racialists of his time who believed they couldn't. Creationist use According to Christian creationists, devolution is: A theory of origins based on scripture which begins with the ultimate complexity of all living things at the time of creation. This was followed by degeneration and the break down of all living things on the genetic level beginning at the Curse (Genesis 3) and continuing to this day with increased momentum. The term was used in the play Inherit the Wind (a parable that fictionalizes the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial), when the character of Matthew Brady (representative of William Jennings Bryan) argued that "Ladies and gentleman, devolution is not a theory but a cold fact ... the ape devolved from man", mocking evolutionary theory by offering an alternative he considers just as plausible. During the Scopes Trial itself, a report in The New York Times said "After flocking to view the monkeys, Dayton has decided that it was not man who evolved from the anthropoid, but the anthropoid which devolved from man; and it points now at the two chimpanzees and the "missing link" to prove the assertion". The suggestion of ape degenerating from "man" had already been brought up by the early young-earth creationist George McReady Price in a work published before the trial: An early creationist to discuss devolution was the ornithologist Douglas Dewar, writing about the subject of the fossil record for the carboniferous period Dewar wrote: A few of the carboniferous insects were larger than any now existing; one of the dragon-flies had a wing-span of 28 inches. This suggests devolution rather than evolution! The Young Earth creationist Ken Ham claims Adam and Eve were made into a state of perfection, with perfect DNA, no mistakes or mutations and that because of man sinning against God in Genesis of the Bible, that God cursed the ground and animals and sentenced man to die. Ham claims this is where mutations come from, and the incredible amount of genetic information that God had created at the beginning has been devolving ever since; according to Ham organisms in nature are losing genetic information. Creationists like Ham claim that mutations lead to a loss of genetic information and this is evidence for devolution. Ken Ham for example has stated: Observations confirm that mutations overwhelmingly cause a loss of information, not a net gain, as evolution requires. Young Earth creationist Joseph Mastropaolo, argues