A Century after Scopes, according to Righting America
According to a recent blog post by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger, A Century After Scopes: Much Has Not Changed, and Much Has Changed. I was most interested in their observation that William’s father was a fundamentalist who passionately opposed evolution. But he was also a geologist who searched for oil, believed in an “old earth,” and subscribed to what is known as “day-age theory,” that is, the belief that the “days” in Genesis are not literal, 24-hour days, but rather represent ages. Thus, at the time of the Scopes trial, creationism realistically accepted the vast age of the earth.
Today, thanks primarily to Henry Morris, creationists do not accept an old earth and consequently are forced to deny, for example, geological science. Ultimately, they undermine virtually all of science and, according to Trollinger and Trollinger, promote an alternative education system which is
"not just about getting creationism, the Bible, and white Christian nationalism into the public schools. It is also about funding private schools, including fundamentalist schools. It is about expanding the right-wing subculture. It is about taking dominion over the culture."
This, they say, is where we are 100 years after the Scopes trial.