Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises. It seems that those on the “god squad” can’t help themselves.

Professors routinely give advice to students but usually while their charges are still in school. Arthur Landy, a distinguished professor of molecular and cell biology and biochemistry at Brown University, recently decided, however, that he had to remind a former premed student of his that “without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn’t make sense.”

The sentiment was not original with Landy, of course. Thirty-six years ago geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, a major contributor to the foundations of modern evolutionary theory, famously told the readers of The American Biology Teacher that “nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.” Back then, Dobzhansky was encouraging biology teachers to present evolution to their pupils in spite of religiously motivated opposition. Now, however, Landy was addressing Bobby Jindal—the governor of the state of Louisiana—on whose desk the latest antievolution bill, the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, was sitting, awaiting his signature.

Remembering Jindal as a good student in his genetics class, Landy hoped that the governor would recall the scientific importance of evolution to biology and medicine. Joining Landy in his opposition to the bill were the American Institute of Biological Sciences, which warned that “Louisiana will undoubtedly be thrust into the national spotlight as a state that pursues politics over science and education,” and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which told Jindal that the law would “unleash an assault against scientific integrity.” Earlier, the National Association of Biology Teachers had urged the legislature to defeat the bill, pleading “that the state of Louisiana not allow its science curriculum to be weakened by encouraging the utilization of supplemental materials produced for the sole purpose of confusing students about the nature of science.”

But all these protests were of no avail. On June 26, 2008, the governor’s office announced that Jindal had signed the Louisiana Science Education Act into law. Why all the fuss? On its face, the law looks innocuous: it directs the state board of education to “allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied,” which includes providing “support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied.” What’s not to like? Aren’t critical thinking, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion exactly what science education aims to promote?

Creationism’s Evolution
Creationists have long battled against the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools, and their strategies have evolved in reaction to legal setbacks. In the 1920s they attempted to ban the teaching of evolution outright, with laws such as Tennessee’s Butler Act, under which teacher John T. Scopes was prosecuted in 1925. It was not until 1968 that such laws were ruled to be unconstitutional, in the Supreme Court case Epperson v. Arkansas. No longer able to keep evolution out of the science classrooms of the public schools, creationists began to portray creationism as a scientifically credible alternative, dubbing it creation science or scientific creationism. By the early 1980s legislation calling for equal time for creation science had been introduced in no fewer than 27 states, including Louisiana. There, in 1981, the legislature passed the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act, which required teachers to teach creation science if they taught evolution.

The Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act was based on a model bill circulated across the country by creationists working at the grassroots level. Obviously inspired by a particular literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the model bill defined creation science as including creation ex nihilo (“from nothing”), a worldwide flood, a “relatively recent inception” of the earth, and a rejection of the common ancestry of humans and apes. In Arkansas, such a bill was enacted earlier in 1981 and promptly challenged in court as unconstitutional. So when the Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act was still under consideration by the state legislature, supporters, anticipating a similar challenge, immediately purged the bill’s definition of creation science of specifics, leaving only “the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences.” But this tactical vagueness failed to render the law constitutional, and in 1987 the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that the Balanced Treatment Act violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, because the act “impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind.”

Donning a Fake Mustache
Failing to demonstrate the scientific credibility of their views, creationists are increasingly retreating to their standard fallback strategy for undermining the teaching of evolution: misrepresenting evolution as scientifically controversial while remaining silent about what they regard as the alternative. This move represents only a slight rhetorical shift. From the Scopes era onward, creationists have simultaneously employed three central rhetorical themes, sometimes called the three pillars of creationism, to attack evolution: that evolution is unsupported by or actually in conflict with the facts of science; that teaching evolution threatens religion, morality and society; and that fairness dictates the necessity of teaching creationism alongside evolution. The fallback strategy amounts to substituting for creationism the scientifically unwarranted claim that evolution is a theory in crisis.

Creationists are  fond of asserting that evolution is a theory in crisis because they assume that there are only two alternatives: creationism (whether creation science or intelligent design) and evolution. Evidence against evolution is thus evidence for creationism; disproving evolution thus proves creationism.

“Academic freedom” was the creationist catchphrase of choice in 2008: the Louisiana Science Education Act was in fact born as the Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, and bills invoking the idea were introduced in Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina, although, as of November, all were dead or stalled. And academic freedom was a central theme of the first creationist movie to tarnish the silver screen: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

The Worm in the Apple
The real purpose of the law—as opposed to its ostensible support for academic freedom—becomes evident on analysis. First, consider what the law seeks to accomplish. Aren’t teachers in the public schools already exhorted to promote critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion of the scientific theories that they discuss? Yes, indeed: in Louisiana, policies established by the state board of education already encourage teachers to do so, as critics of the bill protested during a legislative hearing.

Second, was there in fact a special need for the Louisiana legislature to encourage teachers to promote critical thinking with respect to evolution in particular? No evidence seems to have been forthcoming.

NOTE: For the complete article published in Scientific American go to:  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-latest-face-of-creationism

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