All of us know things. Some things we saw, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled. Our senses inform us every day. Other things we were told. By a parent, a teacher, a friend, or something we read.

We can’t experience everything ourselves. So, we take understanding from human beings who came before. Science grows from the many who have observed and studied.

We all benefit from science to one degree or another, even if we don’t understand it. I sure don’t know the science behind air conditioning. But I’m glad to have it on a muggy July day. A series of smart people make that possible.

For most of us, there are also things we believe by faith. We can’t see or touch God. But if we are believers, God is as much a part of our lives as the oxygen we breathe.

As science is the work of many, religion is also the work of many. My faith has roots in the Old Testament that are three thousand years old, and certainly the two thousand years since the Resurrection. Generations of people lived and experienced their faith before me. Prayers, hymns, and worship I use are handed down from them.

Science and religion are both dedicated to seeking truth.

So why would they ever clash?

One hundred years ago, they did just that.

I saw in a news bit that the “Scopes Monkey Trial” ended a hundred years ago. I had vague knowledge of that. Spending time reading about it, I learned it was a wonderfully illustrative story about the intersection of things we know and things we believe.

I will keep this absurdly short, considering books have been written on it. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published. It’s hard for us now to grasp a time when people’s understanding of life on Earth was as limited. But of course, human knowledge grows over time.

In 1914, George Hunter’s A Civic Biology was the first textbook that described evolution as “the belief that simple forms of life on the earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those more complex and that thus ultimately the most complex forms came into existence.”

Concurrently, there were those who saw this as a threat to religion. William Jennings Bryan was a well-known political figure who had been in all the great debates of the time. An “anti-evolution” movement grew with Bryan at the center. He went around the country delivering addresses that included this line: “It is better to trust the Rock of Ages than to know the age of rocks.”

In the spring of 1925, Tennessee became one of 20, mostly southern states, which banned the teaching of evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union began looking for a teacher to use in a test case to challenge that. Science teacher and football coach, Jonathan Scopes, agreed to be that.

A century later, we still call it the “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Evolution doesn’t exactly say we are descended from monkeys. That little quip, while inaccurate, proved incendiary in the time.

The trial was a giant national spectacle. Six blocks around the courthouse were set aside for speakers and updates to thousands outside. Special telegraph lines were set up to transmit the trial around the county. Movie reels were everywhere. The trial was broadcast live on WGN Radio out of Chicago.

Scopes was found guilty on July 21, 1925. He was fined $100, That was later overturned after appeal. Weirdly, Bryan died in his sleep on July 26. Over time, the teaching of evolution was allowed in all those states where it had been banned.

Looking back on my upbringing, it’s hard to see evolution as a radical idea. I don’t remember my classes in biology and my classes in religion at Sleep Eye St. Mary’s having issues with each other. Of course, a hundred years ago, the idea that our species evolved, or that any species evolved, was unsettling to some.

The Catholic Church has generally been supportive of science. Historically many scientists have been Catholic. Our places of learning, monasteries, and medical facilities have all contributed to human learning.

Except for that one little incident in 1632. Galileo was arrested after claiming the Earth rotated around the sun rather than the sun rotating around the Earth. That was considered heresy, and Pope Urban led the inquisition of Galileo. Spoiler alert, Galileo was right, and three hundred years later, the Church recanted.

In some ways, the Scopes Trial remains with us. Varying degrees of understanding and appreciation for science will always be with us. And skepticism, too. Where science intersects with our faith will always be an important confluence personally and societally.

For me, I don’t see conflicts between the Bible and scientific knowledge. The truths in the Bible are the eternal kind. The same question can have a scientific and religious answer.

“Where did I come from?”

Science can explain the incredibly complex gathering of elements from literally across the universe that comes together in these cells that are me, sipping coffee and typing on my computer right now. Religion says I am here because God created me. That God created and used Creation in ways I can never fully understand is all right by me.

There is in our species a quest for knowledge. God put curiosity in us. For us to seek to understand God’s handiwork that is Creation is natural. And we progress. At one time, humans believed there were four elements: earth, air, fire, and wind. We know now there are 118 chemical elements.

“Science” itself is perfect. One definition: Science is a systematic way of acquiring knowledge and understanding the natural world through observation and experimentation. Human beings are not perfect, and we know science can be used in harmful ways.

For decades, DDT was sprayed around the world. Science was used to develop DDT. Gradually scientists came to understand the damage it was doing. There followed a lag in time between when scientists knew that and when DDT was pulled off the market.

DDT is an example of how the desire for profit can have a great pull. That’s a compelling reason for places where unbiased science can be advanced.

Historically, America has led in that kind of basic research. Much of that is in our universities with government funding. The current plan is to gut money for scientific research.

Why are we cutting research on cancer?

I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know lately.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.