Jul 14, 2025 11:00 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 14, 2025 11:04 PM by C C.)
https://www.skeptic.com/article/scopes-m...evolution/
EXCERPTS: . . . That young man was John Thomas Scopes, a substitute teacher from a neighboring county who, by his own admission, volunteered to challenge Tennessee’s “anti-evolution” law because, in addition to being a free thinker, he thought that the extended stay in Dayton over the summer and the ensuing attention might help his cause in a local love interest...
[...] the ACLU took up the case, which they hoped to lose in Dayton, which would lead to an appeal to the Tennessee State Supreme Court, and eventually a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court, which they hoped would set a precedent for other such bills. And most people think that Scopes and science scored a knockout victory in Tennessee...
[...] In fact, this was no victory for science or evolution, and it may surprise readers to learn that Scopes’ guilty verdict was overturned on a minor technicality involving the levying of a fine over $50 by a judge instead of a jury. Out of embarrassment by the bad publicity the state was receiving, the Tennessee state legislators used this technical misstep to prevent the case from reaching the State Supreme Court...
[...] Worse, the controversy stirred by the trial made textbook publishers and state boards of education reluctant to deal with evolution in any manner. A study by Judith Grabiner and Peter Miller on high school biology textbooks before and after the trial revealed that the subject of evolution simply disappeared from the curriculum and was not taught for decades: “Believing that they had won in the forum of public opinion, the evolutionists of the late 1920s in fact lost on their original battleground—teaching of evolution in the high schools—as judged by the content of the average high school biology textbooks [which] declined after the Scopes trial.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . That young man was John Thomas Scopes, a substitute teacher from a neighboring county who, by his own admission, volunteered to challenge Tennessee’s “anti-evolution” law because, in addition to being a free thinker, he thought that the extended stay in Dayton over the summer and the ensuing attention might help his cause in a local love interest...
[...] the ACLU took up the case, which they hoped to lose in Dayton, which would lead to an appeal to the Tennessee State Supreme Court, and eventually a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court, which they hoped would set a precedent for other such bills. And most people think that Scopes and science scored a knockout victory in Tennessee...
[...] In fact, this was no victory for science or evolution, and it may surprise readers to learn that Scopes’ guilty verdict was overturned on a minor technicality involving the levying of a fine over $50 by a judge instead of a jury. Out of embarrassment by the bad publicity the state was receiving, the Tennessee state legislators used this technical misstep to prevent the case from reaching the State Supreme Court...
[...] Worse, the controversy stirred by the trial made textbook publishers and state boards of education reluctant to deal with evolution in any manner. A study by Judith Grabiner and Peter Miller on high school biology textbooks before and after the trial revealed that the subject of evolution simply disappeared from the curriculum and was not taught for decades: “Believing that they had won in the forum of public opinion, the evolutionists of the late 1920s in fact lost on their original battleground—teaching of evolution in the high schools—as judged by the content of the average high school biology textbooks [which] declined after the Scopes trial.” (MORE - missing details)
