Arguing that creationism should never be taught in schools in a science setting, law professor Kent Greenawalt said yesteday that the Supreme Court's got it right in previous decisions on religion in education.
Greenawalt, a member of the faculty at Columbia Law School, spoke in the Rockefeller Center just hours after the Supreme Court debated the future of publicly-funded vouchers for students attending private or religious schools.
Previous Supreme Court decisions -- including the landmark 1968 Eperson v. Arkansas decision which struck down a law banning the teaching of evolution -- prevent schools from limiting their curricula on religious grounds. The decisions have been based on the separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment.
Justice Anthony Scalia, apparently giving the nod to vouchers, said during the hearing that yesterday's case did not relate to the First Amendment.
According to the Associated Press, Scalia said, "Unless there's an endorsement of religion, I don't see why it matters if [government] money goes to a religious school."
"The crucial issue is the connection between the state and the religious institution," Greenawalt said.
Science teachers should not present scientific theories that are unlikely or without evidence, he said, adding that "creation science does not belong in the science classroom."
A comparative religion course would be a better way to instruct students, he said, though it would have to be under strict guidelines to prevent the teaching of religion as fact.
Though Darwinian ideas of evolution and natural selection are accepted by the scientific community, he said that "it is not hard to see how Darwin's theory disturbed traditional Christians. ... Many religious people have regarded his theory as threatening."
Nearly the entire scientific community backs the theory of evolution, Greenawalt said, and a large body of material including fossil records, carbon-dating techniques and astrophysics have all evidenced the claim.
Many critics of evolution, hoping to defend the Biblical explanation of a 10,000-year-old world, have suggested that there is an incomplete fossil record to prove the theory and that inconsistencies in species development are as yet unexplained.
"Creation science, in its full-blown form, has a little scientific support," Greenawalt said.
A more recent theory is the belief in "intelligent design." Proponents of the idea suggest that a higher power controlling evolution and other sciences might explain many discrepancies and holes in current scientific theory.
He said that were this belief to be taught in schools, it too would likely be interpreted by the courts as being religious in nature and therefore unconstitutional. Intelligent design would "step over the constitutional line" separating church and state, he said.
Greenawalt also pointed out that in a recent Newsweek poll, 84 percent of Americans believe in miracles, while another survey shows that almost three in four believe that both evolution and creationism should be taught.
Though most of his discussion focused on the evolution debate, he also touched on yesterday's Supreme Court hearing.
"The people who think the vouchers are OK think that the schools are providing a lot of valuable secular education," he said.
A ruling in favor of vouchers could potentially cause dramatic reforms to the U.S. education system, as many school systems have waited to implement their own voucher programs pending the decision. The court's opinion is expected by summer.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said that "the question is whether there is neutrality," between religious and non-religious schools, the AP reported.
Discussing the proceedings, Greenawalt said that since most votes were already decided, "the crucial vote will be Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor."
The speech, attended by over 50 students, was sponsored by the Rockefeller Center and the government department.
