“It is humanity’s unique blessing and peculiar curse to be the only species on Earth, as far as we know, that worries so obsessively and at such great expense about where we came from and why we’re here.” (Epilogue, pg. 339)
Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes is a consummate storyteller. In Monkey Girl, he paints a vivid picture of everyone involved in the 2005 court case, Kitzmiller. vs. Dover Area School District, showing how the U.S. divide between evolution and Intelligent Design dramatically played out in one small Pennsylvania town. Along the way, he sets the trial’s story in the context of the historical evolution-creationism debate in this country.
The thinking (or lack thereof) and incompetent behavior of the creationist members of the Dover School Board borders on ludicrous. It’s apparent they cared less for the public education of their students than for standing up for a “man who died on a cross 2000 years ago.” Humes writes a page-turner as he traces their bungling skullduggery in trying to get Intelligent Design taught in the school’s biology class.
Perhaps the most disturbing facts that emerged from the trial were the chain of events that clearly showed how School Board members who call themselves believers lied to try to impose their religious beliefs on others, then lied under oath to try to cover it up.
It’s also uncomfortable to watch how the School Board pitted Christian against Christian in their zeal to have their way. Board members, parents, and students who favored the separation of Church and State were publicly criticized for not being Christian enough, or for being atheists. At the trial’s end, when the presiding judge, a Conservative Bush appointee, ruled that Intelligent Design is not science, the creationist Board and its supporters accused him of being a liberal judicial activist for defending the Constitution.
The Dover trial is a sad reminder of how many US citizens are unaware of what the US Constitution means. The men who forged that document had a profound understanding of the importance of the separation of church and state, based on experience, not conjecture. Their founding of our new country grew directly out of the anguish and turmoil of centuries of European religious wars in which persecution often meant lengthy incarceration or death.
Unfortunately for the US, it seems the battle to discredit evolution and replace it with creationism is not over. We can only hope that concerned citizens like those in Dover, PA, will continue to speak out and take legal means where necessary and judges like John E. Jones will continue to rule fairly to protect our Constitutional rights.
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