On Saturday, a creationist event is coming to campus to address the idea of intelligent design, rather than evolution through natural selection. Some MSU researchers have spoken out against the event.
MSU evolution researcher Richard Lenski, who is behind a groundbreaking study of E-coli evolution that has been going for more than 25 years, said the entire event is erroneous.
“These sorts of events are meant to attract attention and create the appearance of scientific controversy, when there is none,” Lenski said. “This event does a disservice to both religion and science by pretending they are the same.”
One of the summit’s eight workshops specifically targets Lenski’s study, saying his study shows degeneration of a species rather than evolution.
Lenski was invited to debate this at the summit, but declined.
“I'm not interested in participating, because the whole thing looks like a charade designed to confuse rather than illuminate,” Lenski said.
Lenski is not the only MSU scientist opposed to the proliferation of creationist views.
Louise Mead, education director at the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, said the fact of evolution doesn’t necessarily discredit religious beliefs.
“Insisting that humans, and all other life forms, did not evolve, and attempting to discredit the science of evolution because you believe it must conflict with religion, manufactures a controversy that has the sole purpose of polarizing people and forcing them to feel that they have to choose between religion and science,” Mead said.
Mead believes that denying the science as a basis of religion is a misguided concept.
“Science does not, by nature, deny the existence of God,” Mead said.
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