How the Anti-Evolution Debate Has Evolved

In this last month of the year, when many Americans' thoughts are turning to holidays -- and what to call them -- we may miss another large story about the intersections of religion and public life. Last week a federal appeals court in Atlanta listened to oral arguments about a sticker pasted, and now removed, from suburban Cobb County, Georgia’s high school science textbooks warning that evolution is a "theory, not a fact." The three-judge panel will take their time deciding the complex issues in the case. But on Tuesday, a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled the Dover Area ( Penn.) School Board’s oral disclaimers about scientific evolution to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The school district's statement to students and parents directed them to an "alternative" theory, that of Intelligent Design (ID); the court ruled found "that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." (Kitzmiller opinion, p. 31.) Apparently in a case about evolution, genealogical metaphors are unavoidable.

Seemingly every news story about the modern trials feels it necessary to refer to the 1925 Tennessee Monkey Trial, the clash of the larger-than-life legal and political personalities of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow in the prosecution of high school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of state law. As an historian who has written about evolution, education, and the era of the Scopes trial, I will admit the continuities between 1925 and today can seem striking. But, these continuities are deceiving. Though the modern court challenges still pit scientists supporting evolution against some parents, churches, and others opposing its unchallenged place in public school curriculum; the changes in the last eighty years seem even stronger evidence for a form of legal or cultural evolution.

First, the continuities. In the late 19th century religious commentators like the southern Methodist editor and professor Thomas O. Summers, Sr. loved to repeat a little ditty: "When doctors disagree,/ disciples then are free" to believe what they wanted about science and the natural world. Modern anti-evolutionists, most prominently under the sponsorship of Seattle's Discovery Institute, urge school boards to "teach the controversy" about evolution, purposefully inflating disagreements among scientists about the particulars of evolutionary biology into specious claims that evolutionary biology is a house of cards ready to fall at any time. The court in the Dover case concluded that although there were some scientific disagreements about evolutionary theory, ID is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. In a second continuity, supporters of ID reach back, even before Darwin, to the 19th century theology of William Paley, who pointed to intricate structures like the human eye as proof of God's design of humans and the world. Though many ID supporters are circumspect about the exact identity of the intelligent designer, it seems unlikely that the legions of conservative Christian supporters of ID are assuming that Martians, time-travelers, or extra-terrestrial meatballs could be behind the creation and complexity of their world.

While these issues suggest that the Scopes Trial is still relevant and would seem to offer support for the statement most often quoted to me by first year history students on why they should study history -- because it repeats itself -- this new act in the drama shows some remarkable changes. Arguing that a majority of parents in any given state, acting through legislatures, could outlaw evolution because it contradicted their religious beliefs, William Jennings Bryan campaigned successfully in Tennessee and several other states to ban the teaching of evolution and to strike it from state-adopted textbooks.

Legal challenges to the Tennessee law never made it to the federal courts, but the constitutional hurdles for anti-evolutionists grew higher in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas. that an Arkansas law very similar to the Tennessee statute was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The law's purpose, the court found, was expressly religious. So anti-evolution was forced to evolve, seeking a new form more likely to pass constitutional muster. Enter Creation Science, a movement that added scientific language to the book of Genesis, and demanded that schools provide "equal time" to both Creation Science and biological evolution. Creation Science is an important transitional fossil of the anti-evolution movement, demonstrating two adaptations: first, the adoption of scientific language sought to shield the religious purpose of the statute and second, the appeal to an American sense of fairness in teaching both sides of an apparent controversy. The Supreme Court in 1987 found this new evolution constitutionally unfit, overturning a Louisiana law (Edwards v. Aguillard).

Since the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard decision, the anti-evolution movement has attempted several new adaptations, all of which show direct ties to previous forms. The appeal to public opinion has grown: recent national opinion polls reveal that nearly two-thirds of Americans (and even higher numbers of Alabamians) support teaching both scientific evolution and creationism in public schools. School board elections and textbook adoption battles show the strength of these arguments in a democratic society. The new variants have been far more successful at clothing themselves in the language -- but not the methods -- of science. Whether by rewriting state school standards to teach criticisms of scientific evolution (as in Ohio or Kansas) or in written disclaimers to be placed in school textbooks (as in Alabama or Cobb County, Georgia) or in the now discredited oral disclaimers of the Dover Area School Board, the religious goal has been the same: by casting doubt on scientific evolution, they hope to open room to wedge religion back into public school curricula. [Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project".] But as the court in yesterday's Dover case correctly concluded, Intelligent Design is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. Old arguments of a religious majority, though still potent in public debate, have again proven constitutionally unfit; Creationists and other anti-evolutionists will now have to evolve new arguments to survive constitutional tests.

"Well then, hereis the science that defends evolution

Piltdown Man

Feel better?"

Piltdown man was a hoax that was uncovered decades ago by evolutionists. It was never the center of evolutionary thought, nor is it today. I take it you had nothing real to offer, so you brought up your creationist talking point.

"Let's turn to the origin of man, and specifically, the fossil record of `Man'. Many people believe we have `proof' of evolution through the fossil record, yet is this true?"

No. Evolution, like all science, doesn't deal in proof. It deal with evidence.

" Ramapithicus, often pictured as walking erect, has been degrade to the status of extinct ape."

So?

"Australopithecine: not a missing link."

Wrong. Dead wrong. It's in our line of descent.

" Lucy has been compared to modem pygmy chimpanzees."

You have already been informed that this is an error:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1346676/posts?q=1&&page=128

"Homo habilis was once called a missing link between Australopithecus and homo erectus, and a missing link between ape and man. Current conclusions are a chimpanzee, orangutan, or an Australopithecine."

Wrong. It is fully accepted as an ancestor. Current conclusions are that it is a transitional. It is not a chimp, orang, or australopithecine.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/1470.html

" Sianthropus..."

It's sinanthropus. You've misspelled it ever time you have posted it at FR and here:http://www.discussanything.com/forums/showpost.php?p=117964&postcount=20
It's Homo erectus now anyway. And there is nothing wrong with the skulls:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/monkeypeking.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_peking.html

"Pithecanthropus, or Java Man, is based solely on the evidence of a skull cap dug up in 1891 on the banks of the Solo River in Java and a femur that was dug up 50 feet away and year later."

Nothing wrong with Java man either (which is also a homo erectus)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_java.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/java15000.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/brace.html

" Nebraska Man..."

Was a mistake, never accepted by the scientific community, and never appeared in any scientific journals. It was not featured on the cover of Life. It was not mentioned in the Scopes Trial. Not once. Osborn never even testified there.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie020.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/wolfmellett.html

" Piltdown Man..."

The one true hoax, uncovered by evolutionists. It was never fully accepted, and has not been used for many decades.

"Neanderthal Man was found in Neanderthal Valley in West Germany. Long accepted as a missing link, Neanderthal man has been proven to be human, very similar to Europeans today, yet with proven diseases such as rickets, syphilis, and arthritis."

False. It was not sick. There have been a number of new finds to show that it was indeed a separate species.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#neandertals
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html#neandertals

" There is no proof that man evolved from an ape like creature."

Proof? No. Evidence? Tons. Google endogenous retroviruses.

"Human skeleton found 1. 6 million years old, by Richard Leaky( Wash. Post Oct 19, 1984)"

It was not a modern human, and neither Leakey nor the article said it was.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jw-evolution.html

"MODERN AND TALL: Richard Leakey, "... the boy from Tukana was surprisingly large compared with modern boys his age... he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today. This find combines with previous discoveries of Homo Erectus to contradict a long held idea that humans have grown larger over the millennia,"

This is not a quote from Leakey. It's from a National Geographic article. A later report said,

"In 1985 Richard Leakey and his colleagues reported the recovery of the remains of a remarkably complete skeleton of an approximately 12-year-old Homo erectus youth, which revealed some surprising anatomy. For instance, in the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, the hole through which the spinal cord runs is significantly smaller than in modern humans--presumably indicating a smaller demand for nerve signal traffic. In addition, the spines on all the vertebrae are longer and do not point as far back as in modern humans, the significance of which is puzzling.

"The thigh bone is unusual, in that the femoral neck is relatively long while the femoral head--which is part of the ball-and-socket joint with the pelvis--is large. This combination is something of a mix between modern human and australopithecine anatomy: modern humans have a short femoral neck attached to a large head, while in australopithecines the neck is long and the head is small.

"The pelvis itself indicates that the birth canal was smaller than in modern humans, which implies that infants born to Homo erectus mothers would have needed to continue fetal growth rates after birth. This so-called secondary altricial condition means that a more extended period of child care was inevitable, which might well have had important social consequences.

"The Homo erectus youth, which came from 1.6 million- year-old deposits on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, is `the first [early fossil hominid] in which brain and body size can be measured accurately on the same individual', note Leakey and his colleagues."

It most certainly would NOT go unnoticed walking down the street.

"OLD" MODERN MAN: Louis Leakey, "In 1933 I published on a small fragment of jaw we call Homo Kanamens 1s, and I said categorically that this is not a near-man or ape, this is a true member of genus Homo. There were stone tools with it too. The age was probably around 2.5 to 3 million years. It was promptly put upon a shelf by my colleagues, except for two of them. The rest said it must be placed in a "suspense account". Now, 36 years later, we have proved I was right." Quoted in Bones of Contention, p.156"

He was wrong. "Kanjera Man, Kanam Jaw: discovered by Louis Leakey near Lake Victoria in 1932, and claimed by him to be very old and anatomically modern human ancestors. The Kanjera skull fragments were later shown to be modern humans buried in older sediments. The Kanam jaw may be very old, but is not as modern as Leakey thought. (Morell 1995)"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_anomaly.html

"The Dissidents No less an authority than the world-renowned paleontologist (with Dr. Colin Patterson) for the British Museum of Natural History, Dr. N. Etheridge...."

This is a laugh! Etheridge (not to be confused with Niles Eldredge, the contemporary evolutionist) was an Assistant Keeper of Geology in this Museum from 1881 to 1891. His name was Robert Etheridge, Junr., not Dr. N. Etheridge. It;s exceedingly disingenuous to use a 19th century anti-evolutionist, who was a nobody to boot, as a leading authority against evolution today. Par for the lying creationist course.

"Dr. Pierre P. Grasse, editor of the twenty-eight volumes of "Traite de Zoologie" and ex-president of the Academie des Sciences is considered to be the most distinguished of French zoologists. His conclusions? "The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an in-depth criticism." (The Evolution of Living Organisms)"

Grasse was an evolutionist, though he was a Neo-Lamarkian one. He believed the world to be billions of years old. He was no creationist.

"Dr. Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist, evolutionist, concludes his 1986 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, thus: "Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more or less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.... The truth is that despite the prestige of evolutionary theory and the tremendous intellectual effort directed towards reducing living systems to the confines of Darwinian thought, nature refuses to be imprisoned. The "mystery of mysteries" - the origin of new beings on earth - is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the Beagle"."

He has retreated from almost everything in this book. Keep up!

The Colin Patterson quote is a gross misrepresentation.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/9832_ievolutioni_by_colin_patt_12_30_1899.asp

Your post was one lie after the other. And it's the same stuff, almost to the letter, you have been posting at least since 2001 here. Time to think up some new lies; at least amuse us.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.