The Fires of Creationism

Sixty years ago today John T. Scopes went on trial in Dayton, Tenn., for teaching the theory of evolution to his high-school biology class. For 11 days in the summer heat, Clarence Darrow, representing Scopes, battled with William Jennings Bryan, who proclaimed, “I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than in the age of rocks!” Scopes was convicted, though his conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

The issue of evolution vs. the Bible will not go away. It still reverberates through American education and jurisprudence. Fortunately, a lot has happened in 60 years, and courts now decide in favor of evolution rather than against it. On Monday the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down a Louisiana law requiring that creationism--the fancy name for the biblical account in Genesis--be taught along with Darwin. The court held, as other courts have held, that creationism is a religious belief that cannot be injected into public schools without violating the First Amendment.

In a landmark decision in 1982 a federal court in Arkansas had invalidated that state’s creationism law. At the time about a dozen other state legislatures had similar laws before them. None have been enacted, and none are likely to be. Louisiana’s was the only such law remaining in the nation.

So on the legal front the creationists have waged a losing battle. But they show no signs of giving up. Stymied by federal courts at the state level, they have turned their attention instead to the country’s 16,000 local school boards, many of which are unwilling or unable to resist political pressure. Of course, the courts’ findings that religious beliefs have no place in public schools apply as much to school boards as to states, but it is much harder to police so many jurisdictions. The forest fires of creationism have largely been put out, but many brush fires continue to smolder, erupting into flames here and there.

What makes people cling to creationism with such tenacity? It is a linchpin of fundamentalism, which insists that every word in the Bible is literally true. But the fact is that the theory of evolution is correct, and no amount of religious faith can gainsay it. The mechanism of evolution remains open to scientific debate, but the fact of evolution does not. Creationism is harmful to education. Schools should seek to improve science education and provide students with an understanding of what science is and what the scientific method is. They should tell students what the real evidence is for evolution and how scientists concluded that evolution is true. That is what Scopes tried to do in rural Tennessee back when Calvin Coolidge was President. Teachers have a better chance of accomplishing it now.