Evolution and Creationism in American Public
Schools
Science and Its Times , July 15, 2009
Overview
The history of the teaching of evolution in America cannot be addressed without analyzing the origins of
contemporary creationism. The Scopes Trial of 1925 is often regarded as a landmark in the battle to teach
evolution in American public schools, but the U.S. Supreme Court did not overturn state laws that banned the
teaching of evolution until 1968. In response, creationists adopted a new strategy, calling for balanced
treatment in the teaching of evolution and the Creation. That is, they demanded that divine Creation be taught
as science and that evolution should be described as merely a theory. Creation science has traditionally
embraced religious tenets, most notably that of divine Creation "from nothing," distinct kinds of plants and
animals, a worldwide flood, and a relatively recent origin of the universe. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled
that state laws requiring equal time for creationism were unconstitutional. In the 1990s, some states removed
evolution from their curricular mandates and gave local school boards the right to decide whether or not to
teach evolution.
In order to circumvent court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism in schools, many creationist now
advocate the inclusion of "intelligent design" in science curricula around the United States. Intelligent design
asserts that an intelligent being must have designed the world and its living organisms because the
complexities of the world’s biological organisms cannot be explained by evolution. While advocates of
intelligent design assert that their belief is a scientific theory, it is merely thinly veiled creationism presented
through a teleological argument. Even though the National Academy of Science and the National Science
Foundation have identified evolution as the unifying concept of modern biology, not all states require the
inclusion of evolution in high school biology courses.
Background
Scientists and philosophers were interested in the concept of evolution long before Charles Darwin
(1809-1882) published On the Origin of Species in 1859, but the theory of evolution remained incomplete
because no convincing mechanism for it had been proposed. Darwin’s theory of evolution states that species
have evolved from ancestral forms over the course of millions of years and that the mechanism of evolution is
natural selection. On the Origin of Species was both a popular and controversial book. Theologians as well as
scientists were divided about Darwin’s work, especially his ideas about human origins. Some supporters of
evolutionary theory attempted to retain a role for divine intervention, at least in the case of the intellectual and
spiritual faculties of human beings.
The most revolutionary aspect of the Darwinian revolution was its rejection of the comforting belief that the
world had been designed and created especially for human life. Nevertheless, many theologians were able to
abandon the idea of the fixity of species in order to explore new concepts regarding the relationship between
God and the natural world. Others, however, held to a literal interpretation of the Bible and rejected any
alternatives. When On the Origin of Species was published, various theories of the Creation coexisted within
the Christian community. Some theories managed to achieve a measure of harmony between theology and
science. For example, advocates of the day-age theory taught that the days in scripture referred to ages
rather than 24-hour days. The gap theory, in turn, suggested that the time period described by the book of
Genesis could encompass a gap of millions of years between the creation of the earth and that of mankind.
During the 1960s, literal beliefs about the account of the Creation in Genesis became dominant among
American anti-evolutionists.
In America, although Darwinism was often used to justify business and political practices, many states
excluded evolution from their biology courses. The Scopes Trial is the best known example of the conflict
surrounding the teaching of evolution. Even in the 1920s, most scientists were sure that teaching biology
without references to evolution was impossible, but Christian fundamentalists saw evolution as a threat to
religious belief. Anti-evolutionary literature equated Darwinism with agnosticism and atheism.
Fundamentalists tried to legislate the theory of evolution out of the classroom. In Kentucky in 1922, attempts
to pass a law prohibiting the teaching of "Darwinism, Atheism, Agnosticism, or the theory of Evolution as it
pertains to man" were narrowly defeated. In 1925, however, a Tennessee law made it illegal 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." John Thomas Scopes (1900-1970) was tried in Dayton,
Tennessee, for teaching "the theory of the simian descent of man, in violation of a lately passed state law." As
recorded on a marker established by the Tennessee Historical Society on the courthouse grounds, Scopes
was convicted. In 1927, a Tennessee court reversed the decision on a technicality. The Scopes Trial became
the focus of a play called Inherit the Wind, which became a popular film in 1960 starring Spencer Tracy and
Fredric March.
Impact
While the Scopes Trial created a national sensation, the outcome was far from clear. The publicity may have
stopped some states from enacting similar laws, but anti-evolutionary laws were passed in many other states.
Teachers in Tennessee in the 1960s were still required to sign a pledge that they would not teach evolution.
The teaching of evolutionary science at the high school level actually declined after the Scopes Trial. Many
states passed laws similar to the Tennessee anti-evolutionary law, and most biology textbooks omitted any
mention of Darwin or evolution. Evolution did not regain a significant place in biology textbooks until the
Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a new interest in science education in the United States.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court finally overturned the laws that had banned the teaching of evolution. The
Court ruled that banning the teaching of evolution "for the sole reason that it is deemed in conflict with a
particular religious doctrine" was unconstitutional. Scientists assumed that the issue had been settled, but the
rise of Protestant fundamentalism and televangelists (television preachers) led to a vigorous new campaign
against the teaching of evolution. Opponents of evolution launched a campaign to require equal time for the
teaching of special creationism whenever Darwinian evolution was discussed, demanding that teachers refer
to special creationism as science and describe evolution as a theory. The success of this approach was clear
when Texas rejected biology textbooks that included evolution. Publishers rushed to eliminate or water down
references to evolution.
Challenging state equal time laws, scientists and philosophers of science tried to explain what science is and
how one can distinguish science from religion. Science has the following characteristics: 1) science works
upon a foundation of natural law--it cannot explain away anomalies as miracles; 2) science makes predictions
by inference about what might occur; and 3) scientists acknowledge the fact that their predictions could be
wrong. After considering such arguments in a case brought to a U.S. district court in Arkansas, Judge William
Overton, on January 5, 1982, ruled against the Arkansas Equal Time Creation Science Law on the following
grounds: 1) creation science is religion; 2) to teach religion in the public schools is illegal; and 3) creation
science is not science.
The Louisiana Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act was examined by the U.
S. Supreme Court in 1986 in Edwards v. Aguillard. Again, the Court ruled against creation science. Scientists
testified that the case was crucial to the future of basic science education in the United States. They argued
that science education should accurately portray the premises and processes of science and the current state
of scientific knowledge. Science education, scientists maintained, was damaged where the curriculum called
for teaching religious ideas as science. Teaching creationism, in turn, established a false conflict between
science and religion and created confusion about the nature of scientific inquiry. Future progress in science,
medicine, and technology, they continued, would suffer if Americans were not encouraged to discriminate
between natural phenomena and supernatural articles of faith. Moreover, the Louisiana act created confusion
about the way in which scientists used the terms "fact" and "theory." A "fact" to scientists is a property of a
natural phenomenon and a "theory" is a system of knowledge that explains a body of facts. These definitions
permeate all fields of scientific endeavor and are no less relevant to discussions of the origin of the universe
and life than to any other area of research. A review of the process and vocabulary of science will confirm that
the essence of a scientific theory does not vary from discipline to discipline. The Louisiana act’s "fact-theory"
distinction reflected the belief system of certain fundamentalist sects.
The Court held that the terms "creation" and "creation science" embody the principles of a particular religious
sect or group of sects. It concluded that the legislature intended Louisiana’s public school teachers to offer
students evidence that mankind and the universe were brought into existence by a divine Creator. In other
words, the statute called for teachers to balance evolution against a particular religious belief. The biology
textbooks recommended by advocates of creation science included statements such as "the age of the earth
can be measured in thousands rather than millions or billions of years" and "the dinosaurs were directly
created at the same time as men, so that the humans and dinosaurs did live together for many years.
However, the dinosaurs died in the great Flood."
The Court concluded that creation science as presented in the Louisiana case was religion, but it suggested
that the teaching of any scientific views on origins would be acceptable. Therefore, special creationists saw
the decision as a way to get creationism into the biology classroom as a science, if creationist texts were
carefully rewritten to provide scientific evidence. For example, the creationist claim for a young earth leads to
the conclusion that dinosaurs and humans must have coexisted. In support of this assertion, creationists often
claim to have found footprints of humans and dinosaurs together.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many fundamentalist groups began to reformulate creationism to
circumvent the ruling of the Court in Edwards v. Aguillard. Throughout the 1990s, the Center for Science and
Culture (part of the Discovery Institute, a Christian advocacy group), began promoting intelligent design (ID)
in local and state school boards across the United States. Advocates of intelligent design attempted to veil
their religious argument in the cloak of scientific theory. Intelligent design advocates stressed that their beliefs
should be taught alongside evolution in classrooms so that students could be exposed to the supposed
controversy surrounding evolution in the scientific community. There is no controversy surrounding evolution
in the scientific community, as every major scientific organization has endorsed evolution and rejected
intelligent design. No article in support of the supposed science of intelligent design has ever appeared in an
unbiased, peer-reviewed scientific journal.
In 2004, the Dover Board of Education in Dover, Pennsylvania, adopted a policy designed to make students
aware of intelligent design. Eleven parents sued the school board. The resulting case, Kitzmiller v. Dover
Area School Board, was the first federal court challenge against a school board for endorsing intelligent
design. In December 2005, Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican appointed by President George W. Bush,
issued his ruling in the case. Judge Jones held that it was "abundantly clear" that the school board’s
intelligent design policy violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Judge Jones continued,
"In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have
concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious,
antecedents." Furthermore, Judge Jones declared ID fails as a scientific theory on three levels: "1) ID violates
the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument
of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed
creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific
community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to
gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been
the subject of testing and research." The court also criticized the Dover Board of Education for the "utter
waste of monetary and personal resources."
Most polls say that the majority of Americans support the position that schools should teach both sides.
Scientists object to this and in reply ask whether we should also teach Aristotle’s physics, in which the earth is
located at the center of the universe. Community pressure generally favors creation science and balanced
treatment, but some of the major opponents of creationism are actually theologians from mainstream religious
denominations. They say that because special creation is religion and not science it should be taught in
comparative religion courses and not in biology classes. For example, Catholic schools have accepted the
teaching of evolution since the 1950s. Moreover, in 1996, after many years of deliberation, Pope John Paul II
declared that evolution did not conflict with Catholic doctrine.
Anti-evolutionary activism has grown in the United States since 1980. Theological and social factors
contributed to the phenomenal popularity of scientific creationism in the late twentieth century as Americans
became increasingly suspicious of science. The battles between evolutionism and creationism have raised
many questions about the separation of church and state, the teaching of controversial subjects in public
schools, and the ability of scientists to communicate with the public. Many scientists find believing that the
theory of evolution still needs defending to be impossible, but public opinions polls show that the majority of
Americans do not accept the science of evolution, especially with respect to human origins. Many people do
not like to believe that they are the product of a long series of natural events rather than the products of wise
design.
While details regarding the theory of evolution have been refined in light of new scientific discoveries,
evolution’s general principles have remained unaltered. Evolution, moreover, remains unsurpassed in its
ability to provide a detailed explanation for both the diversity and the history of life on Earth.
The controversy over evolution proves more clearly than virtually any other episode in the history of science
that science has had a profound impact on society and human thought. In no other case have the offshoots of
a science created more social challenges than evolution. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many
science educators are convinced that the debate over the teaching of evolution will likely take many forms in
the future.
Further Readings
Books
Arsuaga, Luis, et al. Chosen Species: The Long March of Human Evolution. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005.
Behe, Michael J. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. New York: Free Press,
2007.
Cela-Conde, Camilo J., and Francisco J. Ayala. Human Evolution: Trails from the Past. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
Coyne, Jerry A. Why Evolution Is True. New York: Viking, 2009.
Darwin, Charles, and James A. Secord. Evolutionary Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Petto, Andrew J., and Laurie R. Godfrey. Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. New York: Times Books,
2006.
Stringer, Chris, and Peter Andrews. The Complete World of Human Evolution. London: Thames and
Hudson, 2005.
Periodicals
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution." American
Biology Teacher 35 (1973): 125-129.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation
"Evolution and Creationism in American Public Schools." Science and Its Times. Ed.
Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 7. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Science In Context.
Web. 21 Aug. 2012.
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