Religious+Fundamentalism+and+Science-+Scopes+Trial

Religious Fundamentalism and Science / Scopes Trial 

Religious fundamentalist are people who believe that the rules and principles of a religion should be followed strictly, and want the religion to remain the same as it had always been. With the arrival of new scientific discoveries and theories, things became much more complicated. In some ways, scientific theories completely contradicted biblical events. In many cases science explains the things the bible claims are the works of God. In others, science "disproves" the events that are said to have happened in the bible.

The State of Tennessee v. Scopes
In 1925, biology teacher, John Scopes, from Tennessee was accused of teaching evolution to his class, which violated the state's Butler Act. The case was extremely controversial. Fundamentalists were against the teaching of evolution because it went against the Bible's account of what happened. Modernists believed that it was alright to teach evolution, because it's possible to believe both. It made the division in Christianity more clear, separating the open-minded, "educated" Christians from those that were more "tribal" and close-minded. However, despite all the problems it may have caused, the Scopes Trial made teaching evolution more acceptable in other schools around the country.

Keeping religion out of school curriculums is hard, because so much of science somehow relates (supporting and disagreeing with) to religion. After the Scopes Trial, there were many more cases in which the morality of teaching evolution and creationism was debated, including Epperson v. Arkansas, Daniel v. Waters, and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

 The theory of evolution basically says, over thousands of years, humans evolved from a species somewhere between an ape and a human.

 Creationism goes under the category of spontaneous generation. That says that people were put on earth the way we are today.