Planet of the Monkeys

Leave a comment

“If salvation is available only to Christians, then the Gospel isn’t good news at all. For most of the human race, it is terrible news.” That may not be Rachel Held Evans’s choice for the final word on the subject, but it is the privilege of all writers to be misinterpreted. I read Evolving in Monkey Town because of an odd confluence. Evolution always tastes like forbidden fruit to me, although there can be no real doubt concerning its factuality. Also, the spiritual journeys of women continue to fascinate me. Even if the women are young enough to be my daughter. I first learned about the Scopes Monkey Trial in Mr. Pierce’s tenth grade history class. In eleventh grade I argued the Fundamentalist side of an epic, three-day debate on evolution in current issues class. I set a reputation that I’m still attempting to live down. (Studying religion for the next ten years probably did me no favors here.) The end result is that I feel a personal connection to what happened in Dayton, Tennessee, although I’ve never been there.

Evolving in Monkey Town is a memoir of a struggling, skeptical fundamentalist. Reading it at times made me squirm a bit, seeing childhood worries and frustrations coming back to me through someone else’s experience. Some of Evans’s remarks could have come from me, had I the courage to write up my past so that others might view it. At the end of the book it was obvious that I could not agree with many of the author’s personal convictions, but she earned my respect. Under the constant pressures of pleasing a deity that can’t be seen, or empirically verified, Evans sees clearly the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and Fundamentalist Christianity. She has a wonderful knack for clear sight and forthright comment. Like me, she has become aware that a Fundamentalist upbringing is something no one ever truly escapes.

The crisis that seems to have sparked Evans’s angst was the recognition that no matter how you arrange it, an exclusive religion cannot coexist with a just deity. The world is just too big for that. Any scenario in which God sets the rules and makes it impossible for the vast majority of humanity to attain those rules does reflect rather poorly on this pater familias. We are all reduced to a diabolical game of charades as we march merrily toward perdition. Theodicy is an insurmountable problem in this live-a-day world we inhabit. Reading about the altruistic traits of the primates most closely related to us reveals something about being a monkey’s uncle. When we look at the shenanigans religions enforce on people to make them more worthy of heaven, I think we would all have to admit to living in Monkey Town.

Sh*t Apes Say

1 Comment

Knowing from experience that when I stay alone in a hotel, despite my best intentions, I will get bored and end up watching Mudcats or Dual Survival until my brain feels like a boiled egg, I anticipated my trip to California. I packed Planet of the Apes, the original and best of the lot, hoping for some intellectual stimulation. Having grown up in an anti-evolution household, we were curiously allowed to watch Planet of the Apes, a kind of forbidden zone of the mind. It remains one of my favorite movies of all time. It is also a manifesto of science besieged by religion. Note what Dr. Zaius says, “There is no contradiction between faith and science… true science!” And he is the Minister of Science, and Chief Defender of the Faith. The trial of George Taylor, a thinly disguised parody of the Scopes Trial, has Honorious (read William Jennings Bryan) stating, “It is based on our first article of faith: that the almighty created the ape in his image, that he gave him a soul and a mind, the he set him apart from the beasts of the jungle and made him lord of the planet,” and turning on his fellow apes Zira and Cornelius, he accuses them of being “perverted scientists who advance an insidious theory called evolution!”

Dr. Zira, as one of these “perverted scientists,” asks Cornelius (incidentally, the name of the first non-Jewish Christian, according to Acts), “How can scientific truth be heresy?” This is echoed by Dr. Zaius in the trial where he states, “It is scientific heresy that is being tried here.” Indeed, the entire simian culture is based on the blurring and blending of science and religion. Throughout the film various characters make barbed statements about the human propensity to ignore the obvious. Landon, challenging Taylor about the time change they experienced in space, says—in a line that could come straight from Answers in Genesis—“Prove it! It’s still just a theory.” The exact rhetoric currently used by creationists in school board meetings around the country. To which the most apt reply seems to come from Dr. Zaius, speaking of humanity: “his wisdom must walk hand-in-hand with his idiocy.”

Occasionally even the gun-toting humans get the picture clear. In his opening monologue George Taylor wonders about the world seven hundred years from now, “Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely. That’s about it. Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving?” This seems to be the true measure of heresy—a religion that puts fellow humans on the same level as animals (and even animals deserve far more credit than we are willing to give). Among my favorite lines is Cornelius’ response to Taylor shaving his beard; “Somehow it makes you look less intelligent,” he opines. Endlessly remade, Planet of the Apes is a movie that still answers some of the issues that plague our society nearly half a century later. Perhaps the last line should go to the apes, adjusted of course, for gender sensitivity, “[hu]man[ity] has no understanding.” Well said, Dr. Zaius, well said.

A piece of childhood

Walking Monsters

Leave a comment

It was a moment of weakness, or at least tawdry cheapness, that made me watch The Monster Walks. Just the day before the Cable Vision guy had stopped by, detailing how much money we could save by switching. We haven’t had television service since 2004, and even then it was only with a cheap aerial. Back in the days of Borders, I sometimes caved in and purchased the “Classic Features” movie boxes with 50 B, C, or D movies for what seemed a steal at less then 25 dollars. Maybe five or six of the movies from each set were actually worth the time spent watching them, but many of them proved an education. So it was with The Monster Walks.

Now, I readily confess to having a weakness for B movies. Made by people who were really trying, but who seemed to lack talent, I often identify with their efforts. So when I popped The Monster Walks into my DVD player, I had no idea what I might learn. The first revelation occurred in the opening credits where a character named “Exodus” was introduced. Since this was 1932, the character had to be African American. And comic relief. To spare you the pain of watching the movie, the plot is rather simple: rich man dies, helpless daughter inherits all to the chagrin of surviving brother and domestics, who plot to kill her by pretending to be a murderous ape. There also happens to be a murderous ape locked in the cellar. You get the picture. Aptly named Exodus is purely there as a foil for the educated, privileged white family. He was played by the talented but underappreciated Willie Best. As might (nay, should) be predicted, the scheme of killing the girl backfires and the ape kills the killer. Okay, so I can confess an hour wasted and get on with my reading. But the final scene arrested me.

Exodus wonders to the lawyer (who is there to read the will) why the rich man even had an ape. The lawyer, metaphorically transformed into a judgmental William Jennings Bryan, states that it was because he believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Exodus responds by noting some family resemblance to the ape. The blatant racism was hard to take, but in Black History Month the painfully obvious collective sins of our society should be laid bare. In 1932 Fundamentalism, often implicitly allied with racist causes, castigated Darwin’s theory for bringing all of humanity down to the same level. As long as a white god is creating the universe, the Anglo-Saxon can claim superiority. Never mind that Genesis was written by a Jewish writer living in Asia. Self-righteousness comes in many forms, but it always involves bringing others down to a rung below where the blessed stand. Has not the great Rick Santorum told us that even the Crusades were merely misunderstood?

Fall of the Planet of the Apes

3 Comments

Perhaps it is being under the influence of a head-cold that just won’t go away, or perhaps something deeper, I decided to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Raised in a fundamentalist household, I was enamored of Planet of the Apes (the original one) and watched it and all its sequels repeatedly back before VCRs made owning such chestnuts possible. Perhaps it was that taste of forbidden fruit—evolution—that left such an exotic buzz in my head, or perhaps it was the unforgettable climax. The message that we’ve done this to ourselves. I once even missed seeing a high school friend after several years’ absence on a visit home because an all-day Planet of the Apes marathon was airing on TV. Perhaps it was the subtlety, the Rod Serling feel to it, or the deep level of empathy it evoked, for whatever reason, that original movie remains one of my personal favorites. In Rupert Wyatt’s slick new backstory, something was missing.

The CGI of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty remarkable, except for the occasional jerkiness of violent scenes intended to pump up the testosterone. The subtle emotions visible in Caesar’s every glance conveyed the sense that animals share rights to this planet with us. I’ve been reading about animal intelligence again, and it saddens me that we’ve reached this far in our development only to continue the fiction that homo sapiens are unique among the tree of life. It’s not much of a tree when one of the branches is not and never has been attached. Our animal cousins have much to teach us, and perhaps that’s why I keep returning to Planet of the Apes, despite Charlton Heston. Even the new movie makes several nods to the original with naming the main family Rodman, Caesar building a three-dimensional puzzle of the statue of liberty only halfway complete, calling his mother “Bright Eyes,” spraying Caesar with a hose in his cage and calling the primate center a madhouse, and the cheesy repetition of “Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!” It simply can’t rise to the level set by the writing of Rod Serling and Michael Wilson.

The box-office success of the film tells us something about ourselves. Ironically, and perhaps intentionally, Wyatt’s version neuters the evolution. The apes don’t rise from an unspeakably long evolutionary track from us, but we create them with the nemesis of twenty-first century humans, the virus. Caesar and his friends are genetically engineered by humans, and God has nothing to do with it. In the original, a theological subtlety lingered as a religious court of orangutans condemned Taylor for religious reasons. His claim of human primacy was heresy to primate sensibilities. The new version takes itself too seriously for that. We can’t jangle the evolution keys anymore because of our own national schizophrenia concerning the raw power of nature. Just when we think we’ve evolved beyond petty superstition masquerading as righteousness, yet another state attempts to guillotine the entire scientific enterprise. It’s a sure thing that if the apes don’t get us, we’ll take care of it ourselves. That was the message already in 1968.

Apples and Evil

Leave a comment

I’m not really a mall person. Since I’m not really a techie either, however, I find myself in malls where Apple Stores are located when I can’t get by without a little help from my friends. So it was that I spent several hours at a mall earlier this week. While there I browsed an oriental imports store—the kind of place with a no-frills, I-might-be-gone-tomorrow kind of feel to it. In the front window they showcased a display of swords. Since dragons are a major motif in Chinese folklore, the transition to medieval images of dragon-slayers seemed to be at play here. I am not certain of the last time an actual dragon was reported in central Iowa. One of the swords had a Latin inscription along its blade. My Latin is very rusty, but I did recognize the word “God” amid the fantasy spell. The connection between religion and violence was facing me in that unused (I hope) weapon.

Religion often serves as an outworking of human violent tendencies. Our violence is, no doubt, a product of our godless evolution. As we ascended the tree of life that gave us birth, some other creatures on that tree thought we were tasty. In an unintentional effort to defend ourselves, we grew larger and larger brains that gave us the edge as predators. As a collective, humans tend to be overachievers. We’ve whittled away most of our large predators to the endangered list so that we might shop with relative comfort. If there is guilt about it, we can always blame God.

Evolution did not endow us well with body armor or sharp teeth and claws. People seem to have evolved mostly for running away—that’s what our physiognomy suggests. Among the earliest of weapons was the blade. To be effective a blade must have reach. The sword, the favored weapon of the Bible, grew until weight and balance became optimal. To harm another person you had to be close enough to look that person in the eye. If we look we find another person like us, and we need an excuse for our violence. Religion is readily farmed as the ground for justifying such violence, for religions combat evolution and any differences of opinion. What I was seeing through this mall window was a cross-section of the human story. The sword was ornamental and had clearly never been used. Unfortunately, such weapons are rare. Rarer than my trips to the mall, Apple Stores notwithstanding.

Dawkins Dilemma

Leave a comment

Some of my regular readers may have divined that I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. It is a book well worth more than one post on a blog, but it is also one of those troubling and liberating books all at the same time. Dawkins is a gifted writer who explains things clearly. He sometimes makes mistakes in the details, but his logic is flawless and consistent, at times running up against the limits of reason itself. There is a dilemma here, however, and that is the ghost in the machine. It may not be supernatural, but even Dawkins must occasionally refer to “enlightenment”—a term derived from Buddhism, and “essence”—something that does not actually exist, and other turns of phrase that wander beyond the strict purview of science. Nevertheless, his point, hammered home repeatedly, is well taken. The perpetuation of religion is not very healthy, and in a way, contains the seeds of its own destruction.

As a specialist in religion reading this book by a world-class scientist, it feels like awaking in the morning after a stranger has broken into your room at night and beat you soundly while you slept. Religion is what we do, our thing. That voice of indignation whimpers, “why must scientists come in here and trash all our stuff?” And yet, that is the way of reason. It takes no prisoners. Back at Nashotah House I used to argue points of Scripture with students. Often there would be someone who would resort to, “reason is fallen and is therefore not to be trusted.” I would always respond, “how do you come to that conclusion if not by reason? Can you trust it?” If reason be true, it must be true the entire journey, as anyone who has ever flown on a plane knows. When reason meets religion, however, fireworks fly.

Dawkins does an admirable job illustrating the troubles into which religion has led the human race. It is very unlikely, however, that the human race will ever outgrow religion. Perhaps it is one of those evolutionary mechanisms set into our brains in order to ensure that we are not too successful. With the exception of crocodiles, sharks, cephalopods, and many insects, life forms are continually evolving and dying out. Maybe religion is our apocalypse, the mark of the beast. The original sin. Call it what you will, but religion often acts as a massive deterrent to human progress, and especially to the ideals that it often promulgates. Sometimes it takes a biologist to sort out the menagerie.

In God We Lust

Leave a comment

One of the entrenched ironies of human mentality is that reason will not suffice to change religious views. Many studies have repeated demonstrated that faith is impervious to logic, and this has appeared with Ektachrome clarity in the case of Warren Jeffs. Rev. Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has painted himself into a mental corner that makes the logic of legal proceedings appear as slapping the idiot. Logic and faith do not connect. Any Christian who has read the letter to the Hebrews should know that. Nevertheless, Rev. Jeffs, having illogically dismissed his team of lawyers, has been attempting a divine defense to justify his alleged sexual abuse of minors. He remained silent during his opening statement, despite judicial advice that such a tactic might harm his case. Breaking silence yesterday with a nearly hour-long sermon, faith responded to logic and was found wanting.

Society at large fails to consider that studies of religion have been carried out from multiple angles over many decades. We have erudite studies of the philosophy of religion, the psychology of religion, the anthropology of religion, and the sociology of religion. They all point to the human origins of this phenomenon, often demonstrating that a basic disconnect remains when religious belief is brought into the harsh light of logic. Neurologists and biologists have explored the utility of religion as a survival tactic, and evolution seems to have blessed it. Yet trial lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, and politicians—often themselves religious individuals—are charged with apprehending and convicting others who simply take their religion to extremes. Religions make untenable demands on adherents. God has a poor record of turning up in the courtroom. His divine statements are absent from the stenographer’s tape.

Not knowing the details, it is difficult to find much sympathy for Rev. Jeffs, should he be found guilty. Yet at the same time, his interpretation of religion differs only in a matter of degree from other religious sexual ordinances. Is it normal for a clergyman to live a lifetime of enforced celibacy? Although signing on the dotted line may indicate a tacit agreement with church policy, what young man can clearly anticipate the pressures of decades fighting biology and psychology? Yet the practice is perfectly legal. Until the nearly inevitable inappropriate results squirm out. Public rancor runs high, as it should, against child molesters. The children are innocent victims. The perpetrators, however, believe themselves to be following divine dictates. It would seem that much suffering would be ended if God would go on the record here, so that we might have solid evidence with which to judge the case. If it please the court.

Photo credit: Tony Gutierrez, AP, from The Seattle Times

Who Made Whom, Now?

Leave a comment

John Lennon has great currency, in part, because he is a martyr. Music has moved on since the ‘60s and ‘70s, but aging Boomers still like to quote him, especially his song “Imagine.” In an article written for the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the local Sunday newspaper, J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer cite “Imagine” as the statement of what a world “that makes sense” looks like. I applaud their idealism. Citing psychological and sociological work that has been done over the past decade in the attempt to unravel “homo religiosus” they entitle their article “God didn’t make man: man made gods.” Much of the evidence they cite has been discussed elsewhere on this blog, but the overarching issue—whether this explains human religious behavior or not—remains open. In other words, if evolution provided us with religion, it must have some survival benefit and humans are not easily going to dismiss it.

Admittedly, the evidence for human conceptions of God arising from the need for close connections in community is pretty convincing. Nevertheless, the issue of whether there is a God or not will never be answered by empirical observation. As I tell my students, belief is not based on empirical observation. We do not yet know why people believe, and even if we find the right node, neuron cluster, or sensory stimuli, there will always be those who insist that the hardware is sparked into action by the unseen Other outside the system. It is the classic chicken or egg debate, taking place in that henhouse in the sky. The problem is that God is more like the rooster in that scenario.

The human brain is an endless source of fascination. Science has given us a sense of wonder about our own on-board computer, but it has not managed to capture the sine qua non of the totality of the experience of owning one. Scientists also read, go to shows, make love and eat fine meals for the enjoyment of it all. But as Cipher says in The Matrix, “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.” Our perception of the world as a stable, unmoving center of existence is an illusion. Science has revealed an even stranger reality involving equations that used to haunt my nightmares. Should God ultimately be reduced to formulae, true believers will find another entity to name as the divine. “Imagine… no religion too”? As long as humans are humans such a world remains pure imagination.

Imagine

Religion Al Dente

Leave a comment

I first learned of the Flying Spaghetti Monster while teaching a course on the Bible and Current Events a number of years ago at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Being freed from the confines of my humorless seminary teaching post, I was free to explore innovative ways to approach my subject matter. When discussing evolution, it was helpful to bring in Pastafarianism as an example of how some highly intelligent—and very creative—people deal with the ridiculousness of Creationism. Lest I be accused of unfairness here, Pastafarianism is also ridiculous. That is precisely the point. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) was formed to demonstrate that any inane idea might pass as a religion and should be given equal time with those who use ultra-conservative views on the Bible to effect public policy.

A friend sent me a link to a BBC story of an Austrian man who has finally been successful in his attempt to wear a pasta-strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo. Claiming the headgear to be demanded by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Niko Alm wished to have his official ID photo taken with the symbol of his faith. I sense an evolution taking place here. The Church of FSM has gone mainstream in many respects; there is a Bible available, you can buy a bumper-magnet to rival a Jesus fish, adherents have designed a slick website, and it boasts many, many followers. While the website of the Church of FSM defiantly refuses to be taken seriously, it makes legitimate claims—religions do not require literal belief, and therefore Pastafarianism is a true religion with believers not being held to any particular doctrine.

The outcry against the FSM movement (which began roughly early in the new millennium) demonstrates its effectiveness. Are there really people who believe this religion? A tour of the website should be proof enough. The claims made by the group have analogues in traditional religion; many major religions teach events and doctrines that are equally unbelievable in the confines of the physical world in which we find ourselves. It is difficult to believe that Niko Alm actually takes this seriously, but who are we to judge? The FSM has moved from making fun of Intelligent Design to casting the very definition of religious belief into sharp relief. Who’s to say we haven’t all been touched by his noodly appendage?

Touched by his Noodly Appendage

Sanctuary

Leave a comment

Sanctuaries are often difficult to get to, but are often even more difficult to leave. Various religions make use of the concept—a sanctuary is a safe place, somewhere away from the normal world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons humans devised religion to begin with; the world feels heartless and threatening much of the time, and a place where the unseen parent will keep us safe is a desideratum anxiously quested. The problem with sanctuaries is that too much safety inhibits growth. As history repeatedly demonstrates, sequestered religions grow stagnant and antiquated—frequently hindering more than helping.

The concept of a sanctuary is of a piece with the amorphous idea of sacred space. The idea that some places are different, special, or spiritually vibrant is one that admits of no testing or verification. Nevertheless pilgrims will seek out such places in order to recover a sense of balance or peace. Even scientists know the feeling, although it is frequently consigned to the psychologist’s couch. Finding that spot that gives momentary tranquility is big business, as any travel agent knows. While we may invest our sanctuaries with divine trappings, the practice is, at its roots, very human.

The world was not created for us. Congealing from a rapidly spinning mass of superheated rock and dust, it took a few billion years before life might even manage to float atop the cosmic embers. As part of this fascinating development called life, we have learned its hard lessons. Nature is beautiful and dangerous. We are its masters and its slaves. Some of us take great pains to escape to it and when it is time to leave we are ripped from it like a crying babe from its mother’s arms. Sanctuary is a human concept with divine implications.

A sanctuary

Now Locusts?

2 Comments

With the same page of the newspaper lamenting flooding in Iowa and drought in Florida, it seems that nature has turned against us in an almost biblical way. A more biblical plague than locusts would be hard to conceive, however, so when my wife pointed me to a current video of a locust invasion in Russia, I took notice. In the United States we seldom consider locusts since they have largely ceased to be a problem with the extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust for unknown reasons, last century. One of the more interesting books I’ve read over the last few years was Jeffrey Alan Lockwood’s Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier. Because the locust is not an American problem, biblical literalists like to transform biblical locusts into something else. The transformation is not necessary. We’ve eliminated the large predators from our planet, and the small ones often go unnoticed.

Each year as I lecture on the book of Joel, I spend a little time with locusts. The Asian varieties of locusts tend to reproduce rapidly and prolifically in the desert. Quickly exhausting the sparse food supply, they take to the air and fly for, literally, greener pastures. They can fly for three days without stopping which means they are suddenly there and eating everything. They look like divine judgment. Each locust eats its own body weight in green matter daily, and when a swarm can contain over 100 billion locusts, that can add up to 50,000 tons of food a day. Like poorly mannered house guests, locusts stay until all the food is gone, then leave. They are fully capable of devastating entire nations.

An actual biblical locust, vintage 1915.

Hal Lindsey famously converted Joel’s locusts into military helicopters, claiming that they presaged the end times. Decades later we are still here and so are, apparently, the locusts. They are part of evolution’s great machinery. The biblical view that we are the purpose behind that machinery has caused endless problems for the ecosystem. Locusts are a problem because they consume the food that we would otherwise eat or waste. In the struggle for survival, as Joel attests, it is not always the biggest that win.

Science of the Bible

6 Comments

It should be a local decision. Science, that is. This straight from the mouth of America’s darling Chris Christie. New Jersey’s governor does not wish to weigh in on this one. His children attend private school. Yes, even New Jersey is under the anti-evolution gun. In the light of the inevitability of Creationism trumping real science, I’ve been working on a sample syllabus for high school science teachers. The way I see it, this new focus in American education should teach science the way the Bible does – no holds barred, no punches pulled. No picking and choosing like Creationists do – Hey! Put that cell phone down, it is a device of black magic! (This will need to be followed up, supernaturally, by a course on how to handle witches in the classroom.) My proposed syllabus looks something like this:

Astronomy: study of that mysterious dome that encircles our earth. It seems to have holes poked through it, or so it looks at night. Science can change depending on the time of day. The sun and moon live in that dome as well, as our astronauts can attest. (Their views that the earth is round, without four corners as the Bible instructs, are, of course, heretical.)

Meteorology: study of the windows of the dome. When God opens these it rains. When God is angry he sends fire down from the dome. The loud sound that follows that is his angry voice. So play nice!

Geology: study of the very center of the cosmos. Our flat earth home, with its four corners and steady pillars reaching down into Sheol, is the exact center of everything. There are no such things as dinosaurs (or cats) since they are not mentioned in the Bible. The layers that you see here and there were all caused by the flood in a matter of about 150 days. The whole thing took only 6 days to make.

Biology: study of the separate kinds God created. Let’s be honest here: the chihuahua and the mastiff share a common ancestor? Preposterous! God made each kind separately and they’ve stayed that way for the past 6000 years. Oh, and yes, animals have telekinetic abilities – that’s how they knew to show up at the ark on time. And when the flood was over the marsupials all knew to swim to Australia. Koalas are surprisingly strong in the breast-stroke category.

Humanology: study of human beings (which are not animals). We were created after the animals (unless you read Genesis 2, where we were created from dust before the animals) and are therefore superior to them. Our natural lifespan is about 600 years, but if you are really wicked you might make it almost to 1000. Reproduction is by means of men planting seeds in women. Females contribute nothing to new children except a womb of their own. We teach these new generations by using the science of miracles, and since there are no schools in the Bible, what are we doing here anyway?

O Tenn Won’t You See?

1 Comment

Truth goes to the highest bidder. In the United States the highest bidder is the party with the numbers to get elected. Truth by democracy. Once again Tennessee is flirting with Creationism, if not having already climbed into bed with her. High school biology teachers nationwide are afraid to take on the issue directly; many of them are told by their clergy that the concept itself is anti-Christian. This is what happens when mythological needs go unanswered. No one has yet deciphered why human brains evolved the capacity to believe in outside agency beyond the realm of nature. Many Fundamentalists use the phenomenon as proof of their pre-decided answers, despite their willingness to utilize this evolved Internet to spread their ideas. If evolution is false the Internet does not exist.

The larger issue here is the fact that educators have, by-and-large, dismissed the impact of religion. Particularly in higher education. Everyone has their own religion, we don’t discuss it because someone will become offended, and we pretend that, gosh-darn-it, people are just too smart to believe all that. Meanwhile millions of tax-payer dollars are wasted on cases continually going to court where one subset of one religion insists that its mythology has a right to be taught as science. Even the Fundamentalist’s strange bed-fellows in other conservative issues, the Roman Catholic Church, has stood up and put on its slippers. This one is not a matter of opinion, ecclesiastical or otherwise.

But religious folk understand that if they elect the right candidates, the issue can be forced again and again. The Creationist tactics are evolving to fit the situation. Meanwhile, not only religion, but also the study of history is largely dismissed as irrelevant. It is history that demonstrates the birth, growth, and current goals of the movement. The Scopes Monkey Trial was nearly ninety years ago, but it may as well have not taken place yet. If William Jennings Bryan had been smart, he’d have waited until his cohort had had time to carefully sow their seeds, water, weed, and fertilize them (using the oldest known material to ensure growth – plenty of manure) and then take it to legislators. The results are as predictable as the sunrise over our flat earth.

Seems just like tomorrow...

Genesis Rising

1 Comment

Educating against the grain of an unthinking religiosity is a sobering enterprise. Every semester students provide presentations for my intro class on various issues that the Hebrew Bible informs in wider society. Inevitably one group will choose evolution as the relevant topic. While the actual theory of evolution is outside the scope of a Bible course, I spend more time on Genesis than on any other book. I carefully explain how “science” is a concept absent from the biblical world and how the creation myths in Genesis have no basis in the physical reality we know. The world Yahweh is busy creating consists of a dome turned upside-down over a plate-like earth. That see-through dome keeps out the waters that rush back in a few chapters later to flood the world. It is a fantasy world that even the most intractable creationist can’t accept. (Well, maybe not the most intractable.)

Nevertheless, the Creationist movement that began about 1920 has done its homework. That homework, unfortunately, has been in disciplines that both biologists and biblical scholars ignore – public relations. Any observer of modern American society can easily see the distrust with which education is regarded. As a culture, we dislike those who “think they’re so smart” while we daily use the gadgets and devices they design and improve. Biblical scholars are especially suspect because they engage in the most hubristic of all human activities: storming Mount Olympus (oops, sorry, Heaven) itself.

In a typical Rutgers University intro class of 50 or so students, with a wide variety of majors including the sciences, student presentations on evolution ultimately end up suggesting “let the students decide for themselves.” Although they consistently rate my instruction highly, they just can’t let go of the gnawing belief that Genesis 1 describes the world as it actually is. Disappointed, I am not surprised. When headlines constantly demonstrate the antipathy – if not downright hostility – that governors and some presidents have for education, we will reap what we sow. That, by the way, is from the Bible.

(It's just made of green cheese)

Ring of Fire

1 Comment

It looks so peaceful from above

The great tragedy unfolding in Japan has many Internet pundits wondering if this is a sign of the 2012 apocalypse. In reality it is simply a great human tragedy, a reminder that we are creatures who’ve evolved in a dangerous, often inhospitable universe. Natural disasters may have been one of the stimuli for the development of religion in the first place. Now we can look to seismology and tectonic plates to find out “why” hundreds had to die in Japan, but the human psyche demands a metaphysical reason. Some Christian websites are quick to point out that only a very small percentage of Japanese are Christian. Born with the sin of not being American, well, Shinto happens.

Like last year’s Chilean earthquake, this current disaster has once again shifted the earth on its rotation axis, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. GPS markers on the coast of Japan indicate that the large island has shifted over two meters because of the quake. The world was not made for us, however. We evolved on a planet, peopled it with gods, and decided that they created this place for us. In reality, we survive on the basis of our adaptations to this planet. Any planet dynamic enough to support life will be volatile enough to demand life from its inhabitants.

This is not as fatalistic as it sounds. Religions reflect the impotence humans feel in the presence of raw nature. We’ve shed many physical defenses for the advantages of large brains that require us to piece together a sensible view of an event that has no inherent meaning. The fact is that we are not in control. Once we eliminated the smaller-scale threats of exposure and the dangers of predation, we left ourselves open to macro-scale disasters that no human is large enough to impact. And we know, deep in our psyches, that this is simply part of the price we pay for being human. 2012 will come and go with its own share of natural disasters, but right now we should focus on helping those who’ve experienced their own current apocalypse.