Kansas Vs Darwin

Kansas Vs Darwin (2007)

USA

Director Jeff Tamblyn

Unconditional Films

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who crave certainty and those who seek understanding.

So begins this documentary about the ongoing row over Evolution versus Creation, now rechristened Intelligent Design. I am astounded that such a documentary needs to be made. Do the people of Kansas have no respect for their Constitution? It guarantees freedom of worship, but specifically separates religion and the State. In spite of this there are still citizens who feel it is their moral right, if not obligation, to force their brand of religious superstition onto young kids by teaching it in school. If they can’t do it by persuasive argument they try to do it by legislation.

They are trying to push down the throat of Kansas children what they should know is wrong and by willful ignorance they’re suggesting “we don’t know if evolution is real”

The idea of legislating evolution out of schools and replacing it with Biblical creationism failed in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee in 1925. The state had passed the Butler Act that made it illegal to teach any other theory than creationism. A teacher named Scopes was charged with teaching evolution. The case was defended on the grounds that the law would benefit a religion and was therefore unconstitutional, that belief in the simplistic Bible stories was foolish, and that the Bible had too many inconsistencies to be regarded as scientific and should not be taught in a science class. Much of the defence testimony was held by the Judge to be inadmissible and the jury was excluded during most of it. Scopes was found guilty but the case was quashed on appeal on the technicality that the Judge had levied a fine in excess of that which he was allowed to do under law, and the fine should have been decided by the jury anyway. Other states tried the same technique and the matter was not finally settled until 1968. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such bans on teaching evolution were unconstitutional since their purpose was to support religion.

The creationists wouldn’t let it end there. In the last decade or so creationism has been reinvented as “Intelligent Design”, a doctrine that proposed that if science couldn’t explain a natural event then it must be due to the work of an “intelligent designer”. The word God was carefully avoided. In the Kansas case the creationists changed their method of attack. They proposed that the definition of Science should be changed so Intelligent Design could now be taught alongside Evolution. This would give it the status of a science despite not conforming to any form of accepted scientific rigour such as evidence. One of the basic principles of a scientific theory is that it should explain observed evidence and be capable of being tested. Intelligent Design cannot be tested and so is not science.

Intelligent design ....the things that we don’t know about the past can be filled in with supernatural explanations.

First, the Kansas School Board was stacked with a small majority of creationists. They organised a review of the Science Teaching Standards for 2006. In spite of the majority accepting evolution, they forced a public enquiry into whether Intelligent Design should be included in the syllabus. One lower-level schoolteacher stated I believe that it was required of me by God to run for the Board.

The enquiry was chaired by Pedro Irigonegaray, a Kansas lawyer. He refused any payment for the job stating that it would be taking money from childrens’ education. Most citizens believed it would be a whitewash to introduce creationism into the syllabus.

I would say the reason that there is a controversy here is that we’re independent thinkers and we’re not going to be told “This (evolution) is a factual event” when there’s not enough evidence to back it up. Independent thinkers? Many of the people interviewed in the documentary show that their minds are firmly closed to evolution or any idea (with or without supporting evidence) that disagrees with their certainty about creationism.

They (the media) would portray Kansas and the people of the Midwest as hicks

The documentary shows that many Kansans are quite capable of doing that without media help.

Our children are confused enough without trying to bring in something that’s not real.

There’s that closed mind again.

Many scientists declined to attend the enquiry – they did not want to lend any credibility to Intelligent Design. This was taken as proof that they could not defend evolution. Meanwhile the Intelligent Designers modified their doctrine from “must be the result of...” to “to look for any evidence of the hand of the designer”. If the modified wording was accepted it would open the doors to a change in the definition of Science in the State Teaching Standards.

There is an incredible amount of data supporting Intelligent Design

Not if it can’t be tested – then it’s just superstition.

Evidence? Ask anybody !

Well, that’s convincing.

The attitude of the schoolchildren of various ages is interesting. Some who have left home and gone to college have changed their outlook now they are free of entrenched family and school beliefs and their interviews reflect this change. They comment on their religious upbringing at home and on teachers that proudly announced their belief in creationism, or derided evolution. Some have found in the less constricted atmosphere of college that they can reconcile their views on God and Science. Their parents, however, still refer to evolution teaching as ....indoctrinating our children with that atheistic view.

An experienced schoolteacher described teaching evolution to kids. She said their view was that evolution took away their belief that they were put on earth for a purpose. She got quite emotional about this. The response from a retired schoolteacher was that she should have learned to handle this years ago – she hadn’t done her job as a teacher.

A Moslem journalist described his countrymens’ feelings towards Americans as dislike because everything to an American was materialistic. His country was strongly involved in religion in daily life and had a different outlook. At a press conference one of the Board members paraphrased this as “If you adopt intelligent design then fundamentalist Muslims wont hate Americans as much”.

Pedro Irigonegaray extracted from some scientific witnesses an admission that they had not actually read the draft standard. After he had criticized one witness over this, one of the committee members admitted she also had not read the draft. “I thought that that was really irrelevant”. Irigonegeray’s response to this committeewoman was “You have a responsibility to the children of this state, a responsibility that you have sadly failed.” When faced with this sort of stupidity, he was turning increasingly aggressive.

In November 2006 the State School Board accepted the revised definition of science. This was reversed in early 2007 when moderates regained the majority on the Board and headed off a Supreme Court challenge. In 2006 there were more than 47 challenges to evolution in 24 states. So far the Supreme Court has held fast and enforced the separation of church and state. So far many citizens have refused to accept any amount of evidence supporting evolution. In their blind ignorance they continue to be certain of creation and continue to try to force this view on others.

Rather surprisingly the film was selected for the Kansas International Film Festival, showing that there is still some common sense left in the state. It would be a good comedy documentary if it didn’t deal with such tragic bigoted people.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.6 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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