This Thursday, celebrations are under way worldwide to mark Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. From Argentina to Australia, people are gathering for film screenings, quiz contests, and museum exhibits on "Darwin Day" – along with at least one "survival of the fittest" cake-eating contest.

In the US, though, Darwin remains a controversial figure. Two centuries after the famed naturalist's birth, more than 40 percent of Americans believe human beings were created by God in their present form, according to recent polls from Gallup and the Pew Research Center – a view impossible to reconcile with evolution propelled by natural selection.

Such creationist beliefs lack scientific merit, educators say, and in classrooms evolution reigns supreme. Opponents have tried an array of challenges over the decades, and the latest tactic recently scored its first major victory. It's a tack that is changing the way the cultural battle over evolution is fought.

In June of last year, Louisiana became the first state to pass what has become known as an "academic freedom" law. In the past, fights over evolution took place at the local school board level, but academic freedom proponents specifically target state legislatures.

Such laws back away from outright calls for alternative theories to evolution, electing instead to legislate support for teachers who discuss the "scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of issues such as evolution in the name of protecting the freedom of speech of instructors and students alike.

In 2009, bills have been introduced in Oklahoma, Alabama, Iowa, and New Mexico. Their likelihood of success is uncertain: In the wake of the Louisiana result last year, similar bills were introduced in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and South Carolina, all of which failed.

But it's a strategy shift, opponents say, which is disingenuous at best, and dangerous at worst.

"Quite honestly, there aren't any strengths and weaknesses to evolution in the way they say. It's the hook they use to introduce nonscientific explanations," says Robert Gropp, director of public policy for the American Institute of Biological Sciences in Washington. "You have to give [evolution opponents] credit: They've gotten crafty about arguments they make. 'Academic freedom' sounds very all-American, but the problem is it sets aside the way science is done, the way we teach science."

Supporters of such legislation, like Oklahoma state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R), who introduced The Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act 10 days ago, wonder how people who claim evolution is iron-clad could object to open debate.

"It befuddles me," Senator Brogdon says. "It's amazing that people who believe in human secularism don't want to have an open discussion.... My gosh, what kind of system do we have if we only teach one set of information, one piece of the puzzle?"

Model legislation is currently being promoted by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization that had supported the teaching of "intelligent design," which claims that life is too complex to have simply evolved without the hand of an intelligent designer. The Institute is offering an alternative to Darwin Day that it is calling "Academic Freedom Day." "We're doing sort of a counter to Darwin Day, which has become a sort of quasi-religious celebration," says John West, a senior fellow at the Institute.

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