Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [101]
The Evolution of Creationism
According to the first amendment of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” How this applies to the creationism controversy over the past century evolved, as it were, through three stages, which together led to the birth of the new new creationism, Intelligent Design theory.
1. The Banning of Evolution—That Old Time Religion. In the 1920s, a perceived degeneration of the moral fiber of America was increasingly linked to Darwins theory of evolution. In 1923, Oklahoma passed a bill offering free textbooks to public schools on the condition that evolution not be included. The same year Florida went even further by passing an antievolution law. In 1925, the Butler Act, making it “unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the state . . . to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals,” was passed by the Tennessee legislature. The bill was perceived to be in obvious violation of civil liberties and resulted in the famous Scopes trial. Despite a supposedly “moral” victory for Scopes, the controversy stirred by the trial made textbook publishers and state boards of education reluctant to deal with the theory of evolution in any manner, and the subject was simply dropped for decades until the Sputnik scare of 1957, which rejuvenated science education. By 1961, the National Science Foundation, in conjunction with the Biological Science Curriculum Study, had outlined a basic program for teaching the theory of evolution and published a series of biology books whose common fiber was the theory.
2. Equal Time for Genesis and Darwin—That Old Creationism. The creationists responded with a new approach in which they demanded “equal time” for the Genesis story, along with the theory of evolution, and insisted that evolution was “only” a theory, not a fact, and should be designated as such. This strategy was challenged by scientists in many states, and was ultimately defeated in Arkansas. In 1965 Susan Epperson, a high-school biology teacher in Little Rock, filed suit against the state on the grounds that an antievolution bill passed in 1929 violated her rights to free speech. After her victory, the case was overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1967 and later appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1968 the Court found Epperson in the right and ruled that the law was “an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the biblical account.” On the basis of the Establishment Clause, the Arkansas law was interpreted as an attempt to establish a religious position in a public classroom and was therefore overturned. The Supreme Court ruled that all such antievolution laws were unconstitutional.
3. Equal Time for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science—That New Creationism. Since evolution could not be excluded from the classroom, and since the teaching of religious tenets was unconstitutional, the creationists invented “creation-science.” Since academic honesty calls for a balanced treatment of competing ideas, they argued, creation-science should be taught side by side with evolution-science (note the clever parallel hyphenations). The creationists pressed state boards