By Barbara Forrest

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. / Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look: This is something new’? / It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”  — Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, New International Version

Resistance to the teaching of evolution is an integral part of the history of American anti-intellectualism, which stems in great part from religious fundamentalism. Hence, framing this discussion of creationism within a biblical context is fitting given the singular importance of biblical interpretation in creating the problem. At the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, these verses from Ecclesiastes perfectly capture the perennial American problem of creationism, which began in the early twentieth century and continues into the twenty-first. In 2009, evolution remains the most contentious issue in public-school science education, as Louisiana has — once again — shown the world.

This is the opening of my article with the above title in the February-March 2009 issue of Free Inquiry magazine. Click over to this web page to read about how creationists at the Discovery Institute [pdf], working with the Louisiana Family Forum, used rehashed creationist tactics to pass the stealth creationist Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008: “From a strategic standpoint, ID creationists’ current tactics are merely the retooled creationist strategies that were used decades ago.”