Closing the books

And so we finish our two texts in the summer 2020 Evolution in America course, Larson's professionally and historically "correct" scholarly account of the 1925 Scopes Trial and Chapman's quirky memoir built around a trek to Dayton and a missed re-enactment. We missed it too, thanks to COVID, but maybe your appetite has been whetted and you'll get there eventually. I definitely intend to make the centenary performance in 2025, "God willin'..."

I think quite highly of both books, so different and yet in their different ways both so full of humanity. And whatever else you can say about the Scopes Affair and specifically the trial/summer extravaganza of 1925, I think you have to say that it too was full of humanity--for better and for worse. Fundamentalists and progressives, each concerned to ward off "damnable indoctrination" in (respectively) a naturalistic or supernaturalistic worldview that undermines faith in (respectively) god or progress, fought themselves to a draw in Dayton but at least gave us an entertaining show in the process.

I actually think it was more than just a show, though the popular accounts of the day--most prominently, Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday--treated it as such. But as I commented below,

"Only Yesterday" was not scholarship, but I will say it and its sequel "Since Yesterday" (a popular history of the '30s) are highly entertaining--not in the clipped tones of H.V. Kaltenborn but rather the smooth delivery of Grover Gardener. I do recommend the audiobook versions of each, but with the clear understanding that these are popular and breezy renditions of how those decades felt to many who lived through them and not faithful records of what really happened in every instance. Allen treats the 20s as a series of entertainments, of shows, and in retrospect that's what the Scopes affair was at the time. In the larger sweep of history, though, I still think it was more than that. It was a milestone marker indicating our national regression from a more enlightened and less polarized way of thinking about science, religion, individual liberty, the meaning of our existence etc. etc. We're still retreating, and in many ways are less enlightened about such things than were our forebears in the late decades of the 19th century.
So who won Scopes? Well, to the extent that we're still reflecting on it and trying to fashion a more enlightened stance towards the issues it raised, I think WE can "win" a greater depth of light and insight. But the game is now in extra innings with no end in sight.

Of course my baseball metaphor is in jeopardy again, the 2020 season once again under the life-threatening shadow of COVID. That season's end may well be in sight. Not so, the ongoing competition between advocates of science and of religion. I think the only way that game can be won is if we all come to understand that science and religion each have their place, that contrary to Wm Jennings Bryan's declaration at the outset of the trial they are not in a battle to the death, and ultimately it is possible to affirm the truth of evolutionary science and the value of religious faith.

To his credit, the atheist-cum-agnostic Matthew Chapman arrives at a similar conclusion.

I do have to take issue with his suggestion that atheists are committed to an arrogant conviction in the non-existence of a god or gods. "I came back from Dayton with even less certainty than I had when I went... If I went down [to Tennessee] an atheist, I came back an agnostic, refusing to share with these men the arrogance of any conviction in a matter so clearly unproveable either way."

In my experience, very few atheists--not even Bertrand Russell, for heaven's sake-- are so arrogant as to claim knowledge of godlessness in the universe. They simply speak for themselves, in attesting an inability to believe in a god-governed world. They do believe in a world of human beings striving for, and sometimes attaining, lives of meaning, dignity, and purpose. Like Chapman they "have a craving for a larger meaning, but refuse to satisfy this spiritual hunger with theological junk."

But it's finally up to each of us to separate for ourselves what we consider the spiritual sources of sustenance from the theological junk. As I replied to Delana,

We do each have to find and walk our own path, of course, and like Chapman I have learned to see the value of others' paths even though I cannot follow them or sometimes even understand them. My issue is not with pluralism and the varieties of experience and belief, it is with exclusion and narrowness of judgment... with the attitude that 7/8 of us are doomed to eternal torture at the hands of a "loving" god simply for dissenting from others' faith... with the denialism of the very science that accounts for the technology we all enjoy (including the very platform we're communicating with right now), and that raised our ancestors from rank superstition and ignorance... with the will to impose one's own sectarian ideas upon everyone, and to squash academic freedom. Sacred texts are fine, so long as we read them in an appropriately-interpreted light, and not in the literal intent of their pre-scientific authors.

As a fellow public school educator I know you don't mean to imply, when you say of your decision to send your children to private schools that "it was vital for them to be raised with the truth," that public education fosters untruth. But the mission of public education is to educate children from every background and tradition while respecting their "home truths" and cultural traditions, hence the propriety of refraining from religious instruction in that arena. But evolutionary science in the public domain is not a competitor truth, it is a foundational truth in the light of which we can begin to understand the variety of cultural and religious practices that are natural for humans. It is "everybody's story," as Loyal Rue has written in his eponymously titled book. That's a primary responsibility of public education: to tell the story that unifies us as a species, and gives us the wider context in which to understand and celebrate -- not just tolerate -- our differences.

And as I've replied to Mitch,

It was Chrissie Hynde (wasn't it?) who said we're all of us in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars? Not exactly a Saganesque sentiment, but a good coda for "Saint Matthew"... like you, I find the personal growth reflected in his surprising tolerance and affection for the people he meets in Dayton redemptive. He's harvested some good sunlight, in his Tennessee pilgrimage.

I also think the "mountaintop experience" is available to humans in every culture and tradition, and from countless sources. It's so silly, to try and pin down "the one right religion" when what really matters is our shared and nearly-universal receptivity to such elevated feelings. It all comes down to "live and let live," doesn't it? Let others "find God" or meaning and purpose or peace of mind or whatever they're looking for in their own way, and appreciate the fact that THAT is the human way of transcendence. Be uniters, not dividers... and don't take ourselves so darn seriously. That's when we'll evolve to the next stage of our humanity.

And that can't happen quickly enough, can it? The rest of the world is pretty unimpressed with the present state of our evolutionary ascent in this country, as evidenced by our inability to subdue COVID 19.

So we close those two books. One week remains, in our July mini-mester. Perhaps some of you will open another book for your final essay next week, or perhaps you'll want to tackle my closing question (I already had this in mind, Mitch, before I read your reference to Thomas Jefferson's statement--you clinched it):

Transcribe an imaginary conversation between yourself, Bryan, Chapman, and Darrow. You’ve all just witnessed the Scopes re-enactment in Dayton on Jy 20, 2021 (I hope that's not unrealistically optimistic), and are now gathered at the Monkey Town Brewing Company. (Darrow and Chapman are enjoying an "Evolutionary Theory #1 IPA," Bryan has ordered a "Monkey-Fil-A Sandwich" and an "Elvis Burger"). Darrow says he agrees with Tom Jefferson, it neither picks his pocket nor breaks his leg for anyone to believe in many gods or none etc. And then you say... 

Looking forward to getting back there too.