alien notion In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that requiring public school teachers to teach biblical creationism alongside Darwin's theory of evolution violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The decision was another in a long series of setbacks for creationists, dating to Clarence Darrow's emasculation of William Jennings Bryan during the 1925 Scopes trial.
In recent years, creationists have split into two factions—the "young earthers" who believe in the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis (and include Pat Robertson, who claims that the Smithsonian found physical evidence of creationism "somewhere in the Dakotas" but suppressed it) and a more media-savvy group that has adopted a new tactic to sneak God into the classroom.
The new creationists avoid any mention of Adam and Eve. Instead, they champion a concept known as intelligent design, which is creationism after a shower and shave. They argue the universe is so complex that only an intelligent being could have designed it. They've dusted off ideas that were first popularized by a long-dead British theologian, the Reverend William Paley, who in 1802 postulated that if one finds a watch in the sand on the beach, one must presume there is a watchmaker interesting conversation starter for philosophy class but hardly an idea that can be proved or disproved. (That's why, while many scientists believe in a supreme being, they don't bring him to work.) In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which presented his theory through minor adaptations. His ideas have held up through more than a century of observation, experiments and research into the fossil record.
When pressed, proponents of intelligent design insist their designer isn't necessarily God. They say it can easily be a space alien — a public stance that puts them in league with Scientology, whose followers deify an alien named Xenu. But in privately printed books and at gatherings of the faithful, the movement's true colors emerge. In Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Phillip Johnson, a law professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley, expresses his desire to "redefine what is at issue in the creation-evolution controversy so that Christians and other believers in God can find common ground in the most fundamental issue creator." At a gathering hosted by a TV preacher, Johnson said he hoped intelligent design ultimately would introduce young people to Jesus Christ.
To sell intelligent design to school boards, the religious right organizes grassroots lobbying efforts that ostensibly fight for school reform. In Ohio, creationists gathered under the flag of a group called Science Excellence for All Ohioans. In fact, SEAO is a project of the American Family Association of Ohio with support from Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, James Dobson's Focus on the Family and the Christian Home Educators of Ohio. It found sympathetic members on the state school board, who persuaded their colleagues to host a public hearing — giving intelligent design a legitimacy it didn't deserve. In October, a committee recommended that ninth and tenth graders should be able to "describe how scientists today continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."
Scientists cringe at that line, which acknowledges the new creationist argument that those students should be taught about the "controversy" surrounding evolution making — even if that controversy is of the creationists' own making. When scientists point out that intelligent design isn't by definition science, the new creationists counter that the definition of science is too narrow and that it should allow for supernatural explanations. They dismiss basic scientific knowledge as "naturalism" and say that science ought to move beyond its "naturalistic bias."
Scientists who dismiss this absurd line of reasoning find themselves attacked as close-minded zealots who would deprive students of learning about a wide range of ideas. The modern creationist presents himself not as a person of deep religious faith but as a crusader for "critical thinking" (by that reasoning, every revisionist quack who denies that the Holocaust occurred deserves a place in history class). Science is anything but hostile to new ideas — it just doesn't accept them at face value. Ideas lead to research, the results of which are reviewed and replicated by other scientists until a consensus is reached. That consensus then becomes the scientific canon, which is what is rightfully taught. As Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University, points out, new creationists want to skip the scientific process and jump straight to the classrooms and textbooks.
With its success in disguising its origins and goals, intelligent design deserves a place in school—as a case study in a marketing class.