Edward Larson

Quotes

1. By the 1940s, a fundamentalist subculture had formed in the United States, with a creationist scientific establishment of its own.

   p. 233

2. 

   “I never yet found any conservative lawyer who, at the beginning, wanted to undertake a case which might reflect discredit on him. When it turns out differently and there seems to be some publicity or honor to be had, then offers of assistance come from all over the country.”

   p. 209

3. 

   Stanford university president David Starr Jordan, an eminent evolutionary biologist who later volunteered to aid in the legal defense of John Scopes, spoke for many academics when he dismissed traditional Protestant revivalism as “simply a form of drunkenness no more worthy of respect than the drunkenness that lies in the gutter!”

   p. 41

4. 

   Darrow shortly wrote to Mencken about the examination of Bryan, “I made up my mind to show the country what an ignoramus he was and I succeeded.”

   p. 190

5. 

   Darrow replied within the hour by tersely affirming his agnosticism on every point, concluding with his succinct answer as to the question of immortality: “I have been searching for proof of this all my life, with the same desire to find it that is incident to every living thing, and I have never found any evidence on the subject.”

   p. 197

6. 

   Creation science was nothing but religion dressed up as science, the high court decreed, and therefore was barred by the Establishment Clause from public school classrooms along with other forms of religious instruction.

   p. 271

7. 

   Conservative Christians drew together across denominational lines to fight for the so-called fundamentals of their traditional faith against the perceived heresy of modernism, and in so doing gave birth to the fundamentalist movement and antievolution crusade.

   p. 34

8. 

   The state law against teaching evolution and the resulting trial of John Scopes did not settle the matter in Tennessee or anywhere else. America’s adversarial legal system tends to drive parties apart rather than reconcile them, which certainly happened in this case.

   p. 269

9. 

   “The public mind is poisoned at its source when special interests take hold of educational institutions for their own propaganda.”

   p. 81

10. 

    “What is the purpose of this examination?”

    Darrow answered honestly. “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States,” he declared, “and that is all.”

    p. 6

11. 

    “If the Anti-Evolutionists in Tennessee were aware of the existence of any other religions than their own, they might realize that it is the very genius of religion itself to evolve from primary forms to higher forms.”

    p. 117

12. 

    By the 1960s, however, federal courts had long since stop using the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down progressive state economic regulations and instead used it to avoid repressive state social legislation.

    p. 249