Nearly one hundred years ago, there was a landmark trial between religious fundamentalism and the current educational system, and Jonathan's going to tell us.
A little bit more about it.
You want to take it away, Jonathan sure.
This article explains in some detail the events of the Scopes trial in Tennessee ninety nine years ago. This trial started a still raging debate about how creationism and intelligent design versus science is to be taught in schools. Those Scopes lost the case. Eventually science won, but maybe not. New movements in the US and abroad have been working to invade school boards, and some states are battling in the courts to defend draconian laws that limit what can
be taught in schools and state universities. Once again, religious zealots and fanatics are invading the schools. Let's explore what Scopes has to say about this and how the case was started as a gift to one of the religious a pastor religious representative in their state assembly, as a gift to his ineffectiveness. The story is from the Los Angeles Times by Michael helps Zick, and I apologize for that. On July twenty sixth, twenty twenty four. So I would
like to pass this to the Phoebe Phoebe. I'm via Phoebe the Phoebe.
Yes, can I get a bill passed? Please?
Sure?
Can I get some legislation? Please?
Just email Congress and I'm sure they'll get right on it.
One of them. That's a nice gift, that is, I don't find that under the Christmas tree or is a birthday present. Very often you here have some legislation, have some legislation, legislation, it's nice for you, But legislation is not a gift. Legislation is not something to be fart asked around with. And if you're that bad at getting legislation passed, maybe stop being a legislator. Think that's the that's the nament a problem here. It's like you're a
governor of a state. You're bad at governing. Stop being a governor. That kind of ludicrousness here. And bad legislation means bad laws means injustice and ridicule of the legal system. You get bad laws on the books and you get ridicule from the public, and you have no faith in the institution. Supreme Court doing that nicely for itself. It's creating bad laws out of whole cloth. Whole cloth bad laws that are ridiculing the institution from top to bottom,
and symbols matter a lot. Symbols matter a lot. There is nothing symbolic or empty when it comes to legislating. Tell people who were fighting the gay rights movement in the fifties, sixties and seventies about symbols. Tell people in Britain who were repealing the last of the anti gay laws on the books in two thousand and twenty one with the Shipping Repeal Act, because it was still sitting
on the books. And as we have seen in states like Arizona with abortion laws that are purely symbolic from the eighteen hundreds, they're not symbolic when someone decides that that's the law today that they're going to enforce. And this is the dangerous thing. The law is only there as something of meaning when somebody chooses to enforce it. And the judge in this case chose to enforce the law. Chose to enforce the law wrong, may I add, But
he chose to enforce the law. Judge exceeded is sentencing powers here and over sentenced and on a technicality it was struck down. I privately think the judge did that deliberately to prevent a genuine appeal going forward, because if you have a genuine appeal going forward, then it can be taken up by court on substantive grounds, whereas if a judge is just an idiot, it can't go any further.
But this is an issue as old as time. Don't need any qualifications other than you're liked by the electorate to become an elected official, and that is an electorate problem. The oldest democracy has been in existence because it has allowed people who have no rhyme or reason. From the seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds twentieth century, I reached and legislative within.
The last couple of years. I read a book actually on the history of the fight to keep creationism and later intelligent design out of the schools. And this really is a battle that has never ever ever stopped. Right after the Scopes trial, both Alabama and Missouri had long
legal battles fought over it. It is an actual pretty interesting history where the courts have since the Scopes trial have continuously cited against creationism and IDs in recent decades, and as I recall, and I could be wrong about this, But I think Missouri fought a long legal battle and eventually lost in the courts, and Alabama eventually just quietly dropped the law from the state book about trying to
test it in the courts. So I mean, this is something that has happened in more places throughout the United States. And as I said, it's a big, long, ongoing battle. We all know about the intelligent design case that happened in Massachusetts and in nineteen nineties. I think so. But John, I know you found a telling quote in this article. Can you tell us about that?
Yeah, it actually comes from Ray Gingrew's book about the case Six Days or Forever, And it's said the legislature passed the measure idly as a meaningless gift to its drafter, John W. Butler, a lay preacher who hadn't passed any other bill. The bill did not amount to a row of pins. Let him have it, a legislator is alleged to have said. And so this was passed as poor guy isn't a very good legislator. Let's at least give him one little throw the dog a bone, you know.
But even if you throw a bone to a hungary has unseen consequences. So in this case, in this case elevating ridiculous law into a cultural war, no one expected the governor to sign this, but he did so it was made law. So it's like teaching, and the law reads, and I'll quote that, to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man had descended from a lower order of animal. In a word, evolution
was made a misdemeanor with a fine. So if you if you do that, you're going to get arrested and fine. You know. That's that's where the law he broke was.
That's where the judge fell down because he exceeded his fine power to close the fine that he had. And the problem here is the media got hold of it. Modern media got hold of it, and modern media blew it all out of proportions. Modern media made it far more ridiculous than it actually was.
I mean, part of there was William Jennings Bryant, though, wasn't it. I mean he was making a big deal out of it and bringing the media in and creating that.
I mean, modern film just rubbish, which had no bearing on actual reality in court, sensationalizing things that. I mean, take the mini series People versus O. J. Simpson. Yet some of it was accurate, but large trunks of it were inaccurate. And for media consumption, I mean the films made about the trial. Some parts of it are accurate, large parts of it are imagined and complete nonsense. But
that's what the media does. And that's the problem when you have media consumption portrayed as truth, and in this case, the media consumption is being portrayed as the truth of the trial. The town was fanatics, this man was a lunatic, this man was a pariah. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Absolute CODs, absolutely from start to finish. And I mean, it's just frustrating that there was a reliance on tertiary sources for history moving forwards in the society that we live in, especially when it comes to movies made specifically to make money and not to be educationally accurate.
Well, in the nineteen sixties film version, it says in the article it starred Frederick Marsh, Spencer Tracy, and gene Kelly. Spencer, Tracy and gene Kelly were very famous actors at the time, so it was like, yeah, and they're going to portray him. The characters meant to play Brian Clarence, Darryl and H. L. Menkin, who was the Baltimore newspaper men who brilliantly the average
for it, you know. So it's like and he was an aggressive journalist, which is fine, but when you kind of overshoot things a little bit, it's kind of a mess.
I think there was a general from both sides there was generally putting too much into the trial that was really there. I mean really, it was just a small local thing that really didn't It didn't affect the whole state at the time. It didn't affect the whole country at the time that when the laws when the trial was over, but the big media sensation that happened over it did and it really brought this fight over creationism
into the public eye. So I Scopes was actually recruited by a group of men that hung out at the local pharmacy, including the pharmacist and a local lawyer, and they thought the law was wrong. It was and they wanted to take it to court, so they recruited Scopes that come and help them do it. Now, John I know you did. You studied the town about a little bit and the people that were there. Can you tell us a little bit about the place where the trial took place at. Was it really religious there?
No, it was just a typical smallish town that had you know, uh, this was just a violation of a misdemeanor law, you know, kind of like you know, Okay, it wasn't really very exciting except for to the locals. The locals really didn't care, you know, they were they were basically bored with it. So they then found that it was going to be really good, really good for them, uh financially because the circus that was being created by the press brought people to town and brought press to
town and increased their their revenues for that year. So that was about their only real interest in it. And the pro science. You know, it was a bad test case because it was dying of apathy in the town, but you know, it was like true religious Uh. They've continually fought this since then, but they were kept fighting it before then too. Uh. The there were other incidences that didn't make it to court about not in this
particular town. But you know, they say there's a good one hundred and fifty years of the science versus creation war since basically since Darwin. You know, so it's it is. But the townsfolks themselves were you know, typical Americans. Hey, we can make money at this, you know, so let's do that. So but Scopes himself was one of the adherents of the science side of things, and he said that Dayton trial marked the beginning of the decline of fundamentalism. Oh,
I wish that were true. He said that in a nineteen sixty five interview, I feel that restrictive legislation on academic freedom is forever a thing of the past. That was not a very good prophet prophecy. It's not very prophetic at all. So that was, you know, that was one of the things that I wanted to mention. Other
paragraphing articles said that for the evangelical right. Gould noted, creationism is a mere stocking horse in a political program that would ban abortion, erase political and social gains of women, and reinstitute all the jingoism and distrust of learning. That prepares a nation for demagoguery. So that's kind of, yeah, what's happening. And now that had predictive power if you're
looking at today. The whole thing was just a test of bad ideas and to see if they could build on it and convince the public to acquiesce to authoritarian rule. Again had predictive power.
So I mentioned I mentioned Missouri and Alabama as some of the battleground states, but Phoebe, you had mentioned Kansas too. Can you fill us in on that.
In nineteen ninety nine, the Kansas school Board decided that they were going to remove the teaching of evolution from the state curriculum. The places with anything, they're just going to just remove it, goodbye, get rid of that. We don't achieve that science in the classroom now. We don't
bother that. It was the dying days of the twentieth century, and it was trying to make it out like it was the first days of the twentieth century, in this fit of anti millennium millennium bug fearing tomorrow's world isn't going to come for me kind of nonsense, where they basically said, you know, we want our children to be ignorant, we want our children to retain ignorance, and we don't particularly like you know, this modern rubbish that's here, there,
and everywhere. So we're just going to get rid of it. Yeah, and this was picked up on by a number of science journals at the time. Was absolutely madness because it's scientifically illiterate, and it creates scientific i literacy amongst people in school because it has you eliminate. A fundamental bridge to understanding a number of things. Is if you can just go it's magic, and then it's there, what are you going to do? It's magic? It's magic. There you
go next. And I mean they say that in life there is no magic, but the only thing that is magic is legislation and contracts, because you can just create something and then that's it. It's all changed. That's the
only magic there is. And we see it here when they try to legislate actual woo woo magic La dadadi da out of their own heads where they can just go, well, okay, we're going to done from A to Z and we're going to miss out the twenty four letters in the middle because you know, it's just too complicated and I can't be doing whether my critical thinking skills and my cognitive distidance is too much it's and I'm going to
just explode and fall over. I mean, we live in a world of pluralism, we don't live in a world of monoism or you know, restricted ideas and the attempt by a narrow fundamental sect that is Christianity in this context to try and force on every other person, not just their own sect, so Buddhists, Atheists, Jews, Hindus, Agnostics, etc. To adhere that intelligent design came along and created things is prima facial, unconstitutional, guff and crow barring religion through
the Overton window like you're trying to race the America's cup through it. It is a nonsense.
I think we're seeing a big push too. And you were talking about, you know, at the turn of the century, that anti intellectualism, anti science wave that was sweeping across the country, and I still think we're still dealing with that today. We're dealing with twenty years of people denying science. We're dealing with people still denying it today, getting even worse at it at some points. Do you think that we're ever going to get out of this battle?
Yes, when that generation dies, well now it dies, but Scots generation Scott's generation dad, and we're still in their battle it's not a generational questions.
It is a generational question because we're seeing more and more people are no longer only getting their education from school. Peer education, the Internet, access to wider resources than just what is given to you by your parents and by your school is the fundamental thing of Generation Z, generation Alpha, and soon to be Generation Beta when it does actually turn up in full force, because information will destroy and
education will eliminate. But yes, conspiracy theories and all that exist on social media and all that, but people like us, and there are a lot of people like us, and as we're seen in Britain when it came to the media nonsense surrounding rioting in the streets and far right
lunatics taking over. When you actually get onto the ground and see the reality in my former home city of brightn and Hove, where four thousand anti fascist protest has turned up to fifty fascist protesters in the streets, you realize that reality is not what's on social media. People do educate themselves and the education system that was the only thing that people used to get any information from is no longer that exclusive source.
I just look at you know, you say, people go to the internet and look and I see the other things out there too, like can Ham and cantoven right, And there are people still while looking at this, looking at AIG. So that's why I say, I don't know that it's a generational thing, because this information is still being perpetuated. I talk to younger people online all the time that are pushing these this creationism, to pushing intelligent desime, and I don't know that we're getting.
Away doing it online. When did you actually go and speak to people in reality, the offline, who have actually gone to a real world that is not the Internet.
I live, I am surrounded by these people where I live. I talk to the I talk to these people every day. They come into These anti science people come into my store all the time. This I'm not just I'm not just seeing I'm not just seeing these people on the internet. I'm seeing a lot of young people on the Internet. That's kind of what scares me. But I have people walking into my store every day with these type of attitudes.
And I think that that is a that is actually a shrinking percentage of the population. It's just a more voluble and noticeable because people see the internet as they think that everybody deserves to hear their opinion on something. It doesn't necessarily mean that their opinion is more representative. It just means that they're more licensed to give a total stranger their opinion because that's what social media has done.
It doesn't necessarily mean that people have a greater level of actually believing this is just that more people who are energized by this. As my mother says, the people who shout loudest should be ignored first.
Well, the subtext too of this is that there is a large, organized right wing effort to turn the US into a theocratic dictatorship creationism, anti LGBT, flat earth, anti trans, anti woke rhetoric as a way of normalizing anti democratic and anti republican values. And I say that because we're not a democracy, we are a republic, but values on
which this country was founded. And of course all the politicians side with the perceived winning team right, And that's why the extremist right has had all the normal conservative signed on to gain power as they had, and because they do have an ever shrinking adherence to their particular beliefs. So they are in the throws, the death throws of
their philosophy and their approach to life. I agree with you their Phoebe, and I think that is spurring a lot of the issues that we're having today are made issues because there's a group of very privileged people who are starting to fear losing their privilege.
Well, this is great conversation and I really like to hear what some of our viewers think about it, So leave a comment or drop us an email at nonprofits at atheist typeancommunity dot org.