he nations leading evolutionists of the time. This came nearly twenty years after Bryans reading of On the Origin of Our Species (1859). On several other occasions, Darrow displayed his own ignorance by stating that the Bible taught that the world was flat, that creationism was contrary to the Koran, and by making references to the book of Buddha which does not exist.After showing Bryan was ignorant in world culture, history, and people, Darrow asked for, and was granted, an immediate verdict, keeping Bryan from delivering a lengthy speech he had been preparing for several weeks. Despite this, and Darrows best efforts, the jury convicted Scopes and fined him $100, the laws minimum punishment. As with all other expenses, this was paid for by the ACLU. After the sentencing, Scopes vowed to continue to oppose this unjust statute.The Scopes trial came at a crossroads in history - as people were choosing to cling to the past or jump into the future. The trial itself was a series of conflicts, the obvious one being evolution vs. religion. But as John Crowe Ransom notes, there were a series of tensions throughout the trial, including questions of collective vs. individual rights and academic vs. parental concerns, which have persisted in American culture since the birth of the nation. At issue in both of these conflicts was who had control of the society. Who controlled the schools -- the masses or the teachers? Who determined the law -- the people or the leaders of the town? That there was no resolution was unsettling. Scopes lost the case, but won the public's favor, and the Butler Law remained on the books in Tennessee. For historical scholars, understanding the Scopes trial begins with a cultural framework. To Ransom, the trial was a product of "the modernist-fundamentalist conflict of the period." AsR. M. Cornelius wrote in Their Stage Drew All the World, "This controversy, whose stage was the battle over the nature of the B...
