost experts on the history and philosophy of science, delivered a lecture titled “Creationism Evolving: Ohio’s Struggles with Intelligent Design.”

Princehouse’s address touched on a number of issues dealing both with the history of evolutionary thought and the present state of science education in schools. She spoke about how Darwin, who is widely considered to be the founder of the field of evolutionary biology, was actually wrong about a number of his findings regarding evolutionary change.

However, the tendency towards constant critical analysis and revision of Darwin’s ideas that is essential to scientific understanding often gives opponents of evolution an excuse to discount the theory as uncertain or false. Princehouse went on to explain the history of anti-evolutionary discourse, as well as the dangers of religious non-scientific thought as it creeps into the realm of science.

When modern thought on descent with modification first became mainstream, advances in allied fields such as geology and natural history had produced a general trend toward old earth creationism, the belief that, though divine influences had affected the development of the universe, the earth was quite old and not the product of a literal six-day period of creation.

Princehouse traced the first strains of violently anti-evolutionary creationism to the 1960s popularity of young earth creationism, a philosophy promulgated by the Seventh Day Adventist church, which purports that the earth is only several thousand years old and that all species originated at the same time.

Though the 1968 case of Epperson v. Arkansas resulted in a ruling banning the teaching of biblical creationism from public schools, it was not until the stiffer resolution of the 1987 decision Edwards v. Aguillard that other forms of creation science were likewise acknowledged to be unconstitutional.

Princehouse’s recent activist work has consisted of fighting against attempts to introduce intelligent design, the newest incarnation of creationism, into Ohio’s public school curriculum.

Recently proposed state lesson plans mandate a curriculum on evolution that is, in her opinion, pedagogically and factually incorrect. These curricula include prescriptions for over a week of critical analysis of the various modes of thought regarding the origin of modern species. Problematically, evolution is the only such system with any scientific foundation.

According to Princehouse, the critical analysis is actually a veiled attempt to promote unstructured, unscientific debate between students while forcing at least some to defend non-evolutionary interpretations of change in species over time that inevitably include creationism thought.