Media: Salon.com

The Evolution of Creationism, by Gordy Slack, Salon.com, November 13, 2007. Salon.com

Two years ago, Pennsylvania federal Judge John Jones III handed down a stunning decision that many said would take down the intelligent design movement. But American creationism doesn't die. It just adapts.

Decades earlier, when the courts deemed creation science -- proto intelligent design -- a religious view and not constitutionally teachable as science in public schools, it adapted by cutting God off its letterhead and calling itself "intelligent design." The argument for I.D., and for "scientific creation theory" before it, is that evolution isn't up to the task of accounting for life. Given biology's complexity, and natural selection's inability to explain it, I.D. thinking goes, life must be designed by a, well, designer. I.D.ers skirted any mention of God, hoping to avoid getting snagged on the First Amendment's prohibition against promoting religion by arguing that I.D. was just a young and outlying science.

In the Pennsylvania case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge Jones ruled that if you want to teach intelligent design in science class, first you have to show that it is a distinct species from its earlier, creationist form, not just a modified type. You've got to show us the science part, he said. Besides, Jones declared, your intelligent designer is obviously God.

The six-week trial -- the focus of a Nova documentary, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," airing Nov. 13 -- addressed a host of heady questions. What is science and how does it work? Can evolution account for the diversity of life we see on earth? What is religion? Can science say anything about the existence of a creator and still be science? It also examined the motivations of a local school board that tried to smuggle creationism into its high school biology curriculum. The judge's decision -- that I.D. was not science and that the school board was trying to promote its members' own religious views -- was followed by a short period of shock from the I.D. community.

But like bacteria adapting to antibiotics, creationism has slimmed down once again, this time shedding even a mention of an intelligent designer. A new textbook put out by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank that promotes I.D., doesn't even have the words "intelligent design" in its index. Instead of pushing I.D. explicitly, "Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Darwinism," promoted as a high school- or college-level biology text, "teaches the controversy." Teach the controversy is the new mantra of the I.D. movement.