Apes of Wrath

If a recent discussion on creationism in the Tennessee Senate has a precedent, it is not to be found in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, the genesis text on evolution. Nor is it to be found in the Bible. It rests, instead, in the pages of Douglas Adams’ comic science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide tothe Galaxy.

A group of scientists construct a computer named Deep Thought and ask it to provide the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. After 7.5 million years of calculations, the computer exclaims, “Forty-two!” The scientists are outraged by this seemingly nonsensical answer. “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you,” the computer responds, “is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

Raymond Finney, a Republican state senator from Tennessee’s Eighth District, apparently disagrees. Not only does the retired physician from Maryville know what the question is, he read it into the public record on Feb. 21, in a controversial piece of proposed legislation known as Senate Resolution 17:

Is the universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?

It was the first of several questions that Finney wanted presented to the state Department of Education, with a reply expected by Jan. 15, 2008. In Finney’s view, the questions would help settle the most incendiary ongoing issue in contemporary education, the teaching of intelligent design vs. evolution. Over the past century, the issue has become a conflict of Balkan proportions in Tennessee and elsewhere in the U.S.

But the 11 months provided by SR-17 wouldn’t give the Department of Education much time to reason through the problem. Finney decided to help them out. Hence the next question:

Since the universe, including human beings, is created by a supreme being (a Creator), why is creationism not taught in Tennessee public schools?

Finally, just in case someone asked for concrete proof of a Creator’s hand—some initials on a mountaintop, a date in a cornerstone, anything—Finney’s third question covered all the bases:

Since it cannot be determined whether the universe, including human beings, is created by a supreme being (a Creator), why is creationism not taught as an alternative concept, explanation,or theory, along with the theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools?

Finney doesn’t explain how teaching a Christian version of creationism somehow inevitably follows from our inability to determine if the universe was created. And it is very much a biblical, Judeo-Christian concept that most Americans mean when they refer to creationism. They aren’t suggesting that we also teach the Oceanic idea that the world was born from a clamshell. They omit to mention that the Pangwe of Cameroon considered the first human being to be the creator god’s version of a tailless lizard, or that Amma, the creator god of the Dogon people of Mali, allegedly crafted black people from sunlight and white people from moonlight.

No matter. The instant SR-17 made the local news—and then the national news, and then the international news—it rekindled a flame war that many Tennesseans wish would go the way of the dodo. If you push the button labeled “TENNESSEE” in the mind of biologists in Warsaw or Nairobi, Sao Paulo or Helsinki, their mental screen will light up with the words “SCOPES TRIAL.” Because of the prosecution of a high school science teacher in Dayton in 1925—a media circus shamelessly engineered by Dayton boosters to promote their city—our fair state has the honor of being considered the epicenter of assaults on science education.

There is, of course, the small consolation that Tennessee is not alone in the ongoing wrangle. Sen. Finney’s Three Big Questions, after all, aren’t going to lead to the next Scopes trial. In 2005, that dubious honor went to the town of Dover, Penn., where a now-famous legal showdown took place between Bible-thumpers and monkey-huggers. The players in the drama, which was often reminiscent of Tennessee’s historic courtroom battle, included angry school board members on both sides, outraged parents clutching Gospels and Constitutions, worried teachers, harried students and news media from all over the world.

The debate over creationism vs. evolution may have waxed and waned during the past century, but it has never died. As dependably as the cycles of the cicada, evangelists or lawmakers will spontaneously combust into a new assault against their old secular foes. Suddenly constitutional lawyers will emerge from hibernation, blinking in the camera light, and find themselves on Channel 4 explaining how the architects of the American Constitution—religious skeptics such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin—made the separation of church and state a key aspect of the document that is supposed to protect all our liberties.

Why does the argument over creationism (or its flavor of the week, “intelligent design”) resume every few years, with both sides entrenched even more deeply than before? And why does it seem to recur so regularly, not just in America as a whole, but specifically in Tennessee? One must return to the very point of contention: the beginning. And who better to ask than the great-great-grandson of the man whose name is synonymous with evolution theory—and to some, the enemy of all that is holy.