John ScopesIn existographies, John Scopes (1900-1970) was an American teacher and geologist, noted for voluntarily being the accused in the infamous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, wherein he was charged with teaching, in Tennessee, the “prohibited subject” of evolution to children, which at that time was a violation of the state’s “Butler Act”.

Overview
in c.1920, John Butler, a farmer and part-time high school teacher, was sitting at the Primitive Baptist Church, Tennessee, listing to a sermon about a young woman in his community who enrolled in a biology course at a nearby university, and after finishing the course returned home, the preacher said, and was no longer a Christian. The theory of evolution was said to have destroyed her faith in god. Butler asked himself whether evolution could turn one his own three boys into an atheist. Could this happen to his neighbors’ children? Could this happen in his the high schools of his own Macon County, where evolution was currently being taught? It just wasn’t right, Butler thought, that parents could bring their children up to be god-fearing, only to have a taxpayer-supported biology teacher rob them of their faith. Evolution fit into a strong concern he had about education: it replaced the solid, land-based values of his neighbors with more cosmopolitan and irreligious values.

In 1922, Butler ran as a Democrat for state representative and in his campaign fliers promised voters in his district that he "would work to protect schoolchildren from the effects of the godless doctrine of evolution".

In 1925, Butler, as state Democrat, passed the so-called Butler act, making it illegal to each evolution in school:

"That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any University and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach 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."

Scopes Monkey trial
A plaque stating that than on Jul 10 to 21, 1925, John Scopes, a county high school teachers, was fired for teaching that "man descended from a lower order of animals", a violation of the states "Butler act" passed by Christian-minded democrat John Butler.
The reasoning behind this act is as follows, as he later reported:

"I didn't know anything about evolution when I introduced it. I'd read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense."

In 1925, Scopes was approached by several men to see if he would be willing to volunteer to test the validity of the state’s anti-evolution teaching Butler act; this meeting is retrospectively recounted as follows: [1]

“He recounts that he showed several men gathered in a local drugstore the textbook used to teach high school biology: "I explained that I ... used it for review purposes while filling in for the principal during his illness. He was the regular biology teacher... you can't teach biology without teaching evolution." He was asked, "John, would you be willing to stand for a test case?'... [Scopes thought] To tell the truth, I wasn't sure I had taught evolution. Robinson and the others apparently weren't concerned about this technicality".”

Here, interestingly, we see that Scopes might not even have taught evolution; the trial was a matter of principles.

Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Scopes:

“I don't know... who does?”
— John Scopes (c.1925), response to reporter who asked if he was a Christian [1]

See also
● Science vs religion legal cases

References
1. Scopes, John and Presley, James. (1967). Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes (I don’t known, pg. 83; recounting, pg. 59-60) (Ѻ) (cover). Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

External links
● John Scopes – Wikipedia.

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