Scopes

An “expected” slant?

Wednesday evening (April 12) on American national television, the History Channel presented “Scopes: The battle over America’s soul.”

While . . . the Scope’s “monkey trial” of 1925 in Tennessee was a huge turning point in American history (see The Scopes Trial … what’s the big deal?), we are somewhat concerned with how the trial -- and the Christians of the time -- were portrayed in the new documentary. For example, the History Channel’s website states (in the “day/history” section devoted to the trial) that the Tennessee legislature passed a law (the Butler Act) that made it illegal for public schools to teach evolution, and in another web section, it declares that Scopes was a science teacher. Both items are false. As we will demonstrate in extracts (below) from our new AiG booklet “Inherit the Wind: A Hollywood History of the Scopes Trial,” teachers were free to teach evolution in the state as long as they did not say that humans evolved from animals.1 Also, Scopes was not a science teacher and never taught evolution. Therefore, with this background, we will watch Wednesday evening’s program very carefully.

For the moment, we are pleased to offer you an excerpt of this brand-new AiG booklet written by Dr. David Menton (Ph.D., Brown University) that dispels several of the myths surrounding the “trial of the century,” especially as perpetuated by the horribly inaccurate 1960 Hollywood docu-drama Inherit the Wind.2

Notes

On another part of the website, however, it was made clearer that it was specifically forbidden in Tennessee’s public schools to teach students that humans evolved from animals.

To the credit of the filmmakers of the new documentary, they acknowledge that the 1960 film was highly fictional.