This is the printer-friendly layout. Click here to find the
online format. The January/February 2007 issue of Academe, the
journal of the American Association of University Professors,
features an article by a college teacher named Alvin Saperstein,
of Wayne State University, about how his introductory astronomy
and physics courses are attracting many young-earth
creationists. These may be very good students, but they
frustrate him because he cannot convince them that the universe
and all it contains, including our planet, came into existence
in a natural evolutionary process over billions of years, rather
than in the six days of creation a few thousand years ago, as
creationists calculate from the literal words of Genesis. No
problem arises when the professor explains how the universe
works now. It is only when he lectures about cosmology, or
evolutionary theory in geology, biology, or anthropology, and
asks his students if anything he has said bothers them, that
discomfort begins to appear. The class skepti