Creation, Intelligent Design, and Science in Our Schools
In 1925, 24-year-old substitute teacher John Thomas Scopes was convicted of violating Tennessee’s Butler act, which made it unlawful “to teach any theory that denied the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Scopes was convicted of violating the Butler Act and fined $100. The case was appealed, and while the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the Butler Act, it reversed the verdict against Scopes on the technical ground that only the jury, and not the judge, could impose a sentence in excess of $50.00. This celebrated case has become known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial” and a play and several movies entitled “Inherit the Wind” were loosely based on it.
Incredibly, Tennessee did not repeal the Butler Act until 1967. The following year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that banning the teaching of evolution and allowing only the teaching of Biblical Creation according to Christianity was unconstitutional, as it violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of religion by a state by preferring Christianity over other religions.
The Epperson decision did not sit well with fundamentalist Christians, and they did everything they could to remove the teaching of evolution from our schools and replace it with teachings of Creation. Today, the battle still rages on, only now the Christian Fundamentalists refer to Creation as the “science of Intelligent Design” and demand that it be taught in our science classes as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. According to the “science” of Intelligent Design, the world and universe are so intricate and complex that they could have come into existence only by the workings of a higher power. The courts, however, have not been fooled by the changed rhetoric.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is now taught routinely in science class and no reasonable person can seriously deny his theory. DNA studies show how close various species are related. Indeed, DNA studies reveal that we are genetically very close to chimpanzees. Evolution has taken hundreds of thousands of years to get where we are, and the evidence uncovered by anthropologists and paleontologists just keeps reinforcing Darwin’s conclusions.
America was once at the forefront of the scientific arena. Sadly, we have lost that title to Western Europe. In Einstein’s day, brilliant scientists, physicists, mathematicians, medical researchers, biologists, and others migrated to the United States because so much emphasis was put on scientific research. Now, the number of American students wanting to become scientists has dwindled, and of those that do pursue science, many are lured overseas with promises of good paying jobs, state-of-the-art facilities, prestige, and the opportunity to rub elbows and have discussions with the world’s preeminent scientists in their field.
Religious believers who take the Bible literally explain everything as coming from the hand of God or divine intervention, negating the need for scientific explanation. We need to get our students—especially the younger ones—interested in science, because answers to the world’s problems such as poverty, hunger, global warming, etc. will not come from above but will come only from the scientific education and research of the younger generation, who stand the most to lose if science is pushed aside in favor of “Intelligent Design” or other religious doctrines.
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