What set the Scopes trial in motion was passage of Tennessee's Butler Act, which forbade public-school teachers to deny "the story of the divine creation as taught in the Bible," or to impart the doctrine "that man has descended from a lower order of animals." Evidently the concept of the separration of church and state was not in force. Sprague asks, "but what exactly is the story of the divine creation as taught in the Bible?"
Sprague said that the original Hebrew book of Genesis says "When the gods began to set in motion the heavens and the earth. He states that the ancient Hebrews, like all other ancient people, worshipped a multitude of gods. However, during the Babylonian captivity, the priests of the storm god Yahweh (Jehova) became so powerful that they suppressed all the other cults. They promoted their god as the only god of Israel and then to the only God of the world. He goes on to mention that there are two creation stories in the Bible and traces the origin of the creation myth to various Babylonian and Sumerian tales.
During the trial, the prosecutor villified Clarence Darrow as an "agnostic"and accused Darrow of not believing in the immortality of the soul. Darrow stated that he was proud to be an agnostic and that, although he had searched for years, had not found any evidence of the existence of a soul. This illustrates the difficulty a rational man faces in talking to religious crazies. Why would it matter to the prosecutor what Darrow's beliefs or lack of beliefs were?
In the aftermath, Scopes went on to get his masters in geology. He however ran out of money short of getting his doctorate at the University of Chicago. His application for a fellowship was turned down by the president of the school because he felt that Scopes was a "damned atheist."
I think that we need a constitutional ammendment guaranteeing freedom FROM religion
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