Up until recently, I had chalked this up as yet another example of the Lord's people trying to do things their own way and messing things up in the process.
Earlier this month I read an essay that addressed quite a few common perceptions of the Scopes "Monkey" trial, otherwise known as State of Tennessee v. John Scopes. This essay, titled A Second Look at Fundamentalism: The Scopes Trial and Inherit the Wind, was written by a historian named Nicholas M. Aksionczky. A Second Look is essentially a thesis intended to cut through the sensationalism and present the Scopes trial as "...one of the most misunderstood and distorted events in American History."
Honestly, I was surprised. Even I as a Christian thought that the dramatic portrayal of State v. Scopes was supposed to be historically accurate. Heck, most of the scientific community refers to the play or movie when they mention the trial.
That should have been my first clue.
The dramatic productions (a 1955 stage play, a 1957 screen play and a 1988 TV version) present John Scopes as an oppressed teacher, the prosecutor (and pretty much all Christians) as fanatical and portrays the entire trial as part of a Crusade against "reason" by a bunch of backwards hillbillies. Contrary to popular opinion about Inherit the Wind, this does not reflect reality. Let's look at some reality:
-> In January 1925, the State of Tennessee passed the Butler Act which stated:"That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals [teachers colleges] and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."This act and the fact that it passed the Tennessee State legislature reflects the prevalence of Christian Fundamentalism in the state at the time.
-> Before the trial, John Scopes was merely a substitute teacher and football coach. He taught Physics, not Biology. He was later quoted as saying "...I wasn't sure I had taught evolution" and that he was "afraid that if I was put on the stand I would be asked if I actually taught Biology."
-> John Scopes was not specifically persecuted for teaching or not teaching something. He was recruited by the ACLU so that they could challenge the Butler Act. They actually meant to lose so that they could take the case to a higher court.
-> The portrayal of Christians in the dramatic presentations do not reflect the actual goings-on inside the courtroom and really don't reflect Fundamentalist beliefs of the time.
-> While there were some dramatic outbursts, overall the trial was reasonable. In fact, the most inflammatory rhetoric of the time actually came from an agnostic newspaperman by the name of H.L. Mencken. During his coverage of the trial, Mencken took libel and defamation to new levels, and Mencken's hateful words against Christians are still parroted by atheists today.
So essentially, the landmark case that opened the door to exclusively teaching evolution in public schools really wasn't so landmark after all. In fact, it was one of the first high-profile events that paints a facade of "reasonable" science vs. "backwards" Christianity.
Mencken's ideas are still prevalent in scientific circles today. To an atheist scientist, if you are Christian then you are against everything for which science stands. This paradigm, as widely accepted as it may be, is simply and unequivocally false.
The study of the sciences has, until recently, been a Christian pursuit. Don't believe me? Ask Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene' Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Carolus Linnaeus, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, Gregor Mendel and Max Planck just to name a few. These are people whose contributions to the sciences are not disputed by atheists. However, atheist scientists choose to ignore the fact that every one of these people and MANY more saw the sciences as a way to understand God's Creation.
It wasn't until the widespread acceptance of Darwinism that the pendulum swung away from this approach to science. Now, "big science" is to the point where if a scientist even mentions the possibility of a designer in a class or publication, that researcher puts his/her career at serious risk (see previous entry "On Ben Stein and Chuckie D.")
It's time for the world to see once again that science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Suppressing good science simply because it disagrees with Darwinism and an Old-Earth worldview is not acceptable. It's time for science-minded Christians to stop riding the fence and to stand up for what is right. It's time for Christian schools to build strong science programs and train up the future scientists of the world.
It's time for the atheist choke-hold on science to end. Start by reading A Second Look, and let the Lord lead you from there.
