24 Facts About Scopes Trial

1.

Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21,1925, in which a high school teacher, John T Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

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2.

Scopes Trial was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.

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3.

Scopes Trial was found guilty and was fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

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4.

Scopes Trial succeeded when the Butler Act was passed in Tennessee, on March 25,1925.

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5.

Scopes Trial, who had substituted for the regular biology teacher, was charged on May 5,1925, with teaching evolution from a chapter in George William Hunter's textbook, Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, which described the theory of evolution, race, and eugenics.

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6.

Scopes Trial mentioned that while he couldn't remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had gone through the evolution chart and chapter with the class.

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7.

Scopes Trial urged students to testify against him and coached them in their answers.

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8.

Scopes Trial was charged with having taught from the chapter on evolution to a high-school class in violation of the Butler Act and nominally arrested, though he was never actually detained.

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9.

John R Neal, a law school professor from Knoxville, announced that he would act as Scopes' attorney whether Scopes liked it or not, and he became the nominal head of the defense team.

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10.

Scopes Trial warned the jury not to judge the merit of the law but on the violation of the Act, which he called a 'high misdemeanor'.

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11.

Scopes Trial never testified since there was never a factual issue as to whether he had taught evolution.

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12.

Raulston imposed the fine before Scopes Trial was given an opportunity to say anything about why the court should not impose punishment upon him and after Neal brought the error to the judge's attention the defendant spoke for the first and only time in court:.

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13.

Scopes Trial was an employee of the state of Tennessee or of a municipal agency of the state.

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14.

Scopes Trial was under contract with the state to work in an institution of the state.

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15.

Scopes Trial had no right or privilege to serve the state except upon such terms as the state prescribed.

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16.

Scopes Trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and two ways of finding truth, one "biblical" and one "evolutionist".

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17.

Adam Shapiro criticized the view that the Scopes trial was an essential and inevitable conflict between religion and science, claiming that such a view was "self-justifying".

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18.

Scopes Trial escalated the political and legal conflict in which strict creationists and scientists struggled over the teaching of evolution in Arizona and California science classes.

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19.

However, George Gaylord Simpson challenged this notion as confusing cause and effect, and instead posited that the trend of anti-evolution movements and laws that provoked the Scopes Trial was to blame for the removal of evolution from biological texts, and that the trial itself had little effect.

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20.

Scopes Trial called Bryan a "buffoon" and his speeches "theologic bilge".

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21.

Scopes Trial brought publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, and was hatched as a publicity stunt.

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22.

Whole matter has assumed the portion of Dayton and her merchants endeavoring to secure a large amount of notoriety and publicity with an open question as whether Scopes Trial is a party to the plot or not.

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23.

Scopes Trial chastised the "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls".

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24.

Scopes Trial described Rhea County as priding itself on a kind of tolerance or what he called "lack of Christian heat", opposed to outside ideas but without hating those who held them.

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