内容摘要：Only animals that evolved to live solely on land ever developed claws. The earliest vertebrates -- fish and amphibians – never developed hard nails and remained dependent on watery environments to lay eggs and reproduce.

Only animals that evolved to live solely on land ever developed claws. The earliest vertebrates -- fish and amphibians – never developed hard nails and remained dependent on watery environments to lay eggs and reproduce.

The consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old; that humans and other life forms evolved from earlier forms over millions of years; and that mountains, canyons and other geological features are due to millions of years of tectonic upheaval and erosion. A 2014found 98% of American scientists accept evolution.

“Evolution and the directly related concept of deep time are essential parts of science curricula,” says the Geological Society of America.Evolution is “one of the most securely established of scientific facts,” says the National Academy of Sciences. The academy urges that public schools stick to the scientific consensus and that creationism is not a viable alternative. Creationists, it said, “reverse the scientific process” by beginning with an inflexible conclusion, rather than building evidence toward a conclusion.Creation and evolution may not be front-burner issues today, but the Scopes trial set a template for other culture-war battles over school books and gender policies. William Jennings Bryan’s words from his era would sound familiar at a modern school board meeting: “Teachers in public schools must teach what the taxpayers desire taught.”

The Scopes case involved the 1925 conviction of schoolteacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating a state law against teaching in public schools “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”Tennessee repealed that law in 1967, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas law was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. The high court in 1987 overturned a Louisiana law requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolution. A 2005 federal court ruling similarly forbade the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania from presenting “intelligent design,” as an alternative to evolution, saying it, too, was a religious teaching. Though distinct from young-Earth creationism, intelligent design argues that nature shows evidence of a designer.

A 2023-2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 17% of U.S. adults agreed that humans have existed in their present form since “the beginning of time.”

A 2024 Gallup survey found that 37% agreed that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”Malu Schmidt laughs next to her friends after getting married at the church of our Savior in Nuuk, Greenland, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Malu Schmidt laughs next to her friends after getting married at the church of our Savior in Nuuk, Greenland, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)In his first term in office, Trump began to talk about

from Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally. Back in 2019, most dismissed it. But it had a ripple effect.“It was not taken that seriously back then as it is today. But it was important for Greenland because he, without wanting, did Greenlanders a favor,” said Ebbe Volquardsen, a professor of cultural history at the University of Greenland. “He underlined the value of being in a union with Greenland.”