Delight Springs

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Reinventing religion, and life

Listening to baseball on the radio yesterday, last exhibition game (KC-StL) before the so-called "regular season" commences, I was struck by how normal it sounded, sight unseen--the sound engineering was impressive. But it underscored the theatrical unreality of sports, to know that no one was there but the players and yet I was commiserating in a spectatorial charade in order to make the whole show more compelling. Surreal. The way we live now.

And, how quickly the Zoom classroom has also displaced old assumptions about learning. I'm not complaining, it's way better than not having any classroom at all. But it's a different order of experience. Plus, something about my chromebook seems to dampen and de-amplify my voice. Some, I'm sure, would say that's okay.

Anyway, I had a late thought just before signing on for last night's class...

What's religion really about?

A late last thought before we Zoom...

I think I've mentioned William James's statement that even if all religious theories and creeds were absurd, the "life of religion as a whole is still mankind's most important function." That's an intriguing, cryptic statement, especially when coupled with another James statement. He said the religious impulse is not, contrary to popular belief, fundamentally about God, it's about life -- a richer, deeper, more satisfying life.

I'm reminded of these James statements by Chapman's remark:
To argue about whether God exists or in what form seems as sophomoric and redundant as to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but once you get past that, once you recognise God as an invention and start thinking about what caused His or Her invention, then suddenly the subject becomes serious again, and poignant.
That's the attitude of "Drummond" at the end of Inherit the Wind, isn't it? (See post below.) It's a humanistic attitude, and though it does not participate in religion it is sympathetic to those who do. And curious about their lives. To me, despite his various flaws and vulgarities etc. etc., it's an attitude that really valorizes Chapman's project in this book.

And as for Darrow/Drummond...

I've just re-read the script for Inherit the Wind (the play/film). The ending deviates from reality in interesting ways. In particular, in the script "Drummond" (Darrow) blows up at "Hornbeck" (Mencken) -- who delivers the "busted belly" line Darrow spoke in real life -- and leaves us pondering his commitment to reconcile science and religion, Darwin and the Bible.*

I wonder what Darrow would have said about that. Pretty sure he'd not have liked it.

Do you like Drummond more than Darrow? I'm not sure I do. I know that some of you have an aversion to Darrow, but I think his view that religion is a brake on progress and civilization deserves discussion. I'm more sympathetic to religion than Darrow, generally (though not old-time Young Earth religion); but I respect his position. He might be right.

  • “The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”
  • “I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.”
I fully endorse Darrow's sensibility as expressed here:
  • “When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.”
  • “If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”
Either way, Spencer Tracy is great. Hornbeck needs to be slapped.




Inherit the Wind script, conclusion:
HORNBECK 

Matthew Harrison Brady died of a busted belly. 
(drummond slams down his brief case.) 

HORNBECK 

You know what I thought of him. 

And I know what you thought. 

Let us leave the lamentations to the illiterate! 

Why should we weep for him? He cried enough for himself! 
The national tear-duct from Weeping Water, Nebraska, 
Who flooded the whole nation like a one-man Mississippi! 
You know what he was 2 
A Bamum-bunlcom Bible-heating bastard! 

(drummond rises , fiercely angry.) 

DRUMMOND 

You smart-aleck! You have no more right to spit on his re- 
ligion than you have a right to spit on my religion! Or my 
lack of it! 

HORNBECK 

( Askance ) 

Well, what do you know! 

Henry Drummond for the defense 
Even of his enemies! 

DRUMMOND 

(Low, moved) 

There was much greatness in this man. 

HORNBECK 

Shall I put that in the obituary? 

(drummond starts to pack up his brief case.) 

DRUMMOND 

Write anything you damn please. 

HORNBECK 

How do you write an obituary 

For a man who’s been dead thirty years? 

“In Memoriam— M.H.B.” Then what? 

Hail the apostle whose letters to the Corinthians 
Were lost in the mail? 


INHERIT THE WIND 


113 


Two years, ten years— and tourists will ask the guide, 

“Who died here? Matthew Harrison Who?” 

(A sudden thought ) 

What did he say to die minister? It fits! 

He delivered his own obituary! 

(He looks about the witness stand and the judge’s 
bench, seaching for something ) 

They must have one here some place. 

(hornbeck pounces on a Bible) 

Here it is: his book! 

( Thumbing hastily ) 

Proverbs, wasn’t it? 

DRUMMOND 

( Quietly ) 

“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: 
and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.” 

(hornbeck looks at drummond, surprised. He snaps 
the Bible shut, and lays it on the judge’s bench, horn- 
beck folds his arms and crosses slowly toward drum- 
mond, his eyes narrowing.) 

HORNBECK 

We’re growing an odd crop of agnostics this year! 
(drummond’s patience is wearing thin.) 

DRUMMOND 
( Evenly ) 

I’m getting damned tired of you, Hornbeck. 

HORNBECK 

Why? 

DRUMMOND 

You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow up 
something. 

HORNBECK 

That’s a typical lawyer’s trick: accusing the accuserl 

DRUMMOND 

What am I accused of? 


114 


INHERIT THE WIND 


HORNBECK 

I charge you with contempt of conscience! 

Self-perjury. Kindness aforethought. 

Sentimentality in the first degree. 

DRUMMOND 

Why? Because I refuse to erase a man’s lifetime? I tell you 
Brady had the same right as Cates: the right to be wrong! 

HORNBECK 

“B e-Kind-T o-Bigots” Week. Since Brady’s dead. 

We must be kind. God, how the world is rotten 
With kindness! 


DRUMMOND 

A giant once lived in that body. ( Quietly ) But Matt Brady 
got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too 
far away. 

HORNBECK 

You hypocrite! You fraud! 

( With a growing sense of discovery) 

You’re more religious than he was! 

(drummond doesnt answer, hornbeck crosses toward 
the exit hurriedly ) 

Excuse me, gentlemen. I must get me to a typewriter 
And hammer out the story of an atheist 
Who believes in God. 

(He goes off.) 

cates 

Colonel Drummond. 


DRUMMOND 

Bert, I am resigning my commission in the State Militia. 
I hand in my sword! 


CATES 

Doesn’t it cost a lot of money for an appeal? I couldn’t pay 
you . . . 

(drummond waves him off.) 


INHERIT THE WIND 


115 


DRUMMOND 

I didn’t come here to be paid. (He turns ) Well, I’d better 
get myself on a train. 

RACHEL 

There’s one out at five-thirteen. Bert, you and I can be on 
that train, too! 


I’ll get my stuff! 

CATES 

(Smiling, happy) 

I’ll help you! 

RACHEL 


( They start off. rachel comes back for her suitcase. 
cates grabs his suit jacket, clasps Drummond’s arm.) 

CATES 

(Calling over his shoulder ) 

See you at the depot! 

(rachel and cates go off. drummond is left alone on 
stage. Suddenly he notices Rachel’s copy of Darwin 
on the table. ) 

DRUMMOND 

( Calling ) 

Say— you forgot— 

(But rachel and cates are out of earshot. He weighs 
the volume in his hand; this one book has been the 
center of the whirlwind. Then drummond notices the 
Bible, on the judge’s bench. He picks up the Bible in 
his other hand ; he looks from one volume to the other, 
balancing them thoughtfully, as if his hands were 
scales. He half -smiles, half -shrugs. Then drummond 
slaps the two books together and jams then in his 
brief case, side by side. Slowly, he climbs to the street 
level and crosses the empty square.) 


The curtain falls 

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