| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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And then there is a bigger circle of people who believe in God or gods. Some supreme being. They are sort of okay. I fit into this category as a Jew. Hindus are here because they are polytheistic. Buddhists don't really believe in a God, but they give God-like properties to the Buddha. Most accept that it is anti-social to turn these people into bars of soap. Most accept it is anti-social to deny that some of these people were turned into soap. But there are people outside of this circle who don't believe in any Supreme Being. And how dare they not! I guess believers find themselves threatened by the fact that other people are allowed to think this differently from them. Some of the believers at Contact got really angry that they had invest two hours even liking the Arroway character and then discovering that she was an atheist. Even worse she was a godless atheist.
How could the filmmaker betray them like that? Arroway didn't tell anyone else what to believe, that would have just compounded the sin. I have been told that part of the resentment against Jews, however, is that they don't try to win converts. In fact they discourage conversion. That is considered elitist.
You want to know what the truth is? People are insecure about religion. They want to feel their religion is abundantly obvious because they know deep down that they have no evidence what they believe. Faith is accepting without evidence. The truth is that the Universe does not give us the tools to make any intelligent decision on whether God exists or whether gods exist or whether it is all just a story. There is nothing that holds up to scrutiny as being a good reason to believe anything. So people take the fact that other people believe something different as a real threat. And the more different their conclusions, the more the threat. My personal theology is not to look down on anybody for what they believe. I look down on people who try to export their beliefs to other people in a field where there is no knowledge. Proselytizing is spreading false rumors. And the belief that other people should agree with you without good proof has killed people in the millions, perhaps by now in the billions. Dayton, Tennessee, is all about what happened when somebody with a little bit of evidence taught in school something that contradicted an insignificant part of what the no-evidencers believed.
As we drove we listened to the audio from Inherit the Wind, starring Fredric March and Spencer Tracy-two great actors who had both played Jekyll and Hyde. I don't know why I mention that, but it is interesting. I ran the movie off on audio tape and sometimes we go to sleep listening to it. If you have seen a film two or three times you pretty much can remember the visuals, or at least enough to understand the story. For most films, most of the story is carried on the soundtrack. When I was a kid I dreamt about being able to show a film on the insides of my eyelids so I could go to sleep watching it. This is as close as I got. Often I go to sleep listening to a film because it occupies mind. Thinking will keep me awake. I put a film on a fifteen-minute timer so it turns itself off.
Entering Dayton I see a restaurant called The Golden Monkey. I wonder if it is an allusion to the association of monkeys and Dayton.
I have formed many of my opinions about the Scopes Trial from the film Inherit the Wind directed by Stanley Kramer. I will assume the reader is already somewhat familiar with the Scopes 'Monkey' Trial. Tennessee had recently enacted a law saying it was illegal to teach evolution as fact. In the summer of 1925 John T. Scopes was accused of the crime in a test trial that got out of hand as a media event. Two men, most of their lives strong political allies, came to Dayton to act as Prosecution and Defense. Prosecuting was William Jennings Bryan, a great Populist, three times the Democratic nominee for President and very likely the single man most responsible for the Democratic Party being the liberal party today. Bryan fought for lower tariffs, free coinage of silver, dismantling industrial trusts, and women's suffrage. When he found himself losing power in Democratic party he went into the 'politics of saving souls.' He had turned to Fundamentalist Christianity as a cause and a personal belief.
Defense was Clarence Darrow, perhaps the greatest crusading American lawyer of his day. He had recently won the commuting to life imprisonment the sentences of Leopold and Loeb, two young men who had committed kidnapping and murder for the fun of it. (They are the basis of the films Compulsion, Rope, and Swoon.)
Inherit the Wind is a very good film and the locals have been trying to tell people not to believe it too strongly. It ain't necessarily so. Bryan College, built to honor William Jennings Bryan and whose slogan is 'Christ Above All, ' not necessarily the most unbiased of sources, points out fourteen inaccuracies in the film. Among them were the following.
John Scopes probably did not teach evolution. He was more a coach than anything else though he was prepared to substitute teach biology. He never remembered actually teaching evolution, though most of the biology teachers in the state actually had since it was in the state-mandated textbook. Scopes had agreed to be the nominal defendant when the ACLU had advertised for a teacher willing to act as defendant. He had minimal participation in the trial and was not what the trial was really about. Dayton had agreed to prosecute as a way to put Dayton an the map and to attract business. The suggestion that it be Bryan and Darrow was apparently first made in newspaper editorials. The trial was about whether a law should be enforced. Bryan and Darrow were both happy to be in the public forum. Bryan made the safe offer of paying any fine if Scopes had any problems getting the money. It is claimed that Scopes was well-liked by the people of Dayton. Bryan was conversant with Darwin's writings (it is claimed) and was arguing that they need not be dropped from the State curriculum, but that the word 'theory' be always applied.
Bryan's side did allow scientific testimony but not as evidence, though they did allow it in the record. The whole subplot of the betrayal of Scopes girlfriend is fictional. Scopes did not any steady girlfriend. Darrow wanted the case to go to a higher court and himself requested a guilty verdict. We purchased an account of the events leading to the trial and of the trial itself. There is a great deal about the trial and the events leading up to it that would seem like a bizarre burlesque. It would be nice to see an 'American Experience' or an accurate film on the subject.
We headed out of town on State Route 30 which goes down the side of a mountain. In short order we saw signs that said '6% grade,' 'slide area,' 'roadwork,' 'trucks entering highway,' and 'rough road, shoulder drop-off.' The only one that was missing was 'I'd turn back if I was you.'
We were intending to find someplace to eat, but Route 64/15 just goes through farmland and wooded areas. A barn says 'Apostolic Christian Church.' There seem to be a lot of home-brew churches. I think there are not as many religious stations as I originally thought. I tend to listen to the low end of the dial where Public Radio stations tend to cluster, but it looks like Christian radio stations cluster there also. Actually what there is a lot of on this route is road construction. There must be some big project to widen the road, but it seems every few miles we have to slow down or stop because of big earth moving machines.
I don't know that I would recognize kudzu, but I see a lot of poles and support cables that have been engulfed in vines that I assume are the real thing.
We drive through Pulaski looking for a good place to eat. There is little in town. Most of the restaurants are chains. In the town there may be a cafe or two. I note they have side-by-side one place called The Art of Dance and next to it The Practice of Chiropractic.
The biggest crowd we see is in front of a place called Hickory House so that is it. It is a sort of BBQ place. I am eating a lot of barbecue. When we get further South I will mix in Mexican.
We drove to Lawrenceburg and stayed at the Richland Inn. It was $40/night in the book and actually $47, but the room is fairly comfortable, the best so far. I cannot really complain. There is an easy chair in the room. Nice.
I was curious that while I saw churches all over the place there were no synagogues to be seen. I looked in the yellow pages. They were three phone numbers shy of having three full pages of church phone numbers, they had not one synagogue. In this part of the country Jews are mythical beasts. From our hotel room we get about four FM radio stations. Sports and rock music seem to be what we get.
I write, rest, and watch an independent film on cable, The Pompatus of Love. (Don't worry, the title is not supposed to make sense.)
And that was Monday.
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08/19/97--Tennessee: Shiloh and Memphis:
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Our room included a continental breakfast including cereal, doughnuts, and things intended to be mistaken for bagels. We watched the news and it was about a court action against Dow Chemical on silicon breast implants. A representative of the plaintiff claimed that the chemical company thought it could push around the plaintiffs because they were women. A representative of Dow Chemical said women have been brainwashed into believing every ache and pain is the fault of the breast implant. It is nice to know that whatever the ruling it will be a victory for women's liberation.
I looked at my breakfast plate which now had only crumbs and explained to Evelyn that women have been brainwashed into believing that they are supposed to wait until their husband is ready to throw out his plate before they can proceed with the day, and that today's modern woman is learning she can take the bull by the horns, grabbing that empty plate and throwing it out herself. Didn't work. I had to throw out my own plate. In some ways Evelyn is fixed in pre-liberation thinking.
After breakfast we headed for the Shiloh battlefield. On the way we passed a church with a two signs out. One said 'Judgment Day is Coming,' and the other announced a weight loss class. You have been weighed in the balance and found not quite wanting enough. In fact, you are just a smidge on the heavy side. And you do want to look good in that swimsuit, don't you?
Shiloh was the great reality check of the Civil War. Up until this battle each side had visions of gloriously trouncing the other side and bringing the hostilities to a quick end. Even after First Manassas it was thought that this could be a small war. But now it was too late for that. This was the bloodiest battle that had ever been fought by Americans and it was clear what was to follow would be terrible on both sides. It already was. In a single two-day battle, 3400 men were killed. Actually, that is misleading. Those are the people who were killed outright. There were far more injuries, but many of those would die eventually also. (Usually what is given for a Civil War battle is the casualty rate including killed, injured, and missing. Sometimes those are broken out into separate figures. But it is impossible to tell how many of those are deaths. It may have been impossible to tell at the time. All they knew was how many fighting men they were down.)
General Lew Wallace (who would write Ben Hur) commanded one of Grant's six divisions. John Wesley Powell lost an arm but went on to be one of the great frontier explorers and adventurers. He is best known for his explorations of the Grand Canyon where he occasionally survived by hanging onto rocks with his remaining arm. |
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