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downloadInherit the wind (1960) - starring Spencer Tracy Ms. Donna Anderson
This movie is focused on what were referred
to as the "monkey trials". The question to be decided is whether it
is
legitimate in the sense of the observance of law, and in addition, moral, indeed
- to be preaching alternatives
to the biblical version of how creation unfolded on
our planet (at the outset in any event).
The theories being advanced are those in particular of Charles Darwin" who
thought that man evolved from a
lower order of species, that all forms of life
on earth evolve from other forms etc. Those that preach the "big bang"
theory suggest that all that is on earth came out of no where, and indeed
Darwin's suggestion that "the survival of the
species" came from the
notion of "survival of the fittest" is just as speculative in a moral
sense as the former is
scientifically.
St. Thomas Aquinas was a great thinker involved with the church while active in
the practice of philosophical argument
and published his views that are taught
at most universities today in this area of continued speculation and debate. He
advances several important arguments to negate any notion for a rightly thinking
man to accept that something came from
nothing in what the world is today. after
all, as the theory goes (David Hume), if you take a hundred pieces of metal and
throw them
together repeatedly, they will never collide in such manner as to form a
precision watch (in the form of an
accurate timepiece) since that would be
beyond reason to expect. You would have to design the outcome and go about
bringing your results to fruition methodically in this respect. Those who teach
the "big bang" theory, therefore are simply
those that choose to
reject a notion of a creator with nothing more than an obvious inanity fit for
their needs but is just
as incredulous as anything you could imagine in the way
of an explanation for how we came to be, in a world with so much
order and
obvious evidence of having been built to a design of a creative force as it
were, no matter what you understand
it to be.
Then again those that seek to relate man to ape, are no doubt bringing about as
notion that if that is our roots, then perhaps
we are entitled to return to them
in some way, in such a way as to perhaps pursue a parallel existence even as we
are made in
human form and nothing more than that makes us a different form of
being. This to me is equally incredible to suggest although
there is some
physical resemblance that is a bit of a stretch to take too far, let alone
suggesting that one form of being led to
the other by some form of miracle. It
is idle speculation of a mind that seeks comfort in such ideas as they tend to
lower the
playing field in our expectation of what makes man truly better than
that.
That all said, the movie is very much telling us that religion practices it own
form of repression, of cruelty of the inane that
follow in a way that is blind
to the spirit of those that would preach the bible, as we are told in what the
movie is about. If
religion is used to stifle the real spirit of what a loving
existence of right minded folks should be based on our own faculties
to reason
(contemporary philosopher Walter Stace says that if you think that "god is dead"
and that you therefore don't have
to be moral, then you aren't genuinely
civilized) then it isn't being practiced by certain folk in a way as to do justice
to what
should have been intended when it was considered a reasonable way to
pursue the best possible aims. Is the alternative a
rejection then of religion,
and if so, should we altogether negate all that would be sane to think, by such
flights of idle
fantasy as is taught by "big bang" theorists? Or
Darwin's ideas in addition?
Id like to think that man will find that he can be a moral person by
"looking within" as is Immanuel Kant's teachings on the
matter. And if
so, he may stray from religion and he mat reject "Darwinism" even
more, while still being able to call himself
morally upright and correct in his
dealings and aims in his terrestrial walk among men.
I personally suggest that the measure of any society is its ability to treat
well those spirits that are sensitively and genuinely
Christianly and in need of
right care to survive and flourish. The character played by Ms. Donna Anderson
in the movie is
constantly being cruelly mistreated by a bigoted mindset that
fails to see the real reason you would want to preach anything at
all. It is to
see that loving people get their due. As such I say that both sides of this
debate fail in the most fundamental test of
what they exist for, as is the
message of this movie for us all.