In the early 1980s, the Louisiana legislature passed a law titled the “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act”. The act did not require teaching either evolution or creationism as such, but did require that when evolutionary science was taught, so-called creation science had to be taught as well. Lower courts ruled that the State’s actual purpose was to promote the religious doctrine of creation science, but the State appealed to the Supreme Court. In 1987 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the act was unconstitutional, because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. At the same time, however, it held that “teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.” Using this loophole proponents of creation science introduced the concept of Intelligent Design.
Gilles Nullens