Scopes Monkey Trial

The 1920s was a time of industrial and urban concentration and shifting moral values. People began exploring and accepting new ideas, such as the theory of evolution. Evolution contradicted the belief that God created the world in six days and made man in his own image. Instead the theory of evolution claimed that men evolved from animals of a lower order then humans and this outraged fundamentalists. In the eyes of the fundamentalists evolution was …

…paper, with the Butler Act in Tennessee and other anti-evolution laws throughout the “Bible Belt” that remained until the 1970s, however, these laws were rarely enforced and basically ignored. The Scopes trial adequately represents how the anti-evolution laws were ignored both before and after its conclusion. Most likely the only purpose these laws served were to keep the fundamentalists satisfied as long as they existed and the evolutionists happy as long as they were ignored.