#1856: Heather Kuruvilla

Cedarville University is one of many fundamentalist creationist institutions in the US purporting to meddle in “education” – it sports many of the exterior trappings of genuine universities, but what goes on inside has little to do with rational inquiry of learning. Heather Kuruvilla is one of Cedarville’s professors of biology, a department that does theology and fundamentalist apologetics but little that could be mistaken for science to anyone who actually looked. Kuruvilla also contributed to the “university’s” publication on Darwin, which unconditionally endorses young earth creationism – the opening sentence is: “Replacing his faith in Creator God with misplaced certainty in the power of science, Darwin subjected himself to a disquiet life and a hopeless death,” and that lets you know in no uncertain terms the standards for rigor and impartial evaluation of the evidence for evolution that are going to be applied in what follows. Kuruvilla herself has what appears to be a real education, however, and also appears to actually have some real publications, though these are of course unrelated to evolution. As befits a lunatic with her credentials, Kuruvilla features prominently on various lists of creation “scientists”, including the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism and CMI’s List of Scientists Alive Today Who Accept the Biblical Account of Creation.

Diagnosis: Rabid fundamentalist. Kuruvilla does not enjoy a particularly prominent public profile, and is not distinctively vociferous in the fundie fight against truth, science and evidence, but she and her school are doing their part and a clear danger to civilization.