The politics of my home state of California are rarely boring, particularly when activists and actors achieve the highest post, from Jerry Brown as “Governor Moonbeam” to Arnold Schwarzenegger as “The Governator.” In 1971 California politics even went post-millennial, when Governor Ronald Reagan said in an interview: “Everything is falling into place. It can’t be long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained on the enemies of God’s people. That must mean that they’ll be destroyed by nuclear weapons.” Why worry about long-term environmental degradation when Armageddon is a short-term inevitability? It says so right there in the Good Book.

But how much of the Bible should be taken as literal reality and accurate history, and how much of it should be read for its moral homilies and spiritual meaning? Reagan decreased the possibility of nuclear Armageddon through the paradoxical employment of mutual assured destruction of an arms race, thereby bankrupting the Evil Empire and averting Ezekiel’s prophecy. Post-Reagan evangelicals, however, fueled by fictional fears of being “left behind” in the second coming, still take their scripture with a strong dose of literalness. Six days of creation means just that. All this evolution nonsense is nothing more than an attempt by liberal secular atheists to infuse their Marxist materialism with natural science, thereby excluding God from public classrooms. He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind!

The evolution-creation controversy has raged in America for more than a century; indeed, creationism is almost exclusively an American phenomenon. The legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes “monkey” trial over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy stirred by the trial made textbook publishers and state boards of education reluctant to deal with the theory of evolution in any manner. The subject was simply dropped for decades. But the Sputnik scare of 1957 rejuvenated science education, and by 1961, the National Science Foundation, in conjunction with the Biological Science Curriculum Study, outlined a basic program for teaching the theory of evolution and published a series of biology books whose common fiber was evolution.

The creationists responded with a new approach. They demanded equal time for the Genesis story, along with the theory of evolution, insisting that evolution was “only a theory,” not a fact. These attempts were all interpreted as an attempt to establish a religious position in a public classroom and therefore failed. This led creationists to a third strategy, as when, in Arkansas in 1981, Act 590 was passed. It required a “balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science in public schools.” The constitutionality of Act 590 was challenged and the case was brought to trial.

Federal Judge William R. Overton ruled against the state, on the following grounds. First, creation science conveys “an inescapable religiosity” and is therefore unconstitutional. “Every theologian who testified,” Mr. Overton explained, “including defense witnesses, expressed the opinion that the statement referred to a supernatural creation which was performed by God.” Second, the creationists employed a “two model approach” in a “contrived dualism” that “assumes only two explanations for the origins of life and existence of man, plants and animals: It was either the work of a creator or it was not.”

In this either-or paradigm, the creationists claim that any evidence “which fails to support the theory of evolution is necessarily scientific evidence in support of creationism.” But, Mr. Overton wrote, “Although the subject of origins of life is within the province of biology, the scientific community does not consider origins of life a part of evolutionary theory.” Furthermore, “evolution does not presuppose the absence of a creator or God and the plain inference conveyed by Section 4 [of Act 590] is erroneous.” Mr. Overton summarized the opinions of expert witnesses that creation science is not science, as that enterprise is usually defined: (1) It is guided by natural law; (2) it is explanatory by reference to natural law; (3) it is testable against the empirical world; (4) its conclusions are tentative; and (5) it is falsifiable.

One of the expert witnesses in that trial whose opinions helped shaped the decision of Judge Overton was the philosopher of science Michael Ruse, who for the past three decades, has been a tireless defender of evolutionary theory in both courts and classrooms. He has also authored numerous books on the subject, including “Darwinism Defended,” “The Darwinian Revolution,” “Mystery of Mysteries,” “Darwin and Design,” “Taking Darwin Seriously,” and “Can a Darwinian be a Christian?” His latest production in this now-burgeoning genre of “science and religion studies” is “The Evolution-Creation Struggle” (Harvard University Press, 320 pages, $25.95).

Mr. Ruse’s thesis is that the reason for the “struggle” between evolution and creation has less to do with science and more to do with religion, especially the perceived attack on it by science. Religion has traditionally provided a complete worldview for adherents; science is more a tool for understanding the world that does not usually involve itself with many of the matters that religion encompasses. “I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith,” Mr. Ruse explains, “rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies – pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind.”

In other words, Mr. Ruse writes, if scientists restricted themselves to the natural world and didn’t cross over into religious domains, there would be no conflict. But, in fact, many renowned scientists do just that, from Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley in Darwin’s time, to Julian Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson in the mid-20th century, to Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins today. In their popular writings, Mr. Ruse argues, these scientists shift from “evolution” (descent with modification) to “evolutionism,” a “world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans” that has all the earmarks of a religion. As such, religionists feel threatened.

And well they might, I say, because what is a nontheist to do when faced with life’s deepest questions? If one does not believe in the supernatural origins of morality, for example, one is left with only natural origins. Among possible natural causes of the origins of morality – including upbringing, culture, and history – is evolution. I wrote an entire book on this subject, “The Science of Good and Evil,” which summarized a century of scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality and how to be good without God. I wrote this book not to antagonize theists, or encroach on their domain, or poach their wares. I wrote it because as a scientist the only way to answer such questions is from a natural perspective. The supernatural has no meaning in science. It is nothing more than a linguistic place filler that could just as easily read: “Beats me.”

Mr. Ruse might be right about the consequences of applying science to traditionally religious questions, but what would he have us do? Science is the best tool ever devised for answering questions about the world. We use it because it works. Just because religion has had a 5,000-year head start on answering those questions does not mean that science cannot succeed. It won’t be long now.

Shermer Mr. Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and the author of “How We Believe” and “The Science of Good and Evil.” His latest book is “Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown” (Time Books).