Intelligently Designed: How Creationists Built the Campaign against Evolution - Softcover

Caudill, Edward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252079523 ISBN 13: 9780252079528

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2013

Synopsis

Tracing the growth of creationism in America as a political movement, this book explains why the particularly American phenomenon of anti-evolution has succeeded as a popular belief. Conceptualizing the history of creationism as a strategic public relations campaign, Edward Caudill examines why this movement has captured the imagination of the American public, from the explosive Scopes trial of 1925 to today's heated battles over public school curricula. Caudill shows how creationists have appealed to cultural values such as individual rights and admiration of the rebel spirit, thus spinning creationism as a viable, even preferable, alternative to evolution.

 

In particular, Caudill argues that the current anti-evolution campaign follows a template created by Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the Scopes trial's primary combatants. Their celebrity status and dexterity with the press prefigured the Moral Majority's 1980s media blitz, more recent staunchly creationist politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, and creationists' savvy use of the Internet and museums to publicize their cause. Drawing from trial transcripts, media sources, films, and archival documents, Intelligently Designed highlights the importance of historical myth in popular culture, religion, and politics and situates this nearly century-old debate in American cultural history.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Caudill is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the author of

Darwinian Myths: The Legends and Misuses of a Theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252079523
• ISBN 13: 9780252079528
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280