On a Wing and a Prayer?
By Robert T. Pennock
A century after the Scopes trial, a look back shows the development and folly of creationist supernatural engineering.
This Article From Issue
November-December 2025
Volume 113, Number 6
Page 346
On July 21, 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, a verdict was reached in what became known as the “trial of the century”: High school teacher John Scopes was found guilty of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade public schools from teaching “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The infamous “Monkey Trial,” as it was commonly called, had begun as a stunt by town leaders to bring attention to their community—one newspaper comic depicted Dayton as an organ grinder whose monkey raked in cash and publicity—but it quickly evolved into what is now thought of as the start of America’s 100-year culture war.
QUICK TAKE
- A century ago, The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes trial kicked off what is now thought of as America’s 100-year culture war centering on evolution and creationism.
- The most recent trial in this series was Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005, which found that teaching intelligent design in public schools violated the U.S. Constitution.
- Examining the arguments of intelligent design through the lens of engineering and genetic algorithms can debunk the idea that complexity requires divine intervention.
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