Understanding the Evolution Debate
More than 80 years after the famous 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the debate between evolutionists and creationists continues to rage in science classrooms and in courtrooms across the country. Representatives from both sides of the controversy are frequently accused of any number of ‘isms’: Creationists, we are told, are guilty of anti-intellectualism, religious fundamentalism, and biblical literalism. Evolutionists, on the other hand, are frequently accused of elitism, moral relativism, and scientific materialism. At the heart of the debate lie tensions between traditional values and modernity, academic freedom vs. popular control over public education, the nature of science vs. religion, and the relationship between church and state. In this section of Writing 20, we will develop strategies for academic writing through attempting to understand the evolution debate. Rather than weigh the evidence in favor of one faction or the other, our focus will be to develop a critical understanding of the underlying concerns motivating each side.
The work of this course will revolve around two major writing projects. Your first writing project, due halfway through the semester, will require you to apply what you learn from our reading and discussion to a particular manifestation of the evolution/creationism debate from the popular media: the ‘bumper battle’ over the Christian fish symbol and its counter-symbol, a fish with feet. Building on many of the writing techniques you will learn in the first several weeks of the semester, you will compose a critical essay based on the ‘fish wars.’ As the semester progresses, you will be asked to find and collect additional images (comic strips, editorial cartoons, bumper stickers, car decals, etc.) representing the debate as portrayed in the popular media and also to write a series of brief responses to the course readings which we will discuss in class. For your second major writing project, due at the end of the semester, I will ask you to choose one or more images from our class collection that you feel illustrate some tension at the heart of the evolution/creationism debate and to develop and extend your ideas in a longer project centered on an aspect of the debate that interests you.
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