Chapter I

That transformation of Flood Geology into Creation Science and thence into Intelligent Design turned upon a chain of events taking place in the Inherit the Wind venue of American courtrooms. While the BSCS project certainly woke antievolutionists up, it was a legal decision that got the juggernaut actually moving. In 1968 the Supreme Court Epperson v. Arkansas ruling struck down a 1929 Arkansas statute passed in the waning days of the post-Scopes chill banning any teaching that included the evolution of human beings from “lower” forms. The state adjudications leading up to the federal case and their broader ramifications are covered by Larson (1985, 98-119), Ecker (1990, 79), Shermer (1997, 154-172), Randy Moore (1998c-d; 1999a), Hamburger (2002, 422-434, 454-476) and DelFattore (2007, 46-55).

With the country thrashing out the issues of school desegregation and the Vietnam War, anti-evolution laws seemed as anachronistic as doilies on Danish modern furniture. All save Justice Hugo Black (1886-1971) thought such laws ought to be unconstitutional—what the justices had difficulty agreeing on was why. Some felt the law vaguely worded, others that it infringed on educators’ free speech, but the tack the court majority ended up taking was that it sought religious establishment.

Larson noted Black’s rural Alabama Baptist background may have influenced his differing opinion. Sharing the populist Democratic tradition with Bryan, Black had been elected to the Senate with strong support of the KKK (who’s very long list of things they didn’t like included evolution). Larson (1997, 250-257) further relates the case to the Scopes mythos, noting that Abe Fortas (1910-1982)—“a working class Jewish boy growing up in the Baptist citadel of Memphis”—was a high school student during the 1925 Dayton trial. “Fortas dearly wanted to decide the Epperson case, and did so as one of his last majority opinions before a financial scandal forced him from the bench,” Larson (1997, 254).

This ambiguity fueled the parsimonious coverage of Epperson v. Arkansas by Intelligent Design booster Wayne House (2008b, 192-196). Bypassing the historical roots of antievolution legislation (so clearly embodying partisan religious conviction rather than any imbibing of science findings), House (2008b, 194) opined “that the Supreme Court fails to explain how the statute lacked a secular purpose,” as though it were possible for any statute disallowing the teaching of current evolutionary views on human origins solely because they conflicted with a particular theological mandate to have a “secular” purpose.

Epperson v. Arkansas set up a constitutional hurdle that forced creationists to adopt an equally gymnastic legislative strategy, one promoting “equal treatment” for creation and evolution. Provided one were thorough enough, a seemingly Bible-free “creation model” might be offered as an equally scientific contender with the “evolution model.” (That the results just happened to coincide exactly with the retooled Biblical creationism could be sidestepped as further indication of how “genuine science” served in the end to affirm scriptural truth.) Many creationists would have preferred no evolution be taught at all, of course, but given the new legal circumstances, at least this approach attached to any exploration of evolution an appropriate creationist riposte.

The high water mark for the initial Creation Science phase of anti-evolution legislation came in the early 1980s. An increasing activism among conservative Christians was invigorated by the more general conservative realignment going on in American politics. The new Reagan administration sent encouraging signals to both abortion opponents and creationists, although neither sentiment translated into any substantive action at the federal level. While Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” duked it out with Norman Lear’s “People For the American Way” in the public arena, efforts to affect the content of public school science education proceeded in about half the states, surveyed by Eve & Harrold (1991, 146-160) and Lloyd Bailey (1993, 202-204). Haught (2014, 51-101) covered creationist activity in Florida during the 1980s.

One of the first off the block was the 1981 “balanced treatment” act in Arkansas. Since it was the rejection of their 1929 anti-evolution statute by the Supreme Court that had started all this fuss, there may have been some haste in redressing the state’s dishonor. The legislator who offered the bill manifested no familiarity with the scientific issues involved, and had simply copied the text from one proposed by creationist activist Paul Ellwanger (we’ll return to him in the next section 1.7), who in turn had relied on a draft concept by lawyer Wendell R. Bird. The law was promptly challenged—mainly by Arkansas clergy (the lead plaintiff, William McLean, was a Presbyterian minister) who were appalled at so bald an attempt to codify in the public schools the narrow sectarian views of what Genesis meant for Creation Science, as though that were the only alternative to evolution.

See Edwords (1982a), Ecker (1990, 133-138), R. Moore (1999b) and Milner (2009, 380-381) for coverage of the court challenge, McLean v. Arkansas. McKown (1982) explores the role of Wendell Bird’s convoluted definitions of science in the Arkansas case, and Eldredge (1982, 86-87; 2000, 93-94) tellingly compares Bird’s 1978 ICR summary of Creation Science beliefs with the very similar language of the Arkansas Act 590. (This tendency to retread antievolution legislation will get a reprise in the spate of “critical thinking” efforts in the 21st century.)

Though Yale University law professor Stephen Carter (1987, 984) offered the novel position that the constitutionality of creationist legislation shouldn’t depend on whether it had any scientific validity at all (even “appallingly shoddy and naive” evidence offered no intrinsic legal obstacle for him), in a turnabout of the Scopes era, the state’s case in Scopes II depended on demonstrating that competent scientists really did accept this particular category of creationism as sound empirical science rather than theological mandate. They had a tough time.

The one witness they could round up who wasn’t a creationist was mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe, colleague of Fred Hoyle (whose contrarian barricading of Steady State cosmology from the encroaching Big Bang hordes is still pressed into service by Young Earth creationism, as we’ll see later). Called to question the probability of life arising purely through random processes (which no evolutionist was arguing at the time), Wickramasinghe inconveniently repudiated the very literal creationism being offered as the alternate model, Larson (1985, 160).

Rather disingenuously, Morris & Morris (1996b, 190) remarked that Wickramasinghe “was even willing to testify for the creationist side at the creation law trial in Arkansas in 1981.” There were no references, and the Morrises did not explain to their readers that Wickramasinghe did not support the ICR version of creationism. Mawyer (1986, 62) performed a similar housecleaning for the Fundamentalist Journal by not going into details about which Creation Scientists were involved or what they said in their testimony, except to complain that “Nearly every one of the creation witnesses testified that creationism was not a science and that their positions were motivated by biblical beliefs, not scientific findings.”

Tricked into telling the truth under oath! What a dirty legal trick that was.

All this was because the Arkansas trial marked the first time that full-blown Creation Scientists had their say on the witness stand, and it was not a pretty sight. Physicist Robert Gentry defended his extraordinary “polonium halo” claims for a young earth, and sprinkled discussion of his and other testimony through his later book, Gentry (1986). Fully half of the ten antievolutionary witnesses were specifically members of Henry Morris’ Creation Research Society, Berra (1990, 134-136). Part of the apologetic debacle decried by Mawyer above involved physical chemist Donald Chittick, who didn’t dispel the suspicion that Creation Science was more about “creation” than “science” when he couldn’t be pinned down on whether he could ever accept a scientific fact that conflicted with his view of Bible teaching. Chittick (1984, 253) remained evasive in print, discussing neither the details nor the ruling except to castigate the news media for its “distortions” of the case (none of which he enumerated). He referred the reader instead to The Creator in the Courtroom by Norman Geisler for “a fairly thorough documentation of this.”

Geisler’s book was unavailable for my current inspection, though McIver (1988a, 2; 1988b, 85) suggests overall it was useful but flawed. Geisler (1982) did offer a condensed version for the Fundamentalist Journal. The distilled Geisler certainly bristled with recriminations, from accusing Wendell Bird of promoting false accusations about the competence of the pro-creation legal defense to insisting the “theologically liberal Methodist” Judge Overton of being “overtly biased against creationism” because (1) he “did not believe in creationism as defined by Act 590, (2) his son was “an evolutionary biology teacher” and (3) the “theologically liberal Methodist Bishop” testified in opposition to teaching Creation Science.

To put this bias charge in perspective, Ravitch (2008a, 1063) reminded that “academic freedom is not boundless. For example, one would not expect that a geology department would have to credit, fund, or otherwise support research arguing that the earth is flat. Nor would an astronomy department have to credit or support research attempting to prove (but not disprove) that our solar system is the center of the universe.“

So imagine if we replaced the topic of “creationism” with geocentrism, and a judge was accused of inappropriate bias because (1) they held to that “Earth revolves around the Sun” thing, (2) their son turned out to be an admitted heliocentric astronomer, and (3) the man’s denominational leader further appeared to frown on the idea of giving geocentrism equal time in public school science classes. What manner of judge could be scraped up with a functioning brain stem that wouldn’t stumble on Geisler’s criteria? (And just in case you think this is an unfair and niggling “beating a long dead horse” example in this day and age, just wait till we discuss the 1999 Kansas School Board in the next section 1.7.)

But bringing up Geisler in the first place may not have been the best move on Chittick’s part, as Geisler’s testimony in Arkansas was rather a reprise of Bryan at the Scopes Trial, such as when he revealed how UFOs were “a satanic manifestation in the world for the purpose of deception,” and that he had gleaned this subtle intelligence from that authoritative compendium, Reader’s Digest, Lyons (1984, 358), Gilkey (1985, 76-77) and McIver (1987, 9). Geisler (1982, 21) grumped how the ACLU attorneys were “playing to the press” in “bringing up sensational matters, like UFOs” without revealing it was his own view on this point that was involved, or that one might justifiably regard those as pertinent to assessing Geisler’s analytical expertise in general—creationist beliefs about satanic UFOs are noted in Chapter 3 of Downard (2004).

Gene Lyons (1984, 359) was especially struck by Geisler’s Byzantine hermeneutics:

The most profound part of Geisler’s testimony was his attempt to prove that the “Creator” of the universe and life mentioned in Act 590 was not an inherently religious concept. After citing Aristotle, Plato, and one or two other classical philosophers who supposedly believed in a God or gods without worshipping them—albeit not as creators of the world “from nothing“—Geisler offered his most thundering proof: the Epistle of James. He cited a line of Scripture to the effect that Satan acknowledges God, but chooses not to worship Him. “The Devil,” he said, “believes that there is a God.” Whee! If Geisler has not yet squared the circle in his meditations, he has at least, well, circled it. Who would have thought one could prove the Creator a nonreligious idea by means of hearsay evidence from Beelzebub?

While Gentry and Chittick are peripheral figures in doctrinal creationism today, Norman Geisler remains an active influence into the Intelligent Design era, such as when actor turned Christian activist Kirk Cameron (2008) or conservative ideologue David Limbaugh (2014) readily invoked Geisler & Turek (2004) as a reliable apologetic resource. Whee indeed!

Given such testimony, and even without the parade of pro-evolution scientists called as witnesses (including Stephen Jay Gould), the presiding Federal District Court Judge Overton found no reason to regard the Arkansas law as any other than trying to further a religious purpose, and so ruled in 1982.

Participants on the evolution side have offered commentary on the case, from philosopher Michael Ruse (1984) to Langdon Gilkey (1985), a liberal theologian with considerable misgivings about the proposed law’s implications for religion. Gilkey and Hanson (1986, 189-213) included the full texts of the statute along with Judge Overton’s ruling, with Overton (1982) also available solo in D. Wilson (1983, 206-222) and Montague (1984, 365-397). An online resource is the “McLean v. Arkansas Documentation Project” at antievolution.org.

Creationists Gish (1982) and John Whitehead (1982) of the Rutherford Institute offered measured comments on the case at the time, but the poor showing of their side and subsequent judicial fallout has not encouraged dwelling on the subject since. The perspective of time failed to show, though, as House (2008b, 197-200, 210, 260n) continued his Intelligent Design Creationism Lite version of “not dwelling on the subject,” castigating “Judge Overton’s simplistic understanding of science and religion” while neglecting to mention any of the creationist testimony—though he did quote Geisler in a note complaining about “distorted" media coverage (nothing on those satanic UFOs, of course).