The Real Message of Creationism

When the Kansas Board of Education voted recently to eliminate evolution from the state science curriculum, the sophisticates had quite a yuk. One editorial cartoon had an ape reclining in a tree telling his mate, "We are descended from the Kansas School Board." The decision has been widely derided as a sign of resurgent Middle American obscurantism, a throwback to the Scopes "monkey trial."

Well, to begin with, the Scopes trial is not the great fable the rather fictional Inherit the Wind made it out to be. The instigators of the trial were not bluenosed know-nothings wanting to persecute some poor...