Edward Humes - Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for Americas Soul

E VOLUTION , E DUCATION , R ELIGION, AND THE B ATTLE FOR A MERICAS S OUL

T he Reverend Jim Grove is a wiry and intense man, his eyes burning and birdlike as he takes the mea sure of each person entering the ninth-floor federal courtroom in downtown Harrisburg. He is among the first people whom visitors encounter as they arrive to watch the trial billed in the media as the second coming of the legendary Scopes Monkey Trial. Yes, Grove says, its a monkey trial all right. And the evolutionists are the monkeys. He does not smile when he says this.

Now and then, whenever he feels the moment is right (generally whenever someone initiates eye contact), the reverend unfolds himself from one of the old wood and leather chairs in the court house hallway and offers a small green flyer. This is an invitation to an event in the modest confines of the Dover, Pennsylvania, fire hall entitled, Why Evolution Is Stupid, featuring a presentation from a creationism superstar who bills himself as Dr. Dino. Dr. Dino firmly believes that the world is only 6,000 years old and that, consequently, men and dinosaurs once lived together quite happilythe classic creationist view of the universe. This causes him to be in great demand in the thriving industry of biblically correct science. He crisscrosses the nation for more than 200 paid speaking engagements a year, and Grove sees the Evolution Is Stupid presentation as a critical counter to the devils work going on just beyond the big wooden doors of courtroom 2.

Come to the meeting. You really need to hear the truth, Grove tells one of the legion of reporters headed into court. Youre sure not going to hear it in there . He turns to a young woman and hands her a flyer, his eyes locked on the courtroom doors, where some of the top lawyers and law firms in the nation have congregated to pit science against faith. All youll hear in there are the babblers, Grove promises. Then he launches into a complicated monologue on flood geology in Genesis and why the absence of feathered fish and finned birds proves that Darwins notion about common ancestry is so much bunk. Soon a bubble of solitude has formed around Grove as almost everyone within hearing distance shies away. But the preacher, who has gained local notoriety for his militantly gory antiabortion signs and Halloween parade floats, is not easily deterred.

He has come to bear witness to a trial that began as an obscure dispute over science textbooks in the rural Pennsylvania township of Dover. Now pastoral Dover sits firmly astride the front lines of Americas culture war, occupying the uneasy space between Americas religious faith and its long-standing 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. v. 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.

Reverend Grove, on the other hand, seems more interested in where were going , which is the true bottom line of this battle, at least for the side that most reviles evolution. He appears to be keeping a mental list of all those he meets in the court house hallway, as well as those who testify in the casea list of who will be headed to heaven when Judgment Day arrives, and who will, in Groves estimation, be taking a more southerly direction. His world is a comfortingly (or terrifyingly) straightforward place. Either you believe in the literal truth of the Biblethat God created heavens, earth, and man in six literal daysor you are damned. Those Darwinists wont know what hit them, Grove says quietly as the voluble head of the National Center for Science Education stands a few feet away. A crowd of reporters listens intently as she presents evolutionary theory as the most verified and mature theory in all of science, the very cornerstone of modern biology, as well as the key to all sorts of lifesaving medical and pharmaceutical research. Grove shakes his head, astonished that anyone could buy such talk. As he espouses a theology that predicts the eternal damnation of this spokeswoman for science, along with dozens of people around him, his tone is not nearly as sorrowful as he intends. He juts his bearded chin forward and brings his cowboy boots down on the hard court house floor and sounds more triumphant than sad; after all, he says, his God is a vengeful God.

He also knows that America is largely on his side, at least according to opinion polls. Nearly half the citizenry accepts the idea that God created man in his present form, just as the Bible holds. Only a third believes that there is valid scientific evidence to support the theory of evolution. And an overwhelming majority supports what the Dover school board purportedly sought to do: teach evolutionary theory while also taking pains to point out what critics call its flaws and gaps. In Dover, this was to be accomplished by informing biology students of scientific alternativesspecifically, the new kid on the origins theory block, intelligent design. Accepting ID, as it has come to be known, requires a belief that empirical evidencereal, hard scienceshows that the complexity of life on Earth cannot be explained without the intervention of some sort of master designer. The designer is not identified as Godor identified at allby IDers; they insist that all they can do as scientists is point to evidence that life is intelligently designed, a distinction proponents believe should make all the difference when courts weigh issues of church and state. There is a bit of a nod and a wink to this, as everyone involved knows that theyre talking aboutor, more precisely, not talking aboutGod, which is why such a large segment of Americans approve when ID is explained to them. America, alone among Western nations, is overwhelmingly Gods country. Majority should rule, Grove says. Isnt that the way America is supposed to work? The parents who filed suit beg to differ.

A pale auburn-haired woman walks stiffly past the reverend, looking straight ahead as she plunges through the doors into court. She is a former member and past president of the Dover school board, but Grove does not offer her a green flyer or any sort of greeting; he just purses his thin lips and once again shakes his head slightly. It appears Casey Brown is on Groves second list. That she has done good works, serving her community and her church for many years, doesnt much matter. She has, in the view of Grove and many other citizens of Dover, betrayed her own, taking the side of the godless ACLU, the evolutionists, the poisoners of young minds.