Evolution and Creation Science The term
evolution is used to describe the theory of the long, gradual development of the earth and its species. The terms
creationism and
creation science are used in both legal and general discussion to identify an opposing theory, which holds that the earth was created within the specific time stated in Genesis and that the species were created at once and did not evolve from lower to higher orders. Implicit in the debate over these two versions of the creation of the universe is the debate over the status of the Bible and revelation as a source of human knowledge.
While much energy was devoted in the nineteenth century to the reconciliation of evolutionary theory and the traditional claims of Christianity, it was in the twentieth century that litigation became the special forum for the debate. This litigation has particularly focused on public school
education. The first well‐known instance was the Scopes trial of the 1920s, known often as the “monkey trial.” A Tennessee teacher was criminally charged for teaching evolution in the public schools in violation of a state statute. The attorneys included Clarence Darrow as defense counsel and William Jennings Bryan as special prosecutor. The dramatic trial is better remembered than the appellate decision in
Scopes v. State (1926), which upheld the constitutionality of the statute forbidding the teaching of evolution.
Uncertainty about the legal issue marked the next period. Supreme Court Justice Felix
Frankfurter, dissenting in *
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), questioned whether the Supreme Court should define the limits within which states could experiment with school curricula. Frankfurter urged what is generally referred to as judicial restraint (see
Judicial Self‐Restraint). He saw the substantive issue, deriving from deeply held opposing beliefs and religious and philosophic sensibilities, as necessarily complex. “The religious consciences of some parents may be offended by subjecting their children to the Biblical account of creation,” Frankfurter wrote, “while another state may offend parents by prohibiting a teaching of biology that contradicts such Biblical account” (p. 659).
The Supreme Court has entered the controversy in litigation directly testing the constitutionality under the
First Amendment of particular state statutes dealing with creation science and evolution. In
Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Court held invalid an Arkansas statute that banned the teaching of evolution in the public schools as inconsistent with the First Amendment prohibition of an establishment of
religion. The court's theory was that public school education must not be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect. In
Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the Supreme Court held invalid Louisiana's Creationism Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in the public schools unless accompanied by instruction in creation science as an establishment of religion. This ruling centered on the point that the statute had no clear secular purpose but was rather intended to discredit evolutionism. In dissent, Justice Antonin
Scalia argued that the Louisiana statute had a secular purpose, the protection of academic freedom.
The issues in the argument over creation science are as complex as any involving religious belief and the public order. The controversies raise, from the point of view of the creationist, issues of a “hidden curriculum,” behind apparently neutral teaching. Seemingly neutral presentation may have a tendency to subvert particular values and ideologies. Modern science instruction tends to stress the value of truth based on human reason and experiment and, to that extent, denigrates truth derived from revelation. From the point of view of those opposed to creationism, the dispute concerns reason and unreason, the historic struggle between science and religion, and the power of religious groups to control public discourse.
Bibliography
Stephen Carter , Evolutionism, Creationism and Treating Religion as a Hobby, Duke Law Journal 6 (1987): 977–996.
Laurie Godfrey, ed., Scientists Confront Creationism (1983).
Carol Weisbrod
