Footnotes for "The Money Suit" (originally aired May 14, 2006)
Springfield Elementary begins teaching creationism instead of evolution. Lisa tries holding underground evolution seminars, but is arrested and stands trial. Marge gets involved.
Battles over evolution continue, with conflicts among school boards and in courtrooms over the "intelligent design" theory. The most high-profile such battle in recent years has been the lawsuit over a 2004 decision by the Dover, Pennsylvania school board to support measures to raise criticism of evolution and to promote the theory of intelligent design. In December 2005, Judge John Jones III of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that it was "unconstitutional to teach [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom" because of the religious purpose underlying that theory (decision on-line here).
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions," Jones wrote.
Polls taken by the Gallup organization in recent years have found that many people do believe God had some role in the creation or development of humanity. Polls from November 2004 found that 45 percent of those polled believed that God created humanity as it is now, that 38 percent of those polled believed that humanity developed over time with the guidance of God (a view consistent with that of intelligent design), and that 13 percent believed that humanity developed without God's guidance. At the same time, Gallup's November 2004 polls also found that 35 percent of those polled believed that the theory of evolution was well-supported by evidence, 35 percent believed that the theory was not well-supported by evidence, and that 29 percent did not know enough to say either way.
The most famous case involving evolution laws was the case involving biology teacher John Scopes, who was tried for violating a Tennessee antievolution statute. While people may think from the play "Inherit the Wind" that Scopes was acquitted, he actually was convicted for teaching evolution in 1925 and later had the conviction turned over by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1927 on an unrelated procedural issue.
The United States Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of antievolution statutes until 1967, more than four decades after the Scopes trial, when it declared an Arkansas antievolution statute unconstitutional because of its religious purpose (on-line here). The Supreme Court also ruled in a 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard (on-line here), that a Louisiana law prohibiting the teaching of evolution unless creationism was also taught was unconstitutional.
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