Intelligent Design and Inheriting the Wind
(This was sitting in my 'edit' queue for a while. Might as well publish it without further edit."
One of my all time favorite films is the original 'Inherit the Wind'. Its a Hollywood version of accounts from the Scopes monkey trial and the difficulty faced by teachers wishing to introduce the theory of evolution to American classrooms at the beginning of the last century. Of course both sides are caricatures of the people represented. The pro-evolution crowd is portrayed as calm, intellectual or forward thinking youths. The creationist are portrayed as violent alarmists who are stuck in the past, threatened by progress.
I recently purchased the original and while watching it I was mildly creeped out by the parallels we're seeing with intellectual design, the attempt to re-insert creationism back into the classroom. Its a roll reversal I would hope most American's would find compelling.
One scene in the movie sticks out in my mind. The attorney for the defendent (charged with teaching evolution) attempts to read a passage from Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. The attorney for the state (a hot shot politician from Nebraska) objects and no passage from the 'Origin of Species' is allowed to be admitted as evidence. Today I could image the exact same set of circumstances with a lawyer holding up the book of Genesis and having it struck down.
If I had the time and talent I'd love to redo the script for Inherit the Wind with the roles reversed. The frothing masses of malcontents would jeer at the peaceful, calm, intellectual creationists as they tossed Bibles onto a bonfire.
Ah fun with stereotypes.
I really don't care too much about the ID issue. Even as a scientist I don't have a passionate response to those who I clearly think are barking up the wrong tree because I feel that the ID debate is a symptom of a much deeper issue. Its the same issue that making people shout Merry Christmas at the top of their lungs and vote for Bush even when its not in their best interest. I suffer from some of the effects as well, but I hope I'm self aware enough to be more analytical than most.
But in the end, whom so ever makes trouble in their own house shall inherit the wind...
One of my all time favorite films is the original 'Inherit the Wind'. Its a Hollywood version of accounts from the Scopes monkey trial and the difficulty faced by teachers wishing to introduce the theory of evolution to American classrooms at the beginning of the last century. Of course both sides are caricatures of the people represented. The pro-evolution crowd is portrayed as calm, intellectual or forward thinking youths. The creationist are portrayed as violent alarmists who are stuck in the past, threatened by progress.
I recently purchased the original and while watching it I was mildly creeped out by the parallels we're seeing with intellectual design, the attempt to re-insert creationism back into the classroom. Its a roll reversal I would hope most American's would find compelling.
One scene in the movie sticks out in my mind. The attorney for the defendent (charged with teaching evolution) attempts to read a passage from Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. The attorney for the state (a hot shot politician from Nebraska) objects and no passage from the 'Origin of Species' is allowed to be admitted as evidence. Today I could image the exact same set of circumstances with a lawyer holding up the book of Genesis and having it struck down.
If I had the time and talent I'd love to redo the script for Inherit the Wind with the roles reversed. The frothing masses of malcontents would jeer at the peaceful, calm, intellectual creationists as they tossed Bibles onto a bonfire.
Ah fun with stereotypes.
I really don't care too much about the ID issue. Even as a scientist I don't have a passionate response to those who I clearly think are barking up the wrong tree because I feel that the ID debate is a symptom of a much deeper issue. Its the same issue that making people shout Merry Christmas at the top of their lungs and vote for Bush even when its not in their best interest. I suffer from some of the effects as well, but I hope I'm self aware enough to be more analytical than most.
But in the end, whom so ever makes trouble in their own house shall inherit the wind...
posted by Carl at 11:18 AM
2 Comments:
I think the "deeper issue" is a profound dissatisfaction with modernism. While evolution is true as a scientific theory, most people have an intuition that this is not all that is going on with the world. A lot of scientists, however, extrapolate from the truth of science to an all-encompassing philosophy that science is all there is. This is a (somewhat slanted) view of what modernism means to many people, but many find it deeply disturbing. They are probably correct in feeling so.
It's not that simple. ID, complaining about Christmas, etc., may be a superficial response, but a response to a much deeper issue.
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