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of education and textbook publishers to include the science of creation alongside the science of evolution. In 1981, Arkansas Act 590 was enacted into law by the governor, requiring “balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science in public schools; to protect academic freedom by providing student choice; to ensure freedom of religious exercise; to guarantee freedom of speech; . . . to bar discrimination on the basis of creationist or evolutionist belief.” The constitutionality of Act 590 was challenged on May 27, 1981, with the filing of a suit by Reverend Bill McLean and others. The case was brought to trial in Little Rock on December 7, 1981, as McLean v. Arkansas. The contestants were, on one side, established science, scholarly religion, and liberal teachers (backed by the ACLU) and, on the other, the Arkansas Board of Education and the creationists.

Federal judge William R. Overton of Arkansas ruled against the state on the following grounds: First, creation science conveys “an inescapable religiosity” and is therefore unconstitutional. “Every theologian who testified,” Overton explained, “including defense witnesses, expressed the opinion that the statement referred to a supernatural creation which was performed by God.” Second, the creationists employed a “two-model approach” in a “contrived dualism” that “assumes only two explanations for the origins of life and existence of man, plants and animals: It was either the work of a creator or it was not.” In this either-or paradigm, the creationists claim that any evidence “which fails to support the theory of evolution is necessarily scientific evidence in support of creationism.” But as Overton clarified in this summary, “Although the subject of origins of life is within the province of biology, the scientific community does not consider origins of life a part of evolutionary theory.” Furthermore, “evolution does not presuppose the absence of a creator or God and the plain inference conveyed by Section 4 [of Act 590] is erroneous.” Finally, Overton summarized the opinions of expert witnesses that creation science is not science, as the enterprise is usually defined: “A descriptive definition was said to be that science is what is ‘accepted by the scientific community’ and is ‘what scientists do/” Overton then listed the “essential characteristics” of science (as outlined by the expert witnesses, including evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Francisco Ayala):“(1) It is guided by natural law; (2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; (3) It is testable against the empirical world; (4) Its conclusions are tentative. . . ; and (5) It is falsifiable.” Overton concluded: “Creation science as described in Section 4(a) fails to meet these essential characteristics.”

The New New Creationism: The Rise of Intelligent Design Theory

Out of the ashes of the Arkansas creation decision rose the phoenix of Intelligent Design (ID) theory. Realizing that even a hint of religiosity in their science would doom them to extinction, the new generation of creationists took the decision made by Overton seriously, and they began to focus solely on turning their religious beliefs into a genuine science—not just the transparent facade seen through by the courts but an actual scientific infrastructure that covertly supports an unspoken (and never to be spoken) religious faith.

Throughout the 1990s this new generation of creationists turned to “bottom up” strategies of hosting debates at colleges and universities, publishing books with mainstream academic and trade publishing houses, and enlisting the aid of academics like University of California, Berkeley, law professor Phillip Johnson and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. In 1997, they even roped the conservative commentator William F. Buckley into hosting a PBS Firing Line debate, where it was resolved that “evolutionists should acknowledge creation.” The debate was emblematic of the new creationism, employing new euphemisms such as “intelligent design theory,” “abrupt appearance theory,