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Hairless Apes

On the 100th Anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial

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In nineteen hundred twenty-five,
as Darwinists began to thrive,
they wisely chose to hang their hopes
upon a teacher named John Scopes
who’d contravened the Butler Act
by teaching children, it was fact
that humans, not so long before,
had been mere apes, and nothing more.

When Scopes was charged, his plight soon drew
support from the ACLU
which paid for him to mount a case
they hoped would serve to bring disgrace
upon creationist accounts.
Although they lost, they can announce
that as they battled case by case,
they put God in his rightful place.

We’re now taught we just live, then die,
but if thought through, we must ask why
we should control our inner beast.
That wouldn’t matter in the least
to hairless apes whose thumbs oppose,
since apes should do what they suppose
will bring about what they think’s right,
if needed, through deceit or might.

Those with just ape-like DNA
to guide their footsteps every day,
have urges they must satisfy,
and no act they can’t justify,
since what is virtuous and true
is just based on their point of view,
and not a perfect paradigm
from He who started space and time.

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Poet’s Note: What is now popularly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial concluded on July 21st, 100 years ago. John Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. He was accused of violating the Butler Act, which prohibited teaching the theory of evolution in public schools in that state. The American Civil Liberties Union agreed to fund the defense of Mr. Scopes so they could mount a challenge to the constitutionality of the law. Although that effort failed, this was the first of many battles that ultimately led to teaching Darwin’s evolutionary theory as a proven fact for how new species were created.

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Warren Bonham is a private equity investor who lives in Southlake, Texas.

28 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Great subject and great poem that sums up what has happened to our county and our culture.

    Reply
    • Roy Eugene Peterson

      Issues and stories often become confused. From my postgraduate studies in history, this is one of those. The issue was freedom of speech, while the story was evolution, just like the reason for the Civil War was not slavery, but states’ rights.

      Reply
      • Warren Bonham

        As always, I learn a lot from others on this site who know far more than I do. The history books are frustratingly unreliable for those who want to learn actual history.

    • Edward C. Hayes PhD Hayes

      . . . and, as well, a good illustration of the powerful role that (not-so-humble) POETRY can play in saving, rather reviving, the values of a collapsing culture. Still merely collapsing, not comatose or DOA.
      The SCP has a crucial role to play in that rehabilitation, and it should make it the main publc pronouncement for all cultural revivalists:
      “Poetry Leads The Way” – not politics, not crowd-enthrawling partisans, not even Trump-supporting comic books. Those play a part for the moment. But what truly supports a return to, a permanent rebirth of, the love of truly great art, architecture, sculpture, writing, advertising (I mean that), and music — all that we have lost in the aesthetic world from our highly emotional, pell-mell charge toward absolute freedom — now featuring sex change operations and the denial of biological definitions of the sexes?
      Why, as the example here clearly suggests, culturally themed POETRY could lead the charge for that rehabilitative cultural revival, and its accompanying permanent revolution that we are all awaiting.
      Sincerely,

      I will try to attach my own lengthy, somewhat jargonistic, string of couplets which say that same thing.

      Reply
      • Warren Bonham

        I didn’t see your attachment, but I look forward to reading it. I’m particularly interested in seeing how “advertising” fits into a list containing art, architecture, sculpture, etc.

      • Edward Hayes

        Warren, Advertising bears much of the blame for the decline? extermination? of plain good taste. The ads have adults acting silly; of absurdities of behavior intended as humor. Expect to see coming out of the ocean with an octopus on his head an advertisement for – a bank?! If you watch one hour of phony drama, or so-called humor, or news, you will see one ad at least every 4 minutes and more on the hour. That means at least 15 ads an hour. They are about 30 seconds long, some more. So in one hour you will be exposed to 8 or 9 minutes of advertising stupidity and immaturity. Kids who pulled pranks in high school have jobs awaiting them. Comment:

  3. Brian Yapko

    This is a splendidly conceived and executed poem, Warren, which lays out a logical argument in verse very skillfully. I’ve been fascinated by the Scopes trial ever since seeing the movie “Inherit the Wind” with Spencer Tracy and Frederic March in the only slight fictionalized Clarence Darrow (“Drummond”) and William Jennings Bryan (“Brady”) roles. And I was always taken by the Brady line “I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than I am in the age of rocks.”

    I believe in evolution but I believe that evolution happens to be one more tool used by God as part of Creation — a God who happens to exist outside of Time so that the passage of eons means literally nothing to Him. I’ve always resented the animus of the ACLU in trying not to separate church and state but to try to eliminate church completely. Not remotely what the Founders wanted or anticipated.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      The Rock of Ages line is a great one, and I completely agree that we’ve gone well beyond what the Framers intended when they drafted the Establishment Clause in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. The ACLU has been behind much of that.

      Reply
  4. Martin Rizley

    Warren,
    I like your use of iambic tetrameter. It is a meter that has a natural, flowing feel to it, which is just right for summarizing in a simple, straightforward manner the story of the Scopes trial.

    I also like the way you incorporate what could be described as a “moral argument” in the last two stanza to argue for man´s superiority to the beasts. For though you do not use the word “soul”, you seem to suggest that human ideas of moral virtue and our rejection of the idea that “deceit and might” make right point to a fundamental difference between men and apes, which would be hard to account for if in fact we had no soul and were mere beasts lacking accountability for our actions and destined to pass into oblivion at death.

    A couple possible corrections: since the last sentence of stanza two is in the past tense, shoud you use “could” instead of “can”? Also, I´m pretty sure that technically speaking, the last line of your poem should read “from Him” instead of “from He”.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      Tetrameter has always flowed more easily for me than pentameter ever did. I’m glad it worked here. On the other hand, grammar was obviously never a strong suit. I should invest in Grammarly since the lines you pointed out read well to me, but I’m fairly certain now that I whiffed on them.

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    As a totally convinced evolutionist, I must dissent from the argument of this poem, though its structure and deft use of tetrameter are admirable.

    LTC Peterson is quite correct. The issue at the Scopes trial was not the truth or falsity of evolution, but our American right to free speech and free thought. The state of Tennessee had overstepped the boundary between the authority of religion and the authority of the state by passing an absurd law that disallowed any public discussion of a subject that contradicted the teachings of a sectarian religious text.

    If you read some of the accounts of the atmosphere and public opinion in Dayton at the time of the trial, it becomes quite clear that many ordinary persons in the town and its environs took the entire spectacle as either a joke, or a convenient way to get publicity for the place. Many of them had mixed opinions on the question of evolution or the legal issue of Tennessee’s right to pass laws about what to teach. It was only a minority of very noisy Bible-thumpers that turned the Scopes trial into a clownish and embarrassing display of provincial ignorance.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I’m very glad that the structure, including the use of tetrameter, worked. I’m in Brian’s camp (at least as I understand it) with evolution being a guided rather than a random process. In terms of the background behind the trial, I’ve learned more from those on this site than I ever did from what I was forced to read in school.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Even in his testimony at the Scopes trial, William Jennings Bryan admitted that the process of God’s creation might have taken millions of years (rather than an absurd “six days”). This means that the man was certainly not a “Young Earth Creationist,” but someone who agreed with several Church Fathers that the Genesis account need not be taken as a literal description of humanly perceived time.

  6. Michael Vanyukov

    The poem is a finely stated narrative, but the narrative is mistaken, just as an atheist’s narrative, like Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” is wrong. There is no scientific theory other than evolution that is consistent with the biological, paleontological, and geological data, and G-d is not its alternative. I do agree with Brian that evolution can be viewed as G-d’s tool, just as natural laws are for holding the universe together. The Bible is not a science textbook and is not in conflict with evolution as a scientific concept. I’d recommend reading Theodosius Dobzhansky, an evolutionist, geneticist, and a Christian, on that matter, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/2/text_pop/l_102_01.html.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I’m not familiar with Dobzhansky, but it sounds like I would be well-served by learning more about him. It sounds like we’re aligned around Brian’s view of evolution being a tool. I couldn’t figure out how to respond to Joseph, but I also have a lot of trouble seeing how anyone could get comfortable with a Young Earth orientation. I’m guessing you’re in that camp as well.

      Reply
  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Warren, thank you! This powerful and beautifully written piece is sure to stir up many viewpoints, as it should. School lessons seem to be terribly one-sided at present.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      As you predicted, quite a few viewpoints have been stirred up. Respectful dialog and debate is refreshingly common on this site. Not so much elsewhere, as you also accurately point out.

      Reply
  8. Evan Mantyk

    Thank you for the poem, Warren. It is interesting to look back at the progression of how we got to where we are today, to a place where Darwinian evolution is now treated as fact in classrooms when the theory is full of glaring holes and other possibilities are restricted. It’s a bit like the terrible, mindless splotches that are treated like fine art today. Taken in isolation they are garbage, but if we look at the progression of history there is some sort of theoretical build up and a justification that, if digested with enough suspension of disbelief, seems sort of rational. So too is Darwinian evolutionary theory garbage heaped upon us, held up by a specious theoretical framework. As with art, we must look into the history and development as having taken a wrong direction at some juncture. I would suggest that the obvious place to look is everywhere. In front of our noses, in the boundless amounts of seemingly dead space that allow us to see stars unthinkable distances away. The dead space may not be dead at all. It may actually all be alive in ways that are not easily comprehended. One classic example is the double slit experiment whereby electrons may act independently as either a particle or a wave depending on the presence of human observation. The human mind itself affects the subatomic particle. That tells us that matter at that level does not act in ways that follow simple mechanistic logic that is used to cobble together Darwinian evolution:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ

    If everything is alive as a base postulate, then it opens up new possibilities and avenues of understanding life. The question is no longer how did human life come about, but in what ways does it manifest that are not at first obvious.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Warren, thanks for this look back in time, it’s hard to believe it’s only been a hundred years since Scopes.

      While it could be argued that the ACLU has done much good, it has done far more harm.

      And Evan, I’ve watched the video. I’ve seen the double slit experiment before, but this video makes it clear that science has only the most tenuous grasp on the nature of reality. “Settled science” is a joke.

      Reply
      • Warren Bonham

        I couldn’t agree more about the ACLU. The good/harm ratio seems completely out-of-whack. I didn’t know the history of this organization and had no idea they were sowing seeds of questionable value this long ago.

    • Warren Bonham

      I’ve read about the wave/particle duality of photons before but never thought much about the broader implications as you obviously have done. I will definitely watch that video.

      Reply
  9. Margaret Coats

    Warren, the poem well reflects the actions of the ACLU and others to achieve the present opinionated situation, in which one’s assumptions (either creationist or evolutionist) interpret data so as justify those assumptions. The data (rocks, fossils, etc.) can neither prove nor disprove creation or evolution. The interpretation in which one believes is strictly a matter of faith. Creation as opposed to evolution (of life from non-life, or of higher forms of life from lower) is better supported though not proved by vast quantities and aspects of real data.

    The subject of your poem, though, is one worthy of re-consideration. One of my students did a senior project on the Scopes monkey trial. He found it best to disregard all drama on the subject. As far as one can determine the origin of the trial, it began as something desired and arranged by the ACLU. They looked for a young, single, male teacher who could be accused. They did not want personal or family considerations to affect the project. Scopes was a willing instrument, but as far as I can recall from the immense research done by my student, there is no evidence that Scopes ever taught evolution in the classroom. Certain situations were alleged, on which dates Scopes was either absent from his job or otherwise occupied. But factual considerations were irrelevant to the project of the trial. The ACLU set out to build a foundation on which opinions about evolution would gradually evolve into a general acceptance by most of society, regardless of the outcome of the trial. This they accomplished.

    The ACLU remains engaged in similar missions. At present, they are soliciting contributions for legal and other projects to ensure that children of any age will have easily available books and media of every persuasion and perversion, regardless of anyone wishing to raise the young according to any particular culture or tradition. This is done in the name of freedom, “since what is virtuous and true, is just based on their point of view.” It will undoubtedly favor the unconventional and the revolutionary. Even adults have difficulty sorting out truth for themselves from masses of information.

    Your poem, Warren, is truly a well-expressed treasure of witty wisdom!

    I, however, as a stickler for grammar (often contradicted by opinions of others who think it doesn’t matter), will say you ought to change the last line to read “from Him.” “Him” needs to be in the objective case because it is the pronoun object of the preposition “from.” The next word “who” should be in the nominative case because it is the pronoun subject of the verb “started.” Your error was to think the two words referring to the same person should be in the same grammatical case (either “Him whom” or “He who”). But this is not true, because these two words have different functions in the sentence.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      Thanks for the very thoughtful comments (even including the needed points of correction). As you point out, very few people are open-minded enough to search for the actual Truth. Instead, people tend to have their points of view that they seek to reinforce by cherry-picking the evidence they evaluate. Unfortunately, the ACLU definitely is not a Truth-seeking institution. I suppose they think they’re advancing the cause of freedom, but they come at this mission in a misguided way. Young children shouldn’t be free to make whatever choices they want to make. Not all freedom is good or wise.

      Reply
  10. Yael

    Thank you for bringing the 100th Anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial to mind with your beautiful poem, Warren. As a child in Germany I was taught the theory of evolution in my family and schools as if it were proven fact, and all other creation possibilities were dismissed with extreme and malicious ridicule and contempt. After I met my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ I was relieved and gratified when I learned that a much better explanation than Darwinian evolutionary theory does indeed exist. God speaks His creation into existence and upholds it with His Being. As an artist I create stuff and it’s clear to me that the process of evolution takes place in the mind of the creator. I am therefor not surprised by the amount of savage physical violence which is now overtaking life in many American urban centers, where the youths who were taught that they descended from apes are naturally acting out the behaviors of their supposed ancestors. Darwin’s theory has come home to roost and is producing offspring wherever it was taught to young impressionable minds. I suppose when people get tired of the savagery and the destructive violence they will seek out better narratives than evolutionary theory.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      The question is not one of “narratives,” Yael, but of facts and hard evidence. Anyone can create a narrative, which is simply a human artifact. One narrative can be interchangeably replaced by any other, but physical evidence cannot.

      Reply
  11. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Reading this poem and the comments section has given me much to think about. To me, it is painfully obvious the Scopes trial is much more than a question of evolution or creation. It was, and remains, an arena for people to compete for the “soul” of society, picking their sides as if the subject itself was key to all knowledge. Did anyone truly win, or did the controversy merely give those who hold power new tools to keep people at odds, battling about ideology while missing what unites us? Those in power use science and faith as weapons to keep us at constant odds while missing the beauty and mystery in the world and each other. Today’s science isn’t about the truth – if it were, the supernatural would be factored in. Perhaps we should be asking who stands to gain when we are perpetually set at odds? Is this debate about truth, or is it just another chapter in the long human story of being led to mistrust and muddle instead of marvel? Perhaps the greatest discovery yet to be made is how to argue without dividing, and how to seek understanding without the need of a victor. That can only be done if our children are taught both sides of the argument… an argument that is fast becoming irrelevant – murdered by “settled-science” dogma in a godless world.

    Reply

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