Evolution and Religion

        This cartoon agrees with one of the messages from the tale of the Water Babies in the fact that religion and evolution can coexist. 

Reverse Monkey Cartoons

                This is an example of reverse monkey cartoon wherein monkeys are offended to be “related” to humans. This cartoon was also created around the time of the Scopes trial. 

Give Us All the Sail You've Got, And Heave the Ballast Overboard

        This is another cartoon created by the fundamentalist Earnest James Pace. The professor is depicted as stealing the faith of the students – by steering the boat of “popular education” towards the rock of “infidelity” as he orders the student to toss the Bible overboard.

When the above picture was shown in churches they accompanied it with the following statement: “It is not slander to say that popular education today has at is particular dogma the god-denying theory of evolution. There is no use for the Bible. It is thrown overboard and the boat is sailing straight to the rock of infidelity. Many young people come home from colleges and universities honeycombed with deadly doctrines that destroy the soul. And the home is responsible; the home must consider; the home cannot ignore the fact that God holds it accountable for these terrible conditions.”¹

¹Cohen, Charles Lloyd. Religion and the culture of print in modern America. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Print.

Leaking Badly and Headed for the Earth

                “Leaking Badly and Headed for the Earth” is a cartoon drawn by Earnest James Pace and fundamentalist. This image shows that Darwin’s Hypothesis of Evolution is a speculative hypothesis and is going to crash into the facts. Many fundamentalists believed that evolution was “science falsely called-so”. 

Upstart

Other cartoons took a look at the idea of evolution being a progressive sequence and that humans have reached the pinnacle of evolution. This suggests that Homo sapiens have reached an evolutionary end and a good one at that. These cartoons include the implied teleology while at the same time making fun of it. This often made of the primate cartoons very un-Darwinian. Some even went as far as to imply that only monkeys and apes evolved. This is depicted in the above cartoon titles “The Upstart” from the magazine Judge the summer of the Scopes trial, where a monkey sets off the evolve leaving all of the other animals behind. 

The Missing Link

                This picture shows William Jennings Bryan as the missing link between a professor and an ape. Bryan was a well known fundamentalist that was often mocked in cartoons. He has also been portrayed as an Inquisitor, Don Quixote, and a fool for attacking a scarecrow and for trying to pull a monkey out of a family tree. Pro-evolutionists used monkeys as a way to make fun of antievolutionists. The missing link was a popular way to poke fun at the anti-evolutionists because they would always ask well if we evolved from apes well then where is the creature that is in the middle.  Humans did not evolve from apes but instead we share a common ancestor that we both evolved from which is now long extinct.  

Anti-evolution Movement

The above image was initially widely distributed World War I poster portraying Germany as a gorilla-like brute making off with a woman meant to represent Belgium. This was a popular image during that time because it was reminiscent power and gorillas were associated with race and sexual voraciousness.  However, following World War I it helped to aid the antievolution fervor as many antievolutionists merged evolution with Social Darwinism. In the 1920’s the antievolutionists associated German science with evolution and natural selection with eugenic movement and German Doctrine “might makes right”.