The scopes trial  The scopes trial is based around a teacher named John Scopes. John Scopes was a 

high school biology teacher who was accused of violating the state’s butler act, which makes it unlawful to teach evolution. Scopes was found guilty, but the verdict was over‐turned on a technicality and he was never brought back to trial. The trial drew intense na‐tional publicity, as national reporters scrambled to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the big‐name lawyers representing each side. William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential candidate for the Democrats, was the lawyer for religion, while Clarence Dar‐row, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial saw modernists, who said re‐ligion was consistent with evolution, against fundamentalist who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible trumped all human knowledge. The trial was both a theological con‐test, and a trial of modern science regarding the creation‐evolution controversy. The teaching of evolution expanded, as fundamentalist efforts to use state laws to reverse the trend had failed in the court of public opinion. 

Scopes spent three days in jail and then went back to teaching biology. He doesn’t teach evolution anymore.  This trial in my opinion is the biggest trial of the 1920s it’s re‐ligion vs. science although I am a religious person I agree with scopes on the teaching of evolution. The reason I believe in evolution is how similar we are to these animals and how we are constantly changing, evolving into smarter, stronger people as time passes. We are constantly evolving to better people. The world we live in changes all the time and we change with it. Although I agree with John Scopes I agree with him being found guilty. He did teach evolution is a public school event that is illegal so he did deserve to be in trouble. 

Scopes became an increasingly willing participant, even incriminating himself and urg-ing students to testify against him. He was indicted on May 25, after three students testified against him at the grand jury, at the behest of Scopes. This trial really put a chokehold hold on religion at every twist and turn of the trial, the science side of the trial always had a way to make the religion side look wrong. It was like the butler act shouldn’t exist. The butler act was started by State Rep. John W. Butler, head of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, sweated state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws, succeeding in Tennessee when the Butler Act was passed. I don’t really believe that religion should be taught in public schools over sci-ence. Biology is a class where you learn what makes up organisms and evolution does fall in that category in my opinion. The butler act should looked act again and maybe they should re-think having that law. William Jennings Bryan as good of a president as he is, didn’t nearly as well then the evolution side of the trial though he still he won the trial.