William Jennings Bryant was quite the opposite. A fundamentalist Christian, he wanted to remove all infringing science from where it clashed with religion. He was prepared to take the bible literally in all senses and deny any maneuvering of science against it. He did not care for evolution at all; he believed that the idea was absurd; he was in my opinion just what Darrow called him, “a simple minded bigot.” His goal was to destroy and humiliate science, he could not let them co-exist at all, and there would be no cooperation or independence in his mind. He saw only the defeat of science at the hand of religion and that was his fatal flaw. With logic Darrow was able to use Bryant zealous beliefs against him to embarrass him and his fundamentalist view point.

The trial was set for July 10th 1925. The “drug store conspiracy” got what it wanted. Dayton had a circuit atmosphere, including an actual traveling circus. Religious fundamentalist, atheistic scientists and journalist converged on Dayton like locusts. They were not worried about getting publicity any longer; journalists had traveled from as far as Hong Kong to cover the trial. This case involved the two greatest lawyers of the 20th century, William Jennings Bryant, a three time democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state under Wilson “representing” the defense and Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer who took on very hard cases and was very successful. He was against the fundamentalist movement and often accused of being an Atheist. He was “representing” Scopes. Each side had other lawyers but Bryant and Darrow were the figure heads, often giving passionate speeches concerning science and religion often overshadowing the actual case. Scopes was obviously guilty of breaking the law; he did it on purpose to satisfy Rappleyea and his co-conspirators. The goal of the orators soon overshadowed this. What would have been a simple guilty verdict became a soapbox for science and religion to accuse each other from. The fundamentalist philosophy of the judge was seen very quickly when he barred any experts from testifying infuriating Darrow. But it was Darrow who had the ace up his sleeve. On the 11th day of the trial, in a surprise move, Darrow called Bryant to the bench. Over the course of two hours, Darrow humiliated Bryant, one of the nation’s top theologians, making his whole logic system seem absurd. By doing this he should have provided a mortal blow to all fundamentalism, but just the opposite, the fundamentalist movement garnered even more strength after the end of the t

Some topics in this essay:
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