[meteorite-list] Kansas Legal Debate: Creation,Evolution andIntelligent Design

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri May 13 21:19:21 2005
Message-ID: <428551F1.7BACB2C_at_bhil.com>

Hi,


    Now that things have cooled down a little...

    Early on in this long thread, several people seemed to believe that Kansas
was where the famous 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" had taken place. Not so. That
honor goes to Dayton, Tennessee ("The Buckle on the Bible Belt," as it's called
in the movie).

    The movie about the trial that many referred to is from 1960, "Inherit The
Wind," directed by Stanley Kramer (although based on an earlier play written in
1950). The movie definitely worth watching, an intelligent movie about an
intellectual issue. That hardly ever happens.

    However, neither the drama of the movie nor the drama that history imparts,
reflects the reality of the trial and how it came about. The "Trial of the
Century" was actually a contrived affair dreamed up by a group of local
merchants who felt that the town of Dayton would benefit from a little
publicity.

    Scopes, the defendant, was not a biology teacher, only filling in for the
biology teacher who was sick. He did not teach "evolution" in class, but by
assigning readings from the textbook (Hunter's Civic Biology, 1914 edition), he
had unknowingly violated Tennessee's newly passed so-called "Anti-Evolution" law
which went into effect on its passage on March 13, 1925, thus invalidating the
State-approved textbook for the rest of the school year. Scopes was not defying
the law; he was completely unaware that he had broken it.

    While the law (H.B. 185 of 1925) is always referred to as the anti-evolution
law, it actually read as follows: "that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in
any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which
are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to
teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught
in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of
animals."

    Not unlike today, the ACLU in New York was looking for a test case to void
the Tennessee law and even advertised to find one. The local merchants in
Dayton wanted to be that test case. They talked to Scopes first and asked if he
wanted to participate. He did. Even the Superintendent of Schools agreed to
the notion. It should be pointed out that virtually everybody in Dayton who
supported the idea of legal charges and a trial was opposed to the law.

    However, no one originally associated with the trial had any notion how much
publicity would result! The trial would snowball into a circus with the change
from the original lawyers to Clarence Darrow for the defense and William
Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, for the prosecution. and then
into a national media frenzy. In this case, the one of the most important media
was the brand-new technology of the radio. The "Monkey Trial" became (one of)
the "Trials of the Century" when all the instigators wanted in the way of
publicity was a few newspaper articles about the town of Dayton!

    The hope in 1925 was that appeals would carry the case high enough to get a
federal ruling that laws banning the teaching of evolution were
unconstitutional, but the Scopes guilty verdict was overturned on a technicality
(the jury should have levied the $100 fine instead of the judge), and the
appeals court said that the case was not worth trying again and it was
dismissed. Not until 1968 did the U. S. Supreme Court rule that laws banning
the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional, which is why the Kansas board
has to settle for adding other explanations to the curriculum.


Sterling K. Webb
Received on Fri 13 May 2005 09:18:41 PM PDT