Creationism and Atheism Enliven Race : Elections: Two school board candidates in Escondido are at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum and have added controversy to an otherwise unremarkable race.

Were it not for the presence of a couple of wild cards, Tuesday’s balloting to fill a seat on the Escondido Union High School District board of trustees might be another community election that, at best, would garner yawns among the vast majority of voters.

After all, there’s only one seat to fill--and for only 11 months at that, thanks to the resignation of a trustee earlier this year.

The local newspaper--in a headline for which it later apologized--described the candidates for the board seat as a “motley field.”

Most of the issues have been kicking around for years. Is morale poor among teachers and staff, and, if so, how can it be improved? Where should a new high school be built--in northern Escondido or over the hill in Valley Center, where 700 or more high school students live? Should the high school district unify with the elementary school district, to ultimately reduce overhead and improve the continuity of curriculum?

OK, now add some salt and pepper to an otherwise bland campaign. Should creationism be taught alongside evolution?

Enter two of the candidates, who, more than the other six, may be in the best position to win--or lose--votes because of their highly profiled, diametrically opposed viewpoints. Voters will have no problem telling them apart.

One is the Rev. Billy Falling, 50, a fundamental Christian preacher who five years ago founded the Christian Voters League, a political action group that he intended to build into a million-strong nationwide organization by 1990. Today the group--which surveys candidates for political office for their moral and religious viewpoints, then gives its members a political score card in advance of key elections--has about 1,000 members. This is Falling’s first run for public office.

The other is Stephen Thorne, 35, director of the San Diego chapter of American Atheists. He is perhaps best known for his efforts to denude La Jolla’s Mt. Soledad of its landmark cross and to force the removal of a Nativity scene from Balboa Park’s Organ Pavilion. This is Thorne’s second try at public office; he fared poorly in this year’s special election in the 76th Assembly District race.

Another of the candidates, Ray Lawrence, 64, credits at least Falling’s campaign for injecting some interest in the race, even though it might be distracting voters from more important local issues.

“He has tremendous nuisance value,” Lawrence said. “He irritates people, but he gets them to think, and that’s good. But that attention is being focused on issues that aren’t really issues.”

Lawrence is himself a member of the Christian Voters League, but he says he doesn’t intend to inject the group’s principles into the high school district. Rather, the retired high school administrator is campaigning on a theme of granting individual schools greater administrative autonomy.

Falling’s “objective is to bring a Judeo-Christian ethic into the schoolroom, and that’s a dilemma,” Lawrence said. “Whose morality do you teach?”

Falling is not the only Christian preacher in the race. The other is the Rev. Larry Coyle, 55, minister at First Christian Church of Escondido. But Coyle says his agenda would be to improve district employee morale, pursue the unification of the two districts and focus on drug and dropout problems on the campuses.

Said Coyle of Falling and Thorne: “They both entered the race principally so they can have their own personal views aired, and the media is doing that. They are polarized around their own issues. They’ll have a certain constituency who will vote for them, but I don’t see them as a threat to the mainstream campaigning.”

Falling and Thorne would like to believe otherwise, and say their campaigns are addressing the very fundamentals of public education.

Falling’s campaign is focusing on two basic issues. One is the establishment of a 10-member parental advisory group to the board of trustees “so we can return the authority of educating our children to the parents.” His other goal is to see the city of Escondido release redevelopment agency profits that are earmarked for the district before it proceeds with plans to build a cultural arts complex.

Falling says it’s his Christian obligation to inject his sense of morality into the schools, and he cites his unsuccessful effort last fall to ban readings aloud in class of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” after his daughter complained about the profanities contained in it.

“The kind of language within the book desensitizes students of moral and religious convictions,” Falling complained.

He presented a petition signed by 1,300 people to the school board, asking that the book not be read, but the trustees said the teacher’s decision would stand and that Falling’s daughter would be allowed to read a different book in the school library while Miller’s play was read aloud in class.

“One of the arguments to the Supreme Court on the issue of praying in schools was that an atheist could go to the library and sit that time out,” Falling said. “The Supreme Court said that would be discrimination, so we stopped prayer in the classroom. Now when it comes to students with religious convictions who say they don’t want to read a book aloud that uses God’s name in vain, we send that student to the library. That’s real hypocrisy.”

Falling said he has not read all of “Death of a Salesman” and that, since the play is on the state’s list of recommended reading, he doesn’t want it banned--simply not read aloud.

“But some books already are censored and we’ll continue to censor books in the future. We practice it all the time,” he said. “The Bible is censored from the state reading list.”

Falling also insists that creationism should be taught alongside evolution to high school students “as one of the explanations for the origin of life. Both should be taught, not as a science but as a belief system, a theory, a faith. I argue that evolution is a theory and should never be categorized as undisputed fact.”

On that point, of course, Thorne disagrees--and it’s a disagreement in which Falling offers a sort of backhanded compliment to the atheist.

“The two sides are polarized,” Falling said. “Unfortunately, I think Steve Thorne and I represent the real issues in public education.”

His own mission, Falling said, is to inject greater morality into the classroom.

“This is not a place for evangelism. But Christians should be witnesses to Christ wherever they serve. That doesn’t mean they try to impose religious doctrine in their public leadership, but it does mean they don’t compromise their moral values and principles in their public leadership.”

And that, he said, is why he opposed the reading of “Death of a Salesman.” “God’s name was continually taken in vain. That’s in violation of the Ten Commandments. We’re back to moral absolutes,” he said.

For his part, Thorne said he would prefer that his atheism not surface as an issue in the election, but concedes that it has, if for no other reason than Falling’s constant references to it.

“We need to teach people to teach basic skills better, but we see Falling telling people we don’t need to teach, we just need to believe,” Thorne said. “Creationism has its place, but not in a science classroom. Literature, perhaps, or philosophy or in a comparative literature course, where you can discuss creationism and Christianity all you want.”

Thorne said he believes his atheism won’t stop Christians from supporting him.

“That would be unfortunate. I’d like to think it won’t interfere with people, and a very low percentage of people we’re calling have a problem with it. More of them either don’t know I’m an atheist--I don’t call people and say, ‘Hi, I’m Steve Thorne, an atheist, running for school board’--or they don’t care. I want them to think I’m a reasonable guy who’s listed in the phone book who they can call at home, who is widely read and open-minded to new ideas.”

But if you ask Thorne who he believes the top three vote getters will be Tuesday, he’s willing to name two: himself and Falling.

Another front-runner is acknowledged to be Bill Horn, 46, a Valley Center resident who was initially appointed to the school board to fill the vacancy last summer. His appointment was criticized by Bill Tomkins, 69, a retired salesman, who in turn garnered enough signatures to force a special election to fill the vacancy, and who announced his own candidacy for the post when the only other announced candidate at the time was Horn.

Horn says he is the only one of the eight candidates--or of the four sitting trustees, for that matter--who currently has a child in an Escondido high school, and therefore argues that he would be the best spokesman for parents in the district. Horn is a property manager and avocado grower.

Horn downplays any influence that Thorne and Falling might have on the race. “They provide more options, but I think people are more interested in the business of the district than the other issues they (Falling and Thorne) are raising. The voters are not dumb. They can see through the chaff of some of that stuff.”

Of the eight candidates, only Coyle, Lawrence and Horn had applied for the appointment to the vacancy last summer.

The remaining candidates are Harold Polesetsky, 60, an architect and general contractor, and Terry Cottrell, 41, a real estate property manager.

The winner will finish the term vacated by Don McArthur, who resigned last June, 1 1/2 years short of his term.

The cost of the special election, which was sparked by the petition with a little more than 1,000 signatures, is estimated at $120,000.