Central to my idea of TED talks is the notion of imparting a very singular point or message to legitimize a 4-5 minute time limit. Any more might allow someone to get more in-depth, but with such a limited time, it would be best to provide one well-supported point rather than three or four less substantiated ones. In my case, I’d like to narrow my history of the evolution controversy down to the American side of it, and to impart one particular trend of change: anti-evolutionary perspectives have gradually adopted the cloak of science for themselves.

What I think I’ll do is start with Scopes and talk briefly about the state of creationism at that time, its characteristics and its decisions, and then move on to a brief description of a contemporary court case regarding it. Then that gives me the remainder of the time to speak about the differences in tactics between the two time periods. The trend appears to be that early creationists would gladly cite the Bible as their justification, and proclaim the truth of Biblical principles, whereas modern day notions of creationism attempt to make their argument scientific in nature. One example would be taking the label “intelligent design” rather than creationism, even though whatever limited substance there is to the position never changed. As I work on my talk I’ll have to find broader and more concrete examples of the shift, and be able to show each side clearly.