Monkey Girl by Edward Humes

When I began reading Edward Humes' Monkey Girl I was certain that it would be anti-climactic. The attempt of the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania to bring Christianity into the science classrooms there had had its day in court and I knew the outcome. While I didn't wait with bated breath to hear the verdict of Judge John E. Jones III, I found the book to be fascinating, anger-inducing, and enlightening at the same time. I knew the court ruling going in but I found that I learned a lot by the time I had finished reading the book.

Monkey Girl is about the events in Dover, PA in 2004-5 when the local school board made the Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People available to students as a reference book and had the district administrators read a prepared statement to 9th grade biology students which claimed that the Theory of Evolution had "gaps" and that ID offers an alternative explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

Being a godless heathen keen on seeing state and church separated, I cringe when I hear about school boards bringing in ID, which is simply Christian creationism with new name and shiny new look. I immediately think of the board members who do such things as being a bunch of mindless Jebus lovers and there were definitely those types here. The board revolved around Bill Buckingham who closely adheres to the stereotype above. An ex-cop with a temper, this custos morum made his intentions plain when he said "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Isn't someone going to take a stand for him?" His forthrightness would prove a liability when the school district found itself in Federal court. Buckingham was aided and abetted by Alan Bonsell, another board member who was not shy when it came to expressing a desire for Christianity to be injected into the biology classroom. These two guys were the ringleaders that pressured the school board into allowing ID into the high school.

Monkey Girl was the first time that I've read anything which moved me beyond the Bible thumping stereotype of pro-ID school boards and to actually learn more about members who want Jebus in the classroom. But it was cold comfort to read about Angie Yingling. Despite not understanding ID very well by her own admission (and evolution less so), she abdicated her responsibilities as a board member and joined the pro-ID voting wing out of fear - fear of being branded an atheist by other members. You don't need a school board brimming with Evangelicals to get ID into your classrooms, you just need a bully like Bill Buckingham to take advantage of human frailty and social stigma.


In addition to giving the reader a ground level view of how events unfolded in Dover, Humes also places the battles there in their larger context. He discusses the Scopes trial of 1925 in which a lawsuit was brought against the state of Tennessee and its law against teaching evolution. Science lost that battle but the Cold War brought a new push from the federal level for rigorous science education and evolution came back in a big way. Christian right-wingers then began pushing for "creation science" to be taught in schools but a 1987 Supreme Court decision outlawed the teaching of it in public schools. From this milieu Intelligent Design was born with the Discovery Institute in Seattle being its best organized promoter and defender. Humes dissects the ID movement and the DI's so-called "wedge strategy" which involves promoting ID as science and getting schools to "teach the controversy" or to have teachers essentially bad mouth proven biology so that their nonsense can get a foothold in classrooms.

Tammy Kitzmiller became the lead plaintiff of the court case. Kitzmiller was a Christian who simply felt that the school board had overstepped its bounds by bringing religion into biology classes. Indeed, many of the people who took exception to the board's actions were Christians. In fact, I don't think any of the people from Dover noted in the book as opposing Buckingham and company were described as atheists. Dover was in certain ways an intra-Christian conflict.

Humes' description of the trial itself is dramatic. Each side has a panoply of experts lined up, though the defendants' situation was a bit shaky owing to the Discovery Institute's wavering commitment to the Dover school board. Judge Jones disallowed TV cameras in his courtroom but he would later say he regretted that decision as there was some great science education on display over the six weeks that the trial lasted.

The plaintiffs brought in distinguished biologist Kenneth Miller from Brown University who explained what science was as an endeavor and how ID failed to meet the criteria to make it science. Philosophy professor Barbara Forrest must be quite a woman because she was the only witness that the defense tried to exclude from the case. She came in and crushed her ID enemies, saw them driven before her, and heard the lamentations of the Dover school board after she showed how ID is simply the creationism ruled inappropriate for public schools in 1987 in new clothes.

The most well-known defense witness was biochemistry professor Michael Behe who believes that certain elements of life are just too complicated to have evolved. Behe was pwned by Eric Rothschild, a lawyer for the plaintiff. He embarrassed Behe and his claim that his idea of "irreducible complexity" had been peer-reviewed was shot to ribbons. Rothschild even ran roughshod over a model of evolution that Behe had created with a physics professor named David Snoke. It was so bad that even I felt embarrassed for Behe. That is until Behe claimed that he had devised an experiment to prove ID a valid scientific theory and when asked why he's never carried out he could only say "It would not be fruitful." I thought Behe came off as being rather moderate (i.e. – not a religious nutcase) in Flock of Dodos but after his performance in Dover, I think he's just as big a douchebag as the rest of the Discovery Institute mandarins. I mean, a scientist saying that experiments would not be fruitful. What a maroon.

But the worst were Bill Buckingham and his fellow ID-loving board members. Most knew next to nothing about ID and even less about evolution. They lied about their intentions saying that they never mentioned creationism when considering bringing ID into the classroom. Buckingham was presented with video of him talking to a reporter and saying that very word. These people are just cretins who latched onto the first legitimate sounding Christian challenge to evolution they came upon. With their persecution complex to fore they completely ignored all other considerations including the advice and direction of the district's own teachers.

While ID was kept out of Dover's classrooms, Monkey Girl was, for me, ultimately a sad story. As Humes points out, evolution and the origin of life are topics that are all-too frequently glossed over or ignored completely by public school teachers today. Evolution may be great science and teachers may have a legal right to teach it if not a responsibility to do so, but for many it's like kryptonite. They're afraid of controversy and of people like Bill Buckingham. Until teachers aren't afraid of teaching evolution, pro-science advocates have a long row to hoe. Luckily there are people like Tammy Kitzmiller and the rest of the plaintiffs in the Dover case who stood up for the good guys despite knowing that they would be socially ostracized and that their daughters would be taunted with shouts of "Monkey girl!" They are the real heroes of this story.