DARWINISM IN AMERICA

Fierce resistance to the uptake of Darwinist t severallying in the public schools erupted twice in this century, in the 1920s and in recent decades. The temper of that opposition reflected deep rooted and conflicted attitudes by some elements of American society toward Darwinism.

Darwin's Views and The altercate They Posed

Origin of the Species. Darwin reported that a number of factors accounted for the matter of new species or life forms. First, he stated the obvious, that " down the stairs varying conditions ingrained beings [possess] an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits" (Moore 126). Second, each such organism undergoes a severe "struggle for institution" (126). In adapting to the need to survive in an environment of finite resources, the organism develops characteristics helpful for that intention which were then passed on done reproduction during which "they will tend to produce offspring similarly situated" (Moore 126). The organism which develops the necessary variations to survive will too tend to be successful in sexual endurance and thereby ensure the survival of the species because it will have a competitive advantage in the mating process. Darwin called the mechanism which produced these variations postulate to survive natural selection, as opposed to supernatural concept ( matinee idol) or artificial alternatives, such as breeding. He called this "the precept of preservation, or the s

Conser, Walter H., Jr. God And The Natural World. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1993.

urvival of the fittest" (Wells 167). His view was that organic beings positive such slight variations continuously, but very late over time and over generations, not suddenly. Those organic beings which developed such variations successfully among a population of otherwise homogeneous beings would eventually move around numerous enough to constitute a new surviving species. Those which did not would perish or become extinct.

For Europeans and white Americans of European descent, Commager verbalize "the impact of Darwinism on devotion was shattering; its impact on philosophy was revolutionary" (83).

Commager said "it toppled Man from his exalted position as the end and purpose of creation, the crown of Nature, and the image of God, and classified him prosaically with the anthropoids" (83). Moreover, Darwin's concept of fall natural evolution over eons contradicted the central thesis of contemporaries that God had created the world 6,000 years before in sextette days. The scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries ended the mediaeval world view under which "the universe was finite, hierarchical, and purposefully logical" and replaced it with "an infinite universe organized by mechanical laws" (Conser 10). In the universe as revealed by the scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, fixed laws of nature prevailed, but "the first creation, life, mind and soul [remained] the province of the theologian" (Hull 5-6).

In 1984 the National Academy of Sciences condemned creationism, which it defined as "beliefs in a young Earth and universe, flood geology, and the miraculous institution of all living things" (Numbers 56). The federal courts found unconstitutional as a violation of a prohibition of the separation betwixt church and state two equal time or balanced treatment of evolution laws which were enacted (in Arkansas and Louisiana). Pressures on topical anaesthetic school boards at the grass roots l
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