You wouldn't think teaching Introduction to Botany would be a controversial job.

After all, ferns don't carry handguns, grant pardons or have sexual orientations. They did, however, rule the earth 300 million years ago thanks to evolution. As the first organisms to develop a vascular system, ferns were able to process energy more efficiently, giving them a decided advantage in the competition for resources. It's a process first suggested by Charles Darwin 140 years ago.

As everyone knows, the "E" word - evolution - is one of the most controversial in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Four hundred years after Galileo's row with the Catholic church, a quick survey of Oklahoma and surrounding states would show the battle between science and religion is still as heated as ever.

But what everyone doesn't know is that the battle is a figment of America's imagination. Believing that spiritual people and dedicated scientists stand on opposite sides throwing insults at each other is just simpler than looking at the complicated situation science educators and their students are in.

There is no war, and all-out confrontations are rare. What's getting in the way of science education is, for the most part, the popular perception that there's a war between science and religion.

Politicians, leaders of unrelated causes and activists on both the left and right have benefited from this perception.

The losers may be Americans three generations from now, who will have to live with the political, social and technological effects of the demonization of science.

Show and tell

It was perception that was bothering lecturer Brad Elder, one of OU's introductory botany instructors. Part of the classwork involved expressing the long process of plant evolution. The sheer magnitude of time - 4.5 billion years - involved wasn't getting across.

So Elder developed a way of showing, instead of telling, his students. He took a black marker and drew a timeline to scale of Earth's history on the curb of the South Oval. Every semester, Elder takes his students on a tour of history climaxing with Elder producing a penny, the width of which in comparison to the 300 yards of the tour represents humanity's time on Earth.

"It stuns everybody," Elder said. The tension over teaching evolution in public high schools has resulted in ever growing amounts of college students who have heard about the debate over evolution, but have had little actual exposure to the theory. Giving them a more concrete example about the amount of time it takes for changes in species to take place makes the idea more conceivable to many students, Elder said.

Not that every student wants to hear it. The first time Elder gave the tour at a different university, two students walked off in disgust. Obviously, those students weren't open to the experience, but Elder said he believes his own attitude might have contributed as well.

"When I first started teaching it, I was like, 'You can believe what you want, but this is what goes in this class,'" he said. But through his teaching experiences he's learned to take a different approach. Now the class involves time devoted to discussing different viewpoints of evolution.

The point is to let students express their views, while at the same time making clear that no one is trying to convert them or turn them into an atheist.

"People always jump on that evolution has never been proven," he said. But a theory like evolution can never be proven through traditional testing. The evidence for evolution is almost overwhelming. "It doesn't mean that it's never going to be refuted. It's the best explanation we have."

Elder prefers that science and religion keep to explaining separate realms of explanation. There is a place for both within society.

"You have to have faith of things you can't prove," Elder said. Faith should always be separate from facts. "I think faith should always conflict with science."

Balancing act

Growing up, Gary Smith never felt a conflict between his faith and his interest in science. While other high schools were shying away from even mentioning theories such as evolution and Big Bang in class, Smith's school taught both, and according to him, taught it well.

What made Smith's school different? For starters, it was private. But most of all, it was a Christian school.

"Christianity and science aren't conflicting," the OU chemistry graduate student said.

Smith has no qualms about calling himself a Christian. He grew up in a Christian home in Dallas. He's always had an interest in science. He's even considered becoming a high school science teacher.

Smith does not believe creationism belongs in science classes.

"I don't want people to be taught Christianity in an analytical way," Smith said. In his own study of the Bible, he's never found a problem with what he learns in science classes and his faith. He said putting the Bible under a microscope in order to create an argument to compete against scientific theories goes against the spiritual purpose of the teachings, and the point of science has never been to disprove the existence of God.

God and evolution

It's a view shared by Mark Walvoord. As a child growing up in a Protestant Amarillo home, Walvoord was enchanted by rolly-pollies and nature in general, and as a zoology graduate student at OU, Walvoord aspires to study rare species of frogs and lizards in Madagascar before deforestation can destroy their habitat.

Studying nature and the Bible has made Walvoord realize that not only is the theory of natural selection the best way to describe the variety and abundance of life on Earth, but that there's nothing in scripture that really says it couldn't have happened.

"Even if someone thinks that evolution can't be tested, doesn't mean it's not real," Walvoord said. He calls himself a theistic evolutionist, one who believes in evolution but sees a higher power behind the process.

"The number of changes at the rate they happened couldn't have been made without some help."

Walvoord even hosted a non-class affiliated discussion for students in the lab sections he teaches to discuss questions related to the debate. Only a few people came because of bad weather, but Walvoord said he believes discussing the issue is one of the keys to deflating stereotypes on both sides.

"Most creationists believe that if you're an evolutionist, you're an atheist," he said. He said he can understand how the stereotypes arise, given the nature of American thought and the tendency for extremists to dominate debates.

Student perspectives

Students with perspectives like Smith's and Walvoord's aren't always the case in OU classrooms, and the problems aren't always confined to "hard" science classes.

Trina Hope, assistant sociology professor, has taken to warning students in classes like Sociology of the Family on the first day that they will encounter theories that run against their own beliefs.

"I've had students who were so religious, the class upset them," she said.

Most of the problems arise when the class encounters social theories based on evolutionary theories that relate to subjects such as homosexuality, divorce and gender roles, with feminism in general.

"Students sometimes ask, 'Why can't I just say God made me that way?' " Hope said. But Hope responds that for the purposes of exam questions, that isn't the answer for her class.

Hope hasn't had too many problems with students openly challenging her in class, but then, the most religious students often don't choose to attend class at a school like OU, she said.

Hope is more than aware that there is a segment of the population that is actively engaged in thinking of ways to make teaching scientific theories harder. A friend passed her an e-mail story as a joke, but it was obvious it was originally intended as a story meant to inspire undergraduate students.

In the story, an atheist professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California had preached against God and religion in his classroom for 20 years. A young Christian student openly challenges him in class and the professor proposes a test: He would drop a piece of chalk, and if it didn't break on the ground, then they would know God had interfered, but if it broke it would be proof against the existence of God.

The chalk bounces off the professor and lands whole on the ground. The professor runs out of the classroom, emotionally upset. The student goes on to preach Christianity to the large class for another 30 minutes.

Hope said the story illustrates how some students believe that professors are out to convert their students to atheism. Hope herself has had teaching evaluations in which students have written "It's obvious she doesn't believe in God." But Hope, raised in the Church of Christ and Latter Day Saints and now a member of Reform Judaism, said that even if professors wanted to preach religious or non-religious beliefs in class, they would never get away with it, especially in secular universities.

"My task is not to convert people," she said. "It's to expose them to ideas and data."

Future of evolution

With public schools across the country becoming increasingly cautious about what they teach or what information their science textbooks contain, zoology associate professor Ola Finke sees much at stake for the future of American society.

The questions future voters, leaders and citizens of the United States will be confronted with will need a sound knowledge of basic science to decide, she said. How will Americans decide how to deal with cloning, the "superbugs" developing through misuse of antibiotic drugs, reacting to the effects of global warming, dealing with the exponential population growth of the human species and the ethical concerns of manipulation of the human genome, if most people don't understand the basic evolutionary processes these issues relate to?

The lack of knowledge threatens a subject that is very close to Finke's heart. Finke studies tropical dragonflies and damselflies in areas where massive extinctions of species are taking place because of human involvement.

Finke worries that many don't realize the importance of biodiversity because they don't understand the process behind it. Without realizing what they could lose, people might allow biologically diverse areas to disappear. Humans are fast becoming the main selective pressure on earth, determining which species become extinct.

"A knowledge of science is fundamentally important to us all," Finke said.

Finke's strong belief prompted her to take time out from an already busy schedule to craft a letter and organize an effort to get the letter placed as an ad in several Oklahoma newspapers. The letter expressed the 123 signees' concerns over a proposal to place a disclaimer about evolution on all Oklahoma public school textbooks.

"It's scientists' responsibility to help inform the public when things like this happen," she said.

Media's role

It's also the responsibility of the press and the American public to make sure they are not letting a convenient and compelling story of conflict overshadow the reality of how religion and science relate to each other.

Sources interviewed for this story said they believe issues like textbook disclaimers are often just a hot topic. Often, the reality of the complex situation is oversimplified by the popular media. The result, scientists said, is that the American public jumps onto one side or the other without really knowing what's going on.

Not knowing could lead school boards or textbook adoption boards to follow political movements based on rhetoric instead of looking at what is best for the children involved. Scientists are quick to say they have no intention of changing students' religious views, but the consequences of totally erasing prominent scientific thought from education materials could have far-reaching effects.
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