For Bryan, life without Faith was untenable -- and teaching such a life to school children was an act of corruption that should never be allowed. The question of the origin of the human existence was a stage -- a platform -- from which Bryan could pronounce the merits of Fundamentalist Christianity: it was his pulpit, and like any good preacher he seized the opportunity to preach to the masses, in the spotlight, debating the eternal opponents of God (represented in the Trial by Darrow). It was a stage that transcended the mere local matter of Scopes teaching evolution (against the law in Tennessee): the debate between evolution and Creationism was symbolic of the larger struggle between the forces of Good (Christian Fundamentalism) and the forces of evil (atheism).
This is not to say that proponents of Creationism or of evolution are good or evil in and of themselves -- and that was not really the question at the Trial. It was, in effect, a trial of ideas -- not of people. Certainly, John Scopes was on trial and was found guilty of teaching evolution -- but he himself was ultimately incidental to the much grander vision unfolding in the courtroom. It was a contest between two visions of the world, of life, of the meaning and purpose of life. And while Bryan could characterize atheism as an evil in and of itself because it lacked awareness of God, or could characterize evolution as anti-Christian and therefore evil in and of itself, the men who supported these positions were not ones who could, according to the very same Christian ethic espoused by Bryan, be judged. After all, according to the tenets of Christianity, men are not meant to judge others, for judgment is reserved for God alone: He is the only one with the capacity to see into the minds and hearts of men and judge them accordingly. It is Augustine…
In 2005, a Federal Judge in Georgia ruled that any sticker or notice violated the separation of Church and state, "Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution eduction. . . The distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards
American Religious History Defining fundamentalism and liberalism in Christianity is hardly an exact science, especially because prior to about 1920 there was not even a term for fundamentalism as it exists today. While present-day fundamentalists often claim descent from the Puritans and Calvinists of the 17th and 18th Centuries, Puritans were not really fundamentalists in the modern sense. They were not in conflict with 20th Century-style liberals and supporters of evolution
Schulman illustrates this by reference to Bob Dylan's lyrics, whose images (such as Isis) evoke the spiritual quests of the New Age mysticism and whose outlaw heroes voice an angry suspicion again established institutional authority (Schulman, 147). The same hostility to mainstream values was repeated in iconoclastic directors such as Cassavetes and Scorsese. One sees as well that the 1970s critiques of religion were not based on evolutionary science
Sociology: Changing Societies in a Diverse World (Fourth Edition) George J. Bryjak & Michael P. Soroka Chapter One Summary of Key Concepts Sociology is the field of study which seeks to "describe, explain, and predict human social patterns" from a scientific perspective. And though Sociology is part of the social sciences (such as psychology and anthropology), it is quite set apart from the other disciplines in social science; that is because it emphasizes