Evolution on Trial

Nearly every culture on Earth has an origin story. We humans have always had a driving desire to know where we came from and how we got here. Many years before science started giving us the answers we sought, our shamans and scribes made up myths and legends to tell ourselves who we are and how our world came to exist. Today we are fortunate that we have archaeologist, anthropologist, astronomers and other scientific investigators to look closely at the physical evidence around us to answer our existential questions.

Over the last several centuries we have gone from excepting without question the validity of the Great Chain of Being with God at the top, followed by angels, then humans, animals, plants, and minerals, to taking a closer look at ourselves compared to other living things around us. We have noticed that like many other creatures we have a mouth, nose, eyes, and brain; we bleed red blood, and reproduce sexually. Is it that the gods thought that a modified mammal design would work fine for humans? Or is it possible that all creatures came from one primitive organism and over a long period of time evolved through millions of trial-and-error mutations into us?

Forming an opinion about something is easy, even if one does not have much information to back up a certain point of view. In much of the world, children readily accept that Santa Klaus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny are supernatural beings that bring them gifts at the appropriate times of the year. From there it is not a great stretch in some cultures to believe in other types of supernatural beings such as gods and angels or to get wrapped up in the idea that that heavenly beings could inspire select individuals to write accounts of how the world began and what gods we are to worship.

After many years of trying to look at ourselves objectively, and modifying our opinions in light of the evidence showing that the Earth is very old and that numerous species of animals have evolved, lived on Earth for a time, and then gone extinct, there are still many of us who say it all started a few thousand years ago when a supernatural being created it. In the United States the debate has been so hotly contested that people have gone to court to prove their point of view.

It was not many years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species that we began put to our own biases and prejudices into the idea of natural selection. A number of misinterpretations grew out of the phrase “survival of the fittest” first used by English philosopher Herbert Spencer. In a later publication, Darwin quoted the phrase, but in the context to mean “better suited for an immediate local environment.” Darwin was not implying that a species survived only because it brutally killed all of its rivals.

Unfortunately, there are too many of us who love a good fight. Some of us readily accepted the idea that natural selection implied that evolution was little more than one conflict after another where the weak were easily overcome by the strong. Science now tells us that there was a good deal more cooperation among species than conflict. Think of plants and soil, flowers and bees, and millions of other natural relationships that keeps everything alive and flourishing without the need for conflict.

Yet, the idea of conflict in nature persisted. From the phrase “survival of the fittest” came the idea of ‘social Darwinism’, an idea that went far beyond what Darwin meant by ‘natural selection’. The phrase coincided with the rise of capitalism, especially in America, and came to be a justification of sorts for those with the economic means to exploit others in order to monopolize an industry. Today we use the term ‘robber barons’ to describe such people as John D. Rockefeller who monopolized the oil industry, Andrew Carnegie in steel, and Cornelius Vanderbilt who at one time owned most of the nation’s railroads.

Capitalism was not the only way that the idea of social Darwinism came to be applied. Before the United States entered World War One in 1918, Germany allowed American aid to be provided to Belgium and French refugees after the German invasion of those countries in 1914. Director of the American Council of Relief in Belgium and France from 1914 to 1916 was Vernon Kellogg who would often have dinner with the German officers he worked with. In his 1917 book Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium, Kellogg, wrote about the attitude of the Germans he met at these dinners.

He was appalled by the fact that the Germans, who had obviously misinterpreted Darwinian natural selection, were using the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify their invasion of Belgium, France, and other nations. They boasted about their strong army which they believed justified their attitude that “might makes right”. Vernon wrote: “The creed of survival of the fittest based on violence and competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals.” Although he had been a pacifist when he arrived in Europe, he decided that the Germans could only to be stopped by “brute Force” and began to advocate for American intervention in the war.

Partly because German militarism had caused so much killing and destruction by its overemphasis on survival of the fittest, by the 1920s Darwinian evolution was being viewed as anti-Christian and the cause of moral degeneration in America by many Christian fundamentalist, most notably William Jennings Bryan. Known as “the great commoner” who advocated a strict literal interpretation of the Christian bible, Bryan had run for president three times and been defeated each time. At age 65 he was still ardently opposed to the rise of Darwinism and did not want it taught in schools. He is quoted as saying about evolution: “No more repulsive doctrine was ever proclaimed by man…may heaven defend the youth of our land from these impious babblings.” Events in the mid-1920s brought him one last time into the public spotlight.

The stage was set early in 1925 when John Washington Butler, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, proposed a bill prohibiting teachers from teaching Darwinian evolution in Tennessee public schools. The bill received support and Governor Austin Peay signed it into law.

The Butler Law caused quite a stir around the country pitting creationists against those who saw the bill as unconstitutional because it promoted religion in schools. Within a few months the American Civil Liberties Union had decided to take the issue to court in order to get the law repealed. All the ACLU needed was a teacher to volunteer to be the defendant. John Thomas Scopes, who on May 5 had been charged with violating the Butler Act, for teaching evolution, agreed to do it. Scopes had been arrested and was out of jail on bond.

At age 25, John Scopes was a football coach and substitute teacher at Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tennessee, a small town in the eastern part of the state. The school’s biology teacher was out for a few days and Scopes was called on to teach the class. The text book in use at the time was A Civic Biology written by George William Hunter and published in 1914. It contained a section on evolution which had a drawing done by paleontologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History William Matthew depicting the evolution of the horse over a period of several million years. The section implied that humans had also evolved from primates over millions of years and were not created by a supernatural being fully developed. Scopes used the book and discussed evolution in his biology class and in doing so broke the new state law.

Scopes was put on trial. The State of Tennessee wanted to make sure all teachers understood that they were not to break the new law, while the ACLU wanted to show that the law violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution because of its religious implications.

By the time the trial date of July 10, 1925 came, the case had become an international issue as if the theory of evolution itself was being put on trial. The guilt or innocence of whether John Scopes had broken the law was lost in the larger debate over evolution in what had become known as the “Monkey Trial”. Over 200 newspaper journalists from around the country came to Dayton to report the proceedings, and the trial became the first in the nation to be covered live by a radio station — WGN Chicago. The trial even inspired a song by Billy Rose called “You Can’t Make a Monkey Out of Me.”

Two of the finest legal minds of the time decided to get involved. William Jennings Bryan was hired as prosecutor for the State of Tennessee and Clarnece Darrow was hired by the ACLU to defend John Scopes.

Over 1,000 people showed up on the first day of the trial, and in the July heat the small Rhea County courthouse was hot. The next day the trial was moved out to the lawn of the courthouse where as many as 5,000 people came to watch the performances of the two well-known attorneys.

All of a sudden, the small town of Dayton was inundated with flashy booths selling everything from stuffed monkeys to bibles and books written by Bryan mostly about his three presidential campaigns and his support of creationism over evolution. Another big seller was a book by evangelist Thomas Theodore Martin published in 1923. With the catchy title of Hell and the High School, the book portrayed evolutionists as criminals ruining the morals of America’s youth.

The town took on a circus atmosphere when trainers brought chimpanzees to perform. Even the celebrity chimp Joe Mendi who was popular in Broadway plays and vaudeville was seen around town.

Most of the townspeople backed Bryan, including the judge John Tate Raulston, the jury and most of the people in attendance. Judge Raulston promoted Bryant’s point of view at every opportunity such as when he prevented Darrow from bringing in experts on the science of evolution. Raulston’s excuse was that he wanted to keep the trial focused on the sole issue of whether Scopes was guilty of breaking Tennessee state law. Disappointed that he was not allowed to bring in his experts, Darrow then turned to attacking the literal translation of the creation story in the first chapter of the bible, such as how God created the Earth and sky and humans in only six days.

For several hours, Darrow argued for evolution to the judge, the jury, and those who attended the trial. Then in a brilliant move, Darrow called Bryan to the witness stand and questioned him about details in the bible book of Genesis. Bryan became flustered and did not answer the questions well. In fact, Judge Raulston had Bryan’s testimony stricken from the court records. Another Darrow ploy was that in order to prevent Bryan from delivering his closing speech which he had worked on for several days, Darrow declared to the jury that his client was guilty of teaching evolution, which basically ended the trial.

The trial, which Time Magazine called “the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war”, had lasted until July 21, and to no one’s surprise, John Scopes was found guilty. His punishment for breaking the law was a fine of $100.

But the trial was really about evolution. Although on paper Darrow lost the case for his client, he had won over the hearts and minds of millions of Americans with his defense of Darwinian evolution. Although it took a few years, nearly every state eventually passed laws allowing the teaching of evolution as a valid scientific subject. Forty-two years later in 1967, even Tennessee got around to finally repealing the Butler Act.

It was noted that H. L Menken, probably America’s most prominent journalist at that time, attended the trial as a journalist for the Baltimore Sun newspaper. He had a field day. In his satirical manner he ridiculed many aspects of the trial, including the biased judge, as well as the citizens of Dayton who he called ignorant and prejudiced. He was pleased that Darrow had humiliated Bryan. His newspaper offered to pay Scopes’ $100 fine, but a judge in a higher court overturned the verdict and dismissed the fine. A commentator on Menken said that his writing about the trial had struck a strong blow for science and academic freedom.

Both lawyers had worked hard planning their strategy. For most of the trial, Bryan seemed to have the easier time of it since he had the law, the jury, as well as the judge on his side. Yet the tension during the proceedings, and perhaps the pressure put on him to defend a literal translation of the first few chapters of the Judeo-Christian bible seemed to take its toll on his health. He died in Dayton on Sunday July 26, five days after the trial ended. He was 65 years old. His body was carried by train to Washington DC where he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Ever the irreverent satirist, H.L. Menken wrote that God had thrown a thunderbolt down to kill Clarence Darrow but missed and hit Bryan instead.

Darrow was 68 at the time of the trial. He died at age 80 in 1938. Late in life he wrote in his autobiography a passage that seemed to sum up his views on man and religion: “Man is not only the home of microbes, but of all sorts of vain and weird delusions. How does he come to think himself so important? Man really assumes that the entire universe was made for him; that while it is run by God, it is still run for man. God is just a sort of caterer whose business it is to find out what men want and then supply these wants.”

John Scopes left Tennessee to attend the University of Chicago where he earned a degree in geology. Unable to find work when he returned to Tennessee he and his wife moved to Kentucky and he later found work with oil and gas companies in Texas and Louisiana. He died in Shreveport, Louisiana at the age of 70.

Today the Rhea County Courthouse is a museum, and every July local people re-enact part of the trial.

The Scopes trial caused a great deal of discussion about creationism and evolution, and even after many decades, the issue continues to be a topic that is debated more often emotionally than factually. There have been a least two more court trials in America over the issue of teaching creationism and evolution in public schools.

One case that went as far as the United States Supreme Court occurred in 1987. The case concerned the constitutionality of a 1981 Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public school, the biblical creation story must also be taught. A group of teachers and parents led by Donald Aguillard who was a biology teacher and assistant principal of Acadiana High School in Scott, Louisiana, sued the state to have the law repealed on the grounds that it endorsed religious beliefs. The case came to be known as Edward vs. Aguillard since Edwin Edwards was governor of Louisiana at the time.

After going through lower courts, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which like the Scopes trial, garnered a lot of attention, especially from scientists, educators, and theologians. After debating the issue for several weeks, in a seven to two majority, the court decided that the law violated the “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Scientists and science educators were pleased, but many fundamentalists were not and a group of them were determined to continue the cause of keeping religion in public schools.

In 2005, a group of fundamentalist Christians in Dover, Pennsylvania decided to try a new tactic. Instead of going against Darwinian evolution head on, they would advocate a new idea called “intelligent design”. Proponents of ID argued that many features of living organisms are too complex to have evolved through the natural process of evolution and that only a supernatural mind could have come up with the millions of different creatures in the world today.

Like the Scopes trial 80 years earlier, part of the debate centered on a textbook used in ninth grade biology classes which had a section on evolution. The ID advocates wanted to use a textbook called Of Pandas and People which contained a section on intelligent design. People began to call the debate the “panda trial” to compare it to the Scopes “monkey trial”.

During the debate, an event that stirred up a great deal of controversy was that a student had made a drawing depicting the progression of humans from primates. it was well drawn and it was hung on a wall in the school. This did not suit some of the more adamant fundamentalists, some of whom came to the school, tore down the drawing and ceremoniously burned it.

The case called Kitzmiller vs. Dover Board of Education was heard in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by Judge John Edward Jones III. In his verdict, Jones ruled that intelligent design is not science but a religious belief and as such should not be part of a school curriculum.

But even today the debate continues around the world.

There is certainly nothing wrong with thinking humans are special. Our creativity and curiously are enabling us to learn more and more every day about ourselves and our place in the universe. There are, however, those of us who have trouble coming to terms with the three great blows to our exalted status.

One of the first was Nicolas Copernicus publishing his work that determined that instead of the Earth being the center of the universe, it goes around the sun just like the other planets in our solar system. Copernicus knew that church officials would not be happy with his discovery, so he wisely waited until he was near death in 1543 to publish his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. The church was angry, and a few years later when scholar Giovanni Bruno agreed with Copernicus, he was murdered by burning at the stake.

Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection that showed that humans evolved over millions of years from primates was another great blow to our collective ego that many of us are still refusing to accept.

A third problem that many people struggle with is coping with the idea that human consciousness, that condition of our mind that makes us aware of our existence, is a product of evolution. Some of us want to believe that consciousness is a spiritual gift bestowed on humans by gods, and which god it is depends on the particular religion a person submits to. On the other hand, researchers are pointing out that our sense or awareness, our consciousness, developed over many millions of years as life evolved from single-celled entities to sapient human beings.

Probably the earliest type of self-awareness was just hunger. A paramecium, for example, felt the need to eat whether it understood the reason behind the feeling or not. In time, creatures learned that if they wanted to stay alive, they had to avoid other creatures that would eat them. And so, from these basic beginnings grew what we, 3.5 billion years later, call human consciousness.

It all boils down to the fact that we are of the Earth. Try as we might, we cannot seem to get any of the gods we have clung to for thousands of years to get involved in our successes, or failures, our wars, and our times of peace. We are it. We make the rules and we either live by our rules or break them when they get in our way.

The debate over evolution will continue as long as there are people on Earth who make up gods and then worship them and tell others what the gods told them to say.

Ted McCormack