Today, 05 May, is the 90th anniversary of the day in 1925 when John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Tennessee public school.
It is well worth remembering that despite endless moaning and wailing by creationists about “Darwinist” bullying, “viewpoint discrimination,” and other forms of persecution, nothing remotely like that has ever happened to a creationist. Creationists don’t have to meet secretly in the catacombs. They are totally free to preach, lecture, sell their books, and display their films at churches, bible colleges, creation museums, or any other facility willing to offer them meeting space, and no one ever thinks to interfere.
The Discovery Institute promotes Expelled, their “documentary” narrated by Ben Stein, allegedly detailing the horrors experienced in academia by creationist professors, but as is explained in Expelled Exposed, the Ben Stein film is nothing but distortions and anti-science propaganda.
The only adverse consequences facing a creationist teacher in a secular institution are failure to get a job he wants, or failure to have his teaching contract renewed, or in extreme cases — like that of John Freshwater — getting fired for violating school policy. But those who have achieved tenure, like Michael Behe (a Discovery Institute “senior fellow”), aren’t fired. He’s still a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, although he does endure a bit of ridicule. His colleagues at Lehigh have publicly disassociated themselves from him by issuing this statement: Department Position on Evolution and “Intelligent Design”. But that’s as bad as it gets for creationists. No creationist has ever been arrested and fined, like John Scopes was.
Nevertheless, creationists are quick to point out that they have their martyrs. There’s Stephen Meyer, Vice President and “senior fellow” of the Discovery Institute, whom the Discoveroids praise for his book about the Cambrian “explosion,” Darwin’s Doubt. Meyer was a central figure in the infamous Sternberg peer review controversy. And there’s Guillermo Gonzalez, another Discoveroid “senior fellow” who failed to get tenure at Iowa State University and who ended up teaching at some bible college. He’s a co-author of the classic creationist book, The Privileged Planet, a “fine tuning” argument applied to Earth. He’s one of the creationist martyrs featured in Expelled, but since then he’s been hired by Ball State University, where we assume he’s a Discoveroid sleeper agent.
On the other hand, we’ve seen historical examples of of the consequences that were faced by secular thinkers when religious doctrine was official policy. The examples range from being poisoned, like Socrates, to being burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno, or, like Galileo, to “merely” being threatened with torture, forced to recant his teaching about the solar system, and then being kept under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Galileo’s confrontation with the Inquisition (see the Galileo affair) is the all-time classic example of reason vs theocratic tyranny. We think it even outranks the trial of Socrates, who was executed for “corrupting the youth” of Athens by encouraging his students to question authority.
We emphasize that despite endless propaganda to the contrary, it’s never scientists who commit those atrocities. Science is a product of the Enlightenment — particularly the Scottish Enlightenment, which (quoting from the Wikipedia article) “… asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason.”
If creationists ever do any research — with verifiable results — that contradicts evolution and supports their “theory,” it will be published in science journals. If there’s a genuine scientific controversy — as there was, for example, in the days when Big Bang theory was challenged by Steady State theory — both theories will be in the textbooks. Litigation won’t be necessary, nor will there be any need for creationists to organize grass-roots movements or to sponsor legislation to get their ideas into the public schools. No genuine science has ever resorted to such activities, but it’s typical of pseudoscience.
So today’s the day when we remember John Scopes. His trial for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act is a striking contrast to all the silly claims of mistreatment we constantly hear from the creationists. Let’s not forget that throughout history, all the genuine persecution has been by religious fanatics, never by scientists.
Copyright © 2015. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Of course, the arrest of Scopes was a friendly affair. He cooperated with the deal. And he did not ever face the possibility of personally having to pay a fine. But there are later people who have been in serious trouble.
Does anyone have a list of people who have been fired, etc., for their advocacy of standard science in the US? Evolution, deep time, no word-wide flood, etc.?
There is the case of a person in Texas who sent an email about evolution.
And there are tenured faculty who have been fired.
There are a number of people who have been warned and prudently backed off, who will never be heard of.
“Galileo’s confrontation with the Inquisition (see the Galileo affair) is the all-time classic example of reason vs theocratic tyranny.”
Not exactly, because Galilei himself wasn’t that reasonable either. See, he never disputed the authority of the RCC to try him. He never was arrested, but traveled to Rome voluntarily. He maintained it was absolutely certain that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which is an unscientific position (theories can’t be proven, only confirmed). Plus according to classical relativism it doesn’t matter if we choose the Earth or the Sun as the origing of our coordinate system (which just had been developed by Descartes). Motion is relative, including rotational motion.
As for the RCC – the house arrest didn’t prevent Galilei from writing and publishing yet another book. And during the trial Galilei’s “cell” consisted of a luxury three room apartment.
What was at stake was Galilei’s condescence for the curia. He had mocked them in his latest book. Before the RCC hadn’t had any problem with heliocentrism. Brahe and Kepler never faced any problem.
Once again, as a scion of the family, it behooves me to point out here that Dayton TN has been home to a branch of the Darwin family since the early 19th century, and that a number of journalists covering the Scopes Trial were housed at the Broyles-Darwin House, home of Dayton resident (and distant cousin) James Robert Darwin.
This concludes today’s genealogical trivia. Normal broadcasting will now resume…
Here’s to a true American hero.
Buyt it does matter. Heliocentrism eventually won out because it offered a much simpler explanation for the observed motions of the heavenly bodies than the intricate system of epicycles used by geocentrists.
This was particularly true once it was found, by comparing latter-day observations with ancient star maps (and confirmed later by direct observation) that the stars as well as the planets moved independently rather than being fixed in position relative to one another. Dozens of epicycles might conceivably have been accepted; thousands, one for each star visible to the naked eye or to early telescopes, no.
SC, Perhaps you should drop Socrates out of your list of oppressed. Read “The Trial of Socrates” by IF Stone. Otherwise keep up the good work. Love the blog.