1989, color, 52 minutes, Nova
Starting with a case in Twin Falls, Idaho, in which parents challenge a high school teacher who teaches creationism in a school biology class, the video moves through a history of the evolution vs. creationism controversy. The initial major appearance was with a Tennessee law that became the focus of international attention in 1923 with the Scopes' Trial. Scopes, a high school teacher, agreed to be a test case for the new anti-evolution law. The principal antagonists were William Jennings Bryan, who resisted evolution largely on his dislike of Social Darwinism, and Clarence Darrow, whose concerns were with Constitutional issues. Evolutionists lost the case, but the creationist side was ridiculed. By 1967 the Tennessee law was repealed.
With the push toward better science education in the late 1950s and 1960s, evolutionary theory made important inroads in the curriculum with the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences Curriculum Standards. By 1968, the Supreme Court said that teaching creationism in schools violated the Constitution. But, movements of born-again Christians and Evangelicals slowly started to challenge the system by pressuring publishers of biology texts in the major markets of California and Texas, pushing creation positively, but not emphasizing it as anti-evolution.
By 1981, in the McLean vs. Arkansas case, the judge (Overton) in the case stated that creation science is not science, using a background of Natural Law, scientific approaches of inferences and predictions, and the idea that science is falisifiable. Creationism is religion, not science. By 1987, in the US Supreme Court, a Louisiana case brought a decision that supported McLean, but left it open saying that any scientific view could be taught, thus opening the idea of a "scientific creation". Several organizations such as the Center for Scientific Creation arose to look at the question from a "scientific" perspective.
In it all there is a idea that acceptance of evolution is a rejection of God, a matter that troubled Darwin. Creationists tend to emphasize the gaps in the evolutionary record, demanding transitional forms. Evolutionists point out that there are many complete sequences, emphasizing the fact of evolution versus the theory of natural selection.
On the public relations front, the creationists have been successful with 86% of the American public agreeing that creationism should be taught in schools alongside evolution, with 30% of teachers in places like Texas desiring to do so. But mainstream religion recognizes the dangers, noting that the place for creationism is in comparative religion courses.
The video also examines the nature of evidence presented by both sides and key differences between the two.
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larry-zimmerman@uiowa.edu
University of Iowa Anthropology
08/18/98