Trials of the Monkey

by Matthew Chapman

  In fact the Copernican theory had not been fully accepted in 1925, at least not in some quarters. For supporting Copernican theory in the mid-1600s, Galileo was tried by the Roman Catholic Church and put under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. He was not ‘pardoned’ until 1988, when Pope John Paul II finally conceded that the church had made a ‘mistake.’ 1988! Over three centuries to concede a scientific point that every man of reason had accepted two hundred years before.

  Darrow closed the day with a long speech. He started out by thanking the court for its courtesy, in particular for giving him the title of Colonel, which ‘I hope will stick to me when I get back north.’

  He then went on to sum up the major issues. When you read the transcript of the trial, you can understand most of the complex legal issues expressed by Darrow’s fellow lawyers—if you concentrate. However, when you get to Darrow, he rambles, he makes jokes, he repeats himself, but by the end of it, everything is not only clear but obvious.

  ‘There are in America at least five hundred different sects or churches, all of which quarrel with each other over the importance and non-importance of certain things or the construction of certain passages … There is such disagreement that my client, who is a school-teacher, not only must know the subject he is teaching, but he must know everything about the Bible in reference to evolution. And he must be sure that he expresses it right or else some fellow will come along here, more ignorant perhaps than he, and say, “You made a bad guess and I think you have committed a crime.” No criminal statute can rest that way … Every criminal statute must be clear and simple. If Mr. Scopes is to be indicted and prosecuted because he taught a wrong theory of the origin of life, why not tell him what he must teach? Why not say that he must teach that man was made of the dust; and still stranger, that Eve was made out of Adam’s rib.’

  In other words, it was not only a bad law but badly written. Darrow went on for over two hours. As he walked around the courtroom, he played constantly with his suspenders, even at times putting his arms right through them and then pulling them out again. He would pause and stop to think, and then renew his argument with increased vigour.

  He concluded by saying, ‘There is an old saying that nits make lice … It is a good idea to clear the nits, safer and easier … Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man, and creed against creed, until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots burned men who dared to bring any intelligence or enlightenment and culture to the human mind.’

  Although some of the audience hissed at the end of the speech, most said it was one of Darrow’s best. ‘It was not designed for reading but for hearing,’ wrote Mencken. ‘The clangorousness of it was as important as the logic. It rose like a wind and ended like a flourish of bugles.’ Bryan sat through it, tight-lipped and unmoved. He looked ‘mangy and flea-bitten’ according to Mencken. ‘His eyes fascinated me: I watched them all day long. They were blazing points of hatred. They glittered like occult and sinister gems. Now and then they wandered to me, and I got my share. It was like coming under fire …’

  The judge adjourned court so he could work on his decision about the motion to quash. That night there was a storm. Some townspeople suggested it was an expression of God’s anger with Darrow. In any case, the electricity failed.

  As usual, a preacher was called to give a morning prayer before court began on Tuesday. Before he could start, Darrow objected. As this was a case involving a conflict between science and religion he argued that to have prayers at the opening of every day was clearly prejudicial.

  Stewart and Malone got into a brief but nasty argument over this. The judge intervened, overruling Darrow’s objection and asking for the prayer to be said. When it was over, he explained that because of last night’s power outage, he had been unable to complete his ruling on the motion to quash and needed to adjourn court until the afternoon.

  ‘If you want to make any pictures,’ he told the photographers, ‘make them now. I will give you fifteen minutes.’ Having struck several judicial poses, he left the court for the rest of the morning.

  That afternoon was one of the comic high points of the trial.

  Yesterday, Raulston told the court when it reconvened, he had dictated most of his ruling on the motion to quash and had given it to the court stenographer, a reputable woman, with instructions that no one should see it. Today, however, several newspapers in the larger cities were stating which way he had ruled. He was furious. He ordered the members of the press to stay while he dismissed the jury and the public and read a wire from St. Louis saying the St. Louis Star was carrying a story that the motion to quash had been denied. How could they possibly know? No one except he and his stenographer knew. The motion was not yet even completed!

  He appointed a committee of pressmen to get to the bottom of the matter and report back to him as soon as possible. The five pressmen spent the night playing cards and getting drunk on bootleg liquor. They knew exactly who was responsible for the leak and had from the start.

  The next morning, Wednesday, Raulston called on the chairman of the press committee, Richard Beamish, to make his report. Beamish was an outlandish character who wore extraordinarily loud shirts, each of which, according to Mencken, was given a name, ‘Garden of Allah,’ ‘Who Is Sylvia?’ ‘I’m Called Little Buttercup,’ and so on.

  In fine judicial style, Beamish stated that the reporter who had leaked the story had believed it to be correct and true and did not obtain it in any unethical manner. Beamish was prepared to leave it at that. End of story. Of course, he teased, if the court insisted, he’d be willing to give more details …

  Raulston took the bait. ‘I think the court is entitled to know how this information was had,’ he declared pompously.

  ‘Upon investigation,’ Beamish told him, ‘we find that the information came from you.’

  ‘Well …’ said Raulston, gaping at the courtroom in shock.

  Beamish immediately went on to tell the story. A young reporter named Hutchinson had seen the judge leaving court after Monday’s adjournment. Noticing he had a lot of papers under his arm, he asked if this was his decision. The judge had replied, no, the decision was being copied by the stenographer. Hutchinson then asked whether the judge was going to read his decision that afternoon. The judge replied that that was his intention. Hutchinson then asked if, having given his decision, the judge would adjourn until the following day? The judge had said yes, that was his plan. Now, of course, if the motion to quash were granted, there would be no next day. The trial would be over. Hutchinson deduced therefore that the judge was denying the motion to quash and sent the information to his paper.

  The judge was mortified but soon recovered himself and got ready to take center stage. ‘I shall expect absolute order in the courtroom because people are entitled to hear this opinion,’ he declared and turned again to the photographers. ‘If you gentlemen want to take my picture, take it now.’ And once again, he posed for them. Quash the indictment and miss this? Not a chance. It took him several hours to over-rule all the defence’s objections and when he was done, the poor man was worn out.

  It was unbearably hot and during lunch Scopes and Bryan Jr. went up in the hills to swim in a waterhole in the mountains. Scopes liked Jr. but thought he had been crushed by his famous father. They were late getting back to court, which began without them. Hays was furious with Scopes. No one else seemed to have noticed his absence.

  At last the jury was sworn in. The judge asked the attorneys to make their opening statements.

  Stewart spoke for about a minute, stating their side’s theory of the case. There was a law. Scopes had broken it. It was that simple.
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br />   Malone then got up, dressed as always in an elegant suit and necktie. There was, he stated, more than one theory of creation in the Bible and, through expert witnesses, both scientists and theologians, the defence would show that many people found no conflict between the Bible’s stories and the theory of evolution.

  Malone then glanced at his old boss, Bryan.

  ‘There may be a conflict between evolution and the peculiar ideas of Christianity which are held by Mr. Bryan as the evangelical leader of the prosecution, but we deny that the evangelical leader of the prosecution is an authorized spokesman for the Christians of the United States.’

  He then told the court he was going to read from the writings of ‘a great political leader’ commenting twenty years earlier on Jefferson’s ‘Statute of Religious Freedom.’

  ‘“Jefferson said, in the first place, that to attempt to compel people to accept a religious doctrine by act of law was not to make Christians but hypocrites … that the regulation of the opinions of men on religious questions by law is contrary to the laws of God … that God had it in His power to control man’s mind and body, but did not see fit to coerce the mind or the body into obedience to even the Divine Will; and that if God Himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ …” ’ Malone turned to Bryan. ‘These words,’ he said, ‘were written by William Jennings Bryan and the defense appeals from the fundamentalist Bryan of today to the modernist Bryan of yesterday.’

  Bryan sat tight-lipped, fanning himself with his palm-leaf fan, and did not respond.

  Stewart objected to Malone’s using Bryan’s name and personal views in the case. Malone asked Bryan if he minded. Bryan primly stated, ‘Not a bit. The court can do as it pleases … I ask no protection from the court.’

  Superintendent White was brought on as a witness for the state and testified that Scopes had admitted to him that he’d taught evolution. He was followed by two boys from the high school who confirmed it. When asked by Darrow if this had stopped them going to church or done them any other harm, they replied that it had not. Doc Robinson was called to testify that he’d sold Hunter’s Biology. Darrow read the offending passage from the textbook and then asked Robinson if, having sold the book to many children, he’d ever ‘noticed any mental or moral deterioration’ as a result.

  Stewart’s objection to the question was sustained and the prosecution rested.

  Darrow now brought up the first of his expert witnesses, Metcalf, an eminent zoologist, graduate of Johns Hopkins, and member of many scientific associations. He was also a member of the Congregationalist Church and had taught Bible class to college students when he was at Oberlin in Ohio.

  Because he had not yet made up his mind on the admissibility of scientific testimony, the judge excluded the jury, who would in fact stay out for the rest of the week. Having chosen to be jurors so they could get front row seats, they in fact saw far less of the trial than the average Daytonian.

  Darrow guided Metcalf through an explanation of evolution. Metcalf explained that there was a difference between the theories of evolution and the fact of evolution. That organisms have evolved ‘is a thing that is perfectly and absolutely clear.’ However, there are dozens of theories of evolution, some of which are absurd, some of which may be largely wrong, and some of which are probably largely right.

  At the close of the day, Judge Raulston told the lawyers to prepare their arguments about expert testimony which would be argued the next day, Thursday.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  My Favourite Creationist

  Most modern scientists—perhaps 99 per cent—believe the world is at least 4,000,000,000 years old. Professor Kurt Wise of Bryan College puts it somewhere around 6,000. The gap between these two figures is so huge it’s almost impossible to grasp. It’s the same difference as exists between six and four million.

  Six years ago I moved to New York. Four million years ago I …

  When I emerge from the museum, the sun is out and the humidity is down to 90 per cent. Without further lightning bolts, I drive to Bryan College, and find my way up to Kurt’s office, off the corridor of dead and ancient things.

  Kurt is a tall man with brown hair, a moustache, and large wire-rimmed glasses. He is probably in his mid to late thirties, but it is hard to say because he is so boyish. You might almost think the moustache was grown to make him look older. A white T-shirt saying, ‘Ho-Ho, the University of Chicago Is Funnier Than You Think’ is tucked into his corduroy jeans.

  I tell him I’m writing a book about the Scopes Trial and Dayton, and would like to talk to him about creationism. He ushers me in.

  His official title is Associate Professor of Science and Director of Origins Research at Bryan College. On his desk is a Bible.

  Born and raised in Rochelle, Illinois, a small agricultural town, he was the first student from his high school ever to go on to the University of Chicago, even though it was only eighty miles away. To earn money for college, he worked at the Del Monte canning factory, canning factories being one of the mainstays of the town’s economy. His father was general manager of the local newspaper.

  You can imagine Kurt as a child, collecting and hoarding things with enthusiasm and then defending his hobby with the resolution of the lonely but determined nerd. Little has changed. He is polite and willing to discuss whatever subject arises (to an extraordinary degree as will become evident), but the defenciveness remains, a prickly arrogance which rears up at the slightest provocation. He expects to be ridiculed, but also knows that nine times out of ten, whoever ridicules him will be less intelligent and less informed than he. He sits down in a squeaky metal chair behind his desk. The afternoon sun cuts into the room illuminating a row of photographs, some of his wife and his two young daughters, some of a graduation ceremony, perhaps from Harvard: a younger, paler Kurt in a pink robe with three black flashes on the arm.

  Kurt teaches his Origins course in two parts, the first from the perspective of theistic evolution, which is the idea that God used evolution over long periods of time to create the universe. The second half of the course is where he teaches what he really believes.

  He believes the ‘six days of creation,’ which some creationists see as metaphorical days, were in fact regular ‘earth rotation days’ because the same word for ‘day’ is used in the Ten Commandments when we are instructed to work six days and rest on the seventh.

  He rocks back in his squeaking chair and laughs. ‘So if the first word for day actually means “several million years,” then that means we’re going to have to work for several million years before we ever get to rest!’ He does this a lot, laughing as he talks, a high laugh, almost a series of yelps, but it’s not always clear if it’s from embarrassment or genuine amusement.

  He also confirms that he believes the world is 6,000 years old—‘on the order and magnitude of that’—and suggests that the fossil record was ‘formed catastrophically, possibly the third day of creation, the rising of the continents, and in events such as the flood in the days of Noah, and in the post-flood period as well.’

  To further bolster the idea of a young-age earth, he cites an early Egyptologist from the University of Chicago who put together a chronology based on ancient Egyptian records of solar eclipses and other planetary events, and Bishop Ussher (1581— 1656), who worked his way back through the Bible from the birth of Christ to arrive at a date for the creation of the earth of 4004 B.C. Ussher’s chronology was so widely accepted it appeared in the introduction to the King James Bible, the official Bible of record in the Scopes Trial.

  But Ussher did not just look back, he also looked forward. By taking literally the Old Testament quotation from Psalm 84, verse 10, ‘A day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day,’ and figuring human history as a week, he somehow concluded that Jesus would return in 1997.

  Kurt does n
ot seem to take this seriously. Why, I do not know.

  When I ask him what he is doing to try and prove his theory of a young earth, he throws himself forward in his chair so vehemently I think he’s going to smack the desk with his hand.

  ‘Science doesn’t prove a thing!’ he declares. ‘All I’m doing is searching around for a theory that best fits the data of the universe and the data of Scripture. Science doesn’t arrive at truth except by accident, and you don’t even know you’ve got it when you get there. Look at the history of science: a hundred years ago, what they believed is largely rejected now. A hundred years from now, most likely any theories that I come up with are going to be rejected. Let’s not be chauvinistic about our time period.’

  I point out this is not always so. For example, our understanding of the human body has been largely progressive and is unquestionably closer to the truth than it was a hundred years ago. He concedes the point, but says that with the historical sciences, where we’re displaced from the events and have only relics to interpret, it’s another matter.

  His position is unusual, though, I suggest, in that most scientists are looking at information and then forming theories based on that, whereas he arrives with a theory in place—that of the Bible—and tries to fit the information into it. Again he disagrees vehemently. He is no different from any other scientist, he states. They all enter the field with preconceptions. What about Darwin, I ask, a fairly traditional Christian with no particular view before he set off on the Beagle, and yet by … Before I can finish, he has come tilting forward in his chair again.