Recordpub.com - OUR VIEW: Sawyer, the right choice: Ohio education is behind; funding, not Intelligent Design, should be the issue

Deborah Owens Fink's assertion that student need to learn about all scientific views of evolution, made once more at the candidates night hosted by the Kent League of Women Voters, sounds good until the specifics of what she is saying emerges.

The incumbent on the Ohio Board of Education, Fink, a marketing professor at the University of Akron, has been lobbying to insert faith based Intelligent Design into the study of biology, a field that has come into being by rigorous and empirical observation and by the testing of hypotheses that given sufficient study become theories.

Mixing faith, which is intuitive, with science, which relies not on belief, but rigorous observation and testing of hypotheses, muddies the water. Since Galileo proved the sun does not circle the earth (incurring the wrath of the religious leaders of his day, who forced him on the pain of death to recant his findings), most scientists have to come to realize that faith is a matter for the heart and science a matter for the head.

Just as chemistry succeeded alchemy, evolution displaced creationism as an explanation of how life developed on earth. Controversial when Charles Darwin proposed it in the 1850s, the evidence over the last 150 years that has accumulated in evolution's support is overwhelming.

Many, if not most, who accept evolution as reality do not find it conflicts with their beliefs in a creator. Nevertheless, evolution continues to be controversial and remains unacceptable to some, particularly modern day Biblical literalists, who do have the option of alternative schools, but want public education to make room for their opinions, which are based on rigorous study of the Bible, but not the empirical study and testing of nature.

Former U.S. Rep. Thomas Sawyer, who is challenging Fink, realizes that continuing the Intelligent Design debate further will undermine the education of Ohio's young people who are already hamstrung by a state government that will not address the issue of providing a thorough and efficient education. Proper funding of Ohio education is the issue that needs to be addressed, not evolution, he maintains.

Sawyer, if elected to the Ohio Board of Education, would not get public education mired down in the debate of whether to introduce what are essentially religious beliefs into the study of biology.

The job of an Ohio Board of Education member is unpaid, but can have an important influence in the funding of education and the curriculum offered to young people. A former school teacher, who has served important roles in both the Ohio legislature and Congress, Sawyer would bring a wealth of valuable experience to the work of the Ohio Board of Education.

We recommend Sawyer for the Ohio Board of Education.