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Studies in Religion and Culture
By Langdon Gilkey Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (Studies in Religion and Culture) (1st University Press of Virginia pb) [Paperback]
Creationism on Trial is Gilkey's blow-by-blow account of his experiences as a witness for the ACLU at the 1981 creationist trial in Little Rock, AR.
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First published November 1, 1998
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February 5, 2025
THE ‘THEOLOGY’ WITNESS IN THE ARKANSAS CREATION TRIAL LOOKS AT THE CASE
Theology professor Langdon Gilkey wrote in the Preface to this 1985 book, “This book represents an account of my experience as a ‘theological’ witness for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) at the ‘creationist’ trial in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 7-9, 1981. Appended to that account are also reflections on the state of the church, laboratory, and wider society in light of that controversy.
“To my surprise, the contest enacted in that courtroom between fundamentalist ‘creation science’ (aided by the State of Arkansas) on the one side, and scholarly religion, established science, and liberal teachers (aided by the ACLU and one of New York’s most potent law firms) on the other side, proved to be more than the exciting spectacle I had expected… I found it opening up windows into the baffling complexity and frequently impenetrable obscurity of our present cultural life as an advanced scientific society. I realized that this case could help us UNDERSTAND in new ways how science and the religious manifest themselves in such a society… and the bizarre ways they may there unite and interact… My hope is that it may add to our present self-understanding as a society dedicated in large part BOTH to science and to religion, and that it will encourage these two communities… to spend more of their energy and time seeking to understand each other.”
He recounts, “it was plain that the controversy I was involved in was by no means merely one more battle in an endless ‘warfare of science and religion’… as I looked over the list of opposition witnesses, I saw to my surprise and amusement that over against these churchly plaintiffs, my colleagues in Scripture and church history, and me the theologian, was arrayed a sequence of professional ‘scientists,’ each one replete with a scientific doctorate and a tenured position on a scientific faculty.” (Pg. 15)
He admits, “these are ‘scientists’ by any normal … definition of that word… most of them have gone through scientific training of the highest order, and numbers of them have been, or are at present, functioning as professors or instructors in recognized universities. Since this fact is frequently questioned (‘They’re all engineers and not real scientists!’), a few relevant statistics are in order. If one counts the … formulators of creation science and adds to this the witnesses who agreed to testify against evolutionary science the total is TWENTY-FOUR Ph.D’s in the natural or theoretical sciences… each identified himself… as speaking ‘as a scientist’ while I was identified as ‘only a theologian.’” (Pg. 21-22)
Tony Siano [a lawyer representing the ACLU] explained to him their procedure for taking a deposition from a witness for the creationists: “Whenever we depose a witness of theirs who’s a scientist, we ask a couple of well-known scientists in their own field to join us at the deposition. They don’t ask questions, of course; the lawyer does that. All they do is look sharply at the witness every time he starts to speak, take careful notes, shake their heads grimly at his answers, whisper at length in the ear of the lawyer, and then nod their heads. This makes the witness nervous enough to make mistakes---I’ve heard them say they don’t enjoy these depositions at all!” (Pg. 72)
He recounts, “Tony left me with a copy of [the] deposition … of the man who was… my opposite number in the case, 'their’ theologian, one Norman Geisler of Dallas Theological Seminary… it was when he got going on his own views that my eyes widened as I read. First, in one of the strangest marriages of literalism and modern science I had encountered, he admitted under questioning that he did not regard Noah’s ‘flood’ as representing a sea of water, but as… the appearance of a universal ice age---a view sharply disputed by most… of his creationist colleagues… Tony (who was taking the deposition) was led to ask him if he believed in a personal devil. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Geisler. ‘I have known personally at least twelve persons who were clearly possessed by the devil…. And then… there are the UFOs… they represent the Devil’s major, in fact, final, attack on the earth.’ … Tony asked, ‘And, sir, may I ask you how you know … that there are UFOs?’ ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’ … I sprang to the phone, and when I got Tony on the line, said to him, ‘…Go after that whole sequence on the UFOs, the Devil, and The Reader’s Digest as if your life depended on it… his status as an expert will have dissolved completely away!’ … I was elated later when… I read in ‘The New York Times’… ‘Dr. Geisler acknowledged under cross-examination that he believed in unidentified flying objects as “Satanic manifestations for the purposes of deception.” He said, amid courtroom laughter, that an article in The Reader’s Digest had confirmed their existence.’” (Pg. 76-77)
Gilkey testified, “There is absolutely no question that the concept of creation enshrined in Act 590 represents a particular religious view of origins, and not that of all religions or of religion in general… the creationist literature, and the Act itself… are clearly wrong. Repeatedly, they maintain that there are only two models of creation. This is false. There are literally hundreds of different views of creation, views represented in a wide variety of religious myths and doctrines or ‘truths.’ Nor are any of these ‘esoteric evolutionary systems,’ as creationist literature states. On the contrary, they are RELIGIOUS theories representing the world as arising from a divine and spiritual source.” (Pg. 106-107)
He reports, “The next scientific witness called was G. Brent Dalrymple, assistant chief geologist of the U.S. Geological Service… Dalrymple was asked to comment about several of the better-known ‘proofs’ which the creationists continually cite to show the recent origin of the earth… the creationists had maintained that this [meteoric] dust should be about 185 feet thick IF the earth and its moon were… as old as Dalrymple and his colleagues maintained… Explaining first why the prediction of 185 feet was grievous error in principle, Dalrymple went on to reply that the best data on meteoric dust was that gathered by NASA, where he had recently spent some time. According to their predictions there should be, in five billion years, a layer of twelve centimeters on the moon. When the astronauts landed, they found… that the layer there was precisely ten centimeters---‘about right for 4.5 billion years.’” (Pg. 142-144)
He continues, “The next witness for the plaintiffs was Harold Morowitz, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Yale… however distinguished a microbiologist he may have been, Morowitz… was neither a philosopher nor an historian of science…. On the deeper issues… Morowitz seemed… a little beyond his depth… Creation science … ‘is religion and not science… Because the scientific community so judges it.’ This answer… resonated … with the elitism at which [plaintiffs’ attorney] Childs had hinted… Morowitz, like other scientific witnesses,,, found it hard to state conceptually the theoretical grounds … WHY it was not science (i.e., the canons of scientific method) and … he would have been quite unable to articulate reflectively what he meant when he said he ‘knew’ that it was religion. It was plain that the scientific community only endangered itself when it ignored… the reflective question of what science is… and, like other established elites of history (for example, the established community of priests and theologians) contented itself with intramural discourse combined with fervent self-defense against any external change.” (Pg. 144-149)
He suggests, “Perhaps… the major philosophical and theological task of our time is represented by this question: … How are the many diverse ways of thinking in a culture---its technical and scientific thought, its social and political thinking, its artistic and moral experience and reflection, and its deepest or religious convictions---to find UNITY, that is, together to find coherence, mutual credibility, and effectiveness? That such a crucial enterprise of thought as this should seem strange, esoteric, and useless to much of our current life, especially to much of its official philosophy, not to speak of its scientific faculties, is itself possibly the strangest truth of our present cultural existence!” (Pg. 207-208)
He concludes, “The symbol of the divine creation of nature, of history, and of each of us, and its implication---the affirmation of the divine center for all of life---remain peripheral to our scientific and technological culture, crucial as each once was to the establishment of that culture. Possibly in the ‘Time of Troubles’ now facing this culture, the relevance, power, and beauty of that symbol will reappear, and the centrality of the divine to which it points will return. Such a reappearance might reshape many of the attitudes now destructive in an advanced scientific culture, as creation once functioned to establish the cultural way of life.” (Pg. 234)
Gilkey reproduces all of his own testimony, and offers commentary on much of the trial. This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Arkansas trial---including creationists, who will be interested in some ‘behind the scenes’ material from the ‘other side.’
Theology professor Langdon Gilkey wrote in the Preface to this 1985 book, “This book represents an account of my experience as a ‘theological’ witness for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) at the ‘creationist’ trial in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 7-9, 1981. Appended to that account are also reflections on the state of the church, laboratory, and wider society in light of that controversy.
“To my surprise, the contest enacted in that courtroom between fundamentalist ‘creation science’ (aided by the State of Arkansas) on the one side, and scholarly religion, established science, and liberal teachers (aided by the ACLU and one of New York’s most potent law firms) on the other side, proved to be more than the exciting spectacle I had expected… I found it opening up windows into the baffling complexity and frequently impenetrable obscurity of our present cultural life as an advanced scientific society. I realized that this case could help us UNDERSTAND in new ways how science and the religious manifest themselves in such a society… and the bizarre ways they may there unite and interact… My hope is that it may add to our present self-understanding as a society dedicated in large part BOTH to science and to religion, and that it will encourage these two communities… to spend more of their energy and time seeking to understand each other.”
He recounts, “it was plain that the controversy I was involved in was by no means merely one more battle in an endless ‘warfare of science and religion’… as I looked over the list of opposition witnesses, I saw to my surprise and amusement that over against these churchly plaintiffs, my colleagues in Scripture and church history, and me the theologian, was arrayed a sequence of professional ‘scientists,’ each one replete with a scientific doctorate and a tenured position on a scientific faculty.” (Pg. 15)
He admits, “these are ‘scientists’ by any normal … definition of that word… most of them have gone through scientific training of the highest order, and numbers of them have been, or are at present, functioning as professors or instructors in recognized universities. Since this fact is frequently questioned (‘They’re all engineers and not real scientists!’), a few relevant statistics are in order. If one counts the … formulators of creation science and adds to this the witnesses who agreed to testify against evolutionary science the total is TWENTY-FOUR Ph.D’s in the natural or theoretical sciences… each identified himself… as speaking ‘as a scientist’ while I was identified as ‘only a theologian.’” (Pg. 21-22)
Tony Siano [a lawyer representing the ACLU] explained to him their procedure for taking a deposition from a witness for the creationists: “Whenever we depose a witness of theirs who’s a scientist, we ask a couple of well-known scientists in their own field to join us at the deposition. They don’t ask questions, of course; the lawyer does that. All they do is look sharply at the witness every time he starts to speak, take careful notes, shake their heads grimly at his answers, whisper at length in the ear of the lawyer, and then nod their heads. This makes the witness nervous enough to make mistakes---I’ve heard them say they don’t enjoy these depositions at all!” (Pg. 72)
He recounts, “Tony left me with a copy of [the] deposition … of the man who was… my opposite number in the case, 'their’ theologian, one Norman Geisler of Dallas Theological Seminary… it was when he got going on his own views that my eyes widened as I read. First, in one of the strangest marriages of literalism and modern science I had encountered, he admitted under questioning that he did not regard Noah’s ‘flood’ as representing a sea of water, but as… the appearance of a universal ice age---a view sharply disputed by most… of his creationist colleagues… Tony (who was taking the deposition) was led to ask him if he believed in a personal devil. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Geisler. ‘I have known personally at least twelve persons who were clearly possessed by the devil…. And then… there are the UFOs… they represent the Devil’s major, in fact, final, attack on the earth.’ … Tony asked, ‘And, sir, may I ask you how you know … that there are UFOs?’ ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’ … I sprang to the phone, and when I got Tony on the line, said to him, ‘…Go after that whole sequence on the UFOs, the Devil, and The Reader’s Digest as if your life depended on it… his status as an expert will have dissolved completely away!’ … I was elated later when… I read in ‘The New York Times’… ‘Dr. Geisler acknowledged under cross-examination that he believed in unidentified flying objects as “Satanic manifestations for the purposes of deception.” He said, amid courtroom laughter, that an article in The Reader’s Digest had confirmed their existence.’” (Pg. 76-77)
Gilkey testified, “There is absolutely no question that the concept of creation enshrined in Act 590 represents a particular religious view of origins, and not that of all religions or of religion in general… the creationist literature, and the Act itself… are clearly wrong. Repeatedly, they maintain that there are only two models of creation. This is false. There are literally hundreds of different views of creation, views represented in a wide variety of religious myths and doctrines or ‘truths.’ Nor are any of these ‘esoteric evolutionary systems,’ as creationist literature states. On the contrary, they are RELIGIOUS theories representing the world as arising from a divine and spiritual source.” (Pg. 106-107)
He reports, “The next scientific witness called was G. Brent Dalrymple, assistant chief geologist of the U.S. Geological Service… Dalrymple was asked to comment about several of the better-known ‘proofs’ which the creationists continually cite to show the recent origin of the earth… the creationists had maintained that this [meteoric] dust should be about 185 feet thick IF the earth and its moon were… as old as Dalrymple and his colleagues maintained… Explaining first why the prediction of 185 feet was grievous error in principle, Dalrymple went on to reply that the best data on meteoric dust was that gathered by NASA, where he had recently spent some time. According to their predictions there should be, in five billion years, a layer of twelve centimeters on the moon. When the astronauts landed, they found… that the layer there was precisely ten centimeters---‘about right for 4.5 billion years.’” (Pg. 142-144)
He continues, “The next witness for the plaintiffs was Harold Morowitz, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Yale… however distinguished a microbiologist he may have been, Morowitz… was neither a philosopher nor an historian of science…. On the deeper issues… Morowitz seemed… a little beyond his depth… Creation science … ‘is religion and not science… Because the scientific community so judges it.’ This answer… resonated … with the elitism at which [plaintiffs’ attorney] Childs had hinted… Morowitz, like other scientific witnesses,,, found it hard to state conceptually the theoretical grounds … WHY it was not science (i.e., the canons of scientific method) and … he would have been quite unable to articulate reflectively what he meant when he said he ‘knew’ that it was religion. It was plain that the scientific community only endangered itself when it ignored… the reflective question of what science is… and, like other established elites of history (for example, the established community of priests and theologians) contented itself with intramural discourse combined with fervent self-defense against any external change.” (Pg. 144-149)
He suggests, “Perhaps… the major philosophical and theological task of our time is represented by this question: … How are the many diverse ways of thinking in a culture---its technical and scientific thought, its social and political thinking, its artistic and moral experience and reflection, and its deepest or religious convictions---to find UNITY, that is, together to find coherence, mutual credibility, and effectiveness? That such a crucial enterprise of thought as this should seem strange, esoteric, and useless to much of our current life, especially to much of its official philosophy, not to speak of its scientific faculties, is itself possibly the strangest truth of our present cultural existence!” (Pg. 207-208)
He concludes, “The symbol of the divine creation of nature, of history, and of each of us, and its implication---the affirmation of the divine center for all of life---remain peripheral to our scientific and technological culture, crucial as each once was to the establishment of that culture. Possibly in the ‘Time of Troubles’ now facing this culture, the relevance, power, and beauty of that symbol will reappear, and the centrality of the divine to which it points will return. Such a reappearance might reshape many of the attitudes now destructive in an advanced scientific culture, as creation once functioned to establish the cultural way of life.” (Pg. 234)
Gilkey reproduces all of his own testimony, and offers commentary on much of the trial. This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Arkansas trial---including creationists, who will be interested in some ‘behind the scenes’ material from the ‘other side.’
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April 17, 2009Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock by Langdon Gilkey (?)
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October 22, 2009LC Call No.: KF228.M39.G55 19988
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