Ep. 355 What They Didn’t Tell You About the Scopes Monkey Trial
The 1925 Scopes Trial ostensibly featured the triumph of science over fundamentalist religion. Bob gives some surprising facts that may change your assessment, including long excerpts from Clarence Darrow’s famous cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The complete transcript of the 1925 Scopes trial.
- The History Channel short on the trial.
- Excerpt from the Civic Biology textbook that Scopes used.
- Was Jonah swallowed by a fish or a whale?
- Bryan’s final statement (that he didn’t get to deliver to the court).
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
I think you missed the entire point of Darrow’s questioning, Bob. He wasn’t trying to show that biblical stories were silly or that Bryan was silly for believing in them. He was trying to show, and you briefly mentioned this on the show, that Bryan picks and chooses when he takes the bible literally and when he applies his own interpretations taking modern knowledge into account. And he did this quite well.
It’s also absurd of you to try to paint Darrow with some kind of racist eugenicist brush. You could have at least read his Wikipedia page before recording this episode. Sheesh.
Dave,
I think you missed the entire point of Darrow’s questioning, Bob. He wasn’t trying to show that biblical stories were silly or that Bryan was silly for believing in them. He was trying to show, and you briefly mentioned this on the show, that Bryan picks and chooses when he takes the bible literally and when he applies his own interpretations taking modern knowledge into account. And he did this quite well.
A few things: (A) Every single pro-Darrow interpretation I have come across in my entire life, said that he humiliated Bryan’s silly beliefs. (B) Darrow called it a “fool religion,” which seems to justify what I said. (C) On the narrow point, no if that’s what Darrow was merely trying to do, he failed miserably. If someone says, “It was raining cats and dogs, so I came inside and that’s when I saw the defendant shoot the victim,” there would be no doubt about how the court should interpret that testimony.
It’s also absurd of you to try to paint Darrow with some kind of racist eugenicist brush. You could have at least read his Wikipedia page before recording this episode. Sheesh.
I stand by what I said as to the point of Darrow saying, “Should we sit here and take secondhand testimony from a black man?” (not exact quote) but I agree I wouldn’t have made the eugenics crack had I read his Wikipedia ahead of time.
Points (A) and (B): The silly belief of Bryan was that anyone should take the Bible completely literally. Now of course a lot of people are going to spin things how they want, but that was always my understanding of the story. Darrow’s “fool religion” comment is either him losing control (unlikely but possible) or him trying to get Bryan to lose control – a well known lawyer tactic. If he wanted to attack Christianity or miracles, he definitely would have gone more towards the line of questioning you brought up on the show.
Point C: Even the cats and dogs line makes the point. Not even the most radical biblical fundamentalist takes the entire Bible literally. So given that, they now need to provide a way to tell whether a given passage should be read literally or figuratively. This is not always as easy as it seems.
Point about the black comment: Darrow was definitely not a racist. He provided his services to black defendants, sometimes in high profile cases, and got a lot of criticism for it. If the comment had anything to do with racism at all, it would be playing on the racism of the judge and the other listening. Tennessee wasn’t exactly friendly to non-white races in the 1920s.
I imagine if we were talking about Austrian business cycle theory we could have a perfectly reasonable discussion, Dave, but I don’t see what the point is in continuing this. If you don’t understand “taking the Bible literally” but not meaning “it’s raining cats and dogs” I don’t know what to say. And I could just as well “prove” that Darrow has no personal prejudice against kids murdering their parents.
If you respond, I’ll read it, but I don’t see the point in me continuing with this.
I was only aware that this case existed; I didn’t even know the popular narrative about it, so thanks for covering it, Bob.
Often studying history gives you the impression that people from a century ago were smarter and more sophisticated, which can you make you pessimistic about the present. But Darrow argues EXACTLY like some stupid jerk on Facebook….so I feel a bit better now about our trajectory.
By the way, Bob, if you didn’t already know, there have been some exciting recent discoveries of sophisticated monuments from over 12,000 years ago that is currently rewriting the history of human civilization. On the other hand, it’s also now well established that there was a regime of truly massive global flooding, which occurred at the end of the last ice age. Now the debate is over how many floods exactly, and the cause. If you haven’t gone down the rabbit hole already. I highly recommend the work of Randall Carlson as featured on Joe Rogan. The amount of evidence he compiles and weaves with ancient flood myths is staggering and spooky.
Hi Bob! love your show! Listening to this before your new show on the topic.