The Scopes Trial in 1925 occurred after Tennessee teacher John Scopes was accused of teaching evolution in his classroom and had thus violated the Butler Act (which classified teaching evolution as a misdemeanor). His case was used by pro-evolutionists in order to expose the unconstitutionality of the Butler Act and it eventually made its way up to the Supreme Court. Scopes was found guilty and the Butler Act remained constitutional.
In 2005, this trial rose to prominence once more in Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District as supporters of a intelligent design and creationism in Pennsylvania pushed for state legislation that would make it easier for teachers to bring unscientific ideas into their science classrooms in public schools. Intelligent design is a belief that life and the universe could not have happened by chance and was instead "designed" by some "intelligent" entity. Backers of the bills invoked Scopes as an icon for independent thinking. They believe that because he supported teaching controversial topics he would've backed their attempts at bringing creationism, a belief not widely supported, back into classrooms. The court eventually ruled against intelligent design which has become largely discredited as a pseudoscience.
An important fixture in the intelligent design movement is the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative, non-profit think tank based in Seattle. It aims to permit the teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent design beliefs in public high school science courses in the US. Leaders in the movement state that their belief exposes the limitations of science and naturalism (a belief that only natural forces, as opposed to supernatural or spiritual forces, exist and operate in the world). They hope to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview" and do so by speaking of intelligent design in secular terms and avoid explicitly stating who exactly this designer could be. The movement has experienced largely no major successes in recent years and the Discovery Institute is currently inactive.
In the decades that have followed the Scopes Trial the validity of evolution in the classroom has continued in America despite the large acceptance of Darwin's theory and intelligent design is an example of a modern opponent to evolution.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/scopes-trial
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scopes-creationism-education/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
I really like how you connected Scopes' teaching of darwinism with the idea of creationism. Even though the two ideas take totally different stances on evolution, it was their radicalness that caused supporters of one to argue in favor of the other. It is also interesting to note how the ban on teaching evolution wasn't an outright violation of the separation of church and state, because it didn't force teachers to teach religious principles. It instead outlawed the main contradictory idea to religion, which was an admittedly genius way to circumvent this demanded separation.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that you argue that Clarence Darrow, though in the Scopes Trial he argued for the teaching of evolution, would side with those believing in Intelligent Design simply because both groups are breaking the law by teaching what they teach. Also it is interesting to think about the role of government. Can government really decide that a theory is right, and that other beliefs (e.g Intelligent Design) should not be allowed to be taught? Obviously the group that gets to decide what is and isn't taught in public schools has a lot of power.
ReplyDeleteI like how you bring up a case that had so many parallels with the Scopes case. I think it's very strange that such a heavily based religious idea was even thought to be allowed in public schools. Even though they state they wouldn’t talk about a creator, it would be very easy to figure out the creator in most cases would be God. We know that religion can't be taught to us at public schools, and this protection of the 1st amendment started in the 1980s with Stone v. Graham (1980). Stone v. Graham ruled that religious ideas (the ten commandments) can't be taught at public schools. Even though they tried to claim the teachings weren’t religious, I think that it would have ultimately become a very religious course and violated the 1st amendment.
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https://www.oyez.org/cases/1980/80-321
This was really interesting, and I liked that you included how Scopes was related to this trial. Another court case that involved creationism was the Edwards vs Aguillard case, which banned the teaching of creation science. The term "intelligent design" was instead used as an alternate to creationism in textbooks so supporters could continue to spread their ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a really strange twist that the people advocating for intelligent design would use Scopes to show how they should be listen to, as Scopes was an advocate for evolution and darwinism. However, you explain it very well, and it's really cool to see how trials from the past can relate and even shape trials of the future, especially when it comes to something like how science is taught, as that effects us heavily as students.
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ReplyDeleteI like how you connected Scope's teaching of evolution with creationism. It was an interesting twist and it showed the parallels between these two things. I really enjoyed reading your comparisons of the trial as well and finding the connections between them. I never thought about this in this way, so your article brought a lot of insight to both the trials and the two concepts.
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