State of Protest

Book Review- Monkey Girl, by Edward Humes

Book review by L.Grey, with permission.

In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, ‘And the sun stood still … and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ (Joshua x. 13) and ‘He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time’ (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.

Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind 59 (1950), 443.

Monkey Girl by Edward Humes ISBN: 9780060885489, ISBN10: 0060885483 Ecco (imprint of Harper Collins) Hardcover 400 pages, $25.95

What does it mean when proponents of Intelligent Design say “teach the controversy”?

You may think you know what the controversy is about, but you’ll never get a more thorough and up-to-date analysis of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial than Edward Humes’ book Monkey Girl. The 2005 trial was one of the latest episodes of the seemingly never-ending struggle for the hearts and minds of public school students. This is a fight between those who feel that Science describes nature pretty well, and those who believe that anything other than a strict literal interpretation of the Bible deserves a trip to hell and excommunication from polite society. The trial itself was a gripping account of small-town drama unfolding over the course of a year, of parents and children enduring intimidation and humiliation. Witnesses from both sides turned the courtroom into a fascinating arena of scientific evidence versus faith dressed in science’s clothing. At least three books have come out of the case (see further reading below for details), and Ed Humes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writing style and even-handed coverage make Monkey Girl a compelling choice. Humes not only covers the case, he describes the town as the trial transforms it:

Dover sits firmly astride the front lines of America’s culture war, occupying the uneasy space between America’s religious faith and its longstanding fondness for scientific progress, between an idealized past and an uncertain future, between education and indoctrination, between the natural and the supernatural. For the next several months, the ninth floor courtroom in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building will belong to Kitzmiller et al versus Dover Area School District, an unintentionally epic lawsuit filed by a group of parents against their evolution-doubting school board. The case does indeed have much in common with the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, a public spectacle in which Clarence Darrow and the American Civil Liberties Union unsuccessfully challenged a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution. But unlike its illustrious predecessor (which, popular imagination and classic films notwithstanding, had exactly no impact on the law or educational practice at the time), the Dover case is positioned to define (or redefine) for decades just what children are taught about where we come from. [prologue, Monkey Girl]

The controversy has shifted a bit since the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which first questioned the legality of teaching Darwin’s theory of Evolution in public schools. World War II and the Cold War demanded that the United States produce competent scientists. This demand seemed to effectively muzzle fundamentalists for a few decades. High School Biology classes approaching the Theory of Evolution would often involve an uneasy truce involving the words “changes over time” and neatly sidestepping the origins of life. Until reading this book, I assumed that all but the most extreme religious fundamentalists were fine with this truce. Humes’ book shows precisely how much this has changed.

While the book mostly focuses on the Dover trial, Humes also takes us to a similar trial in Kansas, the controversy involving the gift shop at the Grand Canyon, where Creationists have had some success in censoring information about the geological age of the national monument. Most importantly, Humes follows the trail of intellectual and legal deception to the pseudo-scientific think-tank called The Discovery Institute, a group of scientists who exclude any scientific evidence in conflict with Christian Scripture.

The Dover Trial is full of drama and bad debate, A Scopes Monkey Trial for the 21st century, or Inherit the Wind, Redux. Humes shows in the Dover case how Creationism in public schools, having been defeated in courts during the late 20th century under the Separation of Church and State clause of the First Amendment, evolved (pun intended) into the virtually identical Intelligent Design movement, to Dover, Pennsylvania among other places. Some of the most shocking moments of the trial feature the ironic displays of dishonesty which ultimately brought down the school board members who were trying to bring religion into the local biology classrooms. Humes covers the scope of the grand scheme of religious activists, who plan on infusing not only science classes with Christian dogma and bias, but History, Government, and other classes as well.

This very book elicits criticism from those whose definition of “Fair and Balanced” have been warped to Orwellian proportions by Fox News and today’s most hyperbolic propagandists. Humes compassionately portrays how the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs in this case, were attacked and their children mocked at school out of ignorance. The Dover case pitted one kind of Christians against another. Those who favored the separation of Church and State were attacked as “not Christian enough”, in a great example of how the separation of these two functions protects freedom of religion. Another surprising turn of events showed how the presiding judge, a Bush-supporting Republican was branded as a liberal judicial activist for defending the constitution.

While it is clear on which side Humes’ sympathies lie, the reader is necessarily confronted with the heart of the so-called controversy: regarding extreme religious views which by definition do not tolerate any opposing views, what are the limits of tolerance in society? How can a democracy defend pluralism from those whose religious beliefs clash so vehemently with the definition of reality itself by the rest of the world, both secular and religious? The Framers of the Constitution were historically not far away from centuries of religious wars in Europe which constantly threw governments into turmoil. They saw the value of the separation of church and state to both church and state. Back in those days religious persecution meant death or incarceration because of one’s beliefs, not what passes for persecution these days in the minds of some.

One gets the strong impression reading Humes’ insightful analysis, that this latest version of the old Darwin-vs.-God controversy is the product of the removal of Critical Thinking skills from the mainstream public school curriculum, and the lack of a Cold War Era push towards developments in Math & Science, supported by all but the most outspoken of Bible literalists, who constantly attempt to couch the debate as “God vs. Darwin”, when in fact, most religions don’t require people to choose between the two. In my opinion, this is a clear case of the old adage, “Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”. Young-Earth Creationists might benefit from not ignoring the history of the Catholic Church’s censorship of Copernicus and Galileo hundreds of years ago, and ask themselves why the Pope doesn’t have a big problem with Darwin’s theories today.

-Philadelphic

Further reading on the Dover Trial: (after the break…)
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