Christopher Engel, Christopher Henderson, Spencer Stahl. 2008 DBQ The College Board Advanced Placement Examination UNITED STATES HISTORY (Suggested writing time – 40 minutes) Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your interpretation of Documents A- Z and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside knowledge of the period. 1. The Supreme Court’s decision in The Scopes Trial was correct, evolution is only a theory and should be banned. In light of the following documents and your knowledge of the 1920’s and 1930’s , to what extent to you agree with this statement.
Document A Source: Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (New York: Norton, 1983).
“The basic attack of modern creationists falls apart on two general counts before we even reach the supposed factual details of their assault against evolution. First, they play upon a popular misunderstanding of the word "theory" to convey the false impression that we evolutionists are covering up the rotten core of our edifice. Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution. Yet the same philosophy demonstrates that their own belief is not science, and that "scientific creationism" is a meaningless and self-contradictory phrase, an example of what [1984 author George] Orwell called "newspeak."… Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them…. [H]uman beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do…. "Scientific creationism" is a self-contradictory, nonsense phrase precisely because it cannot be falsified. I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know, but I cannot imagine what potential data could lead creationists to abandon their beliefs. Unbeatable systems are dogma, not science. Lest I seem harsh or rhetorical, I quote creationism's leading intellectual, Duane Gish, Ph.D., from his recent (1978) book, Evolution? The Fossils Say No! "By creation we mean the bringing into being by a supernatural Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of sudden, or fiat, creation. We do not know how the Creator created, what processes he used, for he used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe [Gish's italics]. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." Pray tell, Dr. Gish, in the light of your last sentence, what then is "scientific" creationism?… ” Document B Source: Excerpt from Charles Darwin’s The Orgin of Species. (1859) As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under well-suited conditions of life. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the same country; he seldom exercises each selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a short beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but protects during each varying season, as far as lies in his power, all his productions. He often begins his selection by some half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification prominent enough to catch his eye, or to be plainly useful to him. Under nature, the slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far 'truer' in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship? It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the
improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were. Document C Source: Literary Digest, August 1, 1925.
Document D Source: Excerpt from- Mary Baird Bryan and William Jennings Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan, (Chicago, 1925). Miracles are performed today - miracles as marvelous as anything recorded in Holy Writ. There is such a thing as a new birth; the heart can be so transformed that it loves the things it formerly hated and hates the things it formerly loved. The feeding of five thousand with a few loaves and fishes is no nearly so great a mystery, nor, measured by man's rules, so seemingly impossible as the cleansing of a heart and the changing of a life. The spiritual gravitation that draws a soul toward heaven is just as real as the physical gravitation that draws matter toward the earth's center. We judge the gravitation by the influence it exerts; the proof of the spiritual law is as abundant and as conclusive…. There are realities in the spiritual world which science cannot explain because spiritual things are spiritually discerned, but these things are no less demonstrable than the things with which science deals. We affirm, therefore: First, that God can perform any miracle He may see fit to perform, whether it be by laws unknown to man, or by the overcoming of natural forces by forces greater than nature; second that it is not unreasonable to believe that an infinite God may have reasons for performing miracles that finite man does not now, and possibly never can, comprehend; third that the evidence of the Bible, which is trustworthy, furnishes convincing proof that miracles have been performed by characters in the Old Testament and by Christ and His apostles, all drawing from the same source of infinite power. Belief in the power of God to perform miracles, in the willingness of God to perform miracles, and in the actual performance of miracles, is confirmed and corroborated by man's experience in his own heart and life, and by his observation of similar changes in the hearts and lives of others....
Document E Source: Omaha World-Herald, August 1, 1925.
Document F Source: Excerpt from "Dayton's 'Amazing' Trial," The Literary Digest, July 25, 1925. The [New York Evening World] noting the tendency of some Northern journals to discuss Tennessee as a backward section not representative of the country as a whole, reminds us that it was in Tennessee that Thomas Jefferson found his warmest supporters at a time when he was being denounced as an infidel from the pulpits of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston because of his refusal to accept literally some of the stories of the Old Testament -- the adventure of Jonah and the whale, for instance, and the story of Noah and the flood. "Bigotry," declares The Evening World, "is not geographical nor confined to one place." "Tennesseans," remarks the New York Times, "are not so different from the rest of us that each group of them could not be duplicated in any part of the Union." To understand the influences behind Tennessee's anti-evolution law and the resultant trial of Mr. Scopes before the Dayton court, it is well to hear what Tennessee papers have to say. Many of them oppose this law. Thus The Southern Agriculturist, published in Nashville, declares that "we should feel ourselves faithless to the children of Tennessee, and of the other States in which similar laws are threatened, if we did not protest against it." According to J.W. Krutch, a Tennessean who discusses the trial in The Nation (New York), evolution in Tennessee has about the same status as elsewhere -- the majority of the population knows and cares nothing about it, one minority hates it and one accepts it. "Let the controversialists be heard and get the virus of the polemic poison out of their systems," advised the Knoxville Sentinel, which is convinced that neither religion nor science will suffer as a result. The Sentinel quotes with approval the following sentences from Frank R. Kent's Dayton dispatch to the Baltimore Sun: "It is easy enough to come out here and make fun of this evolution trial, but when you get here you do not want to do it. There is a sincere something at which it isn't pleasant to jeer. What it is, of course, is the religious sentiment of the people -- not the people you meet around town here, or those who drive you out from Chattanooga, show you the place and explain the background of the case, but the quiet people, the inarticulate people back in the country, in the mountains, on the farms and in the towns, too, whose lives center around the churches and who are past middle age." Mr. Kent reports that in Chattanooga "everybody agrees that from three-fourths to four-fifths of the citizens of Tennessee do not believe in the theory of evolution and do believe in the Biblical story of creation." The Sentinel thinks that these figures do not take into account "the numbers who sincerely believe both in the Bible and in evolution as not conflicting." "There are thousands of good men, scientists, preachers, teachers, and statesmen, who see no conflict in what science and the Bible teach as to the origin of man, albeit they do not accept Mr. Bryan's interpretation of Genesis," declares the Chattanooga Times.
Document G Source: Quoted in "Larger Aspects of the Dayton Trial." Literary Digest August 1, 1925. "A basic question of States' rights is involved in the Dayton trial. If a State may be denied the right to prescribe a course of study in the public schools, it may be deprived of all power over its school system. Under the pretext that a State might abuse its power by attempting to interfere with religion, all its powers might be swept away. But the courts stand as a barrier against such an attack upon State control of public schools. So long as the States remain within constitutional limitations, their control over public schools will not be abridged by any decision of the United States Supreme Court. "The Dayton trial is likely to furnish much enlightenment to lawyers as well as laymen on the subject of constitutional limitations. There is no unlimited power in the United States, except the power of the people. All agencies of government must function within bounds. What these bounds are in the case of State jurisdiction over public schools has not been fully determined, but it seems reasonable to assume that when a State prescribes a course of study for its public schools, which are supported by taxes imposed by the State, it can make any other course of study unlawful, even if a teacher violating the law should set up the defense that his theories were facts. Many facts exist which, if taught in the public schools, would subject the teacher to lynch law without further ado. "Can a State prescribe that the Bible or the Koran shall be used as a textbook in the public schools? There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which denies that right to a State. The States and the people have great reserved powers, and this power to control the public schools is one of them." . . . Document H Source: Excerpt from "Dayton's 'Amazing' Trial," The Literary Digest, July 25, 1925. The [New York Evening World] noting the tendency of some Northern journals to discuss Tennessee as a backward section not representative of the country as a whole, reminds us that it was in Tennessee that Thomas Jefferson found his warmest supporters at a time when he was being denounced as an infidel from the pulpits of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston because of his refusal to accept literally some of the stories of the Old Testament -- the adventure of Jonah and the whale, for instance, and the story of Noah and the flood. "Bigotry," declares The Evening World, "is not geographical nor confined to one place." "Tennesseans," remarks the New York Times, "are not so different from the rest of us that each group of them could not be duplicated in any part of the Union." To understand the influences behind Tennessee's anti-evolution law and the resultant trial of Mr. Scopes before the Dayton court, it is well to hear what Tennessee papers have to say. Many of them oppose this law. Thus The Southern Agriculturist, published in Nashville, declares that "we
should feel ourselves faithless to the children of Tennessee, and of the other States in which similar laws are threatened, if we did not protest against it." According to J.W. Krutch, a Tennessean who discusses the trial in The Nation (New York), evolution in Tennessee has about the same status as elsewhere -- the majority of the population knows and cares nothing about it, one minority hates it and one accepts it. "Let the controversialists be heard and get the virus of the polemic poison out of their systems," advised the Knoxville Sentinel, which is convinced that neither religion nor science will suffer as a result. The Sentinel quotes with approval the following sentences from Frank R. Kent's Dayton dispatch to the Baltimore Sun: "It is easy enough to come out here and make fun of this evolution trial, but when you get here you do not want to do it. There is a sincere something at which it isn't pleasant to jeer. What it is, of course, is the religious sentiment of the people -- not the people you meet around town here, or those who drive you out from Chattanooga, show you the place and explain the background of the case, but the quiet people, the inarticulate people back in the country, in the mountains, on the farms and in the towns, too, whose lives center around the churches and who are past middle age." Mr. Kent reports that in Chattanooga "everybody agrees that from three-fourths to four-fifths of the citizens of Tennessee do not believe in the theory of evolution and do believe in the Biblical story of creation." The Sentinel thinks that these figures do not take into account "the numbers who sincerely believe both in the Bible and in evolution as not conflicting." "There are thousands of good men, scientists, preachers, teachers, and statesmen, who see no conflict in what science and the Bible teach as to the origin of man, albeit they do not accept Mr. Bryan's interpretation of Genesis," declares the Chattanooga Times.