Did Man evolve from apes or a pile of dust?                                      

Much of the historical info on this subject I had gleaned from the internet. This topic is a very interesting subject because it deals with a most interesting trial that had expressed two very different views on the origins of Man.                                    

Evolutionists claim that Man evolved from apes and Geneses in the Bible states that God made Man from dust.          

The famous Scopes monkey trial pitted two of the American’s foremost celebrity lawyers against one another, but only one of them was memorialized outside the Tennessee courthouse where the landmark case unfolded  that is until now.

The Rhea County Courthouse in the town of Dayton, the public placed a 10-foot statue of the rumpled Bible skeptic and lawyer, Clarence Darrow, who argued for evolution of Man in the 1925 trial. It stands at a respectful distance on the opposite side of the courthouse from an equally huge statue of William Jennings Bryan, the eloquent Christian defender of the biblical account of creation, which was installed previously in 2005.

The trial that unfolded there ninety-two years ago (1925-2017) garnered national headlines in what historians say started as publicity stunt for Dayton, that small town in the State of Tennessee. Formally known as Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, the case generated front-page headlines nationwide and was immortalized in songs, books, plays and movies.

Dayton hosts its annual Scopes Trial festival for 10 days featuring a theatrical production of the famous trial.

Historians say the trial came about after local leaders convinced Scopes, (a 24-year-old high school teacher) to answer the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) call for someone who could help challenge Tennessee’s law that banned the teaching of evolution. Scopes ignored that law and  taught evolution as part of his school’s curriculum in the public high school in Dayton, Tennessee.  He was later tried and found guilty but he didn’t spend any time in jail. He did however get a fine. (More on that later)

Scopes agreed to be the focus of a test case attacking the new law, and was arrested for teaching evolution with the ACLU paying the expenses of his defense. His lawyer was the legendary Clarence Darrow, who, besides being a renowned defense attorney for labor and radical figures, was an avowed agnostic in religious matters. 

But Darrow’s fame is quite something else. Rifts over his evolution and creationism continue almost a century however, later, the Darrow statue was requested by atheist groups and the city agreed to have it placed on the opposite side of its courthouse. 

William Bryan was a three-time Democratic candidate who lost all three elections for the presidency of the United States.  Bryan was in the courtroom less as a defence attorney and instead as a prosecutor and Clarence Darrow was there as Scope’s defense attorney.

In the county of Dayton, the home of a Christian college that’s named after Bryan, it’s not hard to envision the community accepting a statue venerating the august champion of their faith being so close to the city’s courthouse.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) financed a test case in which John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science teacher, agreed to be tried for violating the Act. Scopes, who had substituted for the regular biology teacher, was charged on May 5, 1925, with teaching evolution from a chapter in George William Hunter's textbook, Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (1914), which described the theory of evolution, race, and eugenics. (a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population)

The Scopes trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held.

Pockets of opposition in the town suggested many Christians still see the science of evolution as clashing with their faith. Dayton resident and Rev. June Griffin had led much of the backlash against the Darrow statue being placed in front of the courthouse, citing her religious convictions. She said, “This is a hideous monstrosity and God is not pleased.” Now this woman is claiming that God actually speaks to her. Is it true that people who claim they hear voices in their head are classed as suffering from some form of a psychological defect?

Twenty supporters and twenty protesters clashed peacefully at the courthouse over the statue.  

Nevertheless, the Darrow statue hasn’t drawn teeming crowds in Dayton like the ones that forced some of the 1925 trial proceedings to be moved outdoors because of the oppressive heat inside the courtroom.

Regardless of how people’s beliefs differ, the statue helps represent history, said Rhea County historian, Patricia Guffey. Most people seem OK with it.” She added, “I just think that something that is history should stay, or should be put up, no matter what. I don’t think we should try to change history.”

Philadelphia-based sculptor Zenos Frudakis crafted the new statue, funded largely by $150,000 from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The group said the project would remedy the imbalance of Bryan standing by itself.

Frudakis was an admirer of Darrow and said that the sculpture offers an honest look at the lawyer. He said, “He looks like he slept in his suit, which he often did. Sometimes his shirts were torn. He smoked too much. He drank too much. He was a womanizer. I got as much of that as I could in the sculpture.”

The state's attorney for this particular trial was William Jennings Bryan, a Christian, pacifist. He agreed to take the case because he believed that evolution theory led to dangerous social movements. And he also believed that the entire Bible should be interpreted literally. Give me a break.

The story of the Scopes trial is retold in both the Paramount and Pathe News film Greatest Headlines of the Century, produced in 1960.

In 1925, John Scopes’ trial was the first highly publicized trial concerning the teaching of evolution. His trial also represented a dramatic clash between traditional and modern values in America of the 1920s

It made for great oratory between eminent rivals and it put the debate over teaching evolution on front pages across the country. But one thing the Scopes monkey trial of 1925 did not do was settle the contentious issue of evolution in the schools, which continues to incite strong passions to this day. 

Narrowly, the Scopes trial was about challenging a newly passed Tennessee state law against teaching evolution or any other theory denying the biblical account of the creation of Man. Broadly, the case reflected a collision of traditional views and values with more modern ones. It was a time of evangelism by religious leaders  including Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday against anti-religious forces, including jazz, sexual permissiveness, and racy Hollywood movies, which they thought were undermining the authority of the Bible and Christian morals in society. 

The weather was stiflingly hot and the rhetoric equally heated in that trial of the century that was attended by hundreds of reporters and others who crowded the Rhea County Courthouse in July 1925.

The arguments

What was at issue was the validity of the law under which Scopes was being charged and the authority of the Bible versus the soundness of Darwin's Theory which had also become the focus of the arguments. 

“Millions of guesses strung together,” is how Bryan characterized evolutionary theory, by adding that the biblical theory made Man indistinguishable among the mammals.

I agree that Man is indistinguishable among mammals but not to the extent that Man was created from a pile of dust as per Geneses. Mammals and Man alike are generally created via the sexual act.

Darrow, in his attacks poked holes in the Genesis story according to modern thinking, calling them "…fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on Earth believes.” I agree. For example I will quote from Geneses. “Adam withdrew from Eve for 130 years after their expulsion from Eden, and in this time both he and Eve had sex with demons until at length, they reunited and Eve gave birth to Seth.”

The jury found Scopes guilty of violating the law and fined him $100. (in 2017 American money, that would amount to $$1,410.39) The fine was paid by the ACLU.  Bryan and the anti-evolutionists claimed victory, and the Tennessee law would stand for another 42 years before it was finally removed from the statutes.

Clarence Darrow and the ACLU had succeeded in being able to publicize scientific evidence for the belief in the theory of evolution and the press reported that although Bryan had won the case, he had lost the argument. However, the verdict did have a chilling effect on teaching evolution in American classrooms, however, and not until the 1960s did it reappear in schoolbooks.               

Despite Scopes being found guilty, the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. 

The trial publicized the Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with their religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether "modern science" should be taught in schools.

State Representative John W. Butler, a Tennessee farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, lobbied state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws. He succeeded when the Butler Act was passed in Tennessee, on March 25, 1925. Butler later stated, "I didn't know anything about evolution. I'd read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.

Not all of the Bible is nonsense. There are valid passages in the Bible that make a great deal of sense. There are also passages in the Bible that makes no sense at all. We have to remember that the Bible was re-written by a large number of men in the Sixteenth Century who during those times, were very superstitious.

Tennessee governor Austin Peay signed the law to gain support among rural legislators, but believed the law would neither be enforced nor interfere with education in Tennessee schools. That was a silly presumption on his part.  

William Bryan thanked Peay enthusiastically for the bill. He said, “The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis.”

The two sides of this contentious issue brought in the biggest legal names in the nation, William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense The trial was considered so important, the trial was followed on radio transmissions throughout the United States.

The (ACLU) offered to defend anyone accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. On April 5, 1925, George Rappleyea, local manager for the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company, arranged a meeting with county superintendent of schools, Walter White and local attorney Sue K. Hicks at Robinson's Drug Store, convincing them that the controversy of such a trial would give Dayton much needed publicity.

According to Robinson, Rappleyea said, “As it is, the law is not enforced. If you win, it will be enforced. If I win, the law will be repealed. We're game, aren't we?" The men then summoned 24-year-old John T. Scopes, a Dayton high school science and math teacher. The group asked Scopes to admit to teaching the theory of evolution.    Scopes was unsure whether or not he had ever actually taught evolution even minutely but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant who would bring to America the theory of evolution.

Rappleyea pointed out that, while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution, the state required teachers to use a textbook that explicitly described and endorsed the theory of evolution, and those teachers were, therefore, effectively required to break the law.^[12] Scopes mentioned that while he couldn't remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had, however, gone through the evolution chart and chapter with the class. Scopes added to the group: "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."

Scopes urged students to testify against him and coached them in their answers. He was indicted on May 25, after three students testified against him at the grand jury; one student afterwards told reporters, “I believe in part of evolution, but I don't believe in the monkey business.”

Judge John T. Raulston accelerated the convening of the grand jury and instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom.” 

Scopes was charged with having taught from the chapter on evolution to an April 24, 1925, high-school class in violation of the Butler Act and nominally arrested, though he was never actually detained. Paul Patterson, owner of The Baltimore Sun, put up $500 in bail for Scopes.

The original prosecutors were Herbert E. and Sue K. Hicks, two brothers who were local attorneys and friends of Scopes, but the prosecution was ultimately led by Tom Stewart, a graduate of Cumberland School of Law, who later became a U.S. Senator. Stewart was aided by Dayton attorney Gordon McKenzie, who supported the anti-evolution bill on religious grounds, and described evolution as “detrimental to our morality and an assault on "the very citadel of our Christian religion.” unquote

Hoping to attract major press coverage, George Rappleyea went so far as to write to the British novelist H. G. Wells asking him to join the defense team. Wells replied that he had no legal training in Britain, let alone in America, and declined the offer. John R. Neal, a law school professor from Knoxville, announced that he would act as Scopes' attorney whether Scopes liked it or not, and he became the nominal head of the defense team.

The prosecution team was led by Tom Stewart, district attorney for the 18th Circuit (and future United States Senator), and included, in addition to Herbert and Sue Hicks, Ben B. McKenzie and William Jennings Bryan.

The trial was covered by famous journalists from the South and around the world, including H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, which was also paying part of the defense's expenses. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the "Monkey Trial" of "the infidel Scopes". It was also the first United States trial to be broadcast on national radio

The ACLU had originally intended to oppose the Butler Act on the grounds that it violated the teacher's individual rights and academic freedom, and was therefore unconstitutional.

Principally because of Clarence Darrow arguments, this strategy changed as the trial progressed. The earliest argument proposed by the defense once the trial had begun was that there was actually no conflict between evolution and the creation account in the Bible. later, this viewpoint would be called the theistic evolution. In support of this claim, they brought in eight experts on evolution. But other than Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from Johns Hopkins University, the judge would not allow these experts to testify in person. Instead, they were allowed to submit written statements so that their evidence could be used in an appeal.

In response to this decision, Darrow made a sarcastic comment to Judge Raulston (as he often did throughout the trial) on how he had been agreeable only on the prosecution's suggestions and not those of the judge. Darrow apologized the next day, thereby keeping himself from being found in contempt of court.

The presiding judge, Raulston, was accused of being biased in favour towards the prosecution and frequently clashed with Darrow. At the outset of the trial, Raulston quoted Genesis and the Butler Act. He also warned the jury not to judge the merit of the law (which would become the focus of the trial) but on the violation of the Act, which he called a 'high misdemeanor.' The jury foreman himself was unconvinced of the merit of the Act but he acted, as did most of the jury, on the instructions of the judge.

Judge Rulston was wrong when he told the jury to consider only the breach of the law. The law itself was a bad law and like all bad laws, a judge or a jury must first decide if the law is a bad law. If it is, then the issue of disobeying the law becomes academic. As it later turned out, the Butler Act was repealed because it was considered as a bad law.

Bryan chastised evolution for teaching children that humans were only one of (precisely) 35,000 types of mammals and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended "Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys,”

Malone responded for the defense in a speech that was universally considered the oratorical climax of the trial. Arousing fears of ‘inquisitions’, Malone argued that the Bible should be preserved in the realm of theology and morality and not put into a course of science. In his conclusion, Malone declared that Bryan's ‘duel to the death’ against evolution should not be made one-sided by a court ruling that took away the chief witnesses for the defense. Malone promised that there would be no duel because “there is never a need to duel with the truth.” The courtroom went wild when Malone finished, and Scopes declared Malone's speech to be the dramatic highpoint of the entire trial and he said that part of the reason Bryan wanted to go on the stand and make a statement was so that he could regain some of his tarnished glory.

On the sixth day of the trial, the defense ran out of witnesses. The judge declared that all of the defense testimony on the Bible was irrelevant and should not be presented to the jury (which had been excluded during the trial). On the seventh day of the trial, the defense asked the judge to call Bryan as a witness to question him on the Bible, as their own experts had been rendered irrelevant.

 Darrow had planned this the day before and called Bryan a “Bible expert”. This move surprised those present in the court, as Bryan was a counsel for the prosecution and Bryan himself (according to a journalist reporting the trial) never made a claim of being an expert, although he did tout his knowledge of the Bible. This testimony revolved around several questions regarding Biblical stories and Bryan's beliefs (as shown below); this testimony culminated in Bryan declaring that Darrow was using the court to "slur the Bible" while Darrow replied that Bryan's statements on the Bible were "foolish”.

On the seventh day of the trial, Clarence Darrow took the unorthodox step of calling William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness in an effort to demonstrate that his belief in the historicity of the Bible and its many accounts of miracles was unreasonable.  

I should add that calling a prosecutor and/or a defence counsel as a witness at a trial is rare nowadays. However, I know of what is permitted, and that is calling a defence counsel to take the stand in the witness box when his client denies he said a certain thing about the crime while being questioned by the police while he was in the presence of his lawyer. 

Bryan accepted, on the understanding that Darrow would in turn submit to questioning by Bryan. Although Hays would claim in his autobiography that the cross-examination of Bryan was unplanned notwithstanding that Darrow spent the night before in preparation of the questions he would ask Bryan. The questions asked were about scientists that Bryan had brought to Dayton including Charles Francis Potter, a modernist minister who had engaged in a series of public debates on evolution with the fundamentalist preacher John Roach Straton who had actually prepared topics and questions for Darrow to address Bryan on the witness stand.

Kirtley Mather, the chairman of the geology department at Harvard and also a devout Baptist when giving his testimony, played Bryan like a violin when being questioned by Bryan and he even answered questions as he believed Bryan would. 

Judge Raulston had adjourned ye court proceedings so that he could stand on the courthouse lawn, ostensibly because he was "afraid of so many spectators crammed into the courtroom, but it was probably because of the stifling heat inside the court room.  

Adam and Eve issue

An area of his questioning involved the book of Genesis, including questions such as if Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where did Cain get his wife, and how many people lived in Ancient Egypt. (If you go to Google and type the following:  [Was the world populated before the arrival of Adam and Eve? Dahn Batchelor] you will see how I answered  those questions.

Darrow used these examples to suggest that the stories of the Bible could not be scientific and should not be used in teaching science with Darrow telling Bryan, "You insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion.” Bryan's declaration in response was, “The reason I am answering is not for the benefit of this superior court. It is to keep these gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet them and let them question me, and I want the Christian world to know that any atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, can question me anytime as to my belief in God, and I will answer him.”

Stewart objected for the prosecution, demanding to know the legal purpose of Darrow's questioning. Bryan, gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible literally word for word. Darrow, with equal vehemence, retorted, "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States. Ouch. That statement would really hurt.

A few more questions followed in the then open-air courtroom. Darrow asked where Cain got his wife. Bryan answered that he would leave the agnostics to hunt for her.  When Darrow addressed the issue of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, Bryan insisted that the Bible be quoted verbatim rather than allowing Darrow to paraphrase it in his own terms. However, after another angry exchange, Judge Raulston banged his gavel, adjourning the court for the day.

End of the trial

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow had lasted approximately two hours on the afternoon of the seventh day of the trial. It is likely that it would have continued the following morning but for Judge Raulston's announcement that he considered the whole examination irrelevant to the case and his decision that it should be expunged from the record.

Unfortunately Bryan was denied his chance to cross-examine the defense lawyer in return, although after the trial Bryan distributed nine questions to the press to bring out Darrow's religious attitude. The questions and Darrow's short answers were published in newspapers the day after the trial ended, with The New York Times characterizing Darrow as answering Bryan's questions "with his agnostic's creed, 'with the columnist saying about Darrow, I don't know,' except where he could deny them with his belief in natural, immutable law.”

After the defense's final attempt to present more evidence Darrow  was denied. He then asked the judge to bring in the jury only to have them come to a guilty verdict:

The jury’s foreman said, “We claim that the defendant is not guilty, but as the court has excluded any testimony, except as to the one issue as to whether he taught that man descended from a lower order of animals, and we cannot contradict that testimony, so there is no logical thing to come to except that the jury find a verdict that may be carried to the higher court, purely as a matter of proper procedure. We do not think it is fair to the court or counsel on the other side to waste a lot of time when we know this is the inevitable result and probably the best result for the case.” unquote

Darrow then addressed the jury, telling them that, “We came down here to offer evidence in this case and the court has held under the law that the evidence we had is not admissible, so all we can do is to take an exception and carry it to a higher court to see whether the evidence is admissible or not, We cannot even explain to you that we think you should return a verdict of not guilty. We do not see how you could. We do not ask it.

Darrow closed the case for the defense without a final summation. Under Tennessee law, when the defense waived its right to make a closing speech, the prosecution was also barred from summing up its case.

Scopes never testified since there was never a factual issue as to whether he had taught evolution although he was never sure if he did. Scopes later admitted that.  In reality, he was unsure of whether he had taught evolution (another reason the defense did not want him to testify), but the point was not contested at the trial.

William Jennings Bryan's summation of the Scopes trial (distributed to reporters but not read in court, said in his written summation and quoted in the news media;

“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass (direction) and thus endangers its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane,(position of)  the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below (submarine) and to go up into the clouds and shoot down (planes) from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world’” unquote         

That was a good speech. It is applicable even in these times.

After eight days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate. Scopes was found guilty on July 21 and ordered to pay a US$ 100 fine (approximately $1,400 in present-day^[terms when adjusted from 1925 for inflation)  Raulston imposed the fine before Scopes was given an opportunity to say anything about why the court should not impose punishment upon him and after Neal brought the error to the judge's attention the defendant spoke for the first and only time in court:

“Your honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom—that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.” unquote

Bryan died suddenly five days after the trial's conclusion.

Scopes' lawyers appealed, challenging the conviction on several grounds;

First, they argued that the statute was overly vague because it prohibited the teaching of "evolution", in a very broad term.

The court rejected that argument, holding:

 “Evolution, like prohibition, is a broad term. In recent bickering, however, evolution has been understood to mean the theory which holds that man has developed from some pre-existing lower type. This is the popular significance of evolution, just as the popular significance of prohibition is prohibition of the traffic in intoxicating liquors. It was in that sense that evolution was used in this act. It is in this sense that the word will be used in this opinion, unless the context otherwise indicates. It is only to the theory of the evolution of man from a lower type that the act before us was intended to apply, and much of the discussion we have heard is beside this case.”  unquote

Second, the lawyers argued that the statute violated Scopes' constitutional right to free speech because it prohibited him from teaching evolution. The court rejected this argument, holding that the state was permitted to regulate his speech as an employee of the state:

“He was an employee of the state of Tennessee or of a municipal agency of the state. He was under contract with the state to work in an institution of the state. He had no right or privilege to serve the state except upon such terms as the state prescribed. His liberty, his privilege, his immunity to teach and proclaim the theory of evolution, elsewhere than in the service of the state, was in no wise touched by this law.” unquote

Third, it was argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee State Constitution, which provided that "It shall be the duty of the General Assembly in all future periods of this government, to cherish literature and science.”  

The argument was that the theory of the descent of man from a lower order of animals was now established by the preponderance of scientific thought, and that the prohibition of the teaching of such theory was a violation of the legislative duty to cherish science.

The court rejected this argument, holding that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the legislature, not the judiciary. The court said;

The courts cannot sit in judgment on such acts of the Legislature or its agents and determine whether or not the omission or addition of a particular course of study tends "to cherish science.” .unquote

Fourth, the defense lawyers argued that the statute violated the provisions of the Tennessee Constitution that prohibited the establishment of a state religion. The Religious Preference provisions of the Tennessee Constitution (section 3 of article 1) stated, "no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”

In my opinion, that would apply to anyone who professes to any religion.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Grafton Green rejected this argument, (the other judges of the court concurring) holding that the Tennessee Religious Preference clause was designed to prevent the establishment of a state religion as had been the experience in England and Scotland at the writing of the Constitution, and held:

“We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship. So far as we know, there is no religious establishment or organized body that has in its creed or confession of faith any article denying or affirming such a theory. So far as we know, the denial or affirmation of such a theory does not enter into any recognized mode of worship. Since this cause has been pending in this court, we have been favored, in addition to briefs of counsel and various amici curiae, with a multitude of resolutions, addresses, and communications from scientific bodies, religious factions, and individuals giving us the benefit of their views upon the theory of evolution. Examination of these contributions indicates that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are divided among themselves in their beliefs, and that there is no unanimity among the members of any religious establishment as to this subject. Belief or unbelief in the theory of evolution is no more a characteristic of any religious establishment or mode of worship than is belief or unbelief in the wisdom of the prohibition laws. It would appear that members of the same churches quite generally disagree as to these things.” unquote

The judge was right on that issue.

Further, the court held that while the statute forbade the teaching of evolution (as the court had defined it), it did not require the teaching of any other doctrine, so that it did not benefit any one religious doctrine or sect over the others.

Nevertheless, having found the statute to be constitutional, the court set aside the conviction on appeal because of a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, since under the state constitution, Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above $50, and the Butler Act specified a minimum fine of $100.

Justice Green added a totally unexpected recommendation;

“The court is informed that the plaintiff in error is no longer in the service of the state. We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. On the contrary, we think that the peace and dignity of the state, which all criminal prosecutions are brought to redress, will be the better conserved by the entry of a nolle prosequi (a formal entry on the record) herein. Such a course is suggested to the Attorney General.”

Attorney General L. D. Smith immediately announced that he would not seek a retrial, while Scopes' lawyers offered angry comments on the stunning decision.

In 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas  (1968) that such bans like the Butler Act  contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is  religious. Tennessee had actually repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

The trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and also two ways of finding truth—one ‘biblical’ and one ‘evolutionist’. Author David Goetz wrote that the majority of Christians denounced evolution at the time.  That is not necessarily true  nowadays.

Author Mark Edwards contested the conventional view that in the wake of the Scopes trial, a humiliated fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint evidenced in the film Inherit the Wind (1960)—about the Scopes Trial and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Bryan, unlike the other leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist and mainline religious groups to argue for the anti-evolutionist position.

The trial escalated the political and legal conflict between strict creationists and scientists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. Before the trial took place in Dayton, only the South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kentucky legislatures had dealt with anti-evolution laws or riders to educational appropriations bills.

Attacks on Bryan were frequent and acidic. Life awarded him its Brass Medal of the Fourth Class, for having "successfully demonstrated by the alchemy of ignorance hot air may be transmuted into gold, and that the Bible is infallibly inspired except where it differs with him on the question of wine, women, and wealth.

Scopes visited Toronto during the latter part of the last century. I regret not attending his speech.

In summary, I want to add that I am in total agreement with the common belief that Adam was not created from a pile of dust.  I also believe that as eons passed by, Man eventually evolved from apes. It makes better sense than that fairy tale found in Geneses.