As she climbed up the stairs, junior Megan Armstrong could see the snow drifting down from the dark, February sky. But the snow was the least of her worries. She had a sense of creeping dread, which cumulated as she approached her biology classroom. Half of the students were already there, and Armstrong trickled in with the remaining students. That day, her class would begin its evolution unit.

“I remember going into class knowing that I was walking into something where things I had been taught all my life were going to be tested,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said she considers herself a literal creationist, someone who believes that God created all things out of nothing in six days, as recorded in the Bible. Although she learned evolution in her biology class, she said her beliefs concerning the origin of life conflicted with what was taught in class. According to Armstrong, CHS has neglected teaching the creationist side of the argument.

“If Carmel has a really huge science department, and we teach a lot of really different, specific sciences like body science and sports science, and if there is scientific backing to a creationist viewpoint in the origin of mankind, then it should be taught along with out other sciences,” she said.

Armstrong’s words are in light of the firing of John Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher at Mount Vernon Middle School. On Nov. 19, 2013 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the school board was justified in firing Freshwater in 2011 for refusing to remove Christian materials from his classroom, according to the Los Angeles Times. Freshwater’s attorney confirmed in April 2014 that the instructor had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state court’s decision. However, the court only affirmed the school board’s decision and avoided the issue of whether Freshwater could teach creationism. In spite of the court’s declining to comment, the ruling sparked controversy and dissent.

According to Armstrong, Freshwater was wrong in his refusal to comply with the school’s instruction.

“It’s not okay to just ignore your boss, you know?” she said. Regarding the teaching itself, however, she said Freshwater should not have been fired if he had been teaching the scientific evidence for creationism.

Her words are in alignment with a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case. In Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court ruled that “teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of mankind to school children might be done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.” Armstrong said she agrees.

“I think, because there is scientific evidence to back creationism, that it should be taught in science classes, because we teach science in science classes,” Armstrong said. “And if we’re going to teach evolution, which has scientific backing, then we should teach creationism, which also has scientific backing.”

“I do know that no legitimate science teacher would teach that,” he said.

The latest Indiana state standards for science, published in 2010, require students to “describe how modern evolutionary theory provides an explanation of the history of life on earth and the similarities among organisms that exist today.”

Armstrong’s experience in her biology classroom reflects this standard.

“We weren’t really taught about an origin that wasn’t anything but evolution,” she said. “And I think that was what made it the hardest, because (the teacher) treated it like fact, as if she was teaching me math. So it was rough at first.”

Although P. David Polly, adjunct biology professor at Indiana University, said he does not believe evolution must be taught as fact in public schools, he said he nevertheless considers learning evolution important.

“Evolution is an appropriate part of scientific education, because it is something that we observe through many lines of evidence at many scales.  It is central to scientific understanding of biological processes, anatomy, genetics, DNA, cancer, viruses and flu epidemics.  We can manipulate evolution in the lab and in agricultural industry,” Polly said. “Thus, there are many cases in which courts considered challenges to the teaching of evolution and ruled against them.”

As Armstrong filed out of her biology class that day, she still felt a lingering sense of dread.

“I think (I felt) more so the same as when I walked in,” she said. “We had a long unit going. On the first couple of days, I was exasperated. Then I started getting upset, not like tearfully upset but like wounded, you could say. I didn’t really go through the five stages of grief. It affected me slowly.”

Matthew Hahn, biology professor at Indiana University, said he has had conversations with students about their faith and evolution.

“Several of my students have talked to me about trying to reconcile their beliefs with what they’ve learned in my class,” he said. “They’ve always been very respectful about it and have just wanted to talk, not argue.”

Polly said he has had a similar experience with students.

“Indeed, when I was a student, I had conversations with many teachers about it,” he said. “Losing one’s faith is a frightening thing, and it is a shame that many people suffer it because of how they were taught religion. Charles Darwin, who first hypothesized the mechanism of natural selection, agonized his entire life about his faith. Many scientists today, especially those raised in cultures outside the United States, were not taught that faith depends on material facts like how old the Earth is or whether evolution occurs.”

Eventually, Armstrong said she discovered the solution to her conflicting beliefs.

“The first month, it was really hard, because I was taking notes on something I didn’t believe in. I was taking tests and lying on test paper so that I could pass. I started to zero it out and take it as fact so that on a test, you can just accept it,” she said. “And then I had a brief, but nevertheless important crisis where I thought, ‘If this isn’t fact, is anything I’ve ever been taught my entire childhood fact?’ And then I did some research on it, and I realized that there’s a lot of science that they’re not teaching me right now. After I picked up on all that, I realized she’s teaching me one part of the story, and I know both sides, and I still choose to believe what I do. And then it became easier.”

Actively searching for both sides of the argument, according to Armstrong, establishes a balance between creationist and evolutionist views.

She said, “I feel the knowledge has expanded, and I’m almost thankful for how rough that was on me, because that made me realize if you really care about something, you should look into it. I feel better because I came out stronger.”