Speaker 1: Nearly one hundred years ago, there was a landmark trial
Speaker 1: between religious fundamentalism and the current educational system, and Jonathan's
Speaker 1: going to tell us.
Speaker 2: A little bit more about it.
Speaker 1: You want to take it away, Jonathan sure.
Speaker 3: This article explains in some detail the events of the
Speaker 3: Scopes trial in Tennessee ninety nine years ago. This trial
Speaker 3: started a still raging debate about how creationism and intelligent
Speaker 3: design versus science is to be taught in schools. Those
Speaker 3: Scopes lost the case. Eventually science won, but maybe not.
Speaker 3: New movements in the US and abroad have been working
Speaker 3: to invade school boards, and some states are battling in
Speaker 3: the courts to defend draconian laws that limit what can
Speaker 3: be taught in schools and state universities. Once again, religious
Speaker 3: zealots and fanatics are invading the schools. Let's explore what
Speaker 3: Scopes has to say about this and how the case
Speaker 3: was started as a gift to one of the religious
Speaker 3: a pastor religious representative in their state assembly, as a
Speaker 3: gift to his ineffectiveness. The story is from the Los
Speaker 3: Angeles Times by Michael helps Zick, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 3: On July twenty sixth, twenty twenty four. So I would
Speaker 3: like to pass this to the Phoebe Phoebe. I'm via
Speaker 3: Phoebe the Phoebe.
Speaker 2: Yes, can I get a bill passed? Please?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Can I get some legislation? Please?
Speaker 3: Just email Congress and I'm sure they'll get right on it.
Speaker 2: One of them. That's a nice gift, that is, I
Speaker 2: don't find that under the Christmas tree or is a
Speaker 2: birthday present. Very often you here have some legislation, have
Speaker 2: some legislation, legislation, it's nice for you, But legislation is
Speaker 2: not a gift. Legislation is not something to be fart
Speaker 2: asked around with. And if you're that bad at getting
Speaker 2: legislation passed, maybe stop being a legislator. Think that's the
Speaker 2: that's the nament a problem here. It's like you're a
Speaker 2: governor of a state. You're bad at governing. Stop being
Speaker 2: a governor. That kind of ludicrousness here. And bad legislation
Speaker 2: means bad laws means injustice and ridicule of the legal system.
Speaker 2: You get bad laws on the books and you get
Speaker 2: ridicule from the public, and you have no faith in
Speaker 2: the institution. Supreme Court doing that nicely for itself. It's
Speaker 2: creating bad laws out of whole cloth. Whole cloth bad
Speaker 2: laws that are ridiculing the institution from top to bottom,
Speaker 2: and symbols matter a lot. Symbols matter a lot. There
Speaker 2: is nothing symbolic or empty when it comes to legislating.
Speaker 2: Tell people who were fighting the gay rights movement in
Speaker 2: the fifties, sixties and seventies about symbols. Tell people in
Speaker 2: Britain who were repealing the last of the anti gay
Speaker 2: laws on the books in two thousand and twenty one
Speaker 2: with the Shipping Repeal Act, because it was still sitting
Speaker 2: on the books. And as we have seen in states
Speaker 2: like Arizona with abortion laws that are purely symbolic from
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, they're not symbolic when someone decides that
Speaker 2: that's the law today that they're going to enforce. And
Speaker 2: this is the dangerous thing. The law is only there
Speaker 2: as something of meaning when somebody chooses to enforce it.
Speaker 2: And the judge in this case chose to enforce the law.
Speaker 2: Chose to enforce the law wrong, may I add, But
Speaker 2: he chose to enforce the law. Judge exceeded is sentencing
Speaker 2: powers here and over sentenced and on a technicality it
Speaker 2: was struck down. I privately think the judge did that
Speaker 2: deliberately to prevent a genuine appeal going forward, because if
Speaker 2: you have a genuine appeal going forward, then it can
Speaker 2: be taken up by court on substantive grounds, whereas if
Speaker 2: a judge is just an idiot, it can't go any further.
Speaker 2: But this is an issue as old as time. Don't
Speaker 2: need any qualifications other than you're liked by the electorate
Speaker 2: to become an elected official, and that is an electorate problem.
Speaker 2: The oldest democracy has been in existence because it has
Speaker 2: allowed people who have no rhyme or reason. From the
Speaker 2: seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds twentieth century, I reached
Speaker 2: and legislative within.
Speaker 1: The last couple of years. I read a book actually
Speaker 1: on the history of the fight to keep creationism and
Speaker 1: later intelligent design out of the schools. And this really
Speaker 1: is a battle that has never ever ever stopped. Right
Speaker 1: after the Scopes trial, both Alabama and Missouri had long
Speaker 1: legal battles fought over it. It is an actual pretty
Speaker 1: interesting history where the courts have since the Scopes trial
Speaker 1: have continuously cited against creationism and IDs in recent decades,
Speaker 1: and as I recall, and I could be wrong about this,
Speaker 1: But I think Missouri fought a long legal battle and
Speaker 1: eventually lost in the courts, and Alabama eventually just quietly
Speaker 1: dropped the law from the state book about trying to
Speaker 1: test it in the courts. So I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something that has happened in more places throughout the United States.
Speaker 1: And as I said, it's a big, long, ongoing battle.
Speaker 1: We all know about the intelligent design case that happened
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts and in nineteen nineties. I think so. But John,
Speaker 1: I know you found a telling quote in this article.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it actually comes from Ray Gingrew's book about the
Speaker 3: case Six Days or Forever, And it's said the legislature
Speaker 3: passed the measure idly as a meaningless gift to its drafter,
Speaker 3: John W. Butler, a lay preacher who hadn't passed any
Speaker 3: other bill. The bill did not amount to a row
Speaker 3: of pins. Let him have it, a legislator is alleged
Speaker 3: to have said. And so this was passed as poor
Speaker 3: guy isn't a very good legislator. Let's at least give
Speaker 3: him one little throw the dog a bone, you know.
Speaker 3: But even if you throw a bone to a hungary
Speaker 3: has unseen consequences. So in this case, in this case
Speaker 3: elevating ridiculous law into a cultural war, no one expected
Speaker 3: the governor to sign this, but he did so it
Speaker 3: was made law. So it's like teaching, and the law reads,
Speaker 3: and I'll quote that, to teach any theory that denies
Speaker 3: the story of divine creation of man as taught in
Speaker 3: the Bible, and to teach instead that man had descended
Speaker 3: from a lower order of animal. In a word, evolution
Speaker 3: was made a misdemeanor with a fine. So if you
Speaker 3: if you do that, you're going to get arrested and fine.
Speaker 3: You know. That's that's where the law he broke was.
Speaker 2: That's where the judge fell down because he exceeded his
Speaker 2: fine power to close the fine that he had. And
Speaker 2: the problem here is the media got hold of it.
Speaker 2: Modern media got hold of it, and modern media blew
Speaker 2: it all out of proportions. Modern media made it far
Speaker 2: more ridiculous than it actually was.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of there was William Jennings Bryant, though,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I mean he was making a big deal
Speaker 1: out of it and bringing the media in and creating that.
Speaker 2: I mean, modern film just rubbish, which had no bearing
Speaker 2: on actual reality in court, sensationalizing things that. I mean,
Speaker 2: take the mini series People versus O. J. Simpson. Yet
Speaker 2: some of it was accurate, but large trunks of it
Speaker 2: were inaccurate. And for media consumption, I mean the films
Speaker 2: made about the trial. Some parts of it are accurate,
Speaker 2: large parts of it are imagined and complete nonsense. But
Speaker 2: that's what the media does. And that's the problem when
Speaker 2: you have media consumption portrayed as truth, and in this case,
Speaker 2: the media consumption is being portrayed as the truth of
Speaker 2: the trial. The town was fanatics, this man was a lunatic,
Speaker 2: this man was a pariah. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Absolute CODs, absolutely from start to finish. And I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just frustrating that there was a reliance on tertiary
Speaker 2: sources for history moving forwards in the society that we
Speaker 2: live in, especially when it comes to movies made specifically
Speaker 2: to make money and not to be educationally accurate.
Speaker 3: Well, in the nineteen sixties film version, it says in
Speaker 3: the article it starred Frederick Marsh, Spencer Tracy, and gene Kelly. Spencer,
Speaker 3: Tracy and gene Kelly were very famous actors at the time,
Speaker 3: so it was like, yeah, and they're going to portray him.
Speaker 3: The characters meant to play Brian Clarence, Darryl and H. L. Menkin,
Speaker 3: who was the Baltimore newspaper men who brilliantly the average
Speaker 3: for it, you know. So it's like and he was
Speaker 3: an aggressive journalist, which is fine, but when you kind
Speaker 3: of overshoot things a little bit, it's kind of a mess.
Speaker 1: I think there was a general from both sides there
Speaker 1: was generally putting too much into the trial that was
Speaker 1: really there. I mean really, it was just a small
Speaker 1: local thing that really didn't It didn't affect the whole
Speaker 1: state at the time. It didn't affect the whole country
Speaker 1: at the time that when the laws when the trial
Speaker 1: was over, but the big media sensation that happened over
Speaker 1: it did and it really brought this fight over creationism
Speaker 1: into the public eye. So I Scopes was actually recruited
Speaker 1: by a group of men that hung out at the
Speaker 1: local pharmacy, including the pharmacist and a local lawyer, and
Speaker 1: they thought the law was wrong. It was and they
Speaker 1: wanted to take it to court, so they recruited Scopes
Speaker 1: that come and help them do it. Now, John I
Speaker 1: know you did. You studied the town about a little
Speaker 1: bit and the people that were there. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about the place where the trial
Speaker 1: took place at. Was it really religious there?
Speaker 3: No, it was just a typical smallish town that had
Speaker 3: you know, uh, this was just a violation of a
Speaker 3: misdemeanor law, you know, kind of like you know, Okay,
Speaker 3: it wasn't really very exciting except for to the locals.
Speaker 3: The locals really didn't care, you know, they were they
Speaker 3: were basically bored with it. So they then found that
Speaker 3: it was going to be really good, really good for them,
Speaker 3: uh financially because the circus that was being created by
Speaker 3: the press brought people to town and brought press to
Speaker 3: town and increased their their revenues for that year. So
Speaker 3: that was about their only real interest in it. And
Speaker 3: the pro science. You know, it was a bad test
Speaker 3: case because it was dying of apathy in the town,
Speaker 3: but you know, it was like true religious Uh. They've
Speaker 3: continually fought this since then, but they were kept fighting
Speaker 3: it before then too. Uh. The there were other incidences
Speaker 3: that didn't make it to court about not in this
Speaker 3: particular town. But you know, they say there's a good
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty years of the science versus creation
Speaker 3: war since basically since Darwin. You know, so it's it is.
Speaker 3: But the townsfolks themselves were you know, typical Americans. Hey,
Speaker 3: we can make money at this, you know, so let's
Speaker 3: do that. So but Scopes himself was one of the
Speaker 3: adherents of the science side of things, and he said
Speaker 3: that Dayton trial marked the beginning of the decline of fundamentalism. Oh,
Speaker 3: I wish that were true. He said that in a
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five interview, I feel that restrictive legislation on
Speaker 3: academic freedom is forever a thing of the past. That
Speaker 3: was not a very good prophet prophecy. It's not very
Speaker 3: prophetic at all. So that was, you know, that was
Speaker 3: one of the things that I wanted to mention. Other
Speaker 3: paragraphing articles said that for the evangelical right. Gould noted,
Speaker 3: creationism is a mere stocking horse in a political program
Speaker 3: that would ban abortion, erase political and social gains of women,
Speaker 3: and reinstitute all the jingoism and distrust of learning. That
Speaker 3: prepares a nation for demagoguery. So that's kind of, yeah,
Speaker 3: what's happening. And now that had predictive power if you're
Speaker 3: looking at today. The whole thing was just a test
Speaker 3: of bad ideas and to see if they could build
Speaker 3: on it and convince the public to acquiesce to authoritarian rule.
Speaker 3: Again had predictive power.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned I mentioned Missouri and Alabama as some
Speaker 1: of the battleground states, but Phoebe, you had mentioned Kansas too.
Speaker 1: Can you fill us in on that.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, the Kansas school Board decided that
Speaker 2: they were going to remove the teaching of evolution from
Speaker 2: the state curriculum. The places with anything, they're just going
Speaker 2: to just remove it, goodbye, get rid of that. We
Speaker 2: don't achieve that science in the classroom now. We don't
Speaker 2: bother that. It was the dying days of the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: and it was trying to make it out like it
Speaker 2: was the first days of the twentieth century, in this
Speaker 2: fit of anti millennium millennium bug fearing tomorrow's world isn't
Speaker 2: going to come for me kind of nonsense, where they
Speaker 2: basically said, you know, we want our children to be ignorant,
Speaker 2: we want our children to retain ignorance, and we don't
Speaker 2: particularly like you know, this modern rubbish that's here, there,
Speaker 2: and everywhere. So we're just going to get rid of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and this was picked up on by a number of
Speaker 2: science journals at the time. Was absolutely madness because it's
Speaker 2: scientifically illiterate, and it creates scientific i literacy amongst people
Speaker 2: in school because it has you eliminate. A fundamental bridge
Speaker 2: to understanding a number of things. Is if you can
Speaker 2: just go it's magic, and then it's there, what are
Speaker 2: you going to do? It's magic? It's magic. There you
Speaker 2: go next. And I mean they say that in life
Speaker 2: there is no magic, but the only thing that is
Speaker 2: magic is legislation and contracts, because you can just create
Speaker 2: something and then that's it. It's all changed. That's the
Speaker 2: only magic there is. And we see it here when
Speaker 2: they try to legislate actual woo woo magic La dadadi
Speaker 2: da out of their own heads where they can just go, well, okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to done from A to Z and we're
Speaker 2: going to miss out the twenty four letters in the
Speaker 2: middle because you know, it's just too complicated and I
Speaker 2: can't be doing whether my critical thinking skills and my
Speaker 2: cognitive distidance is too much it's and I'm going to
Speaker 2: just explode and fall over. I mean, we live in
Speaker 2: a world of pluralism, we don't live in a world
Speaker 2: of monoism or you know, restricted ideas and the attempt
Speaker 2: by a narrow fundamental sect that is Christianity in this
Speaker 2: context to try and force on every other person, not
Speaker 2: just their own sect, so Buddhists, Atheists, Jews, Hindus, Agnostics, etc.
Speaker 2: To adhere that intelligent design came along and created things
Speaker 2: is prima facial, unconstitutional, guff and crow barring religion through
Speaker 2: the Overton window like you're trying to race the America's
Speaker 2: cup through it. It is a nonsense.
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing a big push too. And you
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, at the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: that anti intellectualism, anti science wave that was sweeping across
Speaker 1: the country, and I still think we're still dealing with
Speaker 1: that today. We're dealing with twenty years of people denying science.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with people still denying it today, getting even
Speaker 1: worse at it at some points. Do you think that
Speaker 1: we're ever going to get out of this battle?
Speaker 4: Yes, when that generation dies, well now it dies, but
Speaker 4: Scots generation Scott's generation dad, and we're still in their
Speaker 4: battle it's not a generational questions.
Speaker 2: It is a generational question because we're seeing more and
Speaker 2: more people are no longer only getting their education from school.
Speaker 2: Peer education, the Internet, access to wider resources than just
Speaker 2: what is given to you by your parents and by
Speaker 2: your school is the fundamental thing of Generation Z, generation Alpha,
Speaker 2: and soon to be Generation Beta when it does actually
Speaker 2: turn up in full force, because information will destroy and
Speaker 2: education will eliminate. But yes, conspiracy theories and all that
Speaker 2: exist on social media and all that, but people like us,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of people like us, and
Speaker 2: as we're seen in Britain when it came to the
Speaker 2: media nonsense surrounding rioting in the streets and far right
Speaker 2: lunatics taking over. When you actually get onto the ground
Speaker 2: and see the reality in my former home city of
Speaker 2: brightn and Hove, where four thousand anti fascist protest has
Speaker 2: turned up to fifty fascist protesters in the streets, you
Speaker 2: realize that reality is not what's on social media. People
Speaker 2: do educate themselves and the education system that was the
Speaker 2: only thing that people used to get any information from
Speaker 2: is no longer that exclusive source.
Speaker 1: I just look at you know, you say, people go
Speaker 1: to the internet and look and I see the other
Speaker 1: things out there too, like can Ham and cantoven right,
Speaker 1: And there are people still while looking at this, looking
Speaker 1: at AIG. So that's why I say, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it's a generational thing, because this information is still
Speaker 1: being perpetuated. I talk to younger people online all the
Speaker 1: time that are pushing these this creationism, to pushing intelligent desime,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that we're getting.
Speaker 2: Away doing it online. When did you actually go and
Speaker 2: speak to people in reality, the offline, who have actually
Speaker 2: gone to a real world that is not the Internet.
Speaker 1: I live, I am surrounded by these people where I live.
Speaker 1: I talk to the I talk to these people every day.
Speaker 1: They come into These anti science people come into my
Speaker 1: store all the time. This I'm not just I'm not
Speaker 1: just seeing I'm not just seeing these people on the internet.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a lot of young people on the Internet.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what scares me. But I have people
Speaker 1: walking into my store every day with these type of attitudes.
Speaker 2: And I think that that is a that is actually
Speaker 2: a shrinking percentage of the population. It's just a more
Speaker 2: voluble and noticeable because people see the internet as they
Speaker 2: think that everybody deserves to hear their opinion on something.
Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily mean that their opinion is more representative.
Speaker 2: It just means that they're more licensed to give a
Speaker 2: total stranger their opinion because that's what social media has done.
Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily mean that people have a greater level
Speaker 2: of actually believing this is just that more people who
Speaker 2: are energized by this. As my mother says, the people
Speaker 2: who shout loudest should be ignored first.
Speaker 3: Well, the subtext too of this is that there is
Speaker 3: a large, organized right wing effort to turn the US
Speaker 3: into a theocratic dictatorship creationism, anti LGBT, flat earth, anti trans,
Speaker 3: anti woke rhetoric as a way of normalizing anti democratic
Speaker 3: and anti republican values. And I say that because we're
Speaker 3: not a democracy, we are a republic, but values on
Speaker 3: which this country was founded. And of course all the
Speaker 3: politicians side with the perceived winning team right, And that's
Speaker 3: why the extremist right has had all the normal conservative
Speaker 3: signed on to gain power as they had, and because
Speaker 3: they do have an ever shrinking adherence to their particular beliefs.
Speaker 3: So they are in the throws, the death throws of
Speaker 3: their philosophy and their approach to life. I agree with
Speaker 3: you their Phoebe, and I think that is spurring a
Speaker 3: lot of the issues that we're having today are made
Speaker 3: issues because there's a group of very privileged people who
Speaker 3: are starting to fear losing their privilege.
Speaker 1: Well, this is great conversation and I really like to
Speaker 1: hear what some of our viewers think about it, So
Speaker 1: leave a comment or drop us an email at nonprofits
Speaker 1: at atheist typeancommunity dot org.