Lesson4TheTrailThatRockedtheWorld.ppt

Advanced English Book One The Trial That Rocked the World By John Scopes The Scopes/Monkey Trial The Scopes trial, also known as the “Monkey Trial,” is one of the most famous courtroom dramas in United States history. The press dubbed it the Monkey Trial because, according to popular belief, evolution meant that humans were descended from monkeys. The Monkey Trial The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. The Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, and debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South. Synopsis of the Text Tennessee legislature had enacted a law (the Butler Act) in 1924 making it a crime to teach the theory of evolution in public schools because it contradicted the account of creation in the Bible. The following year, a high school biology teacher in Dayton, John Thomas Scopes (1900-1970), decided to test the law. He explained the theory to his class and was arrested and prosecuted. Religious debate The most contentious debates over evolution have involved religion. From Darwin’s day to the present, members of some religious faiths have perceived the scientific theory of evolution to be in direct and objectionable conflict with religious doctrine regarding the creation of the world. Christian Fundamentalists (【宗】原教旨主义(相信《圣经》所记载的传统的基督教信仰, 反对较为近代的教义) and others who believe literally in the biblical story of creation choose to reject evolutionary theory because it contradicts the book of Genesis, which describes how God created the world and all its plants and animal life