Eighty years ago, the nation stood transfixed by the spectacle of two giants, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, fighting valiantly over the place of creation and evolution in the public school. Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, defended creationism as “inerrant fact” and denounced evolution as “atheistic fiction.” Darrow, celebrated lawyer for the new ACLU, insisted that evolution was “scientific fact” and creationism “obsolete myth.” Bryan won the argument. But the 1925 Scopes case was a storm signal of many battles to come between law and religion and religion and science.
This fall, the nation stood transfixed again by the same battle rejoined in Dover, Pennsylvania – now pitting proponents of intelligent design (ID) against the ACLU. This time the ACLU won handily. Their main argument: ID is simply biblical creationism by another name, and to teach it in public schools violates the First Amendment prohibition on government establishments of religion.