The phrase shown above first
surfaced in 1925, shortly after the ending of the trial officially known as the
State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, but more commonly known as “the
monkey trial”.
In 1925, Tennessee’s Butler Act
made it illegal to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. Scopes
deliberately incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant, and
eventually was found guilty and fined $100, a verdict that was overturned on a
technicality.
Eventually, the case went to
trial, and it attracted some big name lawyers. William Jennings Bryan, a three
time Presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow
spoke for Scopes. Although the trial technically was a defeat for the
fundamentalists and creation theory, anti-evolution legislation was not
challenged again until 1965. Even today, 14 states, including Arizona, Texas,
and Tennessee, use tax dollars to teach creationism in at least some of their
schools.
The monkey trial came to mind
this week as I monitored a biology class at a local high school. The instructor
had 3 different biology text books to choose from, and all of them covered
evolution extensively, in articles that ran from 50 pages up to almost 100.
Even today, there is not
universal agreement on evolution. According to the latest Gallup poll, roughly
40% of our population simply does not believe in evolution. That may seem
surprising, until you consider the fact that 20% of the population believes
that the moon landing was faked, 30% of the population believes that the Bible
is literally true, and more than 40% of the population believes that the earth
is less than 10,000 years old. Additionally, more than half the population
believes that global warming is a hoax, and was not caused by human activity.
For centuries, there was a
conflict between religion and science. In the 1400’s, Copernicus developed a
philosophy called heliocentric, which states that the Earth revolved around the
sun. In the mid-1550’s, Galileo also publicly proclaimed this philosophy, but
was roundly criticized by the Catholic Church, who maintained that the sun
revolved around the Earth. When Galileo refused to accept the Church’s
teaching, he was condemned as a heretic, and was placed under house arrest for
the rest of his life. It was not until 1922 that the Catholic Church admitted
that they were wrong.
Sadly, our politics have gone
in the opposite direction.
During the Nixon
administration, legislators on both sides of the aisle approved the Clean Air
Act and the Clean Water Act, and they also created the Environment Protection
Agency. There is currently a bill pending in Congress to eliminate the EPA
altogether, which makes no sense at all.
Some of today’s politicians
believe that global warming is a hoax, and some of them even believe that
global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese, possibly due to the fact that
the Chinese are now the world’s largest producer of solar panels (but still the
world’s largest consumer of coal).
In February of 2015, Senator
Jim Inhofe (who was then the chair of the Environment and Public Works
committee) brought a snowball to the Senate floor to support his theory that
the Earth is actually getting colder, not warmer.
On March 29 of this year, the
Chair of the House Science Committee (Lamar Smith) declared that the journal
“Science” was not objective.
A few years ago, I had an
opportunity to watch the BBC special titled “the incredible journey of man. If
you click on the links in the article shown below, it is clear that the human
race is a lot older than 10,000 years, and it clearly evolved from a lower life
form.
If you view the first video,
you will notice that early man bore a striking resemblance to today’s
chimpanzee, so it shouldn’t surprise to know that we share 96% or our DNA with
chimpanzees. For what it’s worth, we also share 60% of our DNA with bananas, which
I find extremely confusing.
For those who simply do not
believe that evolution is a credible theory, it’s worthwhile to read the
comment of Neil Degrasse Tyson, who said, “the good thing about science is that
it’s true whether or not you believe in it”.
The debate over creationism
versus evolution is likely to continue long after I’m gone from the Earth, but
regardless of what your opinion is, it is important to remember the words of
Mark Twain, who said, “ it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble,
it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
What do I believe in?
Well, I certainly support the theory of evolution, but I am also troubled by
the fact that all of Earth’s incredibly complex organisms didn’t simply just
happen, so there is probably a bit of Intelligent Design at work here as well.
