Creationists in Court: Sacramento, 1981

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CREATIONISTS IN COURT: SACRAMENTO, 1981 THOMAS H. JUKES* Evolution versus Creationism in California Legal action was brought against the State ??California by Segraves et al., starting in 1979 and coming to trial in March 1981. On January 6, 1981, I received a telephone call from Mr. Robert Tyler, Deputy Attorney General, State of California, who made an appointment with me in my office for the following day. He asked me to serve as his consultant in the trial, to which I consented, because I was the coauthor, with Dr. Richard Lemmon, of appendix A in the Science Framework for Public SchooL·. This document, published in 1978 by the California State Board of Education [1], is intended for kindergarten and grades one through twelve. The introduction, by Dr. Wilson Riles, Superintendent of Public Instruction, says the Framework is intended to "give form and shape, strength and unity to all aspects of . . . public education." Dr. Riles also says that he hopes that the Framework will help teachers "in their most important work of enriching lives and showing each child his or her place as caretaker in the world of living things." Appendix A gives examples of "major conceptual organizations of scientific knowledge," including evolution, and it was to sections of this that the plaintiffs had directed their complaint. Lemmon and I were appointed to the Science Framework committee for writing the publication by Dr. Junji Kumamoto, who was chairperson of the appropriate governing committee. He had invited us tojoin following our participation in public hearings on the teaching of evolution held in Sacramento in December 1972 [2, pp. 55-64; 3]. Tyler, who is 33 years old and correspondingly energetic, asked me for help in getting scientific witnesses. My first call was to Dr. Carl Sagan, who readily consented. I then called Dr. Arthur Kornberg, who also agreed to serve. I made similar requests to Drs. Richard Dickerson, Norman Horowitz, David Wake, Watson Laetsch, Russell Doolittle, *Space Sciences Laboratory and Department of Biophysics and Medical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720.© 1982 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved 003 1-5982/82/2502-0282$01 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 25, 2 ¦ Winter 1982 | 207 Everett Olson, C. Rainer Berger and Reverend Julian Bartlett, all of whom consented. Tyler followed up these calls and also called Lemmon and Drs. William Mayer and Brent Dalrymple, obtaining their consent. He also "recruited" several eminent clergymen of various faiths in addition to Bartlett, and other people in the teaching profession to serve as witnesses. The trial started on Monday, March 2, in the Superior Court of the State of California, Sacramento, Judge Irving Perluss presiding. The plaintiffs, Segraves et al., were represented in court by Richard K. Turner. The complaint contained 41 numbered paragraphs. Two of these were as follows: 20.The evolutionary theory of the origin of man and of all plant and animal life is at odds with, is hostile to and contributes a repugnant coercion against the religious beliefs of plaintiffs. 2 1 . Scientific creationism is compatible and coincides with the religious beliefs of plaintiffs, said belief, based upon scientific principles, being that there was a time in the past when all matter, energy and man and all plant and animal life, and their processes and relationships were created ex nihilo and fixed by creative and intelligent design. The complaint also stated that the action ofthe State ofCalifornia forced taxpayers to support "an unconstitutional establishment of the Religion of Secular Humanism, which said establishment ofreligion is an extreme contravention of said plaintiff's freedom of religion." The complaint demanded that all copies of the 1978 Science Framework be recalled and that the Science Framework be revised "to reflect the constitutionally mandated approach of neutrality concerning the teaching of the origins of life." History The following appears in The War on Modern Science, by Maynard Shipley : "The war on science in California first took on a serious aspect in July 1924, when a group of Fundamentalists protested to the State Board of Education against the use in the high schools and junior colleges of textbooks teaching evolution, on the ground that 'Darwinism is clearly subversive to Christianity' " [4, p...

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