A Valuable Lesson from the Scopes Monkey Trial

photo courtesy of  http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/ad69/MrThompsonGeo/TNvJohnScopesTrial.jpg

Someone's monkeying with the Bible and it has had disastrous consequences.  Please watch the video below of the Scope's Monkey Trial and then read this article.

The infamous Scopes Trial illustrates where the church has gone wrong in trying to compromise and incorporate millions of years into the creation account as recorded in Genesis 1.  The result of the debate between Darrow and Bryan during the trial was to make the Bible seem like myth and those who believe it seem like unthinking fanatics. Indeed that was the agnostic Darrow's intention all along. While Bryan, a Christian, tried to defend Scripture against Darrow's attacks, the battle was lost as soon as Bryan accepted the claim that the earth could be millions of years old. Darrow brilliantly exposed the double standard in Bryan's view of the Bible, i.e. that the biblical narrative of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish should be taken literally and that Eve being fashioned from Adam's rib should be taken literally, BUT that the days in Genesis don't necessarily need to be taken literally. Bryan's compromise on the first chapter in the Bible destroyed his credibility when it came to any other part of Scripture.

The following is a transcript of the exchange between the two men [1]:
(Darrow asking the questions and Bryan answering):

Q—Would you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old?

A—Oh, no; I think it is much older than that.

Q—How much?

A—I couldn't say.

Q—Do you say whether the Bible itself says it is older than that?

A—I don't think the Bible says itself whether it is older or not.

Q—Do you think the earth was made in six days?

A—Not six days of twenty-four hours.

Q—Doesn't it say so?

A—No, sir.

Darrow's strategy is evident.  He is leading Bryan to, in effect, deny the literal interpretation of the plain historical narrative as recorded in Genesis.  Darrow knows that the Genesis creation account as written is clearly intended to mean that God created everything in "six days of twenty-four hours". He knows that if he can get Bryan to display confusion concerning what something as simple as the word day means, then he can demonstrate that surely Bryan can be confused as to other parts of the Scripture as well. Previously Bryan indicated that he believed in a literal fish swallowing a literal Jonah and spitting him out on a literal beach after three literal days. Curiously, Bryan, who knows what the word day means in the historical account of Jonah, doesn't know what the word day means in the historical account of creation.  What Bryan has done is to allow the current scientific consensus of his day to cause him to reinterpret the plain words of Genesis to mean anything other than literal days. He doesn't get the idea of millions of years from the Bible, but from the speculations of man. He then takes man's theories and reads them into the Bible's account instead of letting the word day mean "a twenty-four hour day" as intended by the Holy Spirit inspired Moses. Darrow exposes Bryan's inconsistency, capitalizing upon Bryan's confusion over the understanding of the simple, straightforward account written in Genesis. If millions of years can be read into Genesis by a well-known Bible-believing Christian such as William Jennings Bryan, then can't biological evolution be read into Genesis as well? Since, according to Bryan's own words, creation didn't have to happen in six literal days, then why should we insist that man was literally created directly by God?  If parts of Genesis 1 should not be taken literally, then does any of it have to be taken literally?

Darrow continues to question Bryan concerning the word day in Genesis one.[2]

Q—Then, when the Bible said, for instance, "and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day," that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours?

A—I do not think it necessarily does.

Q—Do you think it does or does not?

A—I know a great many think so.

Q—What do you think?

A—I do not think it does.

Q—You think those were not literal days?

A—I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.

Q—What do you think about it?

A—That is my opinion--I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does.

Q—You do not think that?

A—No. But I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6,000,000 years or in 600,000,000 years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.

Q—Do you think those were literal days?

A—My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.

Michael Hannon, the author of the article which I am citing, provides an eyewitness account from none other than John Scopes, the Tennessee teacher accused of teaching evolution in the classroom. Hannon refers to what Scopes wrote in his autobiography entitled Center of the Storm.  In reference to Bryan's failure to interpret day in Genesis as a literal day, Scopes says:

These were astonishing answers. When Bryan admitted the earth had not been made in six days of twenty-four hours, the Fundamentalists gasped. The Bible had used plain language, stating that the earth was made in six days. . . . It seemed incredible that William Jennings Bryan, the Fundamentalist knight on the white charger, had betrayed his cause by admitting to the agnostic Darrow that the world hadn't been made in six days! It was the great shock that Darrow had been laboring for all afternoon.[3]

The sincerity of William Jennings Bryan is not in question here.  By all accounts he was a man who loved the Scripture and God.. However, because he compromised on the word day in Genesis, he gave the impression that the Bible cannot be taken at face value; if the current scientific consensus contradicts the Bible, then the Bible is wrong and needs to be reinterpreted to fit so-called science. Such compromise leads the next generation to wonder if any of the Bible can be trusted as a source of truth.

Trying to bend the Scripture to allow for billions of years has had a detrimental affect upon our young people. America's Research Group has done research as to why young people are dropping out of church after high school. They found that those from conservative, evangelical churches who attended Sunday school regularly as a child were MORE apt to believe that God used evolution to create humans than those who did not attend Sunday school.[4] They also found that 61% of young people who used to attend church regularly will drop out and not attend church, pray, or read their Bibles when they leave high school.[5]  The regular Sunday school attenders were MORE likely to:

1. not believe that all of the Bible's accounts are true and accurate
2. doubt the Bible because of the secular dates of billions of years for the age of the earth
3. believe the dinosaurs died out before people were on the planet
4. believe that God used evolution to change one kind of animal into another
5. more likely to have heard a pastor/Sunday school teacher teach Christians can believe in millions of years 
6. accept legalizing gay marriage and abortion
7. defend premarital sex [6]

Why do young people who grew up attending Sunday school have the tendency to have more unbelief and lower moral standards than those young people who didn't attend Sunday school?  One of the reasons is that we have compromised God's word ourselves by trying to fit millions of years into Genesis 1.  We say we believe God's word is 100% true, but when a scientist says that the earth is billions of years old we feel we must make that fit with Genesis. The problem is that it doesn't fit and young people can see that. They see us compromise and therefore they compromise too (see my article Even Isaac Asimov Believed in a Literal Reading of Genesis). When Bryan compromised, Darrow won. He succeeded in casting doubt upon God's word. For reasons why millions of years cannot be fit into the days of creation in Genesis read Did God Use the Big Bang to Create.

Sadly, it is in our churches, in our Sunday schools, and in our Christian colleges and seminaries where many of our young people are being led astray.  They are being taught that God's word cannot be trusted.  It is interesting that in a recent survey of Christian colleges, when asked to answer "Would you consider yourself a young-earth or old-earth Christian?", 77.8% of those in the religion departments answered that they believed in an old-earth, while 57.1% in the science departments said that they believed in a young-earth.[7] This same survey indicated that the scientists were MORE likely to believe that the Genesis account of creation is literally true, that the Bible is literally true, and in a literal flood in Noah's day than were the theologians from the religious departments![8] This tells me that the scientists know that there are scientific reasons to doubt evolution and an old earth. It also indicates that the theologians are compromising God's word to try to make it fit with an old earth and some form of evolution.  Therefore, if your child attends one of these Christian schools, he is more likely to remain a Bible believer if he is a biology major as opposed to a religion major!

It's time for us to stop dis-believing God's word in Genesis.  Our young people see us playing with the plain meaning of the word day and scrambling to try to fit millions of years into Genesis.  They see us unable to defend God's word because we won't equip ourselves to do so.  They see us accept the science of millions of years unquestioningly.  They are just taking our compromise to its logical conclusion and abandoning all of Scripture.  That's why I appreciate Answers in Genesis and other organizations that stand uncompromisingly upon God's word and provide us with answers and solid science in support of a young earth.

END NOTES:
[1] Michael Hannon, Scopes Trial (1925),  University of Minnesota Law Library, http://darrow.law.umn.edu/trialpdfs/SCOPES_TRIAL.pdf , accessed October 28, 2014, 69.
[2] Ibid.,69-70.
[3] Ibid.,70.
[4] Ken Ham & Britt Beemer, Already Gone; Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it, (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2009), 41.
[5] Ibid.,24.
[6] Ibid,. 39.
[7] Ken Ham & Greg Hall, Already Compromised: Christian colleges took a test on the state of their faith and THE FINAL EXAM IS IN, (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2011), 55.
[8] Ibid,.52-53.