Intelligently Designed: How Creationists Built the Campaign against Evolution

Chapter 6: Into the Mainstream

6 Into the Mainstream The miscellaneous audience wants to listen to a man who knows. How he knows is of no concern to them. —Clarence Darrow Dover’s “Scopes 2” and Kansas’s design debacle were signal events, showcasing phenomena that no longer represented a mere oddity in American culture. Though creationists lost in Dover and Kansas, the events reflected a movement that had crept from an intellectual backwater to the political mainstream.1 Before 2005, the teaching of evolution already was designated marginal to failing in half of the states, as numerous legislatures and local school boards avoided, disclaimed, and renounced evolution. A 2001 report on teaching evolution showed a “passable C” average across all states, of which nineteen had less-than-passable standards. Of those “failing” states, large percentages of biology teachers believed creationism should be taught alongside evolution, and in some cases actually taught creationism in their classes. More states were deemed failing rather than excellent in teaching evolution.2 Creationists held a Congressional briefing in 2000 and won a presidential endorsement in 2005. Gallup and Pew Research Center polls showed creationism’s prevalence: According to a 2001 Gallup poll, 45 percent of Americans agreed that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,” which echoed results in its other polls on the topic since the early 1980s. A Pew study in August 2006 showed that 64 percent of Americans believed creationism should be taught alongside evolution.3 Creationists’ patience, persistence, and campaigning had paid off. “Evolution or God” became part of the battle line that defined one’s allegiance in the culture war. There was scant public criticism of those who rejected scientific evidence for Earth and life being millions of years old. There were into the mainstream · 115 some critics, but they were simply an opposing voice in a debate—the same news-story template in any number of national issues such as defense spending , national deficits, and illegal immigration. In this respect, creationists had triumphed because they had won recognition as the alternative voice. Intellectually, literalists remained in the 1920s, still fighting modernism and Darwinism. Politically, they were in the twenty-first century. The Discovery Institute and Darwin on Trial were important markers in the creationist movement in the 1990s. The institute and the book reflected political sophistication and maturity, giving creationists a voice that sounded scientific and a theology that appeared grounded in both faith and logic. No longer a shrill minority casting aspersions on elitist universities or upon scientists whose research excluded faith, creationists now had the patina of intellectual credibility. It was not an accident. The Wedge Document, their map for winning public and political opinion, was working because by those first years of the twenty-first century, creationists had: • Made belief in evolution (i.e., biblical literalism) a standard question in presidential elections. • Produced numerous popular publications, many by people with a wide variety of credentials, some scientific, supporting intelligent design /creationism. • Become a national issue by virtue of a new wave of activism in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures across the country. • Reached out to ever-wider audiences and drawn more media attention with museums, conferences, and other public events. • Raised millions of dollars and established institutes, fellowships, and publications to legitimize creationism as science. • Created channels of communication and recruitment via new media. Creationists opened a new, national front in May 2000 when they moved on the U.S. Congress. A congressional briefing, sponsored by the Discovery Institute, featured Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe, among others, in a three-hour informational session for congressmen and staffers. The event was titled “Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design and Its Implications for Public Policy and Education.” The congressional sponsors included Thomas Petri (Republican, Wisconsin), who introduced several of the speakers; Mark Souder (Republican, Indiana); Roscoe Bartlett (Republican, Maryland); and Sheila Jackson-Lee (Democrat, Texas). Charles Candy (Republican, Florida) provided the meeting room. The turnout was modest, about fifty people, only a dozen of them congressmen. At the time, however, Petri was in line to 116 . chapter 6 chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He endorsed the institute’s message. This was a new level of legitimacy and influence for creationists. The forays into state legislatures over the previous eighty years had kept the issue before the public and made it relevant to communities...