Monkey trial time!

All the monkey business starts tomorrow

By MIKE ARGENTO

With the Dover Monkey Trial beginning tomorrow, I know a lot of you will need some help to understand the issues and personalities and stakes involved.

It’s all very complicated.

Fear not. I’m here to help.

For one thing, monkeys aren’t on trial. If they were, the trial would be a lot more entertaining because monkeys are pretty entertaining.

And if you’re concerned about the monkeys, don’t worry. They’re fine. They don’t even have lawyers, as far as I know.

Now, on the surface, the issue joined in the so-called simian trial appears to be fairly simple — should Dover Area Schools mention intelligent design in their science curriculum?

And if it were that simple, the trial would take about an hour and a half instead of the weeks and weeks it should consume.

The trial is a big deal because the stakes are so high.

At least that’s what they tell us.

On the one side, you have the people pushing intelligent design, Christian jihadists who won’t rest until the entire nation accepts Pat Robertson as its personal savior and adulterers are stoned to death in the square in Dover, which isn’t a good idea because it would really cause traffic problems.

On the other side, you have the evolutionists, atheists who won’t be happy until all of our children turn gay.

That seems to sum it up. Like everything else, it’s one or the other. You can’t have both.

If the intelligent design people lose, they’ll chalk it up to judicial activism and the liberal courts and persecution of Christians — which will be kind of funny because the judge is a Dubya appointee.

If the evolutionists lose, they’ll say we’re a nation of boobs and deserve a future of health care that includes the use of leeches and potions made from parts of animals usually served up to the contestants on “Fear Factor.�

Of course, that’s what it’s all about it.

It’s become a monumental match between the forces of godliness and the forces of atheism, or the believers in superstition and believers in reason, or those who want our kids to learn about God in the classroom and those who believe kids should learn about God in church or on the streets or from the older kids on the playground.

The Constitution sides with those who believe in reason. This nation was founded on the principle that people could come here and believe anything they wish, no matter how stupid, and the government, the state, would leave them alone.

And that means that public schools would stay out of the God business.

The school board members who back this travesty and started this circus are now saying it has nothing to do with religion, that their push for intelligent design is merely a way to expose kids to alternate ideas. For one thing, the board’s discussions of the issue made it pretty clear they were trying to foist, as head jihadist/former school board member/admitted prescription drug abuser Bill Buckingham told Fox News, “the Christian view of creationism� upon students.

Now that they’ve been sued, they’re trying to say their move had nothing to do with religion. Hmmmm. What’s that one commandment say about bearing false witness?

For another thing, there are some alternative ideas that you just shouldn’t expose to kids. Trust me. I’ve seen a lot of them on the Internet.

Since intelligent design is, as one scientist has said, nothing more than creationism in a fancy suit, it doesn’t belong in science classes.

For one simple reason: It’s not science. �

Now, if Dover wanted to teach creation beliefs in a philosophy or history of religion class, that’d be no problem. Including them in a science class is, well, sort of like teaching kids how to conjugate verbs in gym class. It doesn’t fit.

Oh, the kids.

It’s not about them. They’re kind of irrelevant in this case, as they are in most cases where adults’ battles over kids wind up before a judge.

Anyway, last week, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by a Presbyterian minister about evolution and religious belief.

Quoting a member of his congregation — with whom he agreed — he wrote that science and religion answer two different questions: Science answers “how� and religion answers “why.�

That seems like a very reasonable way to look at the issue, a tolerance that respects belief while accommodating science.

Which means, of course, that most people will reject it and keep fighting.

Because in this argument, you’re either on one side or the other.

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Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.