Creationists believe they have lost case

Press, 19 December 1981, Page 9

Creationists believe they have lost case

NZPA-Reuter Little Rock

The Arkansas “monkey trial’’ ended yesterday with religious fundamentalists bickering among themselves and convinced that they faced defeat.

Federal Judge William Overton was drawing up his ruling on whether the state’s law to teach “creation science” in its schools violated a Constitutional ban on religious instruction in state schools. He said it might take him several days. In the view of the religious fundamentalists who pushed through the law, the nine-day trial was a rout and a fiasco, and they blame the Arkansas Attorney-General (Mr Steve Clark) for his handling of the defence.

They were pitted against 17 lawyers of the American Civil Liberties Union, some of America’s most eminent - scientists, Arkansas teachers, and most of the state's Church groups.

The Creation Science Legal Defence Fund denounced Mr Clark and his team for poor preparation, humiliating its own witnesses, producing inferior witnesses and “shooting questions from the hip.” The Moral Majority, dominant religious and political force of the American farRight, had already intervened in this crucial test case for creationism laws across the nation, calling the judge biased and the defence mishandled.

Judge Overton did not reply but, apparently anticipating creationist hate mail, gave a warning: • “It may save everybody a lot of wasted time if I say now I do not read what people write to me about this case and I do not accept collect calls.”

The trial has been the biggest courtroom confrontation of science and religion since the original “monkey trial” of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, when a biology teacher, John Scopes, defended by Clarence Darrow, was fined for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. For nine days in Little Rock Mr Clark, aged 35, and his team of Southern lawyers have struggled to prove that creationism — a theory that supernatural forces created the universe 6000 years ago — is a science.

When the defence put its witnesses on the stand it was, as one lawyer noted, “something like nine-pins.” The star theological witness, Norman Geisler, was forced to admit he believed that unidentified flying objects (U.F.O.S) were manifestations of the Devil. Two other witnesses were trapped into saying they would approve, in certain circumstances, teaching that the Earth was,flat.

The Judge rebuked one witness for giving two hours of testimony that he said contained not one single fact. To the end, trouble dogged

Mr Clark. His last witness, Dr Henry Voss, a research scientist for the Lockheed Corporation, due to appear yesterday, was on a plane back to Sunnyvale, California, when the Court opened. Lawyers for both sides were taking his deposition on Thursday night when the A.C.L.U. asked him his views on U.F.O.S. Defence lawyers ordered him not to answer. The A.C.L.U. said that in that case it would challenge any attempt to put him on the stand.

He was the second witness to pull out. On Tuesday a biologist, Dean Kenyon, sat watching fellow defence witnesses being demolished and took the next plane back to San Francisco.

Mr Clark says pressure inside the powerful American scientific community prevented him getting better witnesses, but yesterday he was unrepentent about the way the case was handled. Throughout the trial he tried to portray the scientific community as elitist, arro-

gant, conservative and closed to new ideas.

But time and again, defence witnesses admitted they could not provide scientific evidence for creationism.

“Trouble is they simply didn’t. have a case,” said Bruce Ennis, head of the A.C.L.U. legal team. He said that the trial had proved that the American education system, teaching evolution and rejecting creationism, was on the right track.

Now the A.C.L.U. sets about challenging the only other Creationism Act passed, in Louisiana. At least 16 other states have such bills pending. “We are prepared to challenge the teaching of creation science where ever it is taught in whatever state institution anywhere in this country,” Mr Ennis said.

An appeal against Judge Overton’s ruling is considered certain and the case could eventually work its way to the United States Supreme Court.