Breaking the WedgeJustice Felix Frankfurter stated in his opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education: “We have staked the very existence of our country on the faith that complete separation of state and religion is best for state and best for religion. Like nowhere else in church-state relations, good fences do not make good neighbors. » (Moore 1) Over the past century in America, ideological warfare has been waged in our legislatures, our courts, and our schools. Some elements of the fundamentalist Christian movement have repeatedly attempted to prevent the teaching of Darwinian evolution in public schools because they see it as a threat to their religious beliefs. Darwin's theory posits that species evolve over time, changing in ancestor-descendant relationships from one species to another. This is often seen as being in direct conflict with the biblical account of the creation of the world as told in Genesis, which states that the world is only a few millennia old and that God created man and all species of animals in a single moment. era. The latest battle in this conflict is over intelligent design (ID) theory. Robert Weitzel states that “IDers argue that life is too complex to have developed solely by evolutionary mechanisms. They believe that this complexity could only have been conceived by an intelligent designer. Strategically, they refrain from identifying the nature of the designer. This tactic is designed to give their notion of creation a patina of scientific credibility and protection against First Amendment challenges” (1). Proponents of intelligent design have made efforts on many fronts to try to introduce it into school curricula across the country and are enjoying some success and broad popular support. Although the ID movement enjoys broad public support, particularly in traditionally conservative areas, it is imperative that the teaching of intelligent design be excluded from public school curricula due to the separation that must be maintained between religion and state. our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or restricting freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (The Bill of Rights: A Transcript).