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Evolution Defenders Reflect on Scopes Trial

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

Jul. 9--The debate that took place 80 years ago during the Scopes "monkey" trial remains relevant today, an evolution defender said Friday.

"The belief in the incompatibility of religion and evolution that motivated the Scopes trial and the laws that it was concerned with are still with us and in only slightly changed form, I am sorry to say," said Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education. "But there have been many changes in the legal landscape, in the anti-evolution movement itself, and also in the science of evolution."

Scott and three other evolution defenders participated in a conference call with media across the nation to acknowledge the anniversary of the Scopes trial. The trial began 80 years ago on July 10 and lasted a week.

Joining Scott were Harry McDonald, president of Kansas Citizens for Science; Wes McCoy, chairman of the North Cobb High School science department in Georgia; and Patricia Princehouse, a biology teacher at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

In 1925, a judge found science teacher John Scopes guilty of violating a new Tennessee law that banned the teaching of evolution. He was fined $100. Arguing for the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, a leading fundamentalist.

Because of the ruling, the teaching of evolution was dropped from public schools until the 1960s, Scott said. Fundamentalists then began pushing for the teaching of creation science, she said, which was an effort to take the biblical view of creationism and package it as science. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed that in 1987. Now the push is for intelligent design, the theory that some aspects of life are too complex to be explained by natural causes alone.

"What we are facing now is really all three," said Scott, adding that her national center in Oakland, Calif., often hears from supporters of creationism, creation science and intelligent design.

Proponents of intelligent design claim they are opposed to the teaching of creationism and creation science. They contend that design can be detected without introducing a designer. They also say students should be allowed to hear about what they call the shortcomings of evolution.

The Kansas Board of Education is expected to adopt science standards by September that encourage criticism of evolution -- an approach favored by intelligent-design proponents. The Ohio Board of Education last year approved a lesson plan on how to teach such criticisms. In Georgia, a legal battle continues over whether textbooks should carry a sticker that says, "Evolution is a theory, not a fact."

Princehouse said that most Christians have no trouble believing in both God and evolution. They simply figure that God used evolution as a tool for creation, she said. But a conservative faction continues to insist that the two cannot be compatible, she said.

If the Kansas board adopts standards that are friendly to intelligent design, McDonald said that he expects some smaller schools might drop the teaching of evolution and that others might begin teaching children that supernatural ideas are part of science. Larger districts with strong science programs probably won't change what they are teaching now, he said.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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