TENNESSEE

IT WAS ONE of the most famous trials of the age, the subject of a Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracy, and the last hurrah of a man who three times sought the presidency of the United States.

It was the Scopes Monkey Trial, held in Tennessee in 1925.

It centred on a school teacher who taught evolution in a state school, against the law. This was distilled into the argument that he was teaching that man was descended from monkeys.

The trial saw the prosecution lawyer, William Jennings Bryan, give evidence for the defence as a Bible expert. He was fighting for moral authority; his opponents for scientific truth. There was no middle ground.

Anyway for that moment of hubris, a man who might have been his country’s president opened himself to an eternity of ridicule. He died shortly after. His permanent image, mostly created in Hollywood, did not serve his memory well.

In the end, Mr Scopes was found guilty by the court. He was guilty. But the trial had never been about guilt or innocence.

Creationism, and the Bible, took a kick in the teeth in the court of public opinion, from which it did not recover. Evolution never looked back.

And after all the scientific and religious drama, Mr Scopes even managed to have the verdict overturned on a technicality, which saved him $100.

And it would all have remained that way if modern scientists had not recently discovered that the universe was indeed created, and by a monkey.

“It appears that our reality is the subject of a monkey performing the same mindless task over an infinite period of time,” explained Professor James Maxwell Hawkstein of the Existential Primate Lab in Texas. “We have done the tests, using a particle accelerator and a banana, and the results keep coming out the same. We’re currently trying to get two Macaques to create a new universe using an iPhone and some quantum computers. It’s exciting and not a little dangerous.”