William J. Guste - Defending Creation Science

Defending Creation Science

In the Treen gubernatorial administration (1980–1984), the legislature passed a law permitting public school teachers to instruct the tenets of "creation science" in their lessons if the theory of evolution is also presented. The law neither required the teaching of evolution or creation science, but the instruction of both if the other were taught. Guste, regardless of his personal views on the matter, as attorney general was compelled to defend the Louisiana law. He argued that teachers should be able to present evidence favoring creation because the Supreme Court recognizes that teachers "already possess" the "flexibility to teach all the scientific evidence about the origins of life." Guste noted that the monitoring of state textbooks and science curricula would continue under the creation-science law.

The high Court ruled 7-2 in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987, long after the initial issue had arisen, that creation science is "not science" but "religion" in the name of "science." The "Edwards" in the case referred to Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, who had returned to office in 1984, by having unseated David Treen in the primary the preceding fall. The Supreme Court found that the Louisiana legislature's actual intent was "to discredit evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the introduction of creationism, a religious belief." Therefore, the court held that creation science instruction would be a violation of the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment. Defending the Louisiana law were then Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia, who argued that the court had no reason to interfere with a state law regarding school instruction. Scalia later said that such decisions meant that the court "bristled with hostility toward religion."

Arkansas, under Republican Governor Frank D. White, had passed a similar law at the time. Some 15 years later, an alternative view called "intelligent design" came before federal courts for scrutiny, and lower courts ruled that intelligent design too is "not science" but a form of "religion" in the name of "science."