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| Issues: Evolution and Anti-Evolution
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Evolution, Intelligent Design Lawsuits (last updated October 16, 2005) (back to top)
Hearings as to whether a Pennsylvania school board's policy of questioning evolution's validity and offering students a book seen as promoting intelligent design violates the U.S. constitution began on September 26, 2005. The case is the latest high-profile case in recent years as battles continue about the theory of evolution.
Views of Evolution
The terms evolution, intelligent design, and creationism mean different things to different people. Evolution is commonly seen as a way of explaining how species change over time and can give rise to new species, whereas creationism is commonly seen as a belief that the Book of Genesis is literally true and that God created humanity in the form that it is now. Early court battles over evolution and creationism led to the Supreme Court ruling in 1987 that requiring the teaching of creationism was unconstitutional because of the religious purpose of such a law.
Intelligent design is a relatively new argument, based on the idea that purely natural forces cannot explain the development of life fully and that an intelligent cause, which may or may not be God, was involved. One leading book promoting intelligent design, Of Pandas and People, was written by Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon and was published by the Foundation of Thought and Ethics, which promotes Christian ideas. Some see intelligent design as a way around Supreme Court rulings on creationism, for better or for worse.
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.
Gallup found that belief that evolution was well-supported was strongest among "those with the most education, liberals, those living in the West, those who seldom attend church, and among Catholics" and was weakest among "those with the least education, older Americans (many of whom say they are unsure about the theory in general), frequent church attendees, conservatives, Protestants, those living in the middle of the country, and Republicans."
It is not entirely clear what President George W. Bush himself believes. "I don't necessarily believe every single word [of the Bible] is literally true," he told the New York Times during the 2000 campaign. "I think that, for example, on the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the earth. I don't necessarily use the Bible as necessarily a way to predict the findings of science." Regarding the teaching of intelligent design, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on October 6, 2005 that Bush "believes that students ought to be exposed to different theories" (transcript on-line here).
Dover Case
The following chronology of the Dover case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, was developed largely from documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which has made documents relating to the case available on-line here:
- June 7, 2004: In a public meeting, school board member William Buckingham criticized the biology textbook Biology, by Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine, as "laced with Darwinism" for discussing evolution without including reference to criticisms of evolution.
- August 2, 2004: The Dover school board considered a proposal to purchase Biology along with Of Pandas and People. The board initially voted 4-4 on whether it should purchase Biology without purchasing Of Pandas and People, and then voted 5-3 to purchase Biology without purchasing Of Pandas and People. Copies of Of Pandas and People were then donated anonymously for use in biology classrooms.
- October 18, 2004. The Dover school board passed by a 6-3 vote a resolution which stated: "Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design."
- November 19, 2004: The Dover school district announced that teachers would be required to read a statement to students in the 9th grade biology class that included the following language (release is on-line as a PDF here) :
| "Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference boo, Of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves." |
- December 4, 2004: A group of parents, led by parent Tammy Kitzmiller, filed a lawsuit against the Dover school district, alleging that its resolution violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Their complaint is on-line as a PDF here.
- January 3, 2005: The Dover district filed its response to the complaint, in which the district denies that intelligent design is "inherently religious" and instead argue that it is a "scientific theory based on interpretation of scientific data by scientists; it is endorsed by a growing number of scientists who assert that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures observed by biologists. It does not presuppose any supernatural being. It is not Creationism, which in its basic form holds that the biblical account of creation recorded in the Book of Genesis is scientifically accurate." This response is on-line as a PDF here.
- September 26, 2005: Trial begins as to whether the district's policy has a secular purpose and whether its effect is to advance or inhibit religion. Transcripts of the trial are available on-line here.
Other Battles
Battles over evolution in school board meetings and in courts have become more common in recent years.
For example, in 1999, the Kansas state board of education voted 6-4 to eliminate evolution and the Big Bang theory from the state curriculum. Several national science organizations then denied the board the right to use some of their copyrighted material in the school standards, which forced the state board to revise its standards somewhat. In 2000, three state board candidates were elected who promised to include evolution in the school standards, turning out two incumbents who had supported the elimination evolution. In December 2000, the board approved a new set of science standards once again incorporating evolution.
In January 2005, a federal district judge ruled that a Georgia school district could not place a sticker on some science textbooks which read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." In a Jan. 13, 2005 decision, District Judge Clarence Cooper found that this policy was unconstitutional and ordered that the district stop. The school board (on-line here) announced that it was "disappointed" in the decision and voted on Jan. 17 to appeal the decision.
As for the famous Scopes trial of the 1920s, that trial ultimately did not decide whether an antievolution statute was legal. While people may think from the play "Inherit the Wind" that biology teacher John 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 technicality.
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.
Sources: The Dover, Pennsylvania school district is on-line here. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has information about the Kitzmiller lawsuit on-line here. The Cobb County School District is on-line here. Frank Newport, Third of Americans say evidence has supported Darwin's evolution theory, Gallup (November 19, 2004). Laurie Goldstein, Bush uses religion as personal and political guide, New York Times, October 22, 2000.
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What happened in the Scopes trial and how accurate a depiction was Inherit the Wind?
The story of the Scopes Monkey trial is one that still fascinates many today, largely due to the issues at stake, the prominent lawyers on both sides, and the play Inherit the Wind. Here is a quick look at the actual trial.
Evolution was a new and scary idea in the 1920s. Many people saw evolution as undermining religious faith and social values and they were worried with some good cause about taking evolution too far: the eugenics movement was peaking at this time, and by 1935, 35 states had enacted laws compelling sexual segregation and sterilization of those considered eugenically unfit. In addition, many still were not convinced by the fossil record, though modernist Christians were accepting evolution as God's mechanism of creation and believed that human's religious understanding changed over time.
With all this in mind, Fundamentalist Christian leaders got several states to consider passing laws against evolution in the 1920s. And in 1925, Tennessee became the first state to pass a law actually criminalizing the teaching of evolution, making it a misdemeanor "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 had descended from a lower order of animal." The penalty for violating this statute was a maximum $500 fine, though few thought the law would ever need to be enforced.
After that, events quickly began rolling towards trial, picking up a momentum that caught the nation's attention. The American Civil Liberties Union offered to fund a test case, and residents of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee leaped at the chance for some free publicity. John Scopes, a 24-year-old part-time football coach who had taught some evolution from the school's science textbook, agreed to participate as a voluntary defendant.
And then two of the country's most famous lawyers got involved, volunteering on either side. William Jennings Bryan, a populist and Fundamentalist Christian leader who had railed against the evils of capitalism and ran for president three times, would lead the prosecution in order to uphold the antievolution law (ironically, he had urged Tennessee legislators not to impose a penalty in its statute, in order to avoid such a test case. He also saw the case as not just about religion, but about popular control, that the majority should have control of the curriculum taught in public schools). Clarence Darrow, the famed criminal-defense lawyer who was well-known as an atheist, would defend Scopes.
The trial occurred in July 1925, just four months after the statute had been enacted. The trial took just a few days, with most of the time spent arguing over the admissibility of expert testimony on the nature of evolution. This aspect culminated with Darrow deposing Bryan on Biblical interpretations on an outdoor stage before a Sunday-afternoon crowd, a deposition that the judge refused to admit afterwards.
The jury only heard a few pro forma witnesses and missed most of the speeches that were reported to the rest of the world, and it returned a guilty verdict after deliberating for just a few minutes in the hallway outside the courtroom. The judge set the minimum fine of $100, and Bryan even offered to pay the fine himself.
Both sides rightfully claimed victory. Bryan (who would die just days later) had won a conviction and had upheld the law, and Darrow had managed to tarnish the cause in the eyes of the nation.
But in the long run, Fundamentalists would win out in all the important ways.
First of all, the Scopes trial did not even accomplish what the ACLU had first brought it for. The ACLU had wanted simply to appeal the case to higher courts which would address the constitutional principles at stake, but the case and conviction was dismissed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1927 on a technicality (it was the jury, and not the judge, who was supposed to set the fine). The trial, as far as the law was concerned, had been for nothing.
Fundamentalists passed more antievolution laws in other Southern states and it would not be until 1967, more than four decades after the Scopes trial, that the U.S. Supreme Court would declare an antievolution statute to be unconstitutional because of its religious purpose (see Epperson v Arkansas, 393 US 97). Even then, the issue would not be decisive enough to prevent the passage of more carefully-written laws against evolution.
Moreover, textbook writers (including George Hunter, who had written the edition Scopes had taught from) would voluntarily downplay evolution so they could sell their editions to the South. A Columbia study in 1932 found that the 11 most widely-used textbooks all mentioned evolution, but only one actually discussed it.
Where evolution's defenders won, however, was in the public mind.
Inherit the Wind, for example, showed things much differently from reality. In that 1955 play, which is really more about McCarthyism and the Red Scare than about the 1920s, Scopes is initially the victim of mob mentality, Bryan becomes a raving fanatic, Darrow is more open-minded about religion, and the jury turns away from Bryan and returns a minimal verdict against Scopes. The play, which is still popular today, let many people think that the antievolution movement had been defeated.
As the continued existence of the antievolution movement shows, that is not quite true.
Sources: Edward J. Larson, Summer of the Gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion (Harvard University Press, 1998).
Georgia (last updated February 22, 2004) (back to top)
The lingering debate over the place of evolution in the school curriculum erupted again in early 2004, when a draft of Georgia's proposed new state curriculum released in January 2004 did not include "evolution" in the biology section and did not explain the concept in detail. Evolution has since been added back into the draft curriculum.
State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox said in a Feb. 5 statement (on-line here) that she removed evolution in "an effort to avoid controversy that would prevent people from reading the substance of the document itself. Instead, a greater controversy ensued."
The initial draft replaced the term "evolution" with the term "development of life over time." It did include a brief description of evolution and it did mention Charles Darwin in a brief benchmark explaining what students should be expected to learn, but it did not include evolution among a 15-word list of "language science students should use" in discussing how species change over time.
A new draft, revised as of February 20, does include "evolution" and goes into more detail about what should be taught as a benchmark. The text of the revised benchmark is below, with the full text of the original draft in bold:
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The basic idea of biological evolution is that the earth's present-day species developed from earlier distinctly different species.
Molecular evidence substantiates the anatomical evidence for evolution and provides additional detail about the sequence in which various lines of descent branched off from another.
Natural selection provides the following mechanism for evolution: Some variation in heritable characteristics exists within every species, some of these characteristics give individuals an advantage over others in surviving and reproducing, and the advantaged offspring, in turn, are more likely than others to survive and reproduce. The proportion of individuals that have advantageous characteristics will increase.
Heritable characteristics can be observed at molecular and whole-organism levels - in structure chemistry, or behavior. These characteristics strongly influence what capabilities an organism will have and how it will react, and therefore influence how likely it is to survive and reproduce.
New heritable characteristics can result from new combinations of existing genes or from mutations of genes in reproductive cells. Changes in other cells of an organism cannot be passed on to the next generation.
There are historical scientific models of change, such as those of Lamarck, Malthus, Wallace, Buffone, and Darwin. Evidence from fossil, molecular biology, and anatomical structures suggest relationships among organisms. As climactic conditions change, organisms that do not adapt die off; those organisms suitably adapted survive. Over time, the proportion of individuals that have advantageous characteristics will increase. Heritable characteristics can be observed at molecular and whole-organism levels in structure, chemistry, and behavior. NOTE: This paragraph was in the original draft but was removed from the second draft.
Natural selection leads to organisms that are well suited for survival in particular environments. Chance alone can result in the persistence of some heritable characteristics having no survival or reproductive advantage or disadvantage from the organism. When an environment changes, the survival value of some inherited characteristics may change.
The theory of natural selection provides a scientific explanation for the history of life on earth as depicted in the fossil record and in the similarities evident within the diversity of existing organisms.
Life on earth is thought to have begun as simple, one-celled organisms about 4 billion years ago. During the first 2 billion years, only single-cell microorganisms existed, but once cells with nuclei developed about a billion years ago, increasingly complex multicellular organisms evolved.
Evolution builds on what already exists, so the more variety there is, the more there can be in the future. But evolution does not necessitate long-term progress in some set direction. Evolutionary changes appear to be like the growth of a bush: Some branches survive from the beginning with little or no change, many die out altogether, and others branch repeatedly, sometimes giving rise to more complex organisms.
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Sources: Georgia's performance standards, including the original and revised biology drafts, are on-line here.
What happened in Kansas?
The Kansas State Board of Education is the most recent and prominent battleground over evolution. For months, the board had been deadlocked 5-5 as to whether to keep evolution and the Big Bang theory in its curriculum, which is not required but which sets the minimum for all state schools since that is what is tested in standardized tests. And then, on August 11, 1999, the Board voted 6-4 to eliminate evolution and the Big Bang theory from the state curriculum.
The standards did not require the teaching of creationism and it did recognize that evolutionary processes lead to changes within species, aka "microevolution." But the standards did not include the "macroevolution" theories that explained how the Earth, the cosmos, life, and new species come into being.
An example shows how the standards walked a careful line: "Students should develop an understanding of the universe. The origin of the universe remains one of the greatest questions in science. Studies of data regarding fossils, geologic tables (and) cosmological information are encouraged. But standards regarding origins are not mandated."
In response, three national science organizations (National Research Council, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teachers Association) denied the board the right to use some of its copyrighted material in the school standards. "By selectively removing parts of evolution from its standards, we feel the Kansas State Board of Education is doing a disservice to the students of Kansas, and we do not support its actions," the organizations said.
This forced the State Board to revise its standards once again, though not in any major substantive way. These revised standards were adopted in December 1999 and were tested on in the spring.
In August 2000, voters elected three State Board candidates who promised to include evolution in the school standards, turning out two incumbents who had supported eliminating evolution a year earlier. In December 2000, the Board approved a new set of science standards once again incorporating evolution.
Though this controversy may have ended, it brings to light the actions being taken around the country against evolution. For example, the New York Times reported in August 1999 that Alabama, New Mexico and Nebraska have passed laws reducing evolution's preeminence and labeling it one of several possible theories, and that Texas, Ohio, Washington, New Hampshire and Tennessee have considered (and rejected) similar measures.
What do Americans think about evolution?
Actually, most Americans do not believe in pure evolutionary theory.
According to a 1997 Gallup poll, only 10% of Americans believe in a purely scientific view of evolution. About 40% believe evolution did occur, but with God's guidance (theistic evolution, an aspect of a modernist view of Christianity), and about 44% believe that God created humans in the last 10,000 years (a Fundamentalist view of Christianity).
Scientists and other countries see evolution much differently. Most scientists (55%) see evolution happened without God, 40 percent believe in theistic evolution, and only 5 percent see the Bible literally, according to a 1982 Gallup poll. And in Great Britain, for example, only 7 percent believe God literally created humanity in the last 10,000 years.
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