Legacy

"Scopes is Scoped"

Some Facts to take to the Theater—An Ill Wind Blows Through Biased Play

By Karl Priest (Charleston Gazette 2-20-1998, 5A)

Kanawha Players presents “Inherit the Wind” starting today. If the play is anything like the movie, it will portray Christians as bigots and fools. Kanawha Players will present an example of hate theater, showing first-hand how playwrights and screenwriters can promote biases in the name of entertainment.

I offer some historical and scientific facts for the benefit of an open-minded theater audience.

John Scopes was a short-term substitute teacher without a degree in science and was actually a coach. He was aggressively recruited by the American Civil Liberties Union and a local man with a religious grudge to set up a case. Scopes did not teach evolution in school. After the charges were filed, he taught it in a car, just to be sure he was guilty.

Never mind that William Jennings Bryan died in his sleep five days after the trial, he is cast as a wild-eyed, hateful fanatic who falls completely apart when he takes the stand as a witness. The truth is, Bryan agreed to let Clarence Darrow question him in exchange for the same favor from Darrow. Darrow did not keep his word.

The trial transcript reveals that Darrow viciously attacked Bryan’s Christian beliefs while Bryan refused to allow objections from his colleagues. If Darrow had taken the stand, he would have had to defend his shallow evolutionary dogma. Like most evolutionists today, he wasn’t about to do that.

Let’s look at some so-called scientific evidence that was read into the transcript: Darrow refused to allow expert witnesses to be cross-examined, to conceal the lack of substance to evolutionary beliefs. The testimony that was recorded is easy fodder for creationists today. For example, Piltdown man (proven to be a fraud), embryonic recapitulation (drawings exposed as deceptions), vestigial organs (Who needs tonsils?), and the horse fossil series (Anyone who accepts that thinks Barney is a real dinosaur.). In summary, evolution 73 years ago was the same as Philip Johnson says it is today: “A leaky ship floating on a sea of reality.”

If the state was wrong in 1925 to force only one view to be taught, then it is just as wrong today.

Rational people (and that includes kids), if allowed to hear both sides of the issue, will likely see “Inherit the Wind” as the best evolutionists have to offer. Perhaps someday, Kanawha Players will present a play that portrays Christians and Creationists as people with intelligence and compassion as they really are.

(This article was condensed from what I submitted.)

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On March 13, DR. Walter C. Felty (retired Marshall University professor) was given space to respond.

On March 28 my reply to Dr. Felty was published as a letter which follows.

Dr. Walter Felty insinuated that I am a liar in his column of March 13. I will forgive him for that.

During a telephone conversation Felty impressed me as a nice fellow and certainly a scholar of history, particularly the Scopes Trial.

I ask the reader to do what we creationists always recommend. Look at both sides of the issue and decide for yourself. Read the first paragraph of Dr. Felty’s article where he accuses me of “plugging the notion the universe was created in six days a few thousands of years ago.” Then find my article of page 5A of the February 20 Gazette and see if that is a statement of fact.

If you are interested in a related example of bias (no fault of Dr. Felty) try a little math assignment. Locate my edited article at the bottom of the page and measure its square inches and the height of the headline. Compare that to Dr. Felty’s article which was placed at the top of the page and included a graphic.

Do you think the Gazette might lean toward evolutionism?

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THE BATTLES BEGAN AFTER THAT WITH THE “EVOLUTION RESOLUTION”.