Scopes Trial facts v Inherit the Wind fiction
Book review: Summer for the gods
A review of:
Summer for the gods: the Scopes trial and America’s continuing debate over
science and religion
by Edward J. Larson
BasicBooks (a subsidiary of Perseus Books L.L.C.)
New York, NY, 1997.
318 pages.
by Carl Wieland
A Pulitzer Prize winning work about the creation/evolution debate is sure to attract
the interest of any serious participant. This book attempts to give the definitive
story of the events surrounding the well-known Scopes ‘monkey trial’
in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.
Summer is of course not unsympathetic to evolution. It would hardly have
attained secular acclaim otherwise. Many readers will know what I mean when I say
that its tone towards creationism is much like that in the book The Creationists
by Ronald Numbers, the professional historian who tried to write the definitive
history of the creation movement. Larson is not overtly antagonistic to creationists
(even sympathetic at times), but he does engage in some subtle ‘putdowns’
and distortions of history. Overall, his book is laced with a patronising self-assuredness
about the ‘truth’ of evolution. This is not surprising, as the author
is a friend, colleague and former student of Numbers, a self-confessed apostate.
I found the book to be well worth reading. The author’s access to many original
documents, and his professional background as a historical researcher brings interesting
and hitherto poorly known facts to light. It also goes more to the core of the human
side of the various protagonists than previous works on the subject.
The bottom line is that the Scopes trial (or at least the publicity surrounding
it) was a major setback for biblical creation. There are lessons in this book which
can help prevent us repeating the mistakes of the past.
The most important of these lessons concerns the philosophy of creationism. We need
to ensure that we are continually coming at this issue from the basis of the authority
of the Bible as the revealed Word of God. This may sound surprising in the context
of the Scopes trial failure. Conditioned by media distortions, we are used to thinking
of the anti-evolutionism of the time as driven by vocal fundamentalist fervour and
Bible-bashing. In reality, the anti-evolutionists may not have been driven by the
need to defend the authority of the Bible as much as we might suppose. Much of their
opposition seemed to stem more from personal distaste at the idea of being descended
from an ape, and the social implications some drew from this.
The champion of the anti-evolution forces at the Scopes trial, William Jennings
Bryan, ‘expressed concern only about the teaching of human evolution’
(p. 8—in fact the statute being challenged at the trial only concerned human
evolution). In other matters, compromising the biblical account had actually long
been the order of the day. In the early part of the nineteenth century, many Christian
geologists had abandoned a literal Genesis in favour of Cuvier’s ideas of
multiple catastrophes, followed by separate creative acts. By increasingly opening
the door to Christian acceptance of the notion of vast ages of earth history, this
led to further compromise mid-century by way of the ‘day-age’ and ‘gap’
theories.
The (otherwise) great Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge admitted that long ages
of earth history appeared to be at odds with the straightforward Mosaic narrative,
but nevertheless, he bowed to the authority of ‘science’ and so accommodated
his understanding of the Bible. Thus, even though he railed against Darwinism as
rank atheism, the nose of the camel was already in the tent. His successor at Princeton,
B.B. Warfield (who was conservative enough to sign the well-known ‘Fundamentals’
document), took this ‘re-adjustment’ of the Scripture to its next logical
step, calling himself a ‘Darwinian of the purest water’.
We need to remind ourselves of this inevitable consequence of compromising God’s
Word, in a day when there is again pressure on biblical creationists to relax their
concern about such things as the question of the age of things, the Flood, six days
and so on. (‘Why not just sort out this issue of ‘intelligent design
vs naturalism’ and worry about the rest later—surely we’ll
be able to influence more people that way?’). It never worked for the Children
of Israel in Old Testament times, either.
In fact, it may surprise many readers to know that the ‘Great Commoner’,
as the populist Bryan was affectionately known, would have felt perfectly comfortable
with any of today’s ‘intelligent design’ theorists and long-age
creationists. In a pinch, he would have been able to cope with some form of theistic
evolution, it seems, so long as Adam’s soul remained divinely created.
In one speech, Bryan conceded that it was possible that one would have to admit
evolution right up to the point of the ape. In another, he said that ‘no matter
how long you draw out the process of creation; so long as God stands back of it
you can not shake my faith in Jehovah.’ And of course, it is well-known that
in the witness box, the wily Darrow showed up the inconsistencies in Bryan’s
acceptance of millions of years in the face of the Bible’s clear statements
on six days. Not to mention that Bryan, not having a clear stand or understanding
on the historicity of Genesis, had no coherent response to the question of Cain’s
wife, either. The message this gave people was quite clear—if even this great
‘champion’ stumbled in the face of ‘science’, Christians
had no answers, and the Bible could not be trusted.
The questions that Darrow asked Bryan during the famous cross-examination were the
typical ‘village atheist’ challenges; in addition to Cain’s wife,
they included Jonah’s ordeal and Joshua’s long day. Even though the
prosecution complained that such questions had nothing to do with the issue of human
evolution, Larsen says that ‘in a broad sense … they had everything
to do with it because they challenged biblical literalism [i.e. they attacked the
truth and authority of the Bible.]’ That, of course, is why Creation Ministries International has featured articles attempting to give good, rational answers on each one of these
topics; Larsen claims that the questions favoured Darrow because, he asserts, ‘no
good answers’ existed (p. 188).
Without meaning to be too ‘down’ on William Jennings Bryan, he, like
many other great Christians then and now, failed to take the historicity of Genesis
seriously. This inevitably stunts one’s ability to develop a truly Christian
worldview applicable to all walks of life. Without a Genesis-founded balanced view
of mankind (created in God’s image, yet fallen) one easily falls into the
trap of either too low or too high a view of mankind.
For instance, consistent with the doctrine of a literal Fall, the Bible repeatedly
warns against putting one’s trust in man. Jeremiah 17:9 teaches that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:
who can know it? Yet Bryan repeatedly expressed an apparently naïve
and unbiblical view of mankind as essentially good, upon which he based his overwhelming
faith in democracy. He said ‘There is more virtue in the people themselves
than can be found anywhere else.’ After an election defeat, his message was,
‘The people gave and the people have taken away, blessed be the name of the
people.’ Bryan also said, ‘Have faith in mankind … mankind deserves
to be trusted’. But Jeremiah 17:5 states, Cursed is the
one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns
away from the LORD.
Larsen records an interesting comment (p. 40) from Vernon Kellogg, a prominent zoologist
writing during WWI (1917) who had spoken to German military leaders. ‘Natural
selection based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the Gospel of the German
intellectuals,’ he reported, and served as their justification ‘why,
for the good of the world, there should be this war.’
The fossil record played a prominent part in the popular debate over evolution which
was taking place at the time. The proponents of evolution pointed to what Larsen
calls ‘the remarkably complete collection of fossils tracing the development
of the horse over three million years’. The author’s bias is easy to
spot, considering how puny the fossil evidence of ‘horse evolution’
has been shown to be on careful inspection. The anti-evolutionists mainly focused
on the ‘missing links’ in human evolution. This is consistent with the
already mentioned observation that prime concern was not the historicity of the
Bible, but the dignity or otherwise of our own ancestry.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was the prime mover in the orchestration
of the Dayton event in the first place, hoping for a showy trial to win hearts and
minds. Considering that the ACLU has played a major role in crushing several (noble,
but in our view misguided) recent attempts to compel U.S. teachers to teach an alternative
view in addition to evolution, it was ironic to read the following two extracts
from one of its position statements at the time of Scopes:
‘The attempt to maintain a uniform orthodox opinion among teachers should
be opposed.’
And:
‘The attempts of education authorities to inject into public schools and colleges
instruction propaganda in the interest of any particular theory of society to the
exclusion of others should be opposed.’
It appears, however, that the statement commonly attributed by creationist writers
to Darrow, namely that ‘it is bigotry to teach only one theory of origins’,
is fictitious (p. 258).
It was an eye-opener to discover that the ACLU was actually unhappy with Darrow’s
overt anti-Christian stance. They preferred to take a more subtle line to avoid
alienating the ‘religious’ public.
The ACLU had a number of ‘religious scientists’ on side to show that
one could believe in both God and evolution. They shied away from allowing them
to give live testimony with cross-examination, however, because they realised that
this would reveal that these theistic evolutionists ‘did not believe in the
virgin birth and other miracles’ (p. 181). Bryan, to his credit, insisting
on being able to cross-examine these scientists.
Nothing much has changed in our day. If many of the professing evangelical academics
in organisations like the American Scientific Affiliation, or Australia’s
ISCAST (Instititute for the Study of Christianity
in an Age of Science and Technology) were subjected to cross-examination, their
trusting fellows in the pew might be staggered to learn just what degree of compromise
is almost invariably associated with rejecting the plain (and doctrinally foundational)
truths of Genesis. Today, the leading U.S. anti-creationist campaigner, the
atheist Eugenie Scott of the so-called National Center
for Science Education, is similarly conscious that to win the average
American to the evolutionist cause, one must guard against any sign of being antipathetic
to faith.
Mindful of the same PR issues, Australia’s most prominent anti-creationist
has cleverly cloaked his out-and-out atheism with feigned sympathy for ‘religion’.
There is no doubt that the historical realities surrounding the Scopes trial were
far more complex than my own understanding of them to this point. Larsen’s
book confirms much of what we have published previously on the subject, showing
that matters were far different from the mythical popular version of science vs
Christianity as portrayed ad nauseam in the play and movie Inherit
the Wind.
Even this play seems to have a more complex background than meets the eye. It appears
that the intention (of its human authors at least) of the play was not to enter
the origins debate, which they thought had been largely won by evolutionism already.
It was in fact written with the Scopes trial as a convenient setting to satirically
protest the McCarthy era persecutions. Its mocking caricature of fundamentalism
was a convenient by-product which has been greatly used of the devil.
It was interesting to read of a constitutional scholar, sympathetic to evolution,
who nevertheless stormed out of a Broadway performance of the play in disgust (for
the first time in his life) because of its distortions of the historical Bryan in
particular. Even Time magazine at the time slammed the play as ‘wild
and unjust’ in its portrayals. Since then, sadly, this unjust recital has
become deeply ingrained in the American psyche, as the play is performed by schoolchildren
over and over each year. It is this stage and screen portrayal which, as Carl Sagan
is quoted as recognizing, has had a ‘considerable national influence’,
far in excess of the trial itself.
In summary, this is a well-written book. Though the extent to which it will aid
the creationist cause is debatable, the Scopes trial is an important historical
defining event in the whole creation/evolution struggle. Thus, the useful information
and insights this book provides more than justifies having a copy on the shelves
of the CMI (Australia) library.
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