An Educational–Methodological Look at the “Monkey Trial” (Column 489)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

This past Sunday I participated in Arel Segal’s program “The Report” on Channel 14, and the topic was evolution and faith (see here, starting at minute 9). The topic came up because it has been 97 years since what was called the “Monkey Trial” (the verdict was handed down in July 1925). This is a good opportunity to touch on a few aspects of that trial and its implications.

The “Monkey Trial”

This was a trial that took place in Tennessee, USA, in 1925. That year Tennessee enacted a law prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution in all educational institutions (schools, colleges, and more). We should remember that at that time fewer than seventy years had passed since the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), in which he presented his theory of evolution fully for the first time. During those years fierce clashes erupted between people of faith (mainly Christians) and supporters of the new theory, within which the above legislation and the subsequent trial must be understood.

The main battleground for this, from then until today, has been the United States. The reason for this is a combination of two opposing elements: on the one hand, the population of the U.S. includes quite a few devout and even fundamentalist Christians, both Catholic and Protestant—perhaps more than any other country in the developed Western world. Even among the revered Founding Fathers there were not a few Puritans and devout Christians. On the other hand, one of the constitutional foundations in the U.S. is the separation of religion and state, meaning that the religious dimension is not supposed to take part in the operation of the state. Among other things, it is forbidden to teach religious materials in public schools.

The state of Tennessee is part of what is called the “Bible Belt”, that is, Baptist–Evangelical regions, mainly in the south of the Midwest (and not only there), where most of the population is religious and some of it very fundamentalist. In those years it was customary there to teach theistic evolution, i.e., the view that the evolutionary process unfolds by the hand of God. As part of the fundamentalist effort, in March 1925 a law was enacted prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution (in fact it spoke mainly about human evolution). The main argument of the law’s supporters was that in the U.S. it is forbidden to teach creationism, that is, the thesis that God created the world, since that is considered a religious doctrine, and therefore, they argued, it is equally appropriate to forbid the teaching of evolution.

When the law’s initiator, Tennessee state representative John W. Butler, was asked about the circumstances that led him to promote this legislation, he replied:

I read in the newspapers that sons and daughters come home from school and tell their parents that the Bible is all nonsense. I didn’t think that was right…

The Christian believers saw secular effects of the curriculum, expressed mainly in a dismissive attitude toward the Bible, and therefore enacted the law.

Supporters of evolution (chief among them the American Civil Liberties Union—ring a bell?) were outraged and decided to act, offering legal defense to anyone willing to teach evolution and be prosecuted for it. They sought a show trial that would bring this law to the court of public opinion—the kind of trial in which the formal defendant is in fact the real plaintiff (as in the Kastner trial, where in effect Kastner sued Gruenwald). They found a 24-year-old teacher, John T. Scopes, a high-school teacher of physics, mathematics, and chemistry, who one day in April (about a month after the law was enacted) substituted for the biology teacher and presented to the students an evolutionary tree in which the human being appears as a species on one of the branches under the class of mammals. Afterward they asked him if he would be willing to stand trial for this, and he agreed.

Here enters another wonder of our great friend across the ocean. Beyond the accessibility and free use of firearms—part of civil liberties, of course—there is another aspect of civil liberties they are very particular about: the matter of the citizen’s arrest. Citizens can detain any offender and hold him until he is brought to trial. And so this amiable group (Scopes’s supporters) placed Scopes under citizen’s arrest for violating the law, and he, for his part, encouraged his students to file a complaint against him before a grand jury for the offense of teaching evolution (God forbid). To the amusement of all, journalists who came to cover the grand jury session asked the students scientific questions and, to their surprise, discovered that they were not at all versed in the subject. But that did not stop the wheels of justice, which this time turned very quickly, not least thanks to the (may he protect us) conservative judge John T. Raulston, who acted to expedite the proceedings. The indictment was filed in May 1925.

I have much to say about the conduct of the trial itself and the arguments of both sides, but I will not do so here. Part of the defense’s arguments were that the prosecution did not understand biblical interpretation and of course not evolution either (there were debates over expert testimony brought to the court). They argued that not every biblical description is literal (the swallowing of Jonah, the stopping of the sun at Gibeon, and more). But as I will explain below, in my view all these begged assumptions, interesting as they may be, miss the focal point of the matter.

Despite the defense by Clarence Darrow, one of the most renowned attorneys in American history (in part thanks to his involvement in this trial), after eight days Scopes was convicted on July 21, 1925, and fined $100 (the penalty set by law for this offense was up to $500). On Darrow’s advice Scopes refused to pay the fine, and in the end he was exempted from payment on technical grounds. In 1967 the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional (five years before Roe v. Wade, discussed in column 483).

It was the journalist H. L. Mencken, who covered the trial, who coined the nickname “Monkey Trial,” of course because the subject of the trial was the origin of humans from apes (more precisely: the common origin of both from an earlier ancestor). In the wake of the trial, literary works and films were created, and it greatly deepened the conflict between Christian fundamentalists and secular liberals in the U.S., which of course has not subsided to this day. What has changed is the composition of the Supreme Court (as we recall, right now there is renewed conflict around the overturning of Roe v. Wade on abortion; see on this in column 483). To this day the Monkey Trial is seen as a strong expression of attempts at religious coercion and a war against enlightenment, science, and modernity, a kind of continuation of the church’s persecution of Galileo and other friends at the end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern era. It has become a byword describing religious persecution.

A few initial remarks

As I also said in the interview, when I read a bit about the trial, one point immediately leapt out at me—one that those who cry “religious persecution” tend to ignore. The background to the Tennessee law was the federal prohibition on teaching creation in public schools and colleges across the U.S. This is a constitutional foundation that denies a state the right to legislate otherwise (not only would a law banning the teaching of evolution be struck down, but even a law allowing teaching creation would be invalid). For some reason, none of the anti-persecution warriors talk about that. That is, after all, “justified,” because of the separation of religion and state, and such a law is of course not coercion by anyone over anyone. Only the attempt to forbid the teaching of human evolution is obscurantist coercion and a war on enlightenment. The fact that teaching evolution, at least as it is commonly done in practice, greatly harms the attitude toward the Bible and the values it represents (see the quote I brought above) and therefore certainly has conceptual and religious implications, is, of course, not taken into account in this debate. The absolute-justice paladins, as usual, do not notice that their own approach suffers from the very flaw they accuse (to some extent rightly, it must be said) their opponents of.

Supposedly the claim is that there is no symmetry. Evolution is a well-supported scientific field, a kind of fact, and the religious or secular conclusions that students draw from it are their responsibility. The teacher only teaches science, that’s all. By contrast, teaching about creation is a matter of religious outlook and therefore has no place in a public school that is supposed to be free of religious and ideological dictates. But that is, of course, naïveté. First, even on the factual level, this is not accurate. Many teachers and lecturers explicitly address these implications in their classes (even today), and do not spare their students the “necessary” conclusions. Following my book God Plays Dice, a religious lecturer in evolution at one of the universities told me that he recoiled from addressing these issues in his lectures. I told him that many of his atheist colleagues have no qualms about inserting their views into their courses, and therefore, in my opinion, there is no reason for him not to act likewise. Beyond that, in theory one could also teach about God and creation and leave the religious conclusions—and the conclusions regarding evolution—to the students. There, for some reason, they do not trust teachers to do that (and rightly so, of course), and therefore the principle of separation of religion and state includes a ban on teaching creation. But that creates a bias and exclusion of religious faith in favor of secular atheism. All this, of course, does not prevent American propagandists (and local ones here in Israel) from repeating the claim of asymmetry and treating it as self-evident (see for example here). It goes without saying that those fighting here against the benighted creationists are the very stalwart warriors who give their souls for freedom and for human and civil rights (recall the name of the organization that organized the provocation in Tennessee, or its local counterparts in Israel today). This is the silencing of one side by another in the name of freedom (especially freedom of expression) and in the name of civil and human rights. There is nothing new under the sun, it seems.

Parenthetically I will add that I do not understand the logic of separating religion from the state while allowing the teaching and practice of other ideologies (like liberalism, democracy, etc.). If one doesn’t want to bring ideology into schools, then let them ban all of them—religious and otherwise. Why should a religious ideology be treated differently from any other ideology? True, if they were to ban all ideologies and leave education and schools with only “facts,” that would of course be impossible. Education devoid of ideology is simply not feasible. That is an empty mantra. But if we recognize this, the conclusion is that everything should be allowed into the school, including religions and ideologies (see below). It is not clear to me what justifies religion’s being singled out for discriminatory treatment—ironically in the name of freedom, rights, and equality.

To be fair, in the original context the decision to separate religion and state was made by the Founding Fathers, at least some of whom, as noted, were very religious. They understood that religion tends toward purposeful indoctrination and sometimes the use of power and intolerance, and despite their own faith they recognized the right of others to think and believe otherwise—and even more, that the state should not take part in these debates (sound familiar?). Therefore, despite their own worldview, they were honest enough to establish the separation of religion and state. But once we have seen that both sides are like this and that neutrality is impossible, I think there is no place to continue this discriminatory policy.

So what is the alternative? How can we be honest and fair in presenting all the options and also avoid unfair educational biases among students? More on that below.

Conceptual analysis

To understand my claim better, and in particular the comparison I made, we must go back to basics and do some preliminary analysis. I begin from the assumption that evolution is indeed a well-supported science, and personally I tend to accept its findings. At the same time I also believe in God—and even the “dark and primitive” claim that He created the world. As I showed at length in my book God Plays Dice, in the third conversation of my book The First Being, and elsewhere, the question of faith in God does not depend in any way on the theory of evolution. One can be an atheist and either reject or accept evolution, and one can believe in God and either reject or accept evolution.

Moreover, I showed there that the only possible interface between evolution and faith is in the context of the physico-theological argument. The neo-Darwinist claim is that evolution topples the physico-theological argument for God’s existence, since that argument assumes that something complex does not arise by itself—someone creates it. Evolution supposedly shows that this is possible. I wrote there that even if they were right (and they are not), at most one of the arguments for God’s existence would have fallen. Does that mean there is no God? There are countless other ways to arrive at faith in Him. If I show you that a proof you offered for the Pythagorean theorem contains an error, does the conclusion follow that the theorem is false? Perhaps there is another proof? A simple logical fact is that toppling an argument does not refute its conclusion. Furthermore, I argued there that evolution does not even accomplish this modest thing: it does not topple the physico-theological argument. In fact my conclusion there was that, if anything, evolution even strengthens the physico-theological argument for God’s existence.

This is not the place to go into details. In brief: evolutionary processes occur within the framework of the laws of nature. Without them there would be no evolution (indeed, no biology and no chemistry). The question is not how life arises without God, for that question (in my terminology, the question within the laws) can be answered by evolution itself, which is based on the laws of nature. The more basic question is the question outside the laws: who created the laws that make this carnival possible? The laws do not arise by an evolutionary process, and therefore their existence, fitness, and complexity call for an explanation. Without God it is hard for me to accept the existence of laws so special and so complex.

I assume there will be responses here that challenge this argument, but I will not get into the details of a debate that has already been thrashed out here ad nauseam. Our topic here is different. Let us assume for the sake of argument that this is the creationist position (my own position). Should it be excluded from public schools? To summarize: one can think that God operated evolution, or that it operated without Him and He observed it from above, or a thousand other forms of relation between these two ideas. But God and evolution do not contradict one another, and in my opinion evolution even corroborates faith.

It is easy to miss the conclusion that follows. Evolution itself is indeed a scientific field, and even a rather well-supported one, but it can be offered at least two interpretations on the theological–faith plane:

• The atheistic: the less plausible but much more prevalent, according to which evolution renders the God-hypothesis unnecessary.
• The faith-based: much more plausible but far less common, according to which God is the one who operates evolution (not necessarily constantly and continuously, but through the laws of nature within which it proceeds).

What is important to understand is that one cannot decide between these two interpretations with scientific tools. The decision is up to the individual, and he must reach it in the way that seems right to him (philosophical or otherwise). Science is (relatively) objective, even if not certain, but the questions of faith and disbelief do not deal with the scientific facts but with their interpretations. Therefore these are open questions that admit several different ways and forms of answering them.

What happens on the ground?

So much for the facts (the distinction between fact and interpretation is itself a kind of fact). But in practice this is not what happens. As I wrote, Interpretation A is the more prevalent one, certainly among researchers and teachers of evolution (who generally are not gifted with especially sharp philosophical perception, and many of them mix science with its interpretation and philosophy). Because of religious attacks, from the nineteenth century to this day, supporters of evolution feel on the defensive, and therefore have turned evolution into a kind of religion, and anyone who does not “believe” in it into a heretic. Any statement against evolution is taken as a war on enlightenment—children of darkness against children of light—and meets a crude, forceful attack and absolute unwillingness to listen. You will usually not find among the devotees of evolution a willingness to hear counter-arguments. They are not even willing to give a platform to those who think otherwise. They have turned themselves into a kind of church and those not among the believers into heretics. Thus the debate over these interpretations has turned into a fanatical religious brawl on both sides. Both sides conceal information, present a slanted and distorted picture, and fight with proper and improper tools to silence the other side (=the Sitra Achra).

It is worth recalling the carnival that took place here in our local scene in 2010, when the Ministry of Education’s chief scientist, Gabi Avital, was caught making a statement against evolution (and a few other “benighted” statements against progressive articles of faith didn’t help—though I will say that I myself do not agree with some of them). Needless to say, he was immediately dismissed. True, Avital challenged evolution also on the scientific level (perhaps not correctly, but entirely legitimate), and not only its atheistic interpretation (from my conversations with him, I am not sure he is aware of, or accepts, the distinction I draw here between facts and their interpretation), but there was a clear atmosphere of a witch-hunt and an unwillingness to listen or allow expression in these areas. Haaretz led the jihad against the Ministry of Education and Gabi Avital, which ultimately succeeded. By the way, in my impression, at least in Israel (as opposed to the U.S.), the secular side is much more militant and much less open in this war. The religious side, which also is usually not marked by great openness and attentiveness, is not very occupied by all this.

Christianity (especially in the U.S.) wages world wars against evolution and invests enormous budgets in them. It employs experts and has established research institutes with scientists who try to develop “creation science” (to my taste, rather dubious). Jews are not very troubled by all this. I have often said and written that Christians are the truly “pious” ones. Jews are usually compromisers and pragmatists. Mizrachnikim.

The status of “experts”

It is interesting to note that the Minister of Education during the polemic around Avital was Gideon Sa’ar, a conservative from Likud (then), who at some point was even found to be inclined toward religious views (Heaven forfend). And yet he yielded and fired Avital. I am sure he felt obliged to do so as part of the liberal enlightenment so prevalent in the Likud (of yesteryear). This is no wonder, for a person not trained in philosophy and science and in the relationship between them cannot stand against aggressive neo-Darwinist propaganda that marshals various “authorities” (professors in different fields), thereby making a big impression on the general public of laymen. Thus everyone gets the impression that such statements are an affront to science and rational thought and a march against scientific consensus. Almost none of the lay public can put this motley collection of know-it-alls in their place and explain to them a few fundamental philosophical notions—like the distinction between facts and interpretations thereof.

My remarks apply to politicians and even to judges. I think the judge in the Monkey Trial (who was a conservative), and also in subsequent cases on such topics, is not really equipped with the tools to cope with scientists presenting themselves as experts in the field. They usually do this innocently, because they themselves are not sensitive to the difference between science and interpretation. But what judge or politician can stand up to professors whose supposed field of expertise this is? He will immediately be pilloried as benighted and anti-scientific (just look at the responses to my series of articles in YNET to get an impression).

By the way, the same thing happens with respect to neuroscience and free will, especially when it gets to the legal arena (see my article, “Neuroscience and the Law”). The same is true regarding abortions, where the progressive view is also presented as “science” (see my article, “On Halacha and Reality”), and likewise in the debates over homosexuality (there, too, liberals supposedly cling to science and speak in its name—wrongly, of course; see columns 25–26, for example). Science has a kind of religious halo, and therefore members of the atheist “church,” who have no religious trees to hang on, invent for themselves a religion and their own priests (in English this is called scientism). In reverse irony, they again suffer from the very flaw they accuse their opponents of, and establish for themselves the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Except that, unlike religious beliefs, which may be guilty of some speculation (embracing beliefs without a basis—at least by the critics’ lights), here we are dealing with the adoption of outright false theses (that atheism is a scientific claim, or that the definition of a person or a disease belongs to science), not merely groundless ones.

I think I once told here what the late Prof. Yosef Ne’eman said to me. After he read my book God Plays Dice (which, among other things, criticized him as well), he called me and told me, among other things, that some of his colleagues insist on identifying mental phenomena with physico-chemical processes (neurons). He, as a dyed-in-the-wool materialist and atheist, told me that he tries with all his might to explain to them the folly of this, but to no avail. He told me that intelligent people, including renowned professors, repeat this stupid mantra as if it were the word of God, and not only do they embrace such a foolish mantra, but they are also unwilling to hear any heresy against it. He himself lamented the phenomenon of the atheist church (of which he was one of the high priests). Let there be no misunderstandings: he was a proud atheist (to his funeral and beyond), but—unusually—also an intellectually honest and wise person. Incidentally, I told him in that conversation that in those days I was in the midst of the book The Sciences of Freedom, which deals precisely with this. I do not know if he read it and what he thought.

There is no need to say that intellectual honesty in religious education is not necessarily higher (at any rate, not much higher). There it is even backed by the halakhic prohibition of “lo taturu” (“do not stray”), and so they usually do not address evolution, in particular human evolution. There, too, it stems from fear and the inability to cope with atheistic arguments, with religious educators implicitly assuming that evolution leads to atheism, and therefore they deny it or ignore it. If they had a coherent doctrine with reasonable arguments, familiarity with the issues, and philosophical skill to handle them, they would be freer to address this topic more openly and honestly.

Back to the practical–educational level: conclusions

We have seen that Interpretation A is the more prevalent, in my view mainly because of the lack of philosophical skill among scientists and their devotees—a lack that is psychologically reinforced by their desperate need for a religion and for all-knowing priests so lacking in the atheist vacuum. It is no wonder that many teachers and lecturers in this field tend toward atheism, and many of them are active on its behalf and even lead the fight against religious conceptions (the priests of the atheist church).

Given the situation, teachers and lecturers on evolution naturally insert their atheistic interpretations into evolution classes, usually as if they were a scientific fact or a clear conclusion from the facts and scientific findings themselves. Many are not aware of this and are themselves convinced that they are truly teaching a scientific field and dealing with facts, while in reality they are preaching an ideology. Thus, despite the good intentions that may have existed at the origin (among the Founding Fathers), in practice discrimination is created in the opposite direction.

This discrimination exists in the U.S., as I described, but also in Israel. In religious education, although they could teach evolution, they usually do not (especially human evolution; in recent years this has improved a bit). The result is that students who are exposed to evolution experience a deep sense of inferiority and implicitly adopt the assumption that science—and in particular evolution—leads to atheism. This is, of course, an own goal for religious education.

The conclusion is that at least de facto it is impossible to teach evolution as pure science. In practice it simply does not work. Moreover, I think it is not appropriate to do so. As part of their education, students should be familiar with the interpretive controversy surrounding evolution so they can form a position for themselves. Concealing information—or outlooks and arguments—benefits no one, and presenting slanted and selective positions and arguments is no better. Therefore it is also not an option to refrain from teaching evolution, including human evolution. My critique is directed both at secular education and at religious education. The two churches participating in this war behave in a distorted and faulty manner.

The conclusion is that the desirable and necessary policy, in both religious and secular education, is the opposite of what is typically done in practice in both. In my opinion it is imperative to teach both interpretations honestly and fairly in both educational systems, and to do so with sources and teachers sufficiently knowledgeable and sufficiently honest (with appropriate teaching materials) to present a straight and fair picture of the issue. The teaching materials and teacher training should ensure that the sides are presented fairly and at a high level, without concealment and without omission, while laying out the arguments and flaws on both sides, so as to allow a free, high-level discussion and to enable each student to form his own position.

Incidentally, this is the accepted practice in schools with regard to issues and figures with political implications. Their entry into schools is not prevented; rather, an effort is made to maintain balance and present the different sides as equally as possible. I am not saying that the situation regarding politics is perfect. Far from it. Certainly not in religious education, but not in secular education either. But it is worth remembering that on the topic of evolution this is much easier than in politics, since it is a curricular subject taught throughout the year, the interpretive sides are clear and do not change with the years, and it is possible to build teaching materials that will do the job and be constructed by people entrusted with this. In the political field it is more difficult, since there are many issues and many opinions; the subject is not a regular part of the school curriculum; and opinions and issues (parties and figures) change over the years. Therefore it is hard there to regulate the manner of presentation and the balance of presentations in school. With evolution it is much easier, and it is only natural to implement this.

And to the listener—may it be pleasant…