The Scopes Monkey Trial 2.0: It’s Not About the Stupid Science-Deniers

[brooklynite]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/21/the-scopes-monkey-trial-2-0-it-s-not-about-the-stup

In the classic style of southern Appalachia, Dayton, Tennessee, has abandoned coal mines, epidemic obesity, and a median income that’s half the national average.

Dayton is also famous, loosely speaking. In July 1925, the town hosted the Scopes Monkey Trial, a landmark case in the history of creationism. Eighty-nine years ago Monday, a Dayton jury found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution in his classroom, in open disregard of Tennessee law, and fined him $100.

One feels, walking around Dayton, as if it has been swallowed whole by its stories—stories from the Bible, for sure, but also the grand fiction of the trial that has come to define the town. Torn by schism, 89 years ago—and torn again, today, by an evolutionary dispute at its little evangelical college—Dayton exemplifies two useful truths about the whole creationists-and-evolutionists hoopla. One: People enjoy a good fight. And, two: A nice, predictable performance has a way of subsuming the facts.

I spent part of this past weekend in Dayton for the town’s annual Scopes Trial Play and Festival. I toured the town in a tiny yellow school bus, met some relatives of the legendary boy named Sue, and attended a two-hour, music-infused reenactment of the trial, during which the audience sang hymns and the actor playing Clarence Darrow gave praise, in the final musical number, to religious freedom and the wisdom of the Bible.

[Jim__]

1. Your link doesn't work for me.

[DreamGypsy]

2. Here's the full link

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/21/the-scopes-monkey-trial-2-0-it-s-not-about-the-stupid-science-deniers.html

[Jim__]

3. Thanks.