Evolution Showdown In Georgia

Darwin Disclaimer Stickers Pit Biology Vs. Theology

(CBS)  High School Junior Miller Clark's biology book comes with a controversial disclaimer.

The sticker inside says Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "a theory, not a fact" that should be "critically considered."

As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, in Cobb County, Ga., it's a new twist to an old controversy that packs school board meetings.

"Darwin considered it a theory and it is still a theory and it has never been proven and never will be," says a speaker said at a recent school board meeting.

It pits "red parents" like creationist Marjorie Rogers against "blue parents" like Jeff Selman.

"Give them the evidence and let them make up their own minds," says Rogers.

"It's a religious group that wants to take our country away from us, and they can't have it," says Selman.

Several generations after the famous Scopes Monkey trial, creationists in Cobb County — an affluent conservative community — convinced the local school board that the disclaimer was necessary.

"My interest from the start and all along is that the science in their textbooks be accurate, which it isn't, and be up to date, which it has not been, and be even-handed," says Rogers.

Around Atlanta, many families move to Cobb County just for the schools, which have the highest SAT scores in Georgia. Thirteen different textbooks touch on evolution, and every one of them has the sticker.

A CBS News poll has results on the belief in evolution from all over the U.S.

A half-dozen parents opposed to the stickers sued in federal court, as a violation of church and state.

Selman is one of them.

"Science belongs in the science class, religion belongs in our heart and in places of worship," Selman says. "If you start mixing and matching them you just destroy both."

A judge's ruling on the sticker could come at any time in this evolution of a familiar collision between biology and theology.