We’re going to talk about one of these episodes in the 1920s infamously called the Scopes
Monkey Trial.
The context for this discussion is not only the 20s, but a bigger context – rural American
versus urban America; Victorian certainties versus modern improvisation; old-fashioned
WASP values versus an emerging scientific world.
Significance – The challenge here, to old-fashioned values is symptomatic of the 1920s, and this
of course, will continue throughout the rest of the century as biblical fundamentalism,
or biblical literalism, is increasingly challenged by science.
You’re going to see the prevailing here, of modern skepticism over old-fashioned certainty
in things.
Darwin, of course, Charles Darwin, British naturalist, published on the descent of species,
his theory of natural selection and evolution in 1859.
This is clearly one of the very distinct paradigm shifts in human history – previous to Darwin,
the notion of life on earth being derived from a Creator, from God.
Darwin fundamentally changed this idea by demonstrating that species are not static,
that they’re ever evolving, that supernatural power is not necessary, or at least is not
evident, in the emergence of life on earth and all of its great varieties.
This, of course, is a direct challenge to biblical literalism, and Protestant America,
more so than the Catholic Church, Protestant America is a more literalist population, that
is, they take the Bible at its superficial meaning as opposed to its deeper symbolic
meaning.
What is about Darwin’s ideas that threaten traditional America?
Those things I just mentioned, the notion that species can evolve from other species,
and that indeed species become extinct.
The biblical notion of God’s creatures not being perfect, and going extinct, runs counter
to traditional WASP culture.
Darwin demonstrated that species are mutable.
You can find variations of species in the fossil record.
God is omitted, of course, on the origin of species.
Protestant America viewed Darwin as increasing secularization of the United States – that
is, moving away from the church and the interpretation of history through the church’s eyes to
a more secular view of life on Earth – that is, a more scientific view.
The trial, in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925, is going to illustrate the difference between
a literal and a figurative reading of the Bible, and of course, Darwin’s argument,
by natural selection, contradicts the traditional creationist argument whereby creatures are
the result of a design, or an intelligent designer.
Now Darwin’s theory of evolution is also an epistemological challenge to traditional
Americans.
How do we know things?
All of you know the suffix –ology, the study of, episteme – from the Greek is knowledge
– so epistemology is the study of how we know things, an investigation into knowledge.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection forces people to think about how they know things.
Do we know things through faith?
Do we know things through science?
I think, indeed, we can know the world both ways, but we need to think critically about
how we think and how we know.
The Tennessee Legislature passes the Butler Act in 1925.
This law made it a crime to teach Darwinian evolution.
Let me see what my quote here says, it says – made it a crime to teach any theory that
denies the story of divine creation of man, as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead
that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
This law was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU looked purposefully for a teacher who would be willing to challenge this law
by teaching evolution in the classroom, and they found a young biology teacher in Dayton,
Tennessee whose names was John Scopes.
He was only in his 20s, and he agreed with the ACLU’s arguments, and decided to become
sort of a guinea pig for this challenge to the Butler Act.
The trial itself soon became known as the Monkey Trial.
Again, the scientifically illiterate have this notion of man deriving directly from
a monkey, and of course, this is nonsense.
But this image was parodied, and you could go to Dayton, Tennessee during the trial,
and you could buy monkeys, stuffed monkeys, and other paraphernalia.
Indeed, this hucksterism is prevalent during the monkey trial – listen to me – during
the Scopes Trial.
Businesses did very well – the hotels, the bars, the restaurants, the boarding houses.
Business in Dayton, Tennessee – it was like a giant circus had come to town.
The United States press was there.
Radio was there.
Famous attorneys were there.
Large crowds came to Dayton to witness this history in the making.
The two attorneys are quite famous.
Clarence Darrow would defend John Scopes.
Darrow was well known as a defender of – what did they used to say?
That he was the defender of the damned; he would defend socialists and labor unions and
these type of things.
So he’s there to defend Scopes.
The prosecution includes one of the most famous men in America, William Jennings Bryan.
Bryan, of course, had run 3 times for President; he had lost all 3 times.
But he was easily one of the most famous men in the country.
He was a literalist when it comes to the Bible, and he was there to augment the prosecution.
If you want to see a movie that depicts the Scopes Monkey Trial, I can recommend – Inherit
the Wind is the name of the film, and it stars Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow, and it takes
you through the trial.
It’s recommended; it’s also a bit of a comment on the McCarthyism, the ‘witch hunts’
of the 1950s, which we’ll get into a little later.
The results of the trial?
Scopes is found guilty.
He’s fined – I think $100 – of course the ACLU pays the fine.
A week later, oddly enough, William Jennings Bryan dies in his sleep.
The outcome of the trial, of course, is the Butler Act is upheld.
Now this opens up decades of litigation regarding what is to be taught in the science classroom.
Indeed, these court cases continue.
There was a court case 10 or 15 years ago in Pennsylvania, whereby a battle over science
books, a science book that had the perspective of intelligent design, as opposed to the more
traditional biology books that follow Darwinian natural selection.
So the battle over this issue has not ended.
It continues.
Again, you can mark this up to the sort of last vestiges of traditional American WASP
values – fighting and fighting to hold on to some control over their school districts,
and over what is taught to their children.
These things that are being taught to their children, of course, contradict their faith,
and this is a source of resentment and ongoing litigation.
Again, if natural selection could be taught in the public schools, or even in the colleges,
in such a way that it was understandable to people, I think a lot of this ignorance would
go away.
You can Google Darwinian evidence for natural selection, and take a look at some of the
evidence yourself.
If you look at charts of animal forelimbs, for existence, you can see a wide variety
of creatures from man to bats to whales to – you name it – and you can count the
bones in the forelimbs of these creatures, and you can look at form and function.
Now, ostensibly, there are obviously going to be differences between a man’s arm and
a whale’s fin, but if you look at form and function, and count the number of bones, you
will see that there’s a remarkable similarity.
Darwin would say you have a couple of choices here, you can point to this design – if
you want to call it that – and say that God was so enamored with this particular design
that he used it repeatedly with unlimited number of species, OR you can look at the
similarity in design and form and function, and you can say, as Darwin did, that all of
these creatures were derived from a common ancestor.
Again, this is a scientific topic of great complexity, and it takes some commitment on
the part of the student to understand it, and the Scopes Monkey Trial brought this ongoing
argument to the nation, and what makes it unique as well is that radio broadcast this
trial, so the entire country could listen to this trial as it happened, and newspapermen
took down verbatim records of the trial, the testimony, and people could read these transcripts
in their newspapers.
So this was truly a nationwide event taking place here in little Dayton, Tennessee, which
most people, of course, had never heard of.
So I’m going to end this lecture by reiterating the importance of traditional American values,
WASP values, under attack from here, in this case, from modernity, from science and an
increasingly pluralistic and secular society.
Thanks.