1. What two works shaped how later generations would think of the Scopes trial? 225
2. With what was fundamentalism increasingly associated, due to Scopes? 232
3. What happened in the 50s to revive interest in Scopes as emblematic of a decline in critical intelligence in the US? 239
4. What did the actor Tony Randall wonder? 246
5. Warren Court rulings did what to antievolution statutes in the 60s? 247
6. Who was the jurist from Memphis with a special interest in Scopes? 254
7. What famed evangelist endorsed the interpretation of Genesis as a pictorial depiction of progressive creationism spanning aeons? 261
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8. Who was Chapman's Freudian analyst? 276
9. What makes it hard for Chapman to distinguish one young Christian spelunker from another? 286
10. Into what rationalistic trap have creationists been seduced? 295
11. Where does Chapman think "all this prejudice and violence" against gays comes from? 304
12. Who are the lead actors in Consenting Adults? 314
13. What should church be, in Chapman's opinion? 325
14. What are the three circles of responsibility? 335
15. What & who does Chapman think might in fact have killed Bryan? 345
16. What metaphorical object does the vicar produce, to characterize Chapman's mother's posthumouis condition? 355
17. Chapman came back from Dayton changed in what way? 365
Please add yours...
Please add yours...
Discussion Questions:
- Have you read Only Yesterday? What do you think of it? Does pop history have a place and a value, or is it "fake history"?
- Have you seen Inherit the Wind? Is it badly misleading, or just Hollywood-ish in a way we should not deplore?
- Has the Old Time religion of Bryan (et al) been consigned to the scrap-heap of history, or is it due for a revival?
- History doesn't repeat, said Mark Twain, but it rhymes. What does the Scopes episode rhyme with? What present or near-future events do you imagine might rhyme with it?
- Is Young Earth creationism an intellectually respectable view?
- Is it a mistake for conventionally religious people to assert and defend the rationality of belief in miracles?
- Have religious people, in your experience, become more accepting of homosexuality and other "alternative lifestyles"?
- What do you like and dislike about organized religion and its attendant cultures?
- If you had "more time to study," what elements do you imagine you'd pick and choose for your religion? 326
- Have you ever been incensed by words spoken at a memorial service or funeral? How, why?
- Is conviction of any sort inherently arrogant?
- Please add yours...
The road to Dayton (leave M'boro at 9, for the 1 pm reenactment - we lose an hour to the time zone)-
Young New Englander Comes To Little Dixie Area in 1901 "In May of 1901, after I had completed all the requirements except my oral examination, for my doctor's degree at the Johns Hopkins, I received a letter from Professor George Lefevre, of the University of Missouri. We had taught together at the Marine Biological Laboratory before he went to Missouri in the fall of '99, and now he was writing me about an instructor being added to his staff. He invited me to visit Columbia at the University's expense, so that I might be looked over and look the place over for myself. With my Van Dyke beard and pince-nez, I thought I would make a good impression and hoped that I should like the University of Missouri as much as I liked Lefevre..." (continues, A Damned-Yankee Professor in Little Dixie: abstract from the autobiographical notes of Winterton C. Curtis:Winterton C. Curtis (1957)...
A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial
from D-Days at Dayton: Fundamentalism vs Evolution at Dayton, Tennessee
by Winterton C. Curtis (1956)
Quiz SG 9-10, TM 24-30
ReplyDeleteSG 9-10
1. Following Frederick Lewis Allen, what did the Scopes Trial become symbolic of? (234)
2. What was Krutch's problem with the play, "Inherit the Wind"? (244)
3. What contributed to Fortas' decision to hear the Epperson appeal? (254)
4. How did the New Yorker portray the play, "Inherit the Wind: The State Sequel? (264)
TM 24-30
1. What book of the bible was used to debate the issue of cross-dressing? (284)
2. What theory was used to explain how the Earth flooded during the Great Flood in the Bible? (294)
3. What was the Pope's/Church's position on homosexual acts? (304)
4. Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey starred in a movie about wife-swapping. What was the title of the movie? (314)
5. What was the subject of the sermon Chapman heard at church? (324)
6. According to Chapman, what was the void he tried filling with sex and love, alcohol and drugs, and illicit romance and relentless work? (334-335)
7. Prior to his death, what was holding Bryan together? (344)
8. According to Chapman, what tradition did his mother pass on to her children when she died? (354)
9. How did the Scopes Trial change Chapman? (364)
SG 9-10
ReplyDelete1.To serve the southern market and in response to heightened sensitivity about the topic, national textbook writers became increasingly what? (230).
2.Lawrence and Lee felt that McCarthyism paralleled some aspects of the Scopes trial. What was Lee worried about? (240).
3.In 1966 in Tennessee, who lost his temporary teaching post for reportedly telling students that the Bible was “a bunch of fairy tales.”? (250).
4.What analogy do courts readily dismiss when conservative Christian teachers present evidence for creationism in science classrooms.? (260).
5.Creation science is spread within the conservative Protestant church through the missionary work of what organization? (270).
6.As people learn either from Proverbs in the Bible or a Broadway classic, “He that troubleth his own house shall what? (278).
TM 24-30
1.According to Chapman, long-term sleep deprivation makes you what? (280).
2.On the cave tour since Kurt could not be everywhere what message did he have typed on a piece of paper to be read in his absence that explained fossilized brachiopods within only a few thousand years of earth’s origin? (290).
3.According to Bryan College students, only born-again Christians will go to heaven, so what fraction of the population is damned to eternal hell? (300).
4.The night Victoria told Matthew she was leaving him, he attended a wedding party and attached a note to one of the balloons. What was on the note? (310).
5.Filmmakers are too ashamed to ask themselves what effect it has on society when the artists, the supposed advocates of truth, become mere propagandists for whom? (320).
6.What did the Johnsons ask Matthew to let them do after lunch was over and he was preparing to leave? (330).
7.What was the technicality that resulted in the Scopes verdict being overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court? (340).
8.What question did Matthew ask during his mother’s last years when her pain was so palpable? (350).
9.What had Anna Bella fallen into behind the barn that caused her to scream in pain? (360).
DQ
1.If Darwin had not written On The Origin of Species, do you believe we would still have had discussions about evolution and natural selection?
2.Have you learned anything this semester that convinces you that evolution is factual and that natural selection occurs?
1. Certainly-and Alfred Russell Wallace, or somebody, would be our Darwin.
Delete2. I know this question is not aimed at me, but I've learned - or re-learned - that the human "will to believe" AND disbelieve is a force of nature.
SG 9-10
ReplyDelete1. What caused Frederick Lewis Allen's book, "Only Yesterday" to become a best seller and sell over a million copies? (227)
2. According to Henry M. Morris, what was Bryan's most serious mistake on the stand? (237)
3. By the late 20th century what left Fundamentalists concerned about including creationist theories in the school curriculum than excluding evolutionary concepts from it? (247)
4. Who from the Darrow team considered having teachers cover creationism as well as evolution by saying, "For God sakes let the children have their minds kept open - close no doors to their knowledge? 257
5. What do critics of evolutionary teaching typically ask for? (267)
6. What's the Dover case disclaimer? (277)
TM
1. What was Chapman's response when he was asked why he was in the van on the way to Grassy Cove cave? (258)
2. How did Chapman respond when he was asked if he was a believer? (268)
3. What happened to Chapman's girlfriend after her father was killed in a car crash and her brother and sister were profoundly injured? (278)
4. How did Chapman view himself among the writers in Hollywood? (288)
5. How did Chapman respond when Carter and Gale asked if they can pray for him? (298)
6. What happened to Scopes after he left college? (308)
DQ
1. How would you review Chapman's book?
2. Advocates of creation-science claim Inherit the Wind does not fairly represent their position and historian Martin E. Marty described the movie as an event of media-mythic proportions. Is Hollywood obliged in any way to accurately depict real-life events?
1.286 2.297 3.307 4.318 5.330 6.340
DeleteThanks for joining us in absentia, Pete. Hope you're having a great time in The Holy Land.
1. My review of Trials of the Monkey: tremendously entertaining, if sometimes gratuitously salacious or vulgar. Chapman is hard on himself as a memoirist, but in a way that ought to resonate with the inherent fallibilities of the human condition that we all share. The book lends great insight into the mindset of Daytonians and creationists, and evokes appropriate human sympathy and fellow-feeling. We're all either God's creatures or we're all not, after all.
2. If Hollywood didn't bend events it wouldn't be "Hollywood" - but I do sometimes wish they'd try harder to stick to the facts. It's more dramatic to kill Bryan in the courtroom, for instance, but they could have kept him alive a few more days without seriously impairing the entertainment value of the storyline... if they ask me.
SG 9-10
ReplyDeleteWho wrote that the Darrow-Bryan clash "dealt a death blow to Fundamentalism? (229)
Bryan shifted sides on which two watershed events in American history? (234)
What 1950's event did Hofstadter and other historians say the trial influenced? What highly influential retelling of the trial did this opinion develop? (239)
Discussions:
"Inherit the Wind" is regularly used as an instructional tool when describing this case to high school students. Do you think it's an appropriate choice? Or is this retelling too sensational?
Several people in the text described this trial as "the death of fundamentalism." Do you agree with this diagnosis?
My Responses: SG 9-10
ReplyDelete1) A book written in 1931 by Frederick Lewis Allan- Only Yesterday- An Informal History of the Nineteen Twenties and 1960 movies Inherit the Wind based on the Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
2) Anti-evolutionism
3) During the 1950s, McCarthy-era assaults on individual liberty heightened liberal interest in fundamentalism (p.239)
4) “Sometimes we wonder if anyone ever learns anything.”
5) Warren’s Court ruling made antievolution statues seen virtually un-American.
6) Justice Abe Fortas
7) Billy Graham
TM 24-30
1) Marie Singer
2) Many are home schooled, most are pleasant but uninteresting and their like minded thinking make it hard to distinguish one from another.
3) They chose not to use science to explain miracles, instead they simply believe miracles are miracles and to just leave it at that.
4) Directly from the Bible.
5) Kevin Klein and Kevin Spacey
6) A segment of time to interpret, to translate what is life and all its questions. To let the mind philosophize and wander.
7) 1- The responsibility to yourself, 2- The responsibility you have to those who you know and 3- (most important) The responsibility to the world beyond your own direct experience.
8) Malone and Darrow perhaps shook and eventually broke Bryan’s faith, which can really effect a person.
9) An egg
10) Chapman came back with even less certainty that he had when he went. He changed from an atheist and came back an agnostic realizing choosing either side holds such arrogance on a topic that cannot definitively be proved either way.
More to come! Been a crazy week and got a bit behind.