Episode Transcript
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[00:01:08] Speaker B: ID the Future, A podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: The Scopes Monkey trial turns 100 this year according to Secular's legend, the scopes Trial represented a great showdown between ignorant fundamentalist religion and enlightened scientific progress.
So what really happened in 1925 and 100 years later, is science still suffering from the Scope's effect?
My guest today is Dr. Casey Luskin, Associate Director of Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. Casey is a scientist and attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over evolution.
He holds a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg and earned a law degree from the University of San Diego, where he focused on First Amendment law, education law, and environmental law. His BS And Ms. Degrees in Earth Sciences are from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied evolution extensively at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Dr. Luskin has been a California licensed attorney since 2005, practicing primarily in the area of evolution education in public schools and defending academic freedom for scientists who face discrimination because of their support for intelligent design.
Casey, welcome back.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Great to be with you, Andrew.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Well, this July marks the centennial of the infamous Scopes trial, and for those who may not be familiar with the case, let's just start there. Let's give a little background, take us back to 1925 and fill in the basics for us.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Sure. So the Scopes trial started in 1925 when the Tennessee state legislature passed a law that basically made it a misdemeanor crime to teach human evolution. And of course that was incredibly misguided you should never be criminalizing the teaching of science or, you know, banning the teaching of some scientific concept, even if you disagree with it. That's a terrible way to address this issue. But that's what they did.
And the ACLU then tried to recruit a public school teacher to actually teach evolution in hopes that they could test the law. And so that's what they did. They found this teacher named John T. Scopes and he taught human evolution. Actually, there's some questions about whether he actually did ever teach human evolution. But in any case, he was accused of teaching human evolution and he was then, you know, basically convicted of the crime.
Ultimately it went up to the Tennessee State Supreme Court which upheld the law and found that it was not unconstitutional. But that's really sort of just a background to the Scopes trial. There's a lot more going on here. And this was basically in the 1920s when radio had first come on the scene. And the Scopes trial itself was actually broadcast around the United States through radio. And a whole media circus descended upon the, this little town in Dayton, Tennessee where the trial was happening. So the whole nation basically tuned into this and it was sort of framed and postured as if it was the, the old outdated forces of fundamentalism versus the new forces of modernism and technology and science. And this is the way it was framed in the nation. And what also I think brought a lot of attention to this was that the two main attorneys, both the prosecuting attorney, the, and the attorney defending John Scopes. So the, so the attorney representing the state and also the attorney defending the teacher, were very famous in the United States at that time. William Jennings Bryan, a three time presidential candidate for a progressive political party at that time. He represented the state basically, you know, prosecuting Scopes in this case, defending the state. And then Clarence Darrow, who is a very well known defense attorney, he defended John Scopes. Darrow was sort of a materialist who got famous for defending this, this young murder trial of the, of these young guys who I think they may have murdered their parents. And he basically said, look, it was their genes made them do it, you know, not those exact words, but essentially a materialist view of human nature that we don't have free will, don't convict these poor guys, they had terrible lives. It was their genes, their upbringing, whatever. They can't be blamed for their behavior. So very materialistic view that we don't actually have freedom of choice. So he represented John Scopes. And so part of what made this trial famous was that the, these attorneys actually Took the witness stand, which was highly unusual to see. You know, the lead attorneys taking the witness stand, Darrow Cross examined Brian. And as the story goes, according to at least the way this has been retold in our culture. We'll get to this. Was that Darrow Humil humiliated Brian on the witness stand and made him look like a fool that he was not able to answer basic questions about his personal Christian faith and how to interpret the book of Genesis. That's not actually what happened at all, but, you know, that's the way it's been sort of crystallized for our culture. So the bottom line is that this July, July of 2025, we are celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Scopes trial 100 years ago. And so the question we want to ask sort of today is what has changed in the last hundred years? What has happened post Scopes? How did it influence our culture? And where are we at today? You know, is Scopes still important? I would say it's highly irrelevant to what's going on in the evolution, intelligent design, et cetera debate today. And this cultural sort of controversy and scientific debate, it's not at all relevant. But yet we still feel the after effects of Scopes. But maybe not in the way that some folks might think. I'm sure we'll get to that.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So it sounded like a sensational event that was kind of mass entertainment for people as radio was in its infancy and very interesting and colorful set of characters.
Well, things were relatively quiet after the trial for a while, but 1959 saw the centennial celebration of Charles Darwin's publication of his famous book on the Origin of Species, which certainly stirred up the debate again.
And then the year after 1960, a movie came out depicting the Scope's trial. It was called Inherit the Wind. Was it a fair interpretation of the trial?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: No. In fact, Inherit the Wind as a film has been widely criticized for basically misrepresenting the actual facts that happened at the trial. I believe that the. It was based upon a play that was first written in 1955 and then it was turned into a.
This movie, Inherit the Wind. And many folks have seen this film in high school, you know, English class. It's been played and it, it basically crystallizes this stereotype that we talked about where basically Darwin skeptics are portrayed as sort of these backwards, ignorant fundamentalists who are very bigoted and very intolerant and very ignorant about science versus the progressive, you know, and enlightened, winsome, freedom loving science and educators who, who represent the evolutionists. Okay, so it's portrayed this stereotype and, and Philip Johnson, the very well known pro ID law professor who passed away a few years ago, he actually called it the Inherit the Wind stereotype. And it's basically the stereotype that Darwin skeptics are foolish ignorant. Actually I'm going to quote a couple people here. Eugenie Scott, who of course is a leading pro evolution activist, she said that in the film, quote anti evolutionists and fundamentalists in general were portrayed as foolish, unthinking zealots. And Edward Cottle, who's a professor of journalism emeritus at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, he said both the plane especially the movie portrayed fundamentalists as ignorance backward bigots flailing against the progressive scientific forces of learning and science. And of course, you know, the sci. The evolutionists get all the good qualities. So right there you've got this attempt to really promote stereotypes. And I think that the fact that this film is, has been shown on high school and college campuses all around the United States. I mean almost anybody. Andrew, you didn't grow up here in the US but I mean if you had gone to high school here you probably would have seen this film. I certainly remember watching it.
It's just very much a part of American culture and learning about the history of the early 20th century. But there are, there are some very clear historical inaccuracies. So there's a great book by a law professor named Edward Larson called called Summer for the Gods where he basically critiques a lot of the false history that is retold in this book or in the movie, in the play. And one of the main problems is that it portrays William Jennings Bryan as if he was humiliated on the witness stand and unable to actually answer the questions about his own personal religious beliefs. In fact, even Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that the play and the movie portray this inaccurately. And here's what Gould says. He says, quote, the most celebrated moment when Darrow supposedly forced Brian to admit that the days of creation might have spanned more than 24 hours. Brian was not a young earth creationist. He was sort of an old Earther and had an old earth creation type belief. And Gould says that these represented Brian's free will statements about his own and well known personal beliefs. He had never been a strict biblical literalist. It was not a fatal inconsistency exposed by Darrow's relentless questioning.
Ronald Numbers know, who's also a well known historian of science, he says that during the Scopes trial Brian readily conceded that the world was far older than 6,000 years. And basically, you know, that was his own view. Another well known historian of this, of evolution in this topic, Peter Bowler, he calls it a myth that, quote, became enshrined in the popular imagination and Inherit the Wind, that the Scopes trial was, quote, a defeat for the traditional forces. And that, quote, fundamentalists were exposed as country hicks who were out of touch with the modern world and they then retreated into the hills. So, you know, this Inherit the Wit stereotype, that these fundamentalists, these traditional religious folks, were beaten and they then sort of had no cultural influence and this was just a huge humiliation. This, according to historians, is sort of a stereotype or a myth that has been put forth by Inherit the Wind.
And another problem that I would say also with the film is that it whitewashes the textbook that John Scopes actually used when he was teaching biology. A lot of folks don't know this, but the biology textbook that John Scopes was using to teach evolution was titled A Civic Biology. And it was highly, highly racist. This textbook. And these are exact quotes. It called, quote, the Ethiopian or Negro type, casting them at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And then it said that the Caucasians, quote, represented by the white civilized inhabitants of Europe and America were, quote, the highest type of all. I mean, absolutely sickening racial hierarchies that are promoted by this textbook. And it even depicted the poor and the sick and the disabled as, quote, parasites. And it said that, quote, if such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading, unquote. So this was Certainly in the 1920s, the heyday of evolutionary racism and eugenics that was directly inspired by belief in evolutionary theory, absolutely reflected in this very prominent textbook that was used around the United States at this time. And, you know, you watch Inherit the Wind, the Wind, and it portrays the evolutionists as if they are the enlightened, tolerant folks. And yet the textbook that John Scopes was using was promoted this terrible racial stereotyping and just racism, evil racism against blacks and also discrimination, bigotry against the poor and the disabled. None of that is, of course, you know, recounted. And here at the Wind, this has all been whitewashed from history. So, you know, I think that there's a. The true version of history has recorded a very different version from reality. The late Supreme Court Justice Scalia called this portrayal, quote, unquote, the beloved secular legend of the monkey monkey trial. And Philip Johnson, of course, called it the Inherit the Wind stereotype. But these stereotypes from Inherit the Wind have become deeply embedded into our Cultural psyche.
And unfortunately, I think that a lot of folks will talk about this more. They believe that these stereotypes are true even today. Because when you were in your college, you know, American history class, you watched this film, you know, we were shown in the. Your college auditorium, you know, on some Saturday night movie. And everybody cheers for the, for the evolutionists and booze for the, you know, the bigoted fundamentalist religious folks. People believe these stereotypes are true. And it's had a major impact on the way this issue even plays out today.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. So the trial itself was one thing, but then the art that came later, you know, the play and the movie really, I really like your use of the word crystallize. You know, it crystallized these ideas in the public consciousness.
Wow. Well, what happened in 1968 to fan the flames even more of a brewing cultural clash over Darwin?
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Well, there were a couple of things that happened in around this time, I would say the 50s and the 60s. In the. In 1959, it was the centennial anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. And there was a huge celebration at the University of Chicago that basically was, you know, remembering what, what the influence of Darwinism had been. But at this you saw leading evolutionary scientists basically saying, look, evolution is true and it has vanquished religion. Okay? So Julian Huxley, the grandson of, of T.H. huxley, a prominent biologist, also a eugenicist himself, he proclaimed that Darwinianism has come to age, so to speak, we are no longer having to bother about establishing the fact of evolution. And he went on to say, this was during a CBS broadcast in 1959 celebrating the 100th anniversary of origin of Species. He said Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere is rational of rational discussion. And Peter Bowler, the historian of evolution, says it was because of this sort of triumphalistic human know, bashing of religion in the name of Darwin that that caused what he calls the modern creationist backlash. So actually, you know, creationism that Sturda got going in the 1960s and 70s was a direct response to a lot of this very triumphalistic anti religious rhetoric that was coming out from the scientific community related to Darwinism at that time.
And so in 1968, oh, another thing that happened in the late 50s was the Soviets launched Sputnik, right. And this was a big win for the Soviet Union in the space race. The first satellite to orbit the earth. And as a result, there was a renewed push on science education in the United States. That was good. We needed to Do a better job with science education. But one of the sort of effects of that push for science education was they started these new biology curriculum projects, one called the biology biological science curriculum study that had a strong focus of promoting evolution in public schools. So you saw a lot of places in the United States, now we're learning evolution in ways that they hadn't learned before is being pushed very strongly in the public school science curricula, even in, you know, say, conservative southern states. So in 1968, there was a lawsuit by a teacher in Arkansas who was basically suing over a very similar law that they called these monkey laws that had been passed in Tennessee that had criminalized the teaching of evolution. Well, there was a similar law in Arkansas that basically prohibited the teaching of evolution. And this teacher, Epperson, brought a lawsuit against this law that had banned the teaching of evolution. And it went all the way to U.S. supreme Court and it was called Epperson versus Arkansas. And in this case, the U.S. supreme Court basically ruled that it is legal to teach evolution, which is good. I mean, they should rule that you shouldn't be banning scientific theories. I don't have a problem with that. I, I think it's not a good idea to ban scientific theories. However, they went even further and basically said if you fail to teach evolution, then that essentially will be viewed as if you were doing something animated by religion that is unconstitutional. Okay. So basically taking away freedom of control of the curriculum by local or state bodies, saying you have to teach evolution or you're going to be doing something that is illegal. And this then began a long line of cases that essentially led to where we are today, where the vast majority of schools teach the pro Darwin only viewpoint in a very dogmatic, one sided manner. We can talk about those cases if you want, but that's where we are today. And it began with that case in 1968, Epperson versus Arkansas.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, that's, that's great. Some historical context there to help us understand where we're at. And Meanwhile, through the 1970s and the 1980s, the pursuit of truth marched forward and scientific problems with Darwinian explanations of biological complexity they started to mount. Give us a few examples of the findings that would inspire the rise of the modern theory of intelligent design.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Sure. So, I mean, I think that the biggest discovery was in the 1950s that there is information in our DNA carried through a sequence of nucleotide bases.
And that sequence of nucleotide bases is information that encodes proteins. This was all very new science at this time in the 50s, 60s and 70s, we now sort of take it for granted today. But at that time, it was a huge discovery that there is literally code in our DNA that is going through an information processing process in our cells where molecular machines are reading that information in the DNA, converting it into proteins, and that this information is irreducible to the matter that is carrying it. Michael Polanyi published an article in the 1960s in the Journal Science talking about the irreducible nature of the cell. And he said, look, the information in DNA is not reducible to the actual matter that's carrying it, okay? And it's the ordering of these nucleotide bases that is carrying that information. But information is something beyond and above just the mere matter that's in the DNA. So, and so these are really striking discoveries that there's immaterial information in life that is basically running the show in biology. So as intelligent design theorists started to think about these things in the 70s and the 80s, they begin to realize, okay, well, where does information come from? Where do you get language based codes? Where do you get information processing? Where do you get molecular machines that can read and interpret commands and instructions? We also saw computers starting to become popular around this time. So people were seeing these analogies between computer code, language, information in biology, and they realized in all of our experience, these sorts of things only come from an intelligent cause. So when you had really the first, I would say, proper ID book that belongs to the ID movement, you know, the Mystery of Life's Origin, being published in 1984 by Charles Stackson, Roger Olsen, Walter Bradley, what they basically said is that this information life points to a quote, unquote, intelligent cause. And they were making very modern type ID arguments using these discoveries in biology of the previous. You know, now it's been way more than 30 years, but at that point, it had only been about 30 years since these things had started to be discovered. So these discoveries around that time, although the evolutionists were very triumphalistic, the science that was being done behind the scenes was actually setting the stage for, I would say, the overturning of, of modern Darwinism and showing that really it cannot account for the complexity that we see in biology.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: That was Dr. Casey Luskin giving us some very useful historical context on the original 1925 Scopes trial. The play in the movie based on the Scopes trial called Inherit the Wind, that crystallized inaccurate stereotypes of that trial into the public consciousness. And some of the things that happened in the 1960s and the 1970s to fan the flames of a brewing cultural clash over Darwin's theory of evolution.
In a separate episode, we'll continue our conversation. Dr. Luskin will explain that it wasn't just intelligent design scientists pointing out problems with the Darwinian explanation of life in the second half of the 20th century.
Prominent evolutionary scientists were doing it, too.
We'll also look at how intelligent design has flourished in the last three decades, despite the spirit of SCOPES being alive and well.
And Luskin shares the story of a brand new symposium at Vanderbilt University to mark the centennial of the SCOPES trial.
Do ID scientists get a seat at the table at this significant event?
Check out part two to find out for ID the Future I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for joining us.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
