Four
score and seven years ago, a Tennessee high school biology teacher
named John Scopes was charged with teaching evolution. At the time,
Tennessee had a law called the Butler Act, in honor of John W. Butler,
the leader of the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, that
turned Scopes’s efforts to educate his students into a criminal offense.
The enemies of Darwin won in court but suffered a nearly catastrophic
loss in the public sphere. The press portrayed them as anti-intellectual
and un-American in their opposition to science and progress. They were
the “sharpshooters of bigotry,” according to Scopes’ celebrated
attorney, Clarence Darrow. “I knew that education was in danger from the
source that has always hampered it — religious fanaticism,” he said.
The fallout was so toxic that Christian fundamentalism retreated as a
political force for decades.
1 comment:
This law turns the clock back nearly 100 years here in the seemingly unprogressive South and is simply embarrassing. There is no argument against the Theory of Evolution other than that of religious doctrine. The Monkey Law only opens the door for fanatic Christianity to creep its way back into our classrooms. You can see my visual response as a Tennessean to this absurd law on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/04/pulpit-in-classroom-biblical-agenda-in.html with some evolutionary art and a little bit of simple logic.
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