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The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘What should be taught in schools?': the infamous ‘Scopes monkey trial' turns 100
Her great-grandfather was a doctor called to attend to the lawyer who put the case for creationism. Her great-grandmother was related to Charles Darwin. And now she works in the courthouse where the 'trial of the century' – in which a high school teacher was accused of illegally teaching evolution – began exactly a century ago on Thursday. No one has a perspective on the 'Scopes monkey trial' quite like Pat Guffey, a former high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. As the city prepares to mark the centenary with a week-long festival including a dramatic re-enactment of the court battle, she is aware how its legacy proved both a blessing and a curse. 'So many people have the idea that we are uneducated, we can't speak correctly, we can't write a sentence correctly, we walk down the street barefoot with tattered clothes,' says Guffey, now 79 and the Rhea county historian. 'We are hillbillies, maybe, we have a hickey accent, maybe, but still, everybody talks their own way.' Guffey was a teenager when Dayton hosted the premiere of Stanley Kramer's 1960 film Inherit the Wind, a classic Hollywood account of the trial that immortalised the town as 'the buckle of the Bible belt'. She recalls: 'That was the biggest blunder. Oh, mercy! That was horrible.' One hundred years later the jurists, journalists and onlookers who crowded into the courtroom on sweltering summer days have passed into history. But the Scopes monkey trial continues to rhyme with the book bans, Christian fundamentalism and challenges to scientific expertise amid today's cultural and religious divides. Brenda Wineapple, author of Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, says the trial touches 'everything from the constitutional issues to civil liberties issues but also even civil rights issues about what you can read or think or censor. What should be taught in schools? Who should decide that? And even beyond that, the kind of anxiety that just the word science seems to trigger in people'. It was March 1925 when the Tennessee state legislature passed a law that made it illegal 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'. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York decided to challenge its violation of the separation of church and state as unconstitutional. The ACLU took out an advert in the Chattanooga Daily Times newspaper offering to defend any teacher prosecuted under the law. Business leaders in Dayton, then a town of just 1,800 people located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, scented a PR coup. They recruited 24-year-old John Scopes, a local sports coach and first-year teacher, to stand as defendant in the test case, even though he said he did not remember teaching Darwin's theory. He was arrested on 7 May 1925 and charged with teaching the theory of evolution. The plan worked and the media circus came to town. Dayton had to build a new airstrip to deal with the influx of 200 reporters and a new telegraph office for the more than 2m words they would transmit. It would be the first trial broadcast live on radio, presaging OJ Simpson, Oscar Pistorius and all the blockbuster cases that would follow. The defence was led by Clarence Darrow, 68, a nationally renowned lawyer who argued that the Tennessee law was unconstitutional because it made the Bible, a religious document, the standard of truth in a public institution. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, 65, a former secretary of state and presidential candidate who was the most famous fundamentalist Christian spokesperson in the country. The acerbic journalist HL Mencken, who dubbed it the 'monkey trial', wrote of Bryan: 'He has these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His brand is on them. He is at home among them. Since his earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among the folk of remote hills and forlorn and lonely farms. 'Now with his political aspirations all gone to pot, he turns to them for religious consolations. They understand his peculiar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of sense. When he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice like pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan.' This was the Jim Crow era and Tennessee was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, wrote that if Darwin was right about evolution, white people would 'have to admit that there is no fundamental difference between themselves and the race they pretend to despise'. But the judge excluded testimony from scientific experts. Darrow fought back by calling Bryan himself to testify as an expert on the Bible, posing questions such as where did Cain get his wife, how many people were on Earth 3,000 years ago and how many languages are there? As tempers frayed, the judge intervened and called an adjournment for the day. The outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion, however. The jury deliberated for nine minutes before finding Scopes guilty. He was fined $100. In January 1927 the Tennessee supreme court overturned the conviction because the judge – not the jury – had set the fine, though the court also upheld the law's constitutionality. Bryan was still in town when he died five days after the trial ended. A nextdoor neighbour called Mr Andrews went to fetch Guffey's great-grandfather, Dr Walter Thomason, in an effort to revive him. She says: 'He was already dead at the time, before they had gotten there even. He had died in his sleep. My great-grandfather signed the death certificate.' She adds: 'Mr Andrews liked what they called a hot toddy and so he told my great grandfather, 'Doc, do you think it would be good to give him a hot toddy?' My grandfather said, 'No, he's already dead.' But Mrs Bryan heard that and said, 'No liquor has ever touched his lips; nor will any do so now.'' Guffey also points out that Thomason's wife, her great-grandmother, was a Darwin. 'We have traced our our lineage back to Charles Darwin. It's not real close but it is traced back to him.' The state law against teaching evolution remained on the books until 1967. Guffey, who went to school in Dayton, recalls: 'It was just gone over, like you turn a page and nothing was said about it. Most of the biology teachers then were coaches so they were very interested in doing football plays and giving us worksheets. We did do some dissection but very little, so there wasn't a whole lot going on.' When Guffey became a biology teacher herself, working from 1983 to 2011, the religion versus science debate that played out in court still cast a shadow. 'I always tried to give my students both points of view and tell them what both meant but some of them didn't want to get into that. They didn't want to explain evolution because they didn't even want to talk about it.' Guffey now works at the Rhea County Historical Society, which is based in the original courthouse, a designated national historic landmark that includes a museum. The court offices moved to a new building a few years ago. Dayton will mark the centenary from 11 to 19 July with a festival that includes a symposium on the trial and activities on the courthouse lawn and around town. The star attraction is the long-running play Destiny in Dayton, adapted in 1988 from the transcript of the trial and performed in the original courtroom. Tom Davis, 74, one of the festival organisers, says: 'We have people of all persuasions in the cast. It's not that you have to be a creationist or an evolutionist to be in this. We're just looking for actors who are willing to do a sincere job. I'm not in the production itself but I know the cast regularly gets together after rehearsals, go over to one of the local restaurants and sit and talk about all sorts of stuff, including these issues.' Destiny in Dayton the city's quiet way of pushing back at the mythology of Inherit the Wind, a play that continues to be regularly revived – a new production opens at Washington's Arena Stage next year. Co-authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee changed the name of Dayton to Hillsboro and intended their work, like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, to make a coded critique of McCarthyism. The movie version continues to endure with indelible performances by Spencer Tracy and Fredric March as the duelling lawyers. Gene Kelly plays a cynical big city newsman, inspired by Mencken, who remarks: 'I may be rancid butter, but I'm on your side of the bread.' Davis reflects: 'Hillsboro was full of bigots and ignoramuses like Mencken described: people who were afraid of education. That wasn't Dayton. In 1927, two years after the trial, some of the same folk who planned or participated in the trial opened the first public school. A bunch of the same people worked to establish Bryan College. It's not that people were against education.' Davis, who moved to Dayton in 1976, is vice-president of Rhea Heritage Preservation Foundation and finds the trial is still relevant to America in the present. 'When you look at various public outcries, so many of them have a tie to the trial,' he explains. 'Public education – you can hardly pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing some reference to parents are upset about this or want to do that in public schools and fighting with school boards and so on. That was at the heart of the trial. Who has the right to set the agenda for public schools? Is it the professionals or is it the parents who pay for them?' He adds: 'You look at the idea of majority and minority rights. Who sets the agenda for what happens in America these days? Is it the majority? We claim to be a democracy. To most people, democracy means he who gets the most votes wins. That's all well and good but where does that leave the folk in the minority? Do they have any rights? All of this is critical to where we are as a nation.' Opponents of evolution have adapted their strategies over time, seeking to bypass legal challenges by reframing their arguments. 'Scientific creationism' in the 1970s and early 1980s aimed to secure equal time in public schools for what they presented as a scientific alternative to evolution. 'Intelligent design' in 1990s and early 2000s also sought to present itself as a scientific theory challenging evolution. But judges ruled that these anti-evolutionary concepts were religious, not scientific, and therefore their inclusion in science classrooms violated the establishment clause of the first amendment. Nothing, however, has matched the Scopes trial for drama, spectacle and legend. Edward Larson, a professor of history and law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, says: 'The trial survives but it survives as a myth and under the myth both sides are victims. 'Science, universities, culture, education is a victim of the mob; the people, religion, culture are a victim of the elites. We see that playing out today even in the battles over the universities and the battles over science that are happening in America. But it's not just the United States.'
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘What should be taught in schools?': the infamous ‘Scopes monkey trial' turns 100
Her great-grandfather was a doctor called to attend to the lawyer who put the case for creationism. Her great-grandmother was related to Charles Darwin. And now she works in the courthouse where the 'trial of the century' – in which a high school teacher was accused of illegally teaching evolution – began exactly a century ago on Thursday. No one has a perspective on the 'Scopes monkey trial' quite like Pat Guffey, a former high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. As the city prepares to mark the centenary with a week-long festival including a dramatic re-enactment of the court battle, she is aware how its legacy proved both a blessing and a curse. 'So many people have the idea that we are uneducated, we can't speak correctly, we can't write a sentence correctly, we walk down the street barefoot with tattered clothes,' says Guffey, now 79 and the Rhea county historian. 'We are hillbillies, maybe, we have a hickey accent, maybe, but still, everybody talks their own way.' Guffey was a teenager when Dayton hosted the premiere of Stanley Kramer's 1960 film Inherit the Wind, a classic Hollywood account of the trial that immortalised the town as 'the buckle of the Bible belt'. She recalls: 'That was the biggest blunder. Oh, mercy! That was horrible.' One hundred years later the jurists, journalists and onlookers who crowded into the courtroom on sweltering summer days have passed into history. But the Scopes monkey trial continues to rhyme with the book bans, Christian fundamentalism and challenges to scientific expertise amid today's cultural and religious divides. Brenda Wineapple, author of Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, says the trial touches 'everything from the constitutional issues to civil liberties issues but also even civil rights issues about what you can read or think or censor. What should be taught in schools? Who should decide that? And even beyond that, the kind of anxiety that just the word science seems to trigger in people'. It was March 1925 when the Tennessee state legislature passed a law that made it illegal 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'. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York decided to challenge its violation of the separation of church and state as unconstitutional. The ACLU took out an advert in the Chattanooga Daily Times newspaper offering to defend any teacher prosecuted under the law. Business leaders in Dayton, then a town of just 1,800 people located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, scented a PR coup. They recruited 24-year-old John Scopes, a local sports coach and first-year teacher, to stand as defendant in the test case, even though he said he did not remember teaching Darwin's theory. He was arrested on 7 May 1925 and charged with teaching the theory of evolution. The plan worked and the media circus came to town. Dayton had to build a new airstrip to deal with the influx of 200 reporters and a new telegraph office for the more than 2m words they would transmit. It would be the first trial broadcast live on radio, presaging OJ Simpson, Oscar Pistorius and all the blockbuster cases that would follow. The defence was led by Clarence Darrow, 68, a nationally renowned lawyer who argued that the Tennessee law was unconstitutional because it made the Bible, a religious document, the standard of truth in a public institution. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, 65, a former secretary of state and presidential candidate who was the most famous fundamentalist Christian spokesperson in the country. The acerbic journalist HL Mencken, who dubbed it the 'monkey trial', wrote of Bryan: 'He has these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His brand is on them. He is at home among them. Since his earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among the folk of remote hills and forlorn and lonely farms. 'Now with his political aspirations all gone to pot, he turns to them for religious consolations. They understand his peculiar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of sense. When he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice like pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan.' This was the Jim Crow era and Tennessee was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, wrote that if Darwin was right about evolution, white people would 'have to admit that there is no fundamental difference between themselves and the race they pretend to despise'. But the judge excluded testimony from scientific experts. Darrow fought back by calling Bryan himself to testify as an expert on the Bible, posing questions such as where did Cain get his wife, how many people were on Earth 3,000 years ago and how many languages are there? As tempers frayed, the judge intervened and called an adjournment for the day. The outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion, however. The jury deliberated for nine minutes before finding Scopes guilty. He was fined $100. In January 1927 the Tennessee supreme court overturned the conviction because the judge – not the jury – had set the fine, though the court also upheld the law's constitutionality. Bryan was still in town when he died five days after the trial ended. A nextdoor neighbour called Mr Andrews went to fetch Guffey's great-grandfather, Dr Walter Thomason, in an effort to revive him. She says: 'He was already dead at the time, before they had gotten there even. He had died in his sleep. My great-grandfather signed the death certificate.' She adds: 'Mr Andrews liked what they called a hot toddy and so he told my great grandfather, 'Doc, do you think it would be good to give him a hot toddy?' My grandfather said, 'No, he's already dead.' But Mrs Bryan heard that and said, 'No liquor has ever touched his lips; nor will any do so now.'' Guffey also points out that Thomason's wife, her great-grandmother, was a Darwin. 'We have traced our our lineage back to Charles Darwin. It's not real close but it is traced back to him.' The state law against teaching evolution remained on the books until 1967. Guffey, who went to school in Dayton, recalls: 'It was just gone over, like you turn a page and nothing was said about it. Most of the biology teachers then were coaches so they were very interested in doing football plays and giving us worksheets. We did do some dissection but very little, so there wasn't a whole lot going on.' When Guffey became a biology teacher herself, working from 1983 to 2011, the religion versus science debate that played out in court still cast a shadow. 'I always tried to give my students both points of view and tell them what both meant but some of them didn't want to get into that. They didn't want to explain evolution because they didn't even want to talk about it.' Guffey now works at the Rhea County Historical Society, which is based in the original courthouse, a designated national historic landmark that includes a museum. The court offices moved to a new building a few years ago. Dayton will mark the centenary from 11 to 19 July with a festival that includes a symposium on the trial and activities on the courthouse lawn and around town. The star attraction is the long-running play Destiny in Dayton, adapted in 1988 from the transcript of the trial and performed in the original courtroom. Tom Davis, 74, one of the festival organisers, says: 'We have people of all persuasions in the cast. It's not that you have to be a creationist or an evolutionist to be in this. We're just looking for actors who are willing to do a sincere job. I'm not in the production itself but I know the cast regularly gets together after rehearsals, go over to one of the local restaurants and sit and talk about all sorts of stuff, including these issues.' Destiny in Dayton the city's quiet way of pushing back at the mythology of Inherit the Wind, a play that continues to be regularly revived – a new production opens at Washington's Arena Stage next year. Co-authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee changed the name of Dayton to Hillsboro and intended their work, like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, to make a coded critique of McCarthyism. The movie version continues to endure with indelible performances by Spencer Tracy and Fredric March as the duelling lawyers. Gene Kelly plays a cynical big city newsman, inspired by Mencken, who remarks: 'I may be rancid butter, but I'm on your side of the bread.' Davis reflects: 'Hillsboro was full of bigots and ignoramuses like Mencken described: people who were afraid of education. That wasn't Dayton. In 1927, two years after the trial, some of the same folk who planned or participated in the trial opened the first public school. A bunch of the same people worked to establish Bryan College. It's not that people were against education.' Davis, who moved to Dayton in 1976, is vice-president of Rhea Heritage Preservation Foundation and finds the trial is still relevant to America in the present. 'When you look at various public outcries, so many of them have a tie to the trial,' he explains. 'Public education – you can hardly pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing some reference to parents are upset about this or want to do that in public schools and fighting with school boards and so on. That was at the heart of the trial. Who has the right to set the agenda for public schools? Is it the professionals or is it the parents who pay for them?' He adds: 'You look at the idea of majority and minority rights. Who sets the agenda for what happens in America these days? Is it the majority? We claim to be a democracy. To most people, democracy means he who gets the most votes wins. That's all well and good but where does that leave the folk in the minority? Do they have any rights? All of this is critical to where we are as a nation.' Opponents of evolution have adapted their strategies over time, seeking to bypass legal challenges by reframing their arguments. 'Scientific creationism' in the 1970s and early 1980s aimed to secure equal time in public schools for what they presented as a scientific alternative to evolution. 'Intelligent design' in 1990s and early 2000s also sought to present itself as a scientific theory challenging evolution. But judges ruled that these anti-evolutionary concepts were religious, not scientific, and therefore their inclusion in science classrooms violated the establishment clause of the first amendment. Nothing, however, has matched the Scopes trial for drama, spectacle and legend. Edward Larson, a professor of history and law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, says: 'The trial survives but it survives as a myth and under the myth both sides are victims. 'Science, universities, culture, education is a victim of the mob; the people, religion, culture are a victim of the elites. We see that playing out today even in the battles over the universities and the battles over science that are happening in America. But it's not just the United States.'
South China Morning Post
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Is the Bible true? US attractions like huge Noah's Ark replica argue that it all is
With a colossal replica of the biblical Noah's Ark rising incongruously from the countryside of America's Kentucky state behind him, Ken Ham gives a presentation he has often repeated. Advertisement The ark – the main feature at the Ark Encounter theme park – stretches 155 metres (510 feet), making it 'the biggest freestanding timber-frame structure in the world', Ham says. It holds three massive decks with wooden cages, food-storage urns, life-size animal models and other exhibits. It is all designed to argue that the biblical story was literally true – that an ancient Noah really could have built such a sophisticated ship, and that he and a handful of family members really could have sustained thousands of animals for months, floating above a global flood that drowned everyone else in the wicked world. 'That's what we wanted to do through many of the exhibits, to show the feasibility of the ark,' says Ham, the organiser behind Ark Encounter and its related attractions. Ken Ham poses with an animal model at the Ark Encounter. Photo: AP With that, Ham furthers his goal to assert the entire biblical Book of Genesis should be interpreted as written – that humans were created by God's fiat on the sixth day of creation on an Earth that is now only 6,000 years old. Advertisement All this defies the overwhelming consensus of modern scientists – that the Earth developed over billions of years in 'deep time' and that humans and other living things evolved over millions of years from earlier species.
Associated Press
20-05-2025
- Science
- Associated Press
Takeaways from AP's report on creationist beliefs 100 years after the Scopes trial
WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. (AP) — Some people thought the 1925 Scopes monkey trial marked a cultural defeat for biblical fundamentalism. But a century after what was dubbed the Trial of the Century, the issue is far from settled. Many American adults still embrace creationism — a belief in the literal truth of the Genesis account of the origins of the Earth and humanity. To be sure, Tennessee public schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted in 1925 for violating a state law against teaching human evolution. But it appeared to be a pyrrhic victory for creationists. That's because the star of the prosecution team — populist politician William Jennings Bryan — faltered when he took the stand as an expert witness. He struggled to defend the Bible's miraculous and mysterious stories. But creationist belief is resilient. Polls generally show that somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 Americans hold beliefs consistent with young-Earth creationism, depending on how the question is asked. That belief is most evident in a region of northern Kentucky that hosts a Creation Museum and a gargantuan replica of the biblical Noah's Ark. They draw a combined 1.5 million visits per year. This trend alarms science educators, who say the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and see creationism as part of an anti-science movement affecting responses to serious problems like climate change. An ark in Kentucky Ken Ham began speaking in support of creationism 50 years ago — halfway between the Scopes trial and today — as a young schoolteacher in Australia. He's expanded that work by founding Answers in Genesis, a vast enterprise that includes books, videos and homeschool curricula. The organization opened the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, near Cincinnati, in 2007. Visitors are greeted with a diorama depicting children and dinosaurs interacting peacefully in the Garden of Eden — life-forms that scientists say are actually separated by tens of millions of years. The museum features an array of exhibits, some of them added in recent years, that argue for a literal interpretation of the biblical creation narrative. Most dramatically, Answers in Genesis opened the Ark Encounter theme park in nearby Williamstown, Kentucky, in 2016. Its main attraction is the massive ark replica — 'the biggest freestanding timber frame structure in the world,' says Ham. It's 510 feet (155 meters) long, or one and a half football fields in length; 85 feet (26 meters) wide and 51 feet (16 meters) high. Like the museum, the park includes numerous exhibits arguing for the plausibility of the ark — that Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives had the skill and means to sustain thousands of animals in their care. The park also includes theme-park attractions such as a zoo, zip lines and virtual-reality theater. Similar theaters are planned for tourist hubs Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri. 'The main message of both attractions is basically this: The history in the Bible is true,' Ham says. 'That's why the message of the Gospel based on that history is true.' Creationist beliefs Core beliefs of Christian creationism include: — God created the heavens and the Earth by fiat in six literal days, with humans as the crown of creation. — The Earth is just a few thousand years old. — Humans sinned, and that brought death and suffering into the world (and, ultimately, the necessity of salvation through Jesus Christ). — God drowned almost all people and breathing animals in a global flood because of human wickedness. God spared Noah and his family, instructing him to build a large ark and bring aboard pairs of each animal kind to preserve them from extinction. — The flood explains geological phenomena such as the Grand Canyon. Science educators' concerns According to the vast, long-standing scientific consensus, the above biological and geological claims are absurd and completely lacking in evidence. The consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old; that humans and other life forms evolved from earlier forms over millions of years; and that mountains, canyons and other geological features are due to millions of years of tectonic upheaval and erosion. A 2014 Pew Research Center poll found 98% of American scientists accept evolution. 'Evolution and the directly related concept of deep time are essential parts of science curricula,' says the Geological Society of America. Evolution is 'one of the most securely established of scientific facts,' says the National Academy of Sciences. The academy urges that public schools stick to the scientific consensus and that creationism is not a viable alternative. Creationists, it said, 'reverse the scientific process' by beginning with an inflexible conclusion, rather than building evidence toward a conclusion. Courts of law — and public opinion Creation and evolution may not be front-burner issues today, but the Scopes trial set a template for other culture-war battles over school books and gender policies. William Jennings Bryan's words from his era would sound familiar at a modern school board meeting: 'Teachers in public schools must teach what the taxpayers desire taught.' The Scopes case involved the 1925 conviction of schoolteacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating a state law against teaching in public schools '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.' Tennessee repealed that law in 1967, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas law was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. The high court in 1987 overturned a Louisiana law requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolution. A 2005 federal court ruling similarly forbade the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania from presenting 'intelligent design,' as an alternative to evolution, saying it, too, was a religious teaching. Though distinct from young-Earth creationism, intelligent design argues that nature shows evidence of a designer. A 2023-2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 17% of U.S. adults agreed that humans have existed in their present form since 'the beginning of time.' A 2024 Gallup survey found that 37% agreed that 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.' The differences may be due to the phrasing of the question and the circumstances of the survey. Both surveys found that majorities of Americans believe humans evolved, and of that group, more believe God had a role in evolution than that it happened without divine intervention. Catholics and many Protestants and other religious groups accept all or parts of evolutionary theory. But many conservative evangelical denominations, schools and other institutions promote young-Earth creationist beliefs. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
The Independent
20-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Takeaways from AP's report on creationist beliefs 100 years after the Scopes trial
Some people thought the 1925 Scopes monkey trial marked a cultural defeat for biblical fundamentalism. But a century after what was dubbed the Trial of the Century, the issue is far from settled. Many American adults still embrace creationism — a belief in the literal truth of the Genesis account of the origins of the Earth and humanity. To be sure, Tennessee public schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted in 1925 for violating a state law against teaching human evolution. But it appeared to be a pyrrhic victory for creationists. That's because the star of the prosecution team — populist politician William Jennings Bryan — faltered when he took the stand as an expert witness. He struggled to defend the Bible's miraculous and mysterious stories. But creationist belief is resilient. Polls generally show that somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 Americans hold beliefs consistent with young-Earth creationism, depending on how the question is asked. That belief is most evident in a region of northern Kentucky that hosts a Creation Museum and a gargantuan replica of the biblical Noah's Ark. They draw a combined 1.5 million visits per year. This trend alarms science educators, who say the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and see creationism as part of an anti-science movement affecting responses to serious problems like climate change. An ark in Kentucky Ken Ham began speaking in support of creationism 50 years ago — halfway between the Scopes trial and today — as a young schoolteacher in Australia. He's expanded that work by founding Answers in Genesis, a vast enterprise that includes books, videos and homeschool curricula. The organization opened the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, near Cincinnati, in 2007. Visitors are greeted with a diorama depicting children and dinosaurs interacting peacefully in the Garden of Eden — life-forms that scientists say are actually separated by tens of millions of years. The museum features an array of exhibits, some of them added in recent years, that argue for a literal interpretation of the biblical creation narrative. Most dramatically, Answers in Genesis opened the Ark Encounter theme park in nearby Williamstown, Kentucky, in 2016. Its main attraction is the massive ark replica — 'the biggest freestanding timber frame structure in the world,' says Ham. It's 510 feet (155 meters) long, or one and a half football fields in length; 85 feet (26 meters) wide and 51 feet (16 meters) high. Like the museum, the park includes numerous exhibits arguing for the plausibility of the ark — that Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives had the skill and means to sustain thousands of animals in their care. The park also includes theme-park attractions such as a zoo, zip lines and virtual-reality theater. Similar theaters are planned for tourist hubs Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri. 'The main message of both attractions is basically this: The history in the Bible is true," Ham says. "That's why the message of the Gospel based on that history is true.' Creationist beliefs Core beliefs of Christian creationism include: — God created the heavens and the Earth by fiat in six literal days, with humans as the crown of creation. — The Earth is just a few thousand years old. — Humans sinned, and that brought death and suffering into the world (and, ultimately, the necessity of salvation through Jesus Christ). — God drowned almost all people and breathing animals in a global flood because of human wickedness. God spared Noah and his family, instructing him to build a large ark and bring aboard pairs of each animal kind to preserve them from extinction. — The flood explains geological phenomena such as the Grand Canyon. Science educators' concerns According to the vast, long-standing scientific consensus, the above biological and geological claims are absurd and completely lacking in evidence. The consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old; that humans and other life forms evolved from earlier forms over millions of years; and that mountains, canyons and other geological features are due to millions of years of tectonic upheaval and erosion. A 2014 Pew Research Center poll found 98% of American scientists accept evolution. 'Evolution and the directly related concept of deep time are essential parts of science curricula," says the Geological Society of America. Evolution is 'one of the most securely established of scientific facts,' says the National Academy of Sciences. The academy urges that public schools stick to the scientific consensus and that creationism is not a viable alternative. Creationists, it said, 'reverse the scientific process' by beginning with an inflexible conclusion, rather than building evidence toward a conclusion. Courts of law — and public opinion Creation and evolution may not be front-burner issues today, but the Scopes trial set a template for other culture-war battles over school books and gender policies. William Jennings Bryan's words from his era would sound familiar at a modern school board meeting: 'Teachers in public schools must teach what the taxpayers desire taught.' The Scopes case involved the 1925 conviction of schoolteacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating a state law against teaching in public schools '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.' Tennessee repealed that law in 1967, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas law was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. The high court in 1987 overturned a Louisiana law requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolution. A 2005 federal court ruling similarly forbade the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania from presenting 'intelligent design,' as an alternative to evolution, saying it, too, was a religious teaching. Though distinct from young-Earth creationism, intelligent design argues that nature shows evidence of a designer. A 2023-2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 17% of U.S. adults agreed that humans have existed in their present form since 'the beginning of time.' A 2024 Gallup survey found that 37% agreed that 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.' The differences may be due to the phrasing of the question and the circumstances of the survey. Both surveys found that majorities of Americans believe humans evolved, and of that group, more believe God had a role in evolution than that it happened without divine intervention. Catholics and many Protestants and other religious groups accept all or parts of evolutionary theory. But many conservative evangelical denominations, schools and other institutions promote young-Earth creationist beliefs. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
