"Scientific Creationism"

A pause as my lab partner, Kate, and I stifle yet another of our mid-class giggling fits. She squints and whispers:
"Do you get the impression that no one else in this class is having as much fun as we are?"
I look around at my classmates, who are either drooping, their faces soaked with ennui or tight-jawed and glaring at the head of the room. "Yes."
"What does that say about us?"
"Don't go there."

Dr. Miller teaches my Genetics and Evolution class. He's also the only person I know who confidently stutters... But maybe "stutter" isn't the right term. He's just so excited by the words he's speaking it's a wonder they come out intact.

"Scientific creationism," Dr. Miller exclaims, "is a contradiction in terms. An Oxymoron. Just like Military Intelligence, Adult Male, or Aramark Food."

My dear professor has tried at every turn to explain to my dear peers that Intelligent Design is not an acceptable middle ground between science and religion. Intelligent Design is religion stated in neutral scientific language so that it can be taught in public schools. Dr. Miller also affirms that other Creationist theories are likewise supernatural, teleological, untestable and any number of other things unscientific. Creationism isn't science and jargon-ing it up doesn't change that.

Despite the perceptions of some of my classmates, Doc Miller isn't discouraging belief in God. Kate, lab partner extraordinaire, is going to seminary next year. Our prof's tirades against Creationism don't phase her. They certainly don't threaten my beliefs. Neither of us reads the Bible so literally. God (or whatever may be) is responsible for the creation of our souls. Is that not what "we" are or what "existence" is? So we evolved from "lesser" life forms. So what?

Kate and I sit in the back of class and let the alternate boredom, aggravation and strained silence of our fellow students wash over us. We giggle and document the good bits.

• God of the Gaps is bad theology.
• One word: Jesussaurus (Please ask. I can't possibly explain here.)
• Young Earth Creationism, according to Kate, was completely disproved by Wyle E. Coyote.
• "Of course, as humans, nobody gives a fig how mushrooms evolved... or how figs evolved for that matter." --Dr. M.

And that was just from today's fifty-minute adventure I've come to know as BI 103.