The Scopes Monkey Trial

During the trial, many interesting things happened. To pick one, Clarence Darrow called William Jennings Bryan to the stand to examine him. Darrow asked Bryan a lot of questions regarding how literal the bible. Bryan actually finally admitted that he didn't believe the bible was 100% accurate. This made public opinion on fundamentalism and Bryan himself start to become more negative. Darrow was asking all of these questions and using all kinds of examples to try and prove his point that the Bible is not a trusted source of scientific information.

 

After hours of debate between Darrow and Bryan the judge decided the banter was irrelevant to the trial. John Scopes was eventually found guilty for teaching evolution in school on July 21st 1926 and was fined for 100 US dollars. (equivalent to about $1,330 nowadays.)  The only words John Scopes spoke during the trial were at the very end. Those words were, "Your honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom—that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust." 

 

Even though this trial was a big publicity event, it caused something much bigger. It started and even bigger and larger scale battle between religion and science. People began to question fundamentalism and others stuck true to their beliefs. The Butler Act was repealed in 1967. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the trail due to diabetes and fatigue.