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Essay On Scopes Trial

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The Scopes Trial, more formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, was a criminal case against John Scopes in 1925 for violating the Butler Act of Tennessee, which made it illegal for teachers to teach evolution in their schools. In the end, Scopes was convicted and required to pay a fine of $100 ($1,395.56 in 2017). The Scopes trial set the tone of the US on evolution and science in general for years to come; the trial and evolution as a whole caused a significant negative change in public opinion of science, a change that is still somewhat in place today, holding back global progress and development.
In March 1925, Tennessee governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act into law, which called for a ban on schools “to teach …show more content…

In order to earn Dayton a place on the map and “jump start [their] economy,”3 they hatched a plan to make sure the trial took place in their small town. This group of town leaders asked football coach and substitute biology teacher John T. Scopes if he was willing to be tried for breaking the Butler Law. Scopes agreed, and on May 25th, 1925 , Scopes was indicted by a grand jury. On the side of the prosecution was ex-Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, a well-known leader in the fight against evolution3; on the side of the defense was Clarence Darrow, who was well-known for being both a religious skeptic and an …show more content…

Darwin’s theory contradicted biblical theology in such a fundamental way that it was very near impossible for many people to accept; the drastic difference in the fundamental beliefs between devout Christians and accepters of Darwin’s theory made any kind of compromise between the two groups very difficult.
Despite the extreme differences in fundamental beliefs between followers of Christianity and the scientific community, a few compromises have been made throughout history. The most prominent of which were equal time laws. Equal time laws call for teachers to spend, obviously enough, equal time on both evolution and biblical accounts of creation; equal time laws also typically require that teachers make both evolution and Biblical creation stories seem like they have equal evidence to back them and similar support among

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