Posted on 02/17/2008 6:00:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Books attacking religion, particularly Christianity, have earned quite a bit of money recently for publishers and their authors. Pundits are now having a field day attacking Mike Huckabee’s stance on evolution. Democratic strategist Paul Begala reportedly remarked on CNN on Super Tuesday, “Nobody is more conservative than Huckabee. He doesn’t believe in evolution or gravity or photosynthesis.”
Those who love to lob such oversimplified charges imply that those who do not accept the doctrinaire theories of evolution as set forth by one explorer named Charles Darwin, a century-and-a-half ago, are relics of the Dark Ages.
The latest Smart Set, however, echo the sentiments and tone of one of their more famous and notorious predecessors, Clarence Darrow. The schoolteacher John T. Scopes was among Darrow’s defendants. Unlike Darrow’s other, murderous, clients, Scopes in 1925 was persuaded by the American Civil Liberties Union to simply defy Tennessee state law against the teaching of evolution as it applies to man. He willingly complied, though his case never reached the outsiders’ goal of making the case a Constitutional test.
The public at large has inherited the terms of the evolution debate as handed down in the play about the Scopes trial, Inherit the Wind. That was the experience of one of my freshmen, who from his high school English class saw the conflict according to the play’s simplistic and polemical outline: a brave, young open-minded biology teacher fights like David against the mob of small-town, ignorant fundamentalists. Certainly, the play’s stage directions and the movie version show a town as if in the grips of fundamentalist hysteria: The film opens with a veritable mob of Fundamentalist zombies, singing hymns and waving Bibles. The town’s minister hypocritically promotes Biblical lessons while treating his own daughter, the fiancée of Scopes, with very un-Christian harshness and coldness. Clarence Darrow (named Henry Drummond in the play) provides a marked contrast to all this hysteria, by his courtroom demeanor, reasoned arguments, and sardonic revelations of how little the townspeople know.
But what about the real Clarence Darrow? Is he the spokesman for reason and light against the onslaught of ignorance and fanaticism?
A 1927 book review of his, of the now-forgotten The War on Modern Science, provides insight. Darrow seems to use the review as occasion to continue the arguments from the Scopes trial. After quickly describing the purpose of author Maynard Shipley’s project of exposing the campaign of “Fundamentalists”--“to make education and life correspond to the weird fables found in Genesis and other parts of the Bible,”--Darrow launches the attack:
“No more brazen and dangerous attempt to control thought can be found anywhere in history. The campaign is simply an effort by organized ignorance and bigotry to destroy the learning of the modern world. Under the leadership of the late William Jennings Bryan [Scopes’s primary antagonist], the forces of ignorance and intolerance were marshalled (sic) from Maine to California, and from Canada to Mexico.”
The review continues in the same attack mode using the rhetoric of a call to arms with words and phrases like “inquisition,” “campaign,” “onslaught against science” by the “half-educated,” “ignorant minority” to deny what in Darrow’s estimation “every scientist in the world has accepted”: that “evolution [is] a fact beyond dispute.”
Similarly, in the play, Darwin is presented as a bold thinker, a daring scientist, whose new, daring truths frighten Bible-thumpers. But what Darrow and Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (authors of the play) and most promoters of Darwinism don’t know is that the “bold” and “new” theory of evolution was being promoted more than 2,000 years ago by the Roman philosopher Lucretius.
And Darrow’s fiery rhetoric in this review is not atypical of those like him who are on a mission to wipe out religious influences across the globe. One of my college freshman students after reading this review jokingly called Darrow a “fundamentalist evolutionist.” The student is not a Christian.
Darrow’s rhetoric is mimicked in the more recent atheist jeremiads by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. A susceptible public, exposed to one side of the debate in public schools, brought their recent tomes—God Is Not Great, The God Delusion, and The End of Faith, respectively--to the best seller lists.
Another perspective that those among our college-educated public will not receive is that of Richard Weaver to whose writing I was introduced while in the master’s program at Georgia State University. In a seminar on classical rhetoric I found myself the only one in the room supporting the worth of Socrates’ exploration of truth (sophistry being the latest topic of “cutting edge” scholarship). After several weeks of engaging in discussions where the professor and my fellow students would have forced the hemlock on Socrates (and Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintillian), the professor remarked to me that I was so far to the right that I might even agree with Richard Weaver, on whom he cast fascistic aspersions. Immediately, after class, I went up to the library stacks and walked out with his volumes in my arms.
Among Weaver’s writings I found his analysis of the Scopes trial in The Ethics of Rhetoric. The chapter, “Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton, Tennessee,” is instructive for its analysis of what was (and still is) at stake in the debate on evolution. In short, Weaver reveals that the two sides were arguing two different things, with Darrow’s side using rhetoric to promote the “fact” of evolution. As Weaver points out, rhetoric fulfills its function of persuasion only if the two sides agree on the “facts.”
But more was at stake, as Darrow himself implies in his hysterical review. And that was the notion of truth. Dialectic, as in Socratic questioning, as Weaver points out, is “rationally rather than empirically sustained.” What was at stake for communities in Tennessee was whether it was good that schoolchildren be taught that they descended from apes, rather than being made in God’s image.
This idea, and the whole universe of ideas and values that it carries, still forms the central elements of the debate. For in the Darwinian scheme, man, as nothing more than an animal with more sophisticated cognitive skills, loses moral imperative and free will. The notion of sin becomes moot. And, indeed, in terms of his defense of criminals, Darrow himself utilizes arguments about such environmental factors as poverty, parental problems, and even reading material for some of the most heinous murderers. Among his clients were the privileged young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who coldly and calculatedly murdered their acquaintance Bobby Franks.
Weaver astutely points to the prosecution’s use of that case, where Darrow used as defense the fact that Leopold had been impacted negatively by reading Friedrich Nietzsche in school. Darrow had argued that the universities and professors who taught the nineteen-year-old Leopold are “more responsible for the crime than Leopold himself.” William Jennings Bryan pointed out that the “doctrine” that Darrow and the evolutionists would teach in the schools is the very same one “that gives us Nietzsche . . . who tried to carry this to its logical conclusion” in the idea of the superman. That Nietzsche’s nihilistic views questioning the very notion of evil could influence a rich young man whose goal was to coldly carry out a “perfect murder” makes sense given the premises. In the Darwinian view, animals (including the higher animals like man) act according to environmental forces. That would include not only physical stimuli, but also intellectual stimuli.
And that was what the Tennessee lawmakers objected to: the promotion of Darwin’s ideas as moral guidance. Weaver argues that Darrow, if he believes that Nietzsche could have a negative moral impact, should acknowledge the same for Darwin.
Even those thoughtful Christian thinkers, like the late Catholic Walker Percy, who see no conflict between evolution and faith, have good reason to be suspicious of the Darwinian view promoted in our schools. The most strident proponents of Darwinism, such as the philosopher Peter Singer, justify their policies of euthanasia and infanticide by first attacking the Biblical proscriptions against them. Euthanasia and infanticide, commonly accepted practices before Biblical times, illustrate most starkly Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” In 1925, the eugenics movement was catching on, especially among the progressive intelligentsia.
Alas, few in our schools or culture at large, given current publications, textbooks and curriculums, will be exposed to what is at stake in the debate--its real history or complexity. The confusion that Weaver unraveled—that mistakenly held belief that scientific, empirical “fact” can determine decisions of a moral order—remains with us. This is especially true in the teaching of literature, where pseudo-facts concerning race, class, and gender are mined in polemical “texts.” Most students will likely get the Inherit the Wind version in their classroom discussions--with biology teachers often promoting themselves as latter-day Scopes’s. But like all scientific theories, the jury is still out on this one, as many learned proponents of intelligent design affirm. But that theory is not likely to get a fair hearing, as are not the moral ramifications and implications of a strict Darwinian view of humanity.
Those who describe others as “narrow minded” and “intolerant” should look in the mirror at themselves.
Bump
And that is one of the key problems of our society and our educational processes. The people's understanding comes not from what really happened, but from a PLAY about what happened.
This is a long essay, but worth reading to get to most important 5 paragraphs at the end.
Education is never religiously neutral in content or consequences. These religious consequences effect our culture and politics.
If man is nothing more than an animal. If there is no God. If an attempt is made to remove God from the curriculum, then the concept of sin and free will is scrubbed well. One or two generation of children taught this **will** produce cultural and political changes in any society.
I have repeated posted here that Marxism is our nation’s most serious threat, and schools one of their most important weapons. Of course the Marxists who control the K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are Darwinists or “fundamentalist evolutionists”. The Marxists are also fundamentalist Secular Humanists as well. Their religious goal is a man-made human Utopia ruled by a benevolent elite.
Conservatives ( Christian and non-Christian) can effectively take over the education of children in the U.S. and close down the Marxist madrassas ( mis-named public “schools”). Hey! If the Marxists can play this game so can Conservatives.
How?
Conservatives ( Christian and non-Christian) must get children OUT of the K-12 schools and work to completely reform our colleges and universities.
Conservatives ( Christian and non-Christian) should set up private scholarship foundations to give private vouchers to private schools. These foundations could inspect, certify, and even test the students. They could also provide grants to individual teachers to organize new private schools. These private foundations could also break the government school monopoly on team sports, by setting up their own leagues.
I would recommend that brick and mortar schools be abandoned. They are expensive to run, and burdened by zoning and health regulations, and employee tax issues. Mini-schools, micro-schools, homeschool cooperatives, virtual schools are likely the best hope for the future of education. They are less expensive to organize, open, and run. Also, Prussian-model, brick and mortar schools tend to treat children ( who have committed no crime) like prisoners, and the end product is too often a sheeple-like person.
By the way,,,churches are not likely to help much. They have too many teachers and school employees sitting in their pews putting money in the collection plate. Very few ministers are going to bite the hand that feeds them.
Can the above be done? You bet it can! If Harvard can have a $35 billion dollar endowment and colleges and universities across the nation have endowments in the billions, conservatives could do the same for K-12 education.
Once Conservative get kids out of the government schools, then they must organize a massive tax revolt in the voting booth. It is time to shut the godless, Marxist, government K-12 indoctrination camps DOWN! Permanently!
....Especially the last 5 paragraphs....
ping
Although this thread title indicates that it has to do with Huckabee, the issue of evolution vs. creation and the educational setting is discussed quite well. I know that this is an issue for many homeschoolers, so thought you might be interested in reading this.
What a great article, Kaslin! Thank you so very much for posting it.
It's a much shorter step from history to literature than from 'what really happened' to history.
Thanks for the ping!
Oh?? How about "lob such lies"?
A susceptible public, exposed to one side of the debate in public schools, brought their recent tomes—God Is Not Great, The God Delusion, and The End of Faith, respectively--to the best seller lists.
Nietzsche would have sued them for theft of intellectual property, were he not dead himself.
The theme of this essay addresses a long overdue emphasis on the point that the existence of some particular empirical fact, or set of facts, has little or nothing to do with decisions establishing the moral order of things. The theological viewpoint has the more relevance to the issue and the generally philosophical viewpoint is even more the one on target. There are those on this forum, from both sides of the issue, who love to argue the theology and the philosophy, and others who love to argue the science. (And never the twin shall meet, for neither has the desire to settle the issue; only to go on forever brilliantly making their points and demonstrating the soundness of their beliefs and principles.) Far be it for me to spoil their fun by suggesting that they are missing the most central element of the controversy and that they spend an enormous amount of their time galloping down sidetracks set up for them by their enemies. May they go on enjoying themselves until old Sol blows his toupee.
But it does lead me to speculate how long for the world this particular thread has, since it raises a subject not usually dealt with head-on.
2 issues that most don’t realize about the Scopes trial:
1) Scopes was recruited to push the envelope so to speak. From what I understand, he was a popular coach with no science background.
2) Bryan never made an effective attempt to defend Creation. Like the GOP of today, he just rolled over to Darrow.
That phrase is entirely too applicable to all phases of life and politics these days. - If the truth is unpalatable, make it into a play, your way, and 'poof!' it's suddenly all better ;o)
How did he manage to win then?
Have you ever seen any of the trial transcripts? Compared to what he could have said, it was weak.
Did he really win? Look at how our kids are taught today. Look at how the preceeding generations chipped away the foundation of Scripture and the moral decay that has followed.
We’ve all lost.
Evos claim that teaching creation in schools will result in a return to the Dark Ages, Taliban style living, etc. They blame the poor performance of US students in science and math on the belief in creation, and the teaching of evolution only in schools is the cure for science illiteracy.
The problem is that the decline in the quality of education has directly coincided with the gradual pushing out of creation and Christian teaching in the public school system.
As of now, the teaching of evolution has a virtual monopoly in the public school system. If teaching that were the cure for the poor performance of US students in science and math, then why aren’t we seeing an improvement? The students with the highest science and math scores in this country as a group are private school (almost always Christian) and homeschool students, who are generally taught both evolution and creation.
Evos are hard pressed to demonstrate that teaching creation will result in lower quality science education because it just isn’t happening. On the contrary, those exposed to both are the ones doing better.
I’m not trying to challenge your point; just wondering.
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