Abstract

arly in December of 1981, the federal courtroom in Little Rock, Arkansas, was packed. It was the first week of a trial brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the constitutionality of a state law passed earlier that year. The law mandated "balanced treatment," in the publicly supported schools, between evolutionary ideas and so-called Creation Science, better known as the early chapters of Genesis taken absolutely literally (Ruse 1988). By the end of the third day, the case for the plaintiffs was going well. Theologians had testified that Christianity had long interpreted the Bible metaphorically; a philosopher (me!) had argued that Creation Science fails every criterion of demarcation between science and pseudo-science; and the scientists were pointing to error after error in the claims of the literalists.