Tennessee Teacher Convicted of Teaching Evolution

Mike Riggs | July 21, 2008

On today's date in 1925, a jury of his peers convicted John T. Scopes for teaching evolutionary theory in his high school biology class. Clarence Darrow led the defense against William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic presidential nominee and devout Bible thumper, and lost. The Tennessee Supreme Court eventually overturned the verdict on a technicality, insisting in its decision that The Butler Act itself didn't violate the Constitution.

The trial was essentially a joke, hence its alternate name, the "Scopes Monkey Trial," but the means by which the state made its case sound unfunny and more than a little terrifying from the perspective of a 21st Century agnostic:

The entire prosecution case in the trial of John Scopes occupies less than two hours of a Wednesday afternoon session of court. The state calls only four witnesses. School Superintendent Walter White and Fred Robinson both testify that Scopes, in a conversation at Robinson's drug store-soda fountain-book dispensary, admitted having taught evolution. Howard Morgan, age 14, and Harry "Bud" Shelton, age 17, appear as two eyewitnesses to the crime.

[Prosectuor Thomas] Stewart asks Morgan if "Professor Scopes" ever taught him "anything about evolution." "Yes sir," the boy replies in a barely audible voice. "Just state in your own words, Howard, what he taught you and when it was," Stewart requests. "It was along about the second of April. He said that the earth was once a hot molten mass, too hot for plant or animal life to exist upon it. In the sea, the earth cooled off; there was a little germ of one cell organism formed, and this organism kept evolving until it got to be a pretty good-sized animal, and then it came on to be a land animal, and it kept on evolving, and from this was man." From the defense table, Arthur Garfield Hays offers his congratulations on Morgan's history of life on earth: "Go to the head of the class." Stewart asks Morgan if Scopes classified "man with reference to other animals." He had, Morgan says, called humans "mammals."

Tony Long at Wired brings up this interesting fact, which, if true, means the scene in the soda store was a fabrication:

Whether Scopes actually taught evolution to his biology class remains unclear. Although he told the court he had done it and would do it again, he later admitted to a newspaper reporter that while he used a textbook that included a chapter on evolution, he skipped the chapter.

Science Correspondent Ron Bailey blogged here on Scopes' legal legacy.

Comments

Episiarch|7.21.08 @ 11:53AM|#

Mike, you misspelled "Clarence".

♪|7.21.08 @ 12:03PM|#

He said that the earth was once a hot molten mass, too hot for plant or animal life to exist upon it. In the sea, the earth cooled off; there was a little germ of one cell organism formed, and this organism kept evolving until it got to be a pretty good-sized animal, and then it came on to be a land animal, and it kept on evolving, and from this was man."

That sounds far-fetched to me. Not far from legends about the bear constellation coming out of the sky to roar and shake all the bees out of the trees or some such. Very mythical.

|7.21.08 @ 12:29PM|#

Whether Scopes actually taught evolution to his biology class remains unclear. Although he told the court he had done it and would do it again, he later admitted to a newspaper reporter that while he used a textbook that included a chapter on evolution, he skipped the chapter.

In this account, where does Howard Morgan get the details in his testimony regarding Scopes' lesson?

|7.21.08 @ 12:30PM|#

whats even more funny about those that follow the evolution religion is they think all of this somehow happened in 6000 years!

Dave B.|7.21.08 @ 12:41PM|#

In this account, where does Howard Morgan get the details in his testimony regarding Scopes' lesson?

I think Morgan's testimony regarding Scopes' lesson demonstrates that he didn't get taught evolution. This is how people who don't understand evolution at all describe it:

this organism kept evolving until it got to be a pretty good-sized animal, and then it came on to be a land animal, and it kept on evolving, and from this was man

Either Morgan didn't pay attention to or follow the lesson, or he wasn't taught evolution. Either way, he's making shit up in his testimony.

jtuf|7.21.08 @ 12:45PM|#

Professor Linder at UMKC keeps a website with info in famous trials. He said that the Bulter Act forbade publically funded 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." Mentioning divine creation and the Bible mixes church and state. If the statute just forbade teaching about human evolution in public schools, it might have been reasonable given the state of evolutionary theory in the 1920's. Back then, articles about human evolution were short on science and long on prejudice. Fortunately, the field had improved very much since then.

|7.21.08 @ 12:59PM|#

Anyone know how the two teenagers that Scopes "corrupted" turned out in life?

|7.21.08 @ 1:17PM|#

interesting historical side note ... there is plenty for libertarians to be offended by in the text that Scopes was teaching from. Forget the evolutionary theories ... it was basically a eugenics-happy text that nearly advocated the mass-killing of people with low IQ's. It was all the rage in 1920's America to advocate the sterilization of millions of people for the betterment of society ... this happened to be one of the objections raised by Bryan. He feared that a purely science obsessed culture would inevitably lead to horrors in the name of science. I will not Godwin this thread, but the inference is clear.

Unclaimed Mysteries|7.21.08 @ 1:49PM|#

Godwin's Law is a quaint relic from a simpler time. That's my law. It's not catching on, but it's mine.

Still, baba o'riley is right on the money. Crackpots have often tried to invoke scientific concepts to sex up their shaky worldviews. And it works. Most people are defenseless against a smooth operator who appears to have sci-sci-SCIENCE!($1) behind him or her.

Not to go all "it's about the process" on everybody, but I think learning how science is really done is as important as the facts and figures. I had a math teacher who gave ZERO credit for a right answer obtained by accident. I wish I had more teachers with that attitude.

Elemenope|7.21.08 @ 1:50PM|#

...this happened to be one of the objections raised by Bryan. He feared that a purely science obsessed culture would inevitably lead to horrors in the name of science. I will not Godwin this thread, but the inference is clear.

The inference being both that horrors in the name of science are somehow worse to their victims than horrors in any other name, and stupid.

|7.21.08 @ 1:51PM|#

Crackpots have often tried to invoke scientific concepts to sex up their shaky worldviews.

Al? Al Gore? Is that you, buddy?

the innominate one|7.21.08 @ 2:06PM|#

which concepts have been responsible for more human deaths and suffering: scientifically based justifications, or religiously based justifications?

Elemenope|7.21.08 @ 2:20PM|#

which concepts have been responsible for more human deaths and suffering: scientifically based justifications, or religiously based justifications?

I betcha money-based justifications beats them both buy a great deal (though sometimes just to be confusing, money-justifications are cloaked in science or religion).

Just goes to show that what people do in something's name indicates *nothing* about the underlying value of that thing.

|7.21.08 @ 2:48PM|#

Uhh ... the question about religion vs.science and the number of casualties that has resulted from each is somewhat vacuous ... each has claimed millions of lives. The 20th century is somewhat defined by mass death in the name of science, as opposed to the mass deaths that occurred due to religion prior to that time. The point is: be it science or religion, dogma informs the politics that lead to the wars and oppressions that kill millions of people and makes virtual subjects of nearly the entire world.
The great failure of the "scientific movement" is that it promised to replace superstition with fact, and in doing so, merely replaced religious dogma with scientific certitude - an attitude which lead to the deaths of tens of millions in its name.
Meet the new boss - same as the old boss.

|7.21.08 @ 2:57PM|#

Has anyone else heard the story that the case came about because a couple of guys at the Chamber of Commerce wanted to get some publicity for the town? The details are vague in my memory but I heard it on NPR a few years ago.

Scopes apparently volunteered to go along with it. This would certainly tie into the "...while he used a textbook that included a chapter on evolution, he skipped the chapter" claim above. I don't recall if he was supposed to get anything out of it, but I believe the fine was paid by a local businessman.

I guess my problem with the story is that I can't imagine how anyone could have predicted that the trial of a smalltown schoolteacher would attract national attentention, let alone the likes of Darrow, Jennings and Mencken.

|7.21.08 @ 3:08PM|#

Oh, at the same source as the Scopes biography in the post:

The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a 31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the others--including School Superintendent Walter White--became convinced that publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town, whose population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890's to 1,800 in 1925.

Not exactly what I remembered hearing but close.

I can imagine that the ACLU "announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute" would very likely have lead the townsfolk to believe that someone of Darrow's stature (if not Darrow himself) would put in an appearance.

|7.21.08 @ 3:14PM|#

hence it's alternate name,

aberrant apostrophe alert

|7.21.08 @ 3:17PM|#

which concepts have been responsible for more human deaths and suffering: scientifically based justifications, or religiously based justifications?

Actually, I have trouble thinking of much human based death and suffering justified by scientific claims, at least in the way that wars like the Crusades or events like the Inquisition and the Witch Trials were the result of explicitly religious motivations. Can you give me some idea what you are talking about, beyond the Nazi holocaust?

Further, I don't see how scientific ideas can provide support for genocide in the same way religious ideas can. Certainly crackpot eugenics might suggest that eliminating certain classes of people or races would elevate the human race, but that's not the same as claiming that Science had commanded men to murder in its name.

|7.21.08 @ 3:27PM|#

parse ... you must be fuckin' kidding me, right? Scientific concepts have been claimed as justification for the murder of tens of millions ... from Communism to Nazism. step outside of your little box for a sec and reckon this ... science replaced religion sometime in the late 19th-early 20th century as the source of ultimate truth. Nietzsche had at least one thing right ... God died in the popular imagination as the cause of all things. Suddenly, proofs and laws, based in science, could explain most of the mysteries of the universe. Science replaced God. Thus, science became the justification for most of the genocides and mass murders to follow.

|7.21.08 @ 3:35PM|#

Communism and Nazism are political and philisophical concepts, not scientific concepts.

|7.21.08 @ 3:41PM|#

Yes parse ... both of which claimed scientific justification for the crimes committed in their names. Listen, I am not an enemy of science ... I am only trying to make the point that scientific dogma exists alongside religious dogma as a dangerous propellant to mass crime.

the innominate one|7.21.08 @ 3:46PM|#

baba -

look back past the 20th century to see which viewpoint holds the record for the most murders.

of course, various transgressions are not acceptable, no matter the justification, but creationists often like to point to the Holocaust with one hand and Darwin with the other, as though Hitler wouldn't have found a reason regardless.

how did Staline and Lenin use scientific justifications for their atrocities?

|7.21.08 @ 3:51PM|#

innominate - where do you think the forced atheism of the Soviet regime came from?? There are many writings/speeches/doctrines that state the primacy of sociology and science over the competitive forces of faith. Lenin viewed religion as the only force on earth that could possibly infuse as much passionate faith the Sciences. That is why he was so adamant in pursuing their destruction - he could abide no competition.

|7.21.08 @ 3:59PM|#

Yes parse ... both of which claimed scientific justification for the crimes committed in their names.Listen, I am not an enemy of science ... I am only trying to make the point that scientific dogma exists alongside religious dogma as a dangerous propellant to mass crime.

Claiming that your justification is science is not the same as actually having a scientifically based justification. The Church of Scientology and the Church of Christian Science also claim to have scientific justifications for their doctrines--but they do not.

I don't think it's true that scientific dogma exists. It's certainly the case that some people treat their notion of scientific truth as though it were dogma, but such practice in antithetical to the nature of science.

Che|7.21.08 @ 5:31PM|#

It's certainly the case that some people treat their notion of scientific marxist truth as though it were dogma, but such practice in antithetical to the nature of science marxism.

Mao|7.21.08 @ 5:33PM|#

It's certainly the case that some people treat their notion of scientific marxist truth as though it were dogma, but such practice in antithetical to the nature of science marxism.

html tags are counter-revolutionary running dog lackeys of the capitalist-imperialists.

jtuf|7.21.08 @ 5:34PM|#

parse,

Yes, there is a huge difference between claiming your ideas are empirical truth and actually having ideas that are empirically true. The problem is, how do you tell the difference? For starters, what makes an idea scientific?

jtuf|7.21.08 @ 5:40PM|#

The examples of communism and eugenics show that very bad ideas can get implemented in the name of science. That's why having an idea presented as scientific or presented by scientists is not enough to go through with it. The plans also have to pass some sort of moral test. Since morality is up to the individual conscious, that means it is up to each person to run that check before signing up for an idea.

MJ|7.21.08 @ 11:36PM|#

"Further, I don't see how scientific ideas can provide support for genocide in the same way religious ideas can. Certainly crackpot eugenics might suggest that eliminating certain classes of people or races would elevate the human race, but that's not the same as claiming that Science had commanded men to murder in its name."-parse

Yes, it is the same. Human beings are very good at rationalizing that their guiding philosophies command them into doing what they want to do. The real reasons for wars are generally power and resources, things such as religion, science and nationalism define the rallying points for the populace. It is easier to get people to fight if you say that what we do is in the name of God, Country, or Reason rather than saying that "we want to steal those other people's stuff".

You are right, there is nothing inherent in science actually provides support for such actions. However, the people who are using science in this way generally are not scientists, or, at least, not very good ones. What you seem to be blinded to is that there is nothing inherent in religion (in general, not in specific) either that justifies atrocities committed in its name.

Dave B.|7.22.08 @ 12:49AM|#

What you seem to be blinded to is that there is nothing inherent in religion (in general, not in specific) either that justifies atrocities committed in its name.

Um... specific religions do call for mass murder of non-believers though, Christianity and Islam being the two prime examples. People may be able to claim (falsely) that science justifies their atrocities, but no field of science calls for them.

|7.22.08 @ 4:36AM|#

Um... specific religions do call for mass murder of non-believers though, Christianity and Islam being the two prime examples.

I must always be asleep during the calling-for-mass-murder portion of my Sunday services.

MJ|7.22.08 @ 7:10AM|#

"People may be able to claim (falsely) that science justifies their atrocities, but no field of science calls for them."

No, because "science" is just a methodology for investigating natural phenomana. It is when people start using "science" start expanding the application beyond it's proper purview into a guiding philosophy of life is where the trouble starts. All philosophies of life are prone to being abused. What bothers me is the attitude that religion is always bad and science cannot be, by definition, even though the examples of how bad science based philosophy can go wrong abound in very recent history.

|7.22.08 @ 8:47AM|#

Don't forget that Scopes AGREED to be prosecuted to test the law. He was hardly a victim. His fine was paid by Mr. Bryan.

|7.22.08 @ 10:05AM|#

The trial was essentially a joke, hence its alternate name, the "Scopes Monkey Trial,"

The trial was a joke for a lot of reasons. For one, the town fathers wanted Scopes to break the statewide law, and thought it would get their town some publicity. (They also generally opposed the idea of the state mandating that certain things couldn't be taught, but most people are far more concerned with what's taught than process. I doubt that most people concerned about academic freedom in this case would defend people be free to teach denying evolution in defiance of state standards.) That's why Scopes was hired even though he was completely inadequately trained to teach biology. It is indeed unclear whether or not he actually taught it or simply announced his intention to and bought the relevant textbook.

It doesn't particularly matter whether or not he was guilty, as he wanted to technically violate the law. The whole point was to challenge the law; that's a lot of why the trial was so short and perfunctory. Read Summer for the Gods for a pretty good history of the trial.

Josh Greenberger|7.27.08 @ 11:31PM|#

The Crumbling Facade Of The Theory Of Evolution

Does the fossil record disprove the theory of evolution?

(March 2008) The scientific concept of the origin of life on earth begins with the premise that life first appeared billions of years ago with the formation of microscopic organisms out of inanimate matter. In the billions of years which followed, small organisms evolved into higher and more complex forms of life through random mutations, and one species evolved into another.

Over the years, a process referred to as "natural selection" weeded out those mutations and organisms less fit to survive than others. Thus, it was mostly the more "fit" that passed on their genetic character traits to subsequent generations. And that's how we and all other life forms got here.

On the surface, this sounds great. However, a deeper analysis of the underlying mechanism and the fossil record, leaves little doubt that mutations of a random nature could not possibly have been the driving force behind the development of life on earth.

There has been opposition to the theory of evolution on the basis of whether a random process can produce organization. An analogy often given is, can a monkey on a typewriter, given enough time, produce the works of Shakespeare purely by random keystrokes? Let's assume for the purpose of this discussion that this is possible -- and that random mutations, given enough time, can also eventually produce the most complex life forms.

Let's begin by rolling a die (one "dice"). To get a "3," for example, you'd have to roll the die an average of six times (there are six numbers, so to get any one of them would take an average of six rolls). Of course, you could get lucky and roll a 3 the first time. But as you keep rolling the die, you'll find that the 3 will come up on average once every six rolls.

The same holds true for any random process. You'll get a "Royal Flush" (the five highest cards, in the same suit) in a 5-card poker game on average roughly once every 650,000 hands. In other words, for every 650,00 hands of mostly meaningless arrangements of cards (and perhaps a few other poker hands), you'll get only one Royal Flush.

Multi-million dollar lotteries are also based on this concept. If the odds against winning a big jackpot are millions to one, what will usually happen is that for every game where one person wins the big jackpot with the right combination of numbers, millions of people will not win the big jackpot because they picked millions of combinations of meaningless numbers. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a multi-million dollar lottery yet where millions of people won the top prize and only a few won little or nothing. It's always the other way around. And sometimes there isn't even one big winner.

How does this relate to evolution?

Let's take this well-understood concept about randomness and apply it the old story of a monkey on a typewriter. As mentioned earlier, for the purpose of this discussion, we'll assume that if you allow a monkey to randomly hit keys on a typewriter long enough he could eventually turn out the works of Shakespeare. Of course, it would take a very long time, and he'd produce mountains and mountains of pages of meaningless garbage in the process, but eventually (we'll assume) he could turn out the works of Shakespeare.

Now, let's say, after putting a monkey in front of a typewriter to type out Shakespeare, you decide you also want a copy of the Encyclopedia of Britannica. So you put another monkey in front of another typewriter. Then, you put a third monkey in front of third typewriter, because you also want a copy of "War And Peace." Now you shout, "Monkeys, type," and they all start banging away on their typewriters.

You leave the room and have yourself cryogenically frozen so you can come back in a few million years to see the results. (The monkeys don't have to be frozen. Let's say they're an advanced species; all they need to survive millions of years is fresh ink cartridges.)

You come back in a few million years and are shocked at what you see. What shocks you is not what you find, but what you don't find. First, you do find that the monkeys have produced the works of Shakespeare, the Encyclopedia of Britannica and "War and Peace." But all this you expected.

What shocks you is that you don't see the mountains of papers of meaningless arrangement of letters that each monkey should have produced for each literary work. You do find a few mistyped pages here and there, but they do not nearly account for the millions of pages of "mistakes" you should have found.

And even if the monkeys happened to get them all right the first time, which is a pretty big stretch of the imagination, they still should've type out millions of meaningless pages in those millions of years. (Who told them to stop typing?) Either way, each random work of art should have produced millions upon millions of meaningless typed pages.

This is precisely what the problem is with the Darwinian theory of evolution.

A random process, as depicted by Darwinian evolution and accepted by many scientists, even if one claims it can produce the most complex forms of life, should have produced at least millions of dysfunctional organisms for every functional one. And with more complex organisms (like a "Royal Flush" as opposed to a number 3 on a die), an even greater number of dysfunctional "mistakes" should have been produced (as there are so many more possibilities of "mistakes" in a 52-card deck than a 6-sided die).

The fossil record should have been bursting with billions upon billions of completely dysfunctional-looking organisms at various stages of development for the evolution of every life form. And for each higher life form -- human, monkey, chimpanzee, etc. -- there should have been millions of even more "mistakes."

Instead, what the fossil record shows is an overwhelming number of well-formed, functional-looking organisms, with an occasional aberration. Let alone we haven't found the plethora of "gradually improved" or intermediate species (sometimes referred to as "missing links") that we should have, we haven't even found the vast number of "mistakes" known beyond a shadow of a doubt to be produced by every random process.

We don't need billions of years to duplicate a random process in a lab to show that it will produce chaos every time, regardless of whether or not it might eventually produce some "meaningful complexity." To say that randomness can produce organization is one thing, but to say that it won't even produce the chaos that randomness invariably produces is inconsistent with established fact.

A process that will produce organization without the chaos normally associated with randomness is the greatest proof that the process is not random.

The notion that the fossil record supports the Darwinian theory of evolution is as ludicrous as saying that a decomposed carcass proves an animal is still alive. It proves the precise opposite. The relative scarcity of deformed-looking creatures in the fossil record proves beyond a doubt that if one species spawned another (which in itself is far from proven) it could not possibly have been by a random process.

To answer why we don't see many of the "mistakes" in the fossil record, some scientists point out that the genetic code has a repair mechanism which is able to recognize diseased and dysfunctional genetic code and eliminate it before it has a chance to perpetuate abnormal organisms.

Aside from this not being the issue, this isn't even entirely true. Although genetic code has the ability to repair or eliminate malfunctioning genes, many diseased genes fall through the cracks, despite this. There are a host of genetic diseases -- hemophilia, various cancers, congenital cataract, spontaneous abortions, cystic fibrosis, color-blindness, and muscular dystrophy, to name just a few -- that ravage organisms and get passed on to later generations, unhampered by the genetic repair mechanism. During earth's history of robust speciation (species spawning new ones) through, allegedly, random mutation, far more genes should have fallen through the cracks.

And, as an aside, how did the genetic repair mechanism evolve before there was a genetic repair mechanism? And where are all those millions of deformed and diseased organisms that should've been produced before the genetic repair mechanism was fully functional?

But all this is besides the point. A more serious problem is the presumption that natural selection weeded out the vast majority, or all, of the "misfits."

A genetic mutation that would have resulted in, let's say, the first cow to be born with two legs instead of four, would not necessarily be recognized as dysfunctional by the genetic repair mechanism. (I'll be using "cow" as an example throughout; but it applies to almost any organism.) From the genetic standpoint, as long as a gene is sound in its own right, there's really no difference between a cow with four legs, two legs, or six tails and an ingrown milk container. It's only after the cow is born that natural selection, on the macro level, eliminates it if it's not fit to survive.

It's these types of mutations, organisms unfit to survive on the macro level, yet genetically sound, that should have littered the planet by the billions.

Sure these deformed cows would have gotten wiped out quickly by natural selection, since they had no chance of surviving. But how many millions of dysfunctional cows alone, before you even get to the billions of other species in earth's history, should have littered the planet and fossil record before the first stable, functioning cow made its debut? If you extrapolate the random combinations from a simple deck of cards to the far greater complexity of a cow, we're probably talking about tens of millions of "mistakes" that should have cluttered planet earth for just the first functioning cow.

Where are all these relics of an evolutionary past?

Did nature miraculously get billions of species right the first time? Of the fossils well-preserved enough to study, most appear to be well-designed and functional-looking. With the low aberration ratio of fossils being no more significant, as far as speciation is concerned, than common birth deformities, there seems to have been nothing of a random nature in the development of life.

One absurd response I've gotten from a scientist as to why a plethora of deformed species never existed is: There is no such thing as speciation driven by deleterious mutation.

This is like asking, "How come everybody leaves the lecture hall through exit 5, but never through exit 4?" and getting a response, "Because people don't leave the lecture hall through exit 4." Wasn't this the question?

What scientists have apparently done is look into the fossil record and found that new species tend to make their first appearance as well-formed, healthy-looking organisms. So instead of asking themselves how can a random series of accidents seldom, if ever, produce "accidents," they've simply formulated a new rule in evolutionary biology: There is no such thing as speciation driven by deleterious mutation. This answer is about as scientific, logical and insightful as, "Because I said so."

It's one thing for the genetic code to spawn relatively flawless cows today, after years of stability. But before cows took root, a cow that might have struck us as deformed would have been no more or less "deleterious," from the genetic standpoint, than a cow that we see as normal. The genetic repair mechanism may recognize "healthy" or "diseased" genetic code, but it can't know how many legs or horns a completely new species should have, if we're talking about a trial-and-error crapshoot. If the genetic repair mechanism could predict what a functioning species should eventually look like, years before natural selection on the macro level had a chance to weed out the unfit, we'd be talking about some pretty weird, prophetic science.

In a paper published in the February 21, 2002, issue of Nature, Biologists Matthew Ronshaugen, Nadine McGinnis, and William McGinnis described how they were able to suppress some limb development in fruit flies simply by activating certain genes and suppress all limb development in some cases with additional mutations during embryonic development.

In another widely publicized experiment, mutations induced by radiation caused fruit flies to grow legs on their heads.

These experiments showed how easy it is to make drastic changes to an organism through genetic mutations. Ironically, although the former experiment was touted as supporting evolution, they both actually do the opposite. The apparent ease with which organisms can change so dramatically and take on bizarre properties, drives home the point that bizarre creatures, and bizarre versions of known species, should have been mass produced by nature, had earth's history consisted of billions of years of the development of life through random changes.

To claim that the random development of billions of life forms occurred, yet the massive aberrations didn't, is an absurd contradiction to everything known about randomness.

Evolutionists tend to point out that the fossil record represents only a small fraction of biological history, and this is why we don't find all the biological aberrations we should. But the issue here is not one of numbers but one of proportion.

For every fossil of a well-formed, viable-looking organism, we should have found an abundance of "strange" or deformed ones, regardless of the total number. What we're finding, however, is the proportional opposite.

Evolution may have made some sense in Darwin's days. But in the 21st century, evolution appears to be little more than the figment of a brilliant imagination. Although this imaginative concept has, in the years since Darwin, amassed a fanatical cult-like following, science, it is not. Science still needs to be proven; you can't just vote ideas into "fact." And especially not when they contradict facts.

One sign of the desperation of evolutionists to get their fallacious message across is their labelling of all disproofs of evolution as "Creationism," even when no mention of Creation or a deity is made. Ironically, it's evolutionists' dogmatic adherence to concepts that are more imagination than fact that smacks of a belief in mystical, supernatural powers. What evolutionists have done, in effect, is invented a new god-less religion and re-invented their own version of creation-by-supernatural-means. However, the mere elimination of God from the picture doesn't exactly make it science.

So if the development of life was not an accident, how did life come about?

Well, pointing out a problem is not necessarily contingent upon whether or not a solution is presented. In this case, presenting an alternative may actually be counterproductive. Evolutionists often get so bogged down with trying to discredit an proposed alternative, frequently with nothing more than invectives, that they tend to walk away believing evolution must still work.

The objective here, therefore, is to point out that Darwinian evolution does not fall apart because a solution being presented says it happened differently. The objective here is to show that the mechanics of evolution are incompatible with empirical evidence, verifiable science and common sense, regardless of whatever else may or may not take its place.

For a true study of science, we need to put the theory of evolution to rest, as we've done with so many other primitive concepts born of ignorance. Science today is far beyond such notions as metals that turn into gold, brooms that fly, earth is flat, and mystical powers that accidentally create life. What all these foolish beliefs have in common is that they were popular in their own time, were never duplicated in a lab, and were never proven by any other means.

We'd be doing society a great service if we filled our science textbooks with verifiable facts that demonstrate how science works, instead of scintillating fabrications that demonstrate how imaginative and irrational some scientists can get.

by Josh Greenberger