AFTERMATH
*Fay-Cooper Cole, a University of Chicago professor, had journeyed to Dayton to help Darrow. Returning after the trial, he was called into the president’s office and confronted with the fact that his testimony at the trial had brought outrage from many citizens who demanded that the university fire him. Cole was told that the trustees had carefully considered the matter, and now he was to be informed of their decision. With a twinkle in his eye, the university president handed him a check: his salary had been raised.
Another of Darrow’s “expert witnesses,” *H. H. Newman, afterward wrote a book. In it, he said this about the author of the Tennessee antievolution bill, which became the law under which Scopes was convicted:
“The member of the state Legislature responsible for the draughting of the Tennessee Anti-evolution Bill is said to have regretted his part in the passage of that measure when, for the first time, he learned that the Bible was a translation and was not originally written in English.” *H.H. Newman, The Gist of Evolution.
John W. Butler, the man referred to, was astonished when he learned of this. Writing to Newman he declared the assertion to be “absolutely false,” and said that ever since he first learned to read, he knew that the Bible was but a translation and not written in English. But Newman refused to do anything about the matter. The evolutionists consistently portrayed the case in a different light than what actually happened. Here is how it is presented in a 1984 version. We will italicize the parts that are not correctly presented:
“The Tennessee legislature had passed a law forbidding teachers in publicly supported schools of the state from teaching that humans had evolved from lower forms of life. To challenge the law’s constitutionality, scientists and educators persuaded a young high-school biology teacher named John Thomas Scopes to tell his class about Darwinism. Scopes was thereupon charged with violating the law and brought to trial in Dayton, Tennessee, where he taught . .
“The trial was for the most part disappointing, to the judge refused to allow the defense to place scientists on the stand to testify to the evidence behind the Darwinian theory, and restricted testimony to the question whether Scopes had or had not discussed evolution. But the issues nevertheless emerged in the courtroom when Bryan, over the protests of his fellow prosecutors, volunteered to submit to cross-examination on the Fundamentalist position. Darrow promptly showed that Bryan was ignorant of modern developments in science and had only a stereotyped Sunday-school acquaintance with religion and the Bible . . But the forces of darkness and ignorance are never permanently defeated.” Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s New Guide to Science (1984), pp. 779, 780 (italics ours).
(1) Scopes was not persuaded by anyone, much less by “scientists and educators,” to teach evolution that spring In order that a court case could be brought that summer against the State. It was not until a few weeks before the 1924-1925 school year was over that Rappleyea initially conceived the idea. Rappleyea first thought of it on May 4; later that day young Scopes agreed to say he had taught evolution earlier that spring to the biology class. The next day Scopes was served with the warrant; at the trial, his attorney said he taught evolution on April 24.
(2) Scopes was not a biology teacher.
(3) Scopes repeatedly declared in print afterward that he never taught Darwinism at the school.
(4) The judge did at first permit expert testimony, but afterward denied it to be presented to the jury since it was so nebulous, self-contradicting, and irrelevant. (See chapter appendix, “Tricks at the Trial” for more on this.)
(5) The judge did allow expert testimony by the defense, and that testimony was placed in the official court transcript and afterward published abroad by the evolutionists.
(6) Bryan did not volunteer, but was asked by Darrow to be cross-examined on a promise by barrow that, afterward, Bryan would cross examine him. Bryan fulfilled his part of the agreement, but Darrow reneged on his part.
(7) Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan was rude, purposely confusing, humiliating, and even dishonest. (8) Bryan’s defense was as able as might be expected from an elderly man having to submit to Darrow’s interrogation tactics.
“Actually this [Scopes trial] was one of the few trials in which Clarence Darrow could not control himself, and came out empty-handed. The verdict in part went squarely against Scopes, and the ban on evolutionist teaching continued on the statutes of the State of Tennessee for many years, being rescinded relatively recently.” G. Richard Culp, book review, in Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1977, p. 74.
LATER LEGAL DECISIONS
Motions for a new hearing were denied, and the Butler Act remained on the books until 1967, when it was quietly removed. That came at a time when similar statutes were quietly being removed from other State books also, under threat from the ACLU and scientific organizations to bring them a “monkey trial” if they did not comply. Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole, chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago had given one of the scientific depositions for the evolutionists at the trial, and 34 years later wrote this:
“Where one person had been interested in evolution before the trial, scores were reading and inquiring at its close. Within a year the prohibitive bills (against evolution] which had been pending in other states were dropped and killed. Tennessee had been made to appear so ridiculous in the eyes of the nation that other states did not care to follow its lead.” *Fay-Cooper Cole. “A Witness at the Scopes Trial, ” Scientific American, January 1959, p. 130.
The hawkers and ape out on the streets, the carnival atmosphere, the deceptive questioning by Clarence Darrow, the biased reports sent out by 200 newspaper reporters, 65 telegraph operators, and WGN Chicago radio broadcast, and the sarcastic reports of *Mencken, *Pegler, and *Krutchall had its effect. The ACLU coordinated objective had been achieved. The right “was made to appear so ridiculous” that the world feared to associate with it.
As has been common throughout history, a “scientific theory” that has no scientific facts to support it, must rely on flattery, threats, and bribery and ridicule to uphold it.
The 1967 Tennessee State repeal of the Butler Act occurred because a teacher had been expelled for teaching evolution in a public school, but later had been reinstated. The teacher filed a suit against the State, charging that the law “interfered with academic freedom.” Rather than go through another lawsuit, Tennessee repealed the law.
The year before, in Arkansas, a federal court ruled that their state’s anti-evolution law was unconstitutional, but the following year the Arkansas State Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower court and upheld the constitutionality of the law.
The next year (November 12, 1968), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in tax-supported schools is unconstitutional.
In 1987, the high court ruled that a State could not require the teaching of creationism in tax-supported schools.
But please note that, in these decisions, the Supreme Court has not ruled that creationism and the scientific evidences favoring it could not be discussed, in contrast with the evidences for evolution! Both can still be discussed in the classrooms of America. The discussion of neither of these opposing theories has been forbidden. Evidence in favor of Creation and the Flood can indeed be presented in state-supported schools. But in doing so, religion should not be woven into the presentation. The creationist evidence should not be presented as “religious information,” or in defense of religion in general or particular. Scientific fact and ancient historical records (such as the Bible) may be used in the presentation, but evolutionary teachings must be presented as well. A clear-cut contrast between evidence for the two views should be made. (See chapter 34,Evolution and Education, for more information on teaching Creationism in public schools.)
THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED
Scopes left the area that summer and studied geology at the University of Chicago, worked for an oil company in Venezuela and then a gas company in Louisiana, and died in 1970, not long after the passing of Rappleyea.
The 1925 trial was not only a major event covered by some 200 newsmen, whose stories totaled about 2 million words, but it also became a reference point for a series of similar legal battles in at least seven other states.
Bryan College was later built on the site selected for it by Bryan on a hill on the east side of Dayton. It today has a 100-acre campus, and 600 students. The Dayton courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1977, and in 1979, a $1 million courthouse restoration and basement trial museum was completed. In another museum on the other side of the continent, located at the Institute for Creation Research, is to be found an original 1925 newspaper article, which mentions two lines of evidence offered in defense of evolution: the missing links, pieces of a skull, the Piltdown Man, and a tooth, Nebraska Man. Placed by that particular exhibit is a small sign, “Evolution, a Matter of Faith.” A matter of faith? Yes, evolution can only be accepted by faith alone, whereas there are solid scientific facts under-girding creationism.
In 1928, it was discovered that a mistake had been made and the “hominid tooth” of prehistoric Nebraska Man turned out to be nothing more than a pig’s tooth! Three years after the Scopes Trial, one main “proof” of evolution had been destroyed.
In 1953, Joseph Weiner and Kenneth Oakley used a newly-developed fluorine test on the original Piltdown skull fragments, and discovered that the bones were a hoax! This became something of a national scandal focusing on the British Museum, although museum officials were probably only innocent dupes. Twenty-eight years after the Scopes Trial, the other main “proof” of evolution was destroyed.
Write over the halls of evolution: “By Faith Alone;” and, over the halls of creationism, write these words: “Solid Facts.”
“Two main lines of evidence for evolution [at the Scopes Trial] were the Piltdown man and Nebraska man. Nowhere in the trial did the scientific problems receive any sensible discussion. Darrow displayed ignorance both about the theory of evolution and the teachings of the Bible, and leveled a barrage of insults and vilification at fundamentalist Bryan. Bryan did not respond in kind. Darrow was clearly the media favorite, however.” Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution, p. 100.
“Some thought that reports of what occurred at the trial would damage the cause of evolution. However, on the contrary, the evolutionists have used it to state repeatedly that although Darrow ‘lost’ the trial, he ‘won’ the case and that since the time of the Scopes Trial, no intelligent person can any longer doubt the truth of evolution.
“However as time has passed, the ‘scientific’ evidences against evolution have increased both in number and in strength. There is more that can be said against an evolutionary belief now than there has been at any time in the past because more facts are known and more evidences against evolutionary theory are constantly coming to light.” Donald W. Fatten, “The Scopes Trial,” in Symposium on Creation III (i971), p. 117.
7 – DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS
MALONE’S POSITION
The other leading New York attorney who worked with Clarence Darrow in defending *Scopes at Dayton, was *Dudley Field Malone. The following remarkable statement was made by Malone during that trial. It comes from the trial transcript:
“Any teacher who teaches the boys and the girls of today an incredible theory, we need not worry about those children of this generation paying much attention to it. The children of this generation are pretty wise. People, as a matter of fact, I feel that the children of this generation are probably much wiser, than many of their elders. The least that this generation can do, your honor, is to give the next generation all the facts, all the available theories, all the information that learning, that study, that observation has produced, give it to the children in the hope of heaven that they will make a better world of this than we have been able to make it. We have just had a war with twenty million dead. Civilization is not so proud of the work of the adults. Civilization need not be so proud of what the grown ups have done. For God’s sake, let the children have their minds kept open, close no doors to their knowledge; shut no door from them.”*Dudley Field Malone, quoted in The World’s Most Famous Court Trial: A Complete Stenographic Report (1925). [This book is a transcript of the Scopes trial, and includes the testimony of all the “expert witnesses.’].
DARROW’S POSITION BEFORE THE TRIAL
The following equally remarkable statement was made one year earlier by Darrow in a murder trial:
“In defending two young men, Loeb and Leopold, for cruelty murdering a fourteen year old boy, by name Bobby Franks, the celebrated criminal lawyer of the day, Clarence Darrow, traced their crime back to what they had learned in the university. He argued, ‘is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously?’
“His appeal to the judge was, ‘Your honour, it is hardly fair to hang a nineteen year old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.’ ” *Clarence Darrow, quoted in W. Brigans (ed.), Classified Speeches, quoted in H. Epoch, Evolution or Creation, (1966) p. 146.
*Nietzsche’s philosophy was solidly based on Darwin’s theory of evolution. See chapter 33, Evolution and Society, for more on this.
DARROW’S POSITION AT THE TRIAL
At the trial, Clarence Darrow revealed himself to be a bigot. Evolution should be taught in the schools of America. The people should be forced to accept it. Not to do so, would be rank intolerance and lead to Dark Ages persecution. Darrow sought to use sensationalism and fear to convince the judge and jury. If evolution be banned, Darrow said, a year from now Tennessee State might begin burning books and newspapers:
“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers . . Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed, until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.” Clarence Darrow, a speech given at the Scopes Trial, quoted in *Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1888), pp. 91-82.
To that statement, add this one:
“Most people in our country would agree with the statement made by ACLU’s lawyer, Clarence Darrow, at the 1925 Scopes trial when he said: ‘It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins.’ Yet at the 1981 [Arkansas] trial the ACLU, in effect, was arguing that only evolution be taught.” Thomas G. Berries, book review, in Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1983, p. 228.
*Mencken, always ready to fulminate over something or other, gave his comment about the fact that Darrow’s speech was not accepted by the jury:
“The net effect of Clarence Darrow’s great speech yesterday seems to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.” *H.L Mencken, op. cit., p. 92.
BRYAN’S POSITION
At the time of the Dayton Trial, as well as in later years, it was frequently charged that Bryan was an “apostle of intolerance” and a “child of the inquisition.” This bias was also placed in the 1960 Hollywood film, Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes Trial.
Yet this was not his viewpoint. Bryan’s consistent position was that people should have the right to choose the views to be taught in their schools. On one occasion he said that, since Christians build their own schools when they want to teach their doctrines, evolutionists should do the same for promulgating theirs. He felt that the people should be free to decide, rather than to be forced to accept strange theories in the schools, under coercion by certain pressure groups. During the trial he said that parents, who provide financial support for the schools, should make the final decision on what is to be taught in those schools.
“The most famous confrontation relative to the question of teaching origins in the schools is the Scopes Trial of 1925. Essentially, Clarence Darrow for the defense argued that teachers, being knowledgeable about the subject area, should teach what they feel is correct. Parents are not the ‘experts’ and thus should defer to the teacher’s judgment as to what is to be taught. On the other hand the prosecution, headed by William Jennings Bryan, felt that the parents, who provide financial support for the schools, should make the final decision on what is taught. In essence, the prosecution felt that ‘if I hire a painter to paint my house, the painter should use the color I choose, because I am paying the costs and have to live in the house; the painter is my employee.’ Because parents are essentially hiring the teachers to educate their children for them. Bryan felt they should be allowed to determine how the teachers do the job.”- Merry Bergman, “the Attitude of University Students toward the Teaching of Creation and Evolution in the Schools,” in Origins, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1979.
Four years earlier, Bryan said this:
“We do not ask public school teachers to teach religion in the schools, and teachers, paid by taxation, should not be permitted to attack our Bible in the schools.” – William Jennings Bryan, Address to the Constitutional Convention of Nebraska, 1920.
At another time, he said this:
“Christians do not ask that the teachers in the public schools, colleges, and universities become exponents of orthodox Christianity . . but Christians have a right to protest against teaching that weakens faith in God, undermines belief in the Bible and reduces Christ to the stature of a man.” – William Jennings Bryan, quoted in Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915-1925 (1985), pp. 27&279.
From: http://evolutionfacts.com/Ev-V3/3evlch30.htm
If you passed over this video at the beginning of the article, I’ve added it again at the end as well for convenience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4oHxx0j6L4
