My name is Bill Harris. I received my PhD from the Univ of Minnesota and did my dissertation research at the Mayo Clinic. I spent 11 years at KU Medical Center in the Department of Internal Medicine, and am currently a full professor at the UMKC School of Medicine, the first recipient of an endowed chair in metabolism and vascular biology. I have published over 80 scientific articles over the last 20 years, and currently do full-time research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. With that personal background, let me address 5 questions pertinent to the issue of how theories of origin ought to be taught.
Origins theories have almost nothing to do with the daily grind of science.
The notion that kids who don t believe in evolution will, in some way, be handicapped and non-competitive is absolutely false. This teaching should be part of modern science education because it is so widely believed to be an established fact. Not at all. In other words, we could live without it. Origins theories are fun to think about and provocative to discuss, but they do not affect the work of the vast majority of scientists.