The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

Like many fundamentalist disputes, the Scopes trial was a clash between two incompatible points of view.33 Both Darrow and Bryan represented core American values: Darrow, of course, stood for intellectual liberty and Bryan for the rights of the ordinary folk, who were traditionally leery of learned experts, had no real understanding of science, and felt that sophisticated elites were imposing their own values on small-town America. In the event, Bryan was a disaster on the stand and Darrow was able to argue brilliantly for the freedom that was essential to the scientific enterprise. At the end of the trial, Darrow emerged as the hero of lucid rational thought, while Bryan was seen as a bumbling, incompetent anachronism who was hopelessly out of touch with the modern world: he compounded the symbolism by dying a few days later. Scopes was convicted, the ACLU paid his fine, but Darrow and science were the real victors at Dayton.