Marc's+6th+Week+Assignment

__The Scopes Trial__ (State vs. John Scopes ("The Monkey Trial") by Douglas Linder)

The 1920s did indeed represent a time of social chaos, as Linder opens "modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect." These modernists would come up with their own ideas for different aspects of science and society and took pleasure in debating the ideas of others. This seemed to be what was "in." Everyone was doing it. With revolutionary ideas like evolution up for discussion, some feathers were sure to be ruffled.

It is surprising that the Scopes Trial took place where it did. Tennessee, which can be considered part of the "Bible Belt" of the United States, is a surprising place to find a teacher avidly championing the idea of evolution, an idea that goes against the ideas of the Bible. This goes to show just how influential and far reaching some of the modernist ideas were. It is clear just how much the new generation loved to champion these modernist ideas because the aim of the defense was to take the trial to the Supreme Court, thus gaining publicity throughout the nation. They were challenging the age old stories of creation and they wanted the nation, perhaps the world, to know about it.

Unfortunately for the defense, the prosecutors also assembled an excellent team. William Jennings Bryan, a well known American and figurehead of the anti-evolution movement in America played a central role in the prosecution. Clarence Darrow and Bryan met head on in the following litigation and frequently came to a gridlock situation, so much so to the extent that they resorted to insults to each others' person and the groups they each represented. Towards the end of the trial, however, Bryan loses some ground when Darrow cross-examines him to obtain the opinion of a religious expert. Darrow was able to force Bryan to admit not all parts of the Bible were to be taken literally and that creation, which is said to have taken place over six days, could have been six //periods// of an unspecified amount of time (read: Darwin's unimaginable tracts of time).

Ultimately, the case was indeed passed along to the Supreme Court, which then dismissed the case. The case was not just about John Scopes teaching evolution in his high school biology class and whether he would pay a fine for it, not be allowed to teach anymore or go to jail. It was about modernism versus traditionalism, science versus religion. The debate between evolutionism and creationism did not end with the trial, it was nowhere near //resolved// as a result of the trial. All the trial did was publicize the fact that people across the nation were seriously questioning what they had been taught and what the generations before them had been taught. The debate still rages on today, nearly 90 years later. The Scopes Trial showed that some people believed in evolutionism and were willing to teach the idea, even if it is deemed illegal. Where their state told them no, their intellect and their beliefs told them yes. And, as Linder states in the opening paragraph, it only mattered if your ideas were sufficient for your own intellect. Perhaps some people were not pleased with God creating everything as they were. With Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and evolution, their intellects were appeased, and so they were followers and representatives of that idea which they believed.