Creationists in pre-med

When I was finishing my undergrad a couple of years ago, I was a TA for a freshman Honors discussion course who had been reading and discussing Micheal Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things. Most of the course had been about critical thinking, learning how to do good research, etc., and they usually did a decent job in their essays and classroom discussions. The professor, the other TA, and I were shocked when we discovered many of them were young Earth creationists. These brilliant kids, cream-of-the-crop freshman at a state university, about 50% of them science majors, believed Genesis literally. 

Several of them will be sitting for MCATs this year. 

Since the other TA and the professor come from liberal arts and social sciences backgrounds, I had the opportunity to lecture on how natural selection works, how we know that evolution happens. how we know the age of the Earth, and what words like "theory" mean in science. The geology department was kind enough to give me some samples to use to illustrate some of my points. 

I saved about half of my time for a Q & A session, and it was clear that some of the students were hearing some of this very basic information for the first time. It was also clear that a few students had read up on some Creationist and apologetic literature before coming to class. I hope I helped open some eyes, but I fear it was too little, too late. 

When students are learning about Adam and Eve and about Noah and the flood long before they can talk, college is way too late to be talking about evolution for the first time. High school is far too late. Middle school is even too late. When children are convinced over 10-15 years that all the stories are literally real, it is no wonder that these preteens and young teens don't accept evolution like they accept practically all information presented to them in Algebra and English and US history. 

We need to be emphasizing the fundamental concepts which ultimately lead to a robust understanding of evolution (e.g., the Earth is old, animals with camouflage are harder for birds to find and eat, kids usually look like their parents, trilobite fossils don't go with dinosaur fossils which in turn don't go with people fossils, etc.) from Kindergarten on More importantly, we need to make sure these topics are not only in the Core Curriculum, but also on the test (if the concepts aren't on the test, they just aren't taught). 

When the basics are reinforced year after year, however, it makes understanding evolution much easier, and it makes believing creationist nonsense much harder, even for the heavily indoctrinated.