On Giving Equal Time to the Teaching of Evolution and Creation

ON GIVING EQUAL TIME TO THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION* JOHN A. MOOREÎ On April 30, 1973, Senate Bill 394, having been passed by an overwhelming majority of both houses of the General Assembly of the state of Tennessee, became law. The new law, which to some extent replaced the antievolution law that was repealed only in 1967, reads in part: Any biology textbook used for teaching in the public schools, which expresses an opinion of, or relates to a theory about origins or creation of man and his world shall be prohibited from being used as a textbook in such a system unless it specifically states that is a theory as to the origin and creation of man and his world and is not represented to be scientific fact. Any textbook so used in the public education system which expresses an opinion or relates to a theory or theories shall give in the same text book and under the same subject commensurate attention to, and an equal amount of emphasis on, the origins and creation of man and his world as the same is recorded in other theories, including, but not limited to, the Genesis account in the Bible. . . . The teaching of all occult or satanical beliefs of human origin is expressly excluded from this act. . . . Provided however that the Holy Bible shall not be defined as a textbook, but is hereby declared to be a reference work, and shall not be required to carry the disclaimer above provided for textbooks. . . . This Act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare requiring it.1 Similar bills have been or are being considered by the legislatures or departments of education of Georgia, Michigan, Washington, California , and Colorado, but only Tennessee's has become law. When teachers of science are confronted with a situation of this sort, a variety of responses might be expected. Some teachers might welcome the possibility of being able to present their own religious beliefs to their students. Others might avoid the problem by omitting all references to scientific data and hypotheses about the origin and evolution of the ?Based on a lecture given at a symposium entitled "The Role of Controversy in Science," Annual Meeting, American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, February 1974. tProfessor of biology, University of California, Riverside, California 92502. 1In September 1974 the Nashville Chancellery Court found this law to be unconstitutional . The state has appealed the ruling. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1975 | 405 world and its inhabitants. This last course has been widely adopted in the past; lots of problems never arise if one ignores the topic. The Tennessee law does not require one to teach the accounts of creation given in Genesis and elsewhere. It says only that if you do include the scientific explanations, you have to include the religious ones as well. Still another response would be to abide by the law and give "commensurate attention to" and "an equal amount of emphasis on" the two conflicting points of view. This is the option that I plan to discuss in this paper. So let us assume that we will carry out the stipulations of the Tennessee law as honestly and as competently as we can. Let us assume also that we do this as teachers of science and not as advocates of some religious doctrine or sect. That is, we will employ only the canons of scientific and scholarly procedures in exploring the topic. Statements and hypotheses will be evaluated solely on the basis of the scientific evidence in their favor. Many accounts ofcreation, including Genesis, are precise enough to be used as working hypotheses from which various deductions can be made. The deductions can be tested, again with scientific data and procedures , and from the results the original hypothesis can be substantiated , made more probable, made less probable, or rejected. One might object at this point by saying that what I propose to do is not what the Tennessee lawmakers had in mind. That may be, but if I am asked to consider Genesis in a science course, and to treat it as a scientific theory, how else am I...