On Monday night the UW chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes sponsored a lecture from Dave Nutting, a co-director of the Alpha and Omega Institute of Creation.
“Why can two different Ph.D scientists look at the same information, one comes up with the idea of evolution, and the other comes up the idea of a creator?” said Nutting. “There isn’t a problem with the data, it’s the interpretation of the data.”
Nutting’s lecture, “Was Darwin Wrong?” was held in the Education Auditorium and was the first of two talks that Nutting gave this week, with the Tuesday night lecture focusing more so on geological aspects of creation science.
“I didn’t always used to be a Creationist,” Nutting said in the opening minutes of his presentation. “In fact, it was the scientific evidence that made me reevaluate my stance on the theory of evolution.”
Nutting laid out the framework of his argument against the Darwinian Evolution Theory by first drawing comparisons between evolutionary sciences and Creationism.
“I think that Evolution requires faith in a lot of things if you’re going to believe it,” said Nutting. “I would call belief in evolution a philosophy more than anything.”
Audience members were given a period of time to voice questions at the conclusion of Nutting’s presentation. The crowd was comprised of a mixture of Creationists and evolution supporters alike, resulting in queries ranging from simple requests for clarification to structured arguments against many of the points raised by Nutting.
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding, by militant creationists, as to the mission of the field of science,” said Markus Holley, a senior studying English education who comes from an ex-fundamentalist background. “Existential nonsense aside, observing the natural world as it seems to be, science is not something one is asked to put faith into.”
Despite the fact that many of Nutting’s arguments against evolution specifically questioned the scientific method, university students and faculty members agree that events such as Nutting’s lectures are beneficial to an academic environment for many reasons.
“I wouldn’t want the university filtering who gets to come and talk on campus,” Holley said. “Just because a person is speaking on a subject that I don’t agree with doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get the choice to hear what they have to say.”
Dr. Alex Buerkle, who teaches the Evolutionary Biology course on campus, sees another reason as to why the University hosting speakers such as Nutting is beneficial to students.
“I’m very happy when people present their ideas at a university,” Buerkle said. “I think people need to be aware of all kinds of viewpoints. I also think it’s important for students to get the chance to delineate between someone’s opinion and academic scholarship.”
Buerkle said that in his ten years teaching at the university he has been impressed with the open-mindedness of Wyoming students.
“I get the feeling that students here get generally less threatened by opposing ideas than do other students I’ve interacted with,” said Buerkle.
Nutting’s presentation, after exploring examples of scientific findings which he asserts aid in undercutting many of the foundational theories of evolution, ended with a final appeal of audience members to do their own research.
“Now, we’ve talked about a lot of stuff tonight,” Nutting said, “but I don’t want everyone here to just take my word on this. Go out, research this stuff. Make up your own mind.”
