Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [16]
Most people think that science scored a knockout victory in Tennessee. Reading Mencken would certainly lead to this conclusion. Of Bryan he gibed: “Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor half-wits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards. . . . It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.” In fact, this was no victory for evolution or science, and it may surprise readers to learn that Scopes’s guilty verdict was overturned not on the merits of the case but on a minor technicality involving the levying of a fine of over $50 by a judge instead of a jury. Embarrassed by the bad publicity the state of Tennessee was receiving, the state legislators used a technical misstep to prevent the case from reaching the state’s supreme court. Who can blame them after reading comments like this from Mencken: “It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.” Worse, the controversy stirred by the trial made textbook publishers and state boards of education reluctant to deal with evolution in any manner. A study of high school biology textbooks before and after the trial revealed that the subject of evolution simply disappeared from the curriculum and was not taught for decades.4
Bryan’s story reveals a common fear many people hold about the theory of evolution. A liberal and freethinker on so many other issues, Bryan took a stand against evolutionary theory after the First World War, when he became aware of the use of social Darwinism justifying militarism, imperialism, eugenics, and what he saw as “paralyzing the hope of reform” through its program of “scientific breeding, a system under which a few supposedly superior intellects, self-appointed, would direct the mating and the movements of the mass of mankind.” He developed this view after reading the entomologist Vernon L. Kellog’s 1917 book Headquarters Nights, a recounting of the evenings Kellog spent listening to German military and intellectual leaders justify their militarism and imperialistic expansionism with classic social Darwinism—national survival of the fittest, improvement of the superior Germanic breed, and elimination of unfit races.5
Bryan became concerned for both his faith and his country. The enemy he identified, however, was not Germany, but evolutionary theory. “The evolutionary hypothesis carried to its logical conclusion, disputes every vital truth of the Bible,” he wrote in his final speech. “Its tendency, naturally, if not inevitably, is to lead those who really accept it, first to agnosticism and then to atheism. Evolutionists attack the truth of the Bible, not openly at first, but by using weasel-words like ‘poetical,’ ‘symbolical,’ and ‘allegorical’ to search out the meaning of the inspired record of man’s creation.” Scopes’s crime was to pass this poison on to the next generation:
The people of Tennessee have been patient enough; they acted none too soon. How can they expect to protect society, and even the church, from the deadening influence of agnosticism and atheism if they permit the teachers employed by taxation to poison the mind of the youth with this destructive doctrine? And remember, that the law has not heretofore required the writing of the word “poison” on poisonous doctrines. The bodies of our people are so valuable that the druggists and physicians must be careful to properly label all poisons; why not be as careful to protect the spiritual life of our people from the poisons that kill the soul?
Bryan’s fears about social Darwinism were rankled by the lawyer across the aisle. He narrowed his focus on Darrow, particularly on the attorney’s famous and very public defense of