Inherit the Wind (1960)
Director: Stanley Kramer.
Cast: Spencer Tracy (Clarence Darrow), Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Florence Eldridge, Dick York, Harry Morgan (the judge), Donna Anderson, Elliott Reid, Claude Akins, Noah Beery, Jr., Norman Fell.
Good film about the famous monkey trial (the 1925 Scopes trial). Actor Gene Kelly's character is based on that of the infamous sharp-tongued journalist from Baltimore H. L. Mencken.
Historical Background:
Science is composed of theories (connected, logical explanations if you will) of how the world works. Given the massive, overwhelming evidence for evolution, if the theory of evolution is not correct, then it is save to say that none of our scientific theories are correct.
It is hard for a scientific person to take anti-evolutionary thinkers seriously (although we still take our anti-evolutionary social sciences seriously -- they refuse to accept the implications of evolution and heredity for the behavior of human beings).
This was a spectacular trial when it occurred in the 1920s. Local teacher John Scopes agreed to violate the law so that he could be tried so that in turn the laws against teaching evolution could be declared unconstitutional. People were gathered all around the court house and the controversy was argued in the streets to some extent, although most of the people were religious fundamentalists who did not "believe" in evolution.
The famous Clarence Darrow made mental mince-meat of pompous William Jennings Bryan (who ran for the presidency for the Democrats 4 different times), who foolishly took up Darrow's challenge to be cross-examined as an expert on the Bible. Darrow, in the heart of the Bible-belt in Tennessee, of course, lost the case, and still to this day school districts still occasionally decide to ban evolution in the name of conservative religion.
Of course, religious liberals have long reconciled evolution with religion, but there still are many who will never reconcile themselves to the scientific truth.
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