Evolution and creationism and the Supreme Court
The debate surrounding evolution and creationism has been a significant cultural and legal issue in the United States, particularly in the context of public education. Since the rise of the theory of evolution in the 19th century, conflicts arose between scientific explanations of human origins and religious beliefs, especially among conservative and Evangelical Christians who often reject evolution based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. This discord led to early attempts to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, most notably exemplified by the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which highlighted the clash between science and religion in a legal setting.
In the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court began to address this issue, ruling in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) that laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution violated the First Amendment. The subsequent legal landscape evolved with attempts to introduce creationism into school curricula, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), which deemed a Louisiana law mandating the teaching of both evolution and "creation-science" unconstitutional due to its lack of a secular purpose.
Despite these rulings, the debate has continued, with movements advocating for the inclusion of intelligent design in school curriculums emerging in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As of 2023, the Supreme Court's precedent established in Edwards v. Aguillard remains significant in discussions about educational content related to evolution and creationism in public schools.
Evolution and creationism and the Supreme Court
Description: Modern scientific theories of natural and human origins and religious beliefs about the world’s creation
Significance: The battle between the teaching of evolution versus creationism entered the public schools and arrived before the Supreme Court, which found that the establishment clause forbids public schools from lending their authority to advance creationism.
The emergence of the theory of evolution as a scientific account of human origins has, since the nineteenth century, created conflicts with religious beliefs. Conservative and Evangelical Christians, in particular, have often viewed evolution as inconsistent with a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation, with some arguing that the gradual nature of the evolutionary process conflicts with the relatively brief period—six days, according to the Bible—during which they believe creation to have taken place. Others have reconciled evolution with their religious beliefs by viewing the creation story as allegorical, either generally or in the specifics (with each “day” representing a considerably longer span of time).
Early Attempts to Ban the Teaching of Evolution
The debate between science and religion over natural origins inevitably arrived in public schools. In areas controlled by conservative religious sensibilities, opponents of evolution were able, for a time, to prevent public school teachers from teaching the evolutionary account. As the twentieth century progressed, several of these prohibitions eventually took the form of law. The most celebrated attempt to enforce such a legal prohibition was the Scopes trial in Tennessee in the 1920s. State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1925), which eventually became known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” was the criminal prosecution of a Tennessee schoolteacher who had violated a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. For eight scorching days in July 1925, the trial pitted William Jennings Bryan as a special prosecutor for the state of Tennessee against Clarence Darrow as the attorney for the defendant. Bryan secured a conviction in the case, and the presiding judge imposed a $100 fine on Scopes. However, in the court of public opinion, Bryan fared more poorly. During the trial, he agreed to be cross-examined by Darrow and, at least in the minds of many observers, allowed Darrow to tar him and other evolution opponents as unsophisticated religious fundamentalists. On appeal, the Tennessee appellate court affirmed the constitutionality of the Tennessee antievolution statute but held that a jury rather than a judge should have assessed the fine in the case. The state of Tennessee, its law thus vindicated, declined to prosecute the case again, frustrating Scopes and others who wished to take their challenge to the Supreme Court.
Several decades would pass before the Supreme Court finally considered the constitutionality of laws prohibiting instruction concerning evolution. When it did, in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Court found a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution to be violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. During the 1960s, the Court began to examine the influence of religion in public schools, declaring school-sponsored prayers unconstitutional in Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). With these precedents in mind, the Court concluded that attempts to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools amounted to an impermissible intrusion of religion on the public school curriculum.
Creation Science and the Public School Curriculum
The battle that began as an attempt to keep evolution out of public schools metamorphosed over the next two decades into a rear-guard attempt to return creationism to the schools. In the early 1980s, for example, the Louisiana legislature passed the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act. This law, which essentially provided that public schools that chose to teach “evolution-science” also had to teach “creation-science,” was justified by the legislature as necessary to preserve academic freedom. The Supreme Court disagreed, however. When the matter arrived before the justices in the latter half of the 1980s, the Court had interpreted the First Amendment’s establishment clause as imposing a three-part requirement on state and federal laws. According to the three-part test adopted in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), laws had to (1) have a secular purpose, (2) produce a secular effect, and (3) entail no excessive entanglement between government and religion.
The Louisiana law was challenged in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), and a majority of the Court agreed that the law violated the establishment clause. According to the Court, the Louisiana statute stumbled over the first prong of the three-part Lemon test. Despite the Louisiana legislature’s assertion that the act was necessary to preserve academic freedom, a majority of the Court concluded that the act was, in fact, meant to support an essentially religious purpose: restoring the religion-rooted view of natural origins represented by “creation-science” to the public school classroom. Finding that the law lacked any real secular purpose, therefore, the Court concluded that it was unconstitutional.
The debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools did not end with the Edwards v. Aguillard decision. In the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, those against the teaching of evolution in public schools advocated instead the teaching of intelligent design—the idea that natural forces could not have single-handedly created humankind. Advocates of intelligent design do not want schools to stop teaching evolution, but want them to also teach the controversies connected to the idea. These battles have played out in school boards and state courts throughout the first part of the twenty-first century, though, in 2023, the Edwards v. Aguillard decision appeared to remain unthreatened.
Bibliography
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Masci, David. “Twenty Years After a Landmark Supreme Court Decision, Americans Are Still Fighting About Evolution.” Pew Research Center, 13 June 2007, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2007/06/13/twenty-years-after-a-landmark-supreme-court-decision-americans-are-still-fighting-about-evolution/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.
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