Shades of Scopes -- Evolution on Trial in Topeka

AP Reports:

By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. - Eighty years after the first famed "Monkey Trial," a second one of sorts opened Thursday, giving critics of evolution a forum in which to attack the theory.

A State Board of Education subcommittee began four days of trial-like hearings on evolution, and witnesses were advocates of intelligent design, critics of evolution or both.

The entire board plans to consider changes in June to standards that determine how Kansas students are tested on science.

The three board members presiding over the hearings are all conservative Republicans and receptive to criticism of evolution. Two of them, Kathy Martin, of Clay Center, and Connie Morris, of St. Francis, agreed several times with witnesses critical of evolution.

"I was hoping this hearing would give me good, hard evidence that I could repeat," Morris said.

....

Some science groups and many scientists contend the board is being pushed to adopt language that would enshrine tenets of intelligent design in the standards — even if that concept isn't mentioned by name. National and state organizations are boycotting the hearings, viewing them as rigged against evolution.

But intelligent design advocates say that's not true and argue that they're only trying to give students a more balanced view of evolution.

Read the whole thing here.

OK, it's a blatant publicity stunt, but interesting nonetheless. Unfortunately most people's perceptions of the debate have been shaped by the popular play and movie "Inherit the Wind" which was a grossly unfair and horridly distorted piece of propaganda. Anyone interested in getting the story straight should take a look at Ed Larson's Pulitzer Prize winning study, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion and also check out Stephen Jay Gould's essay in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.

Both are available at Amazon [note my ads along the right border].

Both men make the point that William Jennings Bryan was far from the flannelmouthed buffoon he appears to be in the film and play. He was an extremely distinguished statesman, political leader, and diplomat whose views on evolution were quite sophisticated.

Larson in particular notes that in the early twentieth century leading scientists and theologans, including prominent fundamentalists, were moving toward compromise on many points regarding evolutionary theory, but that the popular press, seeking conflict on which to report, kept stirring up controversy.

Gould notes that the variety of evolutionary theory being taught eighty years ago was quite racist and many aspects of that theory, as presented at the time, would be morally repugnant to nearly everyone today as it was to Bryan.

Both men agree that there was very little in the way of bigotry and intolerance on display in Dayton during and after the trial.

For other articles critical of the portrayal of the Scopes trial in "Inherit the Wind" see here, and here.

It will be interesting to see how this whole debate plays out. The authority of science has been seriously undermined by (among other things) sensationalism, unrestrained and often unprincipled careerism, the failure of peer review, politicization and outright fraud. There are also more fundamental problems with the applicability of science to public policy. It is not surprising that much the public has lost its once naive faith in "science." At the same time the weakness of religious authority is such that it has to try to justify its claims through the use of scientific categories of explanation and proof.

Both secularists and religious people feel weak and under attack and, as before, the media and unscrupulous politicians are stirring things up. Things are starting to get interesting.

UPDATE:

Check my latest posting on this subject here.

Stay tuned....