Milestones in the Evolution-Creationism Controversy

The big battles between Darwinists and doubters in U.S. classrooms and courtrooms

As Dawkins makes abundantly clear, the controversy over how to teach evolution in school continues to rage around the globe. But, historically, the debate between Darwinists and creationists has generated the most heat in the United States. Here are some landmarks.

The Scopes Trial: In 1925, John T. Scopes openly defied a Tennessee law forbidding state-supported schools from teaching any theory that contradicted the Biblical story of divine creation. When the case found its way to court, the trial packed plenty of star power. Legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow defended Scopes; three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan represented the prosecution. Excluding any scientific evidence on the validity of evolution and any question of the law’s constitutionality, the judge limited arguments to whether Scopes had violated Tennessee law—a fact that the defense admitted. The jury found Scopes guilty and fined him $100.

Nowadays, most people believe that Scopes won—probably because their knowledge of the case comes from Inherit the Wind, which dramatically reimagined the trial. In reality, Scopes did eventually get off on a technicality; the Tennessee Supreme Court heard Scopes’s appeal and ruled that his fine was excessive. But the court also upheld the constitutionality of the law, which the legislature didn’t repeal until 1967.

The Epperson Case: In a 1968 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, high school teacher Susan Epperson challenged the constitutionality of an Arkansas law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The High Court agreed with her, saying that state-school curricula “tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma” violated the First Amendment. The ruling lifted the prohibition against teaching evolution but didn’t forbid teaching some form of creationism.

Edwards v. Aguillard: By the early 1960s, Biblical literalists began promulgating something called “creation science”—basically, an account of creation from the Book of Genesis rendered in scientific terms. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court took up Edwards v. Aguillard, a case challenging the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that required schools to teach creation science whenever they taught evolution in the classroom (or vice versa). Proponents of the law argued that it guaranteed teachers’ academic freedom. In a seven-to-two ruling, however, the Court decided that the law advanced a particular religious doctrine and therefore violated the First Amendment.

The Dover Trial: In 2005, 11 parents sued the school district and school board in Dover, Pa., for requiring public-school biology teachers to present intelligent design as a scientifically valid alternative to evolution. Without ever mentioning God, intelligent design posits that organisms appeared with complex organs and other biological systems already fully formed, engineered by an unknown, unnamed designer. A host of scientific organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs calling intelligent design thinly veiled religion, not science. The trial, heard in U.S. district court, attracted nationwide attention and lasted for nearly six weeks. The judge eventually ruled for the plaintiffs, finding that intelligent design is theology and has no place in a science classroom.