LAFAYETTE - He stated his beliefs in 95 theses that he nailed to the door of a
church in Wittenberg, Germany - the town where he lived in 1517.
For this act of defiance against the Catholic Church, religious reformer Martin
Luther was excommunicated four years later. Dan Clark did somewhat less last
month - he quit his job teaching chemistry at Jefferson High School rather than
modify his teachings about evolution.
Yet it was an act of defiance also done in the name of God, a personal
testimony that many people wouldn't make today. Teaching religion - that's what
Lafayette School Corp. Superintendent Ed Eiler essentially accused Clark of
doing when he penned an official reprimand in September 2000.
The letter said Clark introduced "creationism/special creation and
religion" to his students and ordered him to stop. Creationism, and what
is sometimes called intelligent design, rests on the belief that the story of
biblical creation can be proven scientifically and that evolution can be
disproved.
For example, creationists believe the geology of the Earth can be best
explained in terms of a global flood, as the Book of Genesis describes. They
also believe nothing in chemistry can really explain the emergence of life,
hence God must be the creator.
Clark said he stayed quiet during the past school year because of the
reprimand, and that he ultimately demanded it be removed from school files.
When Eiler wouldn't do that, Clark quit. He now teaches at Frontier High School
in nearby Chalmers.
Clark denies that he teaches creationism, but acknowledges highlighting natural
phenomena that he thinks are incompatible with evolution. He believes that
creationism can be supported by fact.
Clark thinks that evolutionists have failed to show "intermediaries"
between different species that have presumably succeeded each other. In human
evolution, this is ordinarily spoken of as "the missing link."
Clark, 52, is a native of Indiana with degrees from Purdue University and Bob
Jones University. He became a Christian in 1971.
Creationism has been a hot-button topic in public education for decades, as has
the teaching of evolution. The modern theory of evolution is largely credited
to 19th-century British naturalist Charles Darwin.
Craig T. Nelson, an Indiana University biology professor who has lectured on
creationism, said that whatever else it is, creationism is not science.
Nelson argues that the origin of creationist ideas is irrelevant - they have to
stand up to rigorous scientific testing, just like any other ideas about nature
and the universe.
For example, Nelson argues that various kinds of radioactive dating on rocks
show that the Earth is much older than creationists can accept. Fossil records
also confirm that the Earth is millions of years old.
Similarly, modern physicists can study light that originated billions of years
ago in the early stages of the universe's development. This also refutes a
literal interpretation of the Bible that the world was created in six days, or
that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, he said.