CYKIAE Season 15 Part 39. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – She Murdered Her Philandering Husband in Court and He Got Her Off because She Was a Widow

CYKIAE Season 15 Part 39. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – She Murdered Her Philandering Husband in Court and He Got Her Off because She Was a Widow

William Jennings Bryan was pitched against Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial – and it wasn’t a fair fight. John Farrell, in his biography, Clarence Darrow – Attorney for the Damned, wrote of one of Darrow’s more remarkable court wins – and he had had many remarkable court wins: He was a practicing defense lawyer, and in his time he represented … many a scorned woman like Emma Simpson, the socialite who smuggled a handgun into court and shot her philandering husband in the midst of their divorce proceeding. "You've killed him!" said a shocked clerk. "I hope so," said Emma. Meeting the classic definition of chutzpah, Darrow convinced the jury to have mercy on the widow. The types of cases and the types of clients that Darrow appeared in and represented were in an entirely different league to the ones that Bryan was used to. Darrow had been almost constantly in practice with the most remarkably complex variety of cases imaginable. Bryan had not practised law for 30 years. The legal contest was one between Darrow, armed with the best Samurai sword, and Jennings, armed with an airline plastic knife. But, having said that, the results weren’t what you would expect. Tag words: William Jennings Bryan; Clarence Darrow; Scopes Monkey Trial; John Farrell; Clarence Darrow – Attorney for the Damned; Prendergast; Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Bobby Franks; James McNamara; Los Angeles Times; Big Bill Haywood; Red Scare; Isaac Bond; Scottsboro boys; Ossian Sweet; Henry Sweet; Emma Simpson; Edward J Larson; ACLU; American Civil Liberties Union; NAACP; Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; Christianity; The Commoner; Omar Khayyam; Dudley Field Malone; Nietzsche; Felix Frankfurter; Bainbridge Colby;

CYKIAE Season 15. Part 38. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – Dayton Tennessee – William Jennings Bryan the Legend Prosecuting Scopes.

William Jennings Bryan had won the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for President against William McKinley in 1895. For the same elections, Clarence Darrow had secured for himself the nomination of the Democratic party to run for Congress. Darrow in fact spent most of his time campaigning vigorously for Bryan, to the detriment of his own campaign. In the result both he and Bryan failed in their bids for office. John Farrell, in his book Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned wrote: Darrow blamed Bryan, in part, for the Democratic defeat. When they met the following spring, Darrow was "terribly raw" to Bryan, said Masters. "You'd better . . . study science, history, philosophy and quit this village religious stuff," Darrow told Bryan before a group of fellow Democrats. "You're a head of the party before you are ready and a leader should lead with thought." Bryan turned to the others and said, "Darrow's the only man in the world who looks down on me for believing in God." "Your kind of a God," Darrow replied. Bryan's success gnawed at Darrow. He despised Bryan's dull intellect and complacency. Soon, Darrow would be telling a story of how Altgeld, on the day after the Cross of Gold speech, had labeled Bryan a "damn fool." "I've been thinking over Bryan's speech," Altgeld had sneered, according to Darrow. "What did he say anyhow?" For thirty years, Darrow's envy and antipathy toward Bryan would build — until he was given, and took, the opportunity to destroy him. In part the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial is the story of Darrow finally seizing the chance to take his revenge on Bryan. Tag words: William Jennings Bryan; William McKinley; Clarence Darrow; John Farrell; Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned; Scopes Monkey Trial; Edward Larson; Summer for the Gods; The Boy Orator of the Platte; Great Commoner; Peerless Leader; Cross of Gold speech; Darwinism; majoritarian; Jonathon Wells; Zombie Science; Theory of Evolution; H G Wells; Dudley Field Malone; John Randolph Neal;

CYKIAE Season 15 Part 37. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – Dayton Tennessee – A Boy Named Sue.

Now here’s what could sound like a very modern story. Only it isn’t. In this part I’m going to be telling you about Sue Hicks of Tennessee. Except Sue Hicks isn’t the 1925 Southern Belle that you might be thinking she is, in any event Sue Hicks wasn’t originally from Tennessee. Although in one sense Sue was. But in another she wasn’t – but one thing is for sure and certain, Sue Hicks played an essential part in what was soon to become known as the Monkey Trial. Tag words: Sue Hicks; Monkey Trial; Scopes Monkey Trial; Edward J Larson; Summer for the Gods;Leopold Loeb Case; John Farrell; Clarence Darrow – Attorney for the Damned; American Civil Liberties Union; ACLU: George W Rappleyea; Fred E Robinson; Walter White; John Godsey; Herbert E Hicks; Sue K Hicks; Wallace Haggard; John T Scopes; Hunter's Civic Biology; William Jennings Bryan; Clarence Darrow; Mencken;

CYKIAE Season 15 Part 36. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – Dayton Tennessee – Hitler On the Side of Christian Fundamentalists.

If you get it right all the time, you’re doing really well. But sometimes you get it really, really wrong. Permit me to illustrate. William B Riley conceived the idea of a body to advance Christian Fundamentalist ideas. The body that emerged from this idea was called World's Christian Fundamentals Association – the WCFA. In 1922 the movement lobbied to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools. It threw its weight behind what was to become the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. When that trial was over, the crusade against teaching evolution in schools continued with some successes and some failures – and some massive humiliating missteps. Edward Larson, in his book Summer for the Gods wrote: By the thirties, [Riley] warned of an "international Jewish-Bolshevik-Darwinist conspiracy" to promote evolutionism in the classroom, and praised Adolph Hitler's effort to foil such conspiracies in Germany. Riley was backing the wrong horse there, in so many ways. Even Hitler would have been surprised, and perhaps furious, at what had been said about him on so many levels. I’ll talk about that in a later programme. Tag words: Christian Fundamentalist; William B Riley; World's Christian Fundamentals Association; WCFA; Scopes Monkey Trial; Edward J Larson; Summer for the Gods; Adolf Hitler; William Jennings Bryan; Darwinism; the Commoner; Theory of Evolution; Neo-Darwinism; Alfred Russel Wallace; Overruling Intelligence; Governor Austin Peay; , John W Butler; Butler bill;

CYKIAE Season 15 Part 35. And Christ Rose Yet Again – The Sudden Death of Atheism – The Scopes Monkey Trial – Dayton Tennessee – When Science is Just Good Storytelling. Part 35

William Jennings Bryan challenged evolution for what he saw as the lack of evidence to show that man evolved from lower animal forms. His chief scientific opponent, well I’ll let Edward J Larson tell you about that from his book on the Scopes Monkey Trial, Summer for the Gods: At the time, the popular debate over the status of evolution as science centered largely on the interpretation of fossils. Various types of scientific evidence supported the theory, but short of actually observing the development of new kinds of plants or animals, intermediate fossils linking related species offered the most persuasive "proof" of evolution. . . . . Bryan's chief adversary in the creation — evolution controversy from the scientific viewpoint, American Museum of Natural History president Henry Fairfield Osborn, …. "the very recent discovery of Tertiary man constitutes the most convincing answer to Mr. Bryan's call for more evidence." Tracing humanity's family tree, Osborn added, "Nearer to us is the Piltdown man, found [in] England; still nearer in geologic time is the Heidelberg man, found on the Neckar River; still nearer is the Neanderthal man, whom we know all about. This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth." Explaining the fossil record for us are the scientists called paleoanthropologists. How much reliance should we put on the fact they’re telling us that man descended from the apes as proven by the fossil record? Tag words: William Jennings Bryan; the Commoner; Edward J Larson; Scopes Monkey Trial; Monkey Trial; Summer for the Gods; Jonathon Wells; Icons of Evolution; paleoanthropology; Piltdown man; Heidelberg man; Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; Origin of Species; Nelson QScience; Pam Borger; Great War; World War I; Vernon Kellogg; Richard Weikart; Darwinian Racism; Ernst Haeckel; Friedrich Nietzsche; James H Leuba; John Lennox; God’s Undertaker; Edward Larsen; Larry Witham; Richard Dawkins; New Atheists; Christianity; John Scopes;