Among Weaver’s writings I found his analysis of the Scopes trial in The Ethics of Rhetoric.  The chapter, “Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton, Tennessee,” is instructive for its analysis of what was (and still is) at stake in the debate on evolution.  In short, Weaver reveals that the two sides were arguing two different things, with Darrow’s side using rhetoric to promote the “fact” of evolution.  As Weaver points out, rhetoric fulfills its function of persuasion only if the two sides agree on the “facts.”

            But more was at stake, as Darrow himself implies in his hysterical review.  And that was the notion of truth.  Dialectic, as in Socratic questioning, as Weaver points out, is “rationally rather than empirically sustained.”  What was at stake for communities in Tennessee was whether it was good that schoolchildren be taught that they descended from apes, rather than being made in God’s image. 

            This idea, and the whole universe of ideas and values that it carries, still forms the central elements of the debate.  For in the Darwinian scheme, man, as nothing more than an animal with more sophisticated cognitive skills, loses moral imperative and free will.  The notion of sin becomes moot.  And, indeed, in terms of his defense of criminals, Darrow himself utilizes arguments about such environmental factors as poverty, parental problems, and even reading material for some of the most heinous murderers.  Among his clients were the privileged young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who coldly and calculatedly murdered their acquaintance Bobby Franks. 

            Weaver astutely points to the prosecution’s use of that case, where Darrow used as defense the fact that Leopold had been impacted negatively by reading Friedrich Nietzsche in school.  Darrow had argued that the universities and professors who taught the nineteen-year-old Leopold are “more responsible for the crime than Leopold himself.”  William Jennings Bryan pointed out that the “doctrine” that Darrow and the evolutionists would teach in the schools is the very same one “that gives us Nietzsche . . . who tried to carry this to its logical conclusion” in the idea of the superman.  That Nietzsche’s nihilistic views questioning the very notion of evil could influence a rich young man whose goal was to coldly carry out a “perfect murder” makes sense given the premises.  In the Darwinian view, animals (including the higher animals like man) act according to environmental forces.  That would include not only physical stimuli, but also intellectual stimuli.

            And that was what the Tennessee lawmakers objected to: the promotion of Darwin’s ideas as moral guidance.  Weaver argues that Darrow, if he believes that Nietzsche could have a negative moral impact, should acknowledge the same for Darwin.

            Even those thoughtful Christian thinkers, like the late Catholic Walker Percy, who see no conflict between evolution and faith, have good reason to be suspicious of the Darwinian view promoted in our schools.  The most strident proponents of Darwinism, such as the philosopher Peter Singer, justify their policies of euthanasia and infanticide by first attacking the Biblical proscriptions against them.  Euthanasia and infanticide, commonly accepted practices before Biblical times, illustrate most starkly Darwinian “survival of the fittest.”  In 1925, the eugenics movement was catching on, especially among the progressive intelligentsia.

            Alas, few in our schools or culture at large, given current publications, textbooks and curriculums, will be exposed to what is at stake in the debate--its real history or complexity.  The confusion that Weaver unraveled—that mistakenly held belief that scientific, empirical “fact” can determine decisions of a moral order—remains with us.  This is especially true in the teaching of literature, where pseudo-facts concerning race, class, and gender are mined in polemical “texts.”  Most students will likely get the Inherit the Wind version in their classroom discussions--with biology teachers often promoting themselves as latter-day Scopes’s.  But like all scientific theories, the jury is still out on this one, as many learned proponents of intelligent design affirm.  But that theory is not likely to get a fair hearing, as are not the moral ramifications and implications of a strict Darwinian view of humanity.