Lifting Cassandra's Curse

06 November 2011 18:38

Lifting Cassandra's Curse

Talk given to the Rugby Rationalists Group Monday 21st November 2011

Kelvin Beer-Jones

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Introduction - Lifting Cassandra's curse 11 October 2011 17:19

Thank you for this opportunity to talk to you. My Friend tells me that you are given to lively and robust debate, and I hope gentle with those who come along to address you. I have been asked to talk to you about how I see 'rationalism' working in the world today and whilst I am sure that I can leave you to extols its successes and triumphs on another occasion, today I have come here to discuss one of the downsides to rationalism, the bringing of science into competition with theology.

I want to revisit with you Dayton Tennessee, June 1925, and to reprise the show trial of John Scopes, often called the "Monkey Trial". In my view this trial did much damage to both science and religion, in falsely pitting the one against the other, as if only one truth was available to be won and each side was encouraged to compete with the other to win the prize.

But, why was the trial framed in such combative terms, and why were both sides keen to parody the other? I think I know why. Science and Theology are both Greek terms for the rational study of particular systems of thought. The combative, divisive, and triumphalist nature of early Greek approaches to argument has over the last two millennia permeated both of these disciplines when they are brought together.

Cassandra warned the citizens of Troy, when the seemingly retiring Greeks left a tribute of a Wooden Horse, to "Beware the Greeks bearing gifts". Her gift of foresight was fully offset by an equal and opposite curse, that she would never be believed. Homer's Iliad is of course mythic and as such contains truths wrapped up in stories. Mycenaean Achaeans were then I believe the full cultural ancestors of the later Classical Greeks. The many good gifts from the Greeks that we have inherited have come to us accompanied by some pretty bad ones. I have in mind the aggression and warmongering of both early and Classical Greeks which was matched by their accomplished and cynical ability to package their supremacist ideologies in better clothes, such as democracy and rationalism. These are the Greek gifts that I contend Cassandra gives warning of to posterity. We should take great care in their deployment because they have the capacity to do great harm.

Rationalism was on both sides of the argument at Dayton. Rational religion lost and rational science won. This was however a Pyrrhic victory and the row between science and theology runs on still today, with its main proponents now fundamental scientism and fundamental Christianity. Both science and theology received a major boost to their popularity at Dayton but popularity, it turned out, came in a poisoned chalice.

So we will hear again William Jennings Bryan [1], who was an impressive orator, in the Tennessee courtroom struggle to put his religious views into a coherent system of theological logistics so that he could do battle with Clarence Darrow [2]. Later I will show why he should not have even attempted to do this. We will also hear Darrow (it seems every generation must have it's Dawkins), knowingly make a fool of Bryan and by doing so avoid exposing the inadequacies of early Darwinism to public scrutiny. For Darrow the show was of greater value than the substance. When we put Dayton 1925 in its historical context, we will see that he was indifferent to the adverse impact that his enthusiasms could have on wider society.

Then we will turn to a more modern assessment of the issues debated at Dayton. We will consider the views of Jim al-Khalili [3], a televisual scientist whose programme "Complexity - Secret Life of Chaos" presented in 2010, is the latest airing of the Dayton arguments from a scientific point of view. It is surprising I think, how little thinking seems to have advanced in some scientific circles in the nearly 90 years since Dayton.

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Not all scientists are however so combative and intent on winning a phoney war against theology.

We will note how Simon Conway Morris [4] is able to give a much more balanced and nuanced account of the miracle of Creation.

And now that I have mentioned the miracle of creation It would be appropriate for me today to represent to you the evidence in Genesis 1, in a way that was simply not available to Bryan in 1925.

Finally I will make an appeal to you. A new kind of rationalism is called for on both sides of the modern Dayton Courtroom where science and religion still confront each other. One that seeks to add to the different understandings of others and one that buries triumphalism. Dare I say ladies and gentlemen that it is time to be more Quakerly in our lives.

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Part One - Dayton Tennessee July 1925 08 October 2011 23:23

The early 1920s found social patterns in the US in chaos. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, and openly debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism had developed, becoming especially strong in the American South.

In a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925 a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The guilt or innocence of John Scopes, and even the constitutionality of Tennessee's anti-evolution statute, mattered little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values.

William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic candidate for President, led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish Darwin's theory of evolution from American classrooms. By 1925, Bryan and his followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in fifteen states to ban the teaching of evolution. In February that year, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced by John Butler [5] making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals."

When William Jennings Bryan offered to join the prosecution team despite having not practiced law in over thirty years, Clarence Darrow, who was then approaching seventy, jumped to join the battle in Dayton.

Douglas O Linder [6] has written extensively on the trail and its consequences. He tells us that a carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as the opening of the trial approached in July 1925.

Banners decorated the streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street.

Nearly a thousand people, 300 of whom were standing, jammed the Rhea County Courthouse on 10th July, for the first day of the trial. Also in attendance were announcers ready to send to listeners the first live radio broadcast from a trial. The proceedings opened, over Darrow's objections, to a prayer.

Opening statements pictured the trial as a titanic struggle between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed that "if evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued, "Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial." The prosecution, Darrow contended, was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in the Middle Ages." Darrow said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible "the yardstick to measure every man's intellect, to measure every man's intelligence, to measure every man's learning." It was classic Darrow, and the press, mostly sympathetic to the defence, loved it.

Before a crowd that had as the week of the trial progressed swelled to about 5,000, the defence read into the record, for the purpose of appellate review, excerpts from the prepared statements of eight scientists and four experts on religion who had been prepared to testify. The statements of the experts were widely reported by the press, helping Darrow succeed in his efforts to turn the trial into a national biology lesson.

On the seventh day of trial, judge Raulston asked the defence if it had any more evidence. What followed was what the New York Times described as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo-Saxon history." Hays asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an expert on the Bible.

Bryan assented, stipulating only that he should have a chance to interrogate the defence lawyers.

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Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis.

After initially contending that "everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My impression is that they were periods."

Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes."

The trial was nearly over. Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech that he had laboured over for weeks. The jury complied with Darrow's request, and Judge Raulston fined Scopes $100.

A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality and not the constitutional grounds that Darrow had hoped for. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."

The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states went on to enact laws restricting the teaching of Darwin's theory.

Each side came away feeling that their cause had been advanced in Dayton. The New York Times reported that, “Each side withdrew at the end of the struggle satisfied that it had unmasked the absurd pretensions of the other.”

There can be no doubt that America went through turbulent waters in the 1920s. As the decade opened, the country was led by Woodrow Wilson, the only university professor ever to be elected president of the United States. Wilson’s election symbolized the growing influence of academics, who not long before were bit players in American life. Wilson argued that intellect, and not Victorian traditions or religious precepts, should guide America's social institutions.

At the same time, the US was transforming from an agricultural nation to one based on manufacturing. Demand for traditional skills shifted to demand for skills better suited to new technologies. Electrification changed night into day, the automobile became the must-have of every want-to-be, radio gave the news a new immediacy.

The Dayton show trial, set in train by a piece of bad legislation, was I think not the best forum for determining whether it was good for the morals of the pupil, good for the well being of the state or good for the ideals of education; that the teaching of Darwin's theories ought, or ought not to take place alongside the teaching of the Biblical creation texts in schools.

At Dayton in 1925 two extreme versions of Greek scholastic traditions clashed unnecessarily and unhelpfully, one presented by a religious fundamentalist and the other by a scientific fundamentalist. Each side had its own perverse rationality and each had determined that it could not live alongside the other. Can we do better today perhaps?

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Part Two - Jim al-Khalili Complexity - Secret Life of Chaos 11 October 2011 17:19

Jim Al-Khalili OBE is a British scientist, author and broadcaster. He is a professor of Physics at the University of Surrey where he also holds a chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He is a vice president and trustee of the British Science Association.

We will examine in some detail Al-Khalili's statements made by him in "Complexity - Secret Life of Chaos", a television programme that he developed for the BBC in 2010 and we can compare his views today with those of Darrow at Dayton in 1925.

Jim al-Khalili sets out at the beginning of his programme that this is to be a film about one very simple question, how did we get here?

To begin, he shows us a table with ingredients set out as if for a cookery programme, but instead he has on show the elements and compounds from which he says "all humans are made". He explains that they are "incredibly, almost embarrassingly common. In fact almost 99% of the human body is a mixture of air, water, coal and chalk, with traces of other slightly more exotic elements like iron, zinc, phosphorous and sulphur. The elements which make up the average human, cost at most a few pounds. But somehow trillions of these very ordinary atoms conspire miraculously to organise themselves into thinking, breathing, living human beings".

He states that "how the wonders of creation are assembled from such simple building blocks is surely the most intriguing question that we can ask. You may think that answering it is beyond the realm of science, but that is changing. For the first time science has pushed past religion and philosophy in daring to tackle this most fundamental of questions".

Conway Morris in quoting George Wald [7] in his book Life's Solution provides a cautionary note about this kind of scientific Chutzpah. Wald says "one has only to contemplate the magnitude of the task of making life, to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.

Yet here we are, as a result I believe, of spontaneous generation." Life's Solution goes on to explain in convincing detail and uses comprehensive argument to argue why this act of creation is so immensely difficult from a scientific point of view. Conway Morris says "what obviously did happen in our solar system may itself be either a very rare occurrence or, dangerous thought, possibly unique."

In spite of nearly a 95 year gap between al-Khalili's TV programme and Dayton 1925 Al-Khalili still sees the issue as some kind of race for the truth between science, religion and philosophy. Like Darrow he is prepared to make sweeping statements that down play scientific uncertainty and difficulty in order to champion his side.

Al-Khalili goes on, "Its about how inanimate matter with no purpose or design can spontaneously create exquisite beauty. Its about how the same laws that make the universe chaotic and unpredictable can turn simple dust into human beings".

We then have the body of the programme which sets out the development of mathematical thinking in the general area of evolution by Turing [8], which was then developed further by Belouso [9]v and later completed by Mandelbrot [10].

It is perhaps significant that al-Khalili's makes his case by focussing on mathematics and computer science which is an abstraction from the real world, instead of talking about the more pertinent sciences of, in this case cosmology and biology. By arguing solely from mathematics and computer science he can it seems make light of the biological and historical difficulties that dog current evolutionary thought, matters that Conway Morris explores in great detail in Life's Solution.

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Al-Khalili then tells us with enthusiasm that the big break through in modern evolutionary thinking came late in the twenty-first century when Chaos Theory displaced the certainties that were thought to be inherent in Newtonian physics. Chaos theory, he tells us, makes clear that "very simple and straight forward formulas, rules or equations with nothing random whatsoever about them can have entirely unpredictable outcomes". Lorenz [11], a key proponent of Chaos Theory caught the public imagination with his deliberately populist explanation of the phenomena, which he called "The Butterfly Effect". al-Khalili then tellingly says, "centuries of scientific certainty dissolved in just a few short years. The truth of the clockwork universe turned out to be just an illusion. Something which had seemed a logical certainty revealed itself merely as an act of faith". Science has then switched Gods it appears, and from Newton to Chaos?

John Greene [12] says when talking about evolutionary scientists in one of his papers on Darwinism that "most of them, especially those who reject religious and philosophical approaches to the problem of human duty and destiny, manage to smuggle in by way of simile and metaphor the elements of meaning and value that their formal philosophy of nature and natural science excludes from consideration".

Al-Khalili we see, just like Darrow at Dayton revels in this new found destabilisation of accepted certainties. He says "It seems that every aspect of the world we live in is uncertain. The global climate could dramatically change in a few short years, stock markets could crash without warning, we could be wiped from the face of the planet overnight, and there is nothing anyone could do about it. Unfortunately all of this is true and yet to be scared of chaos is pointless".

Now it has surely always been the case for man that he must live with uncertainty. The truths of religion have dealt precisely with that uncertainty for at least the last 5000 years. So if al-Khalili is to sweep away religion and philosophy along with Newton then we must look to what he will replace them with. What gifts will the new scientific God Chaos bestow upon us?

Instead of responding to the dramatic case that he has now made he instead leaves us in this very uncomfortable place. al-Khalili at this point in his programme develops a diversion. He talks about feed back loops in computer programming. al Khalili says "look at a massive flock of birds in migratory flight. Each bird obeys very simple rules and the flock as a whole does incredibly complicated things, avoiding obstacles, navigating the planet with no single leader or even conscious plan. But amazing though the flocks behaviour is, it is impossible to predict how it will behave. It never repeats exactly what it does even in seemingly identical circumstances". The same is true he asserts with sand dunes and forests, animals, insects and human beings.

Contrast this with Conway Morris in Life's Solution, in his chapter called 'Looking for Easter Island' here Conway Morris shows us the exact opposite argument to that of al-Khalili' in his bird in flight analogy. In describing a study of the migratory flights of the albatross Conway Morris provides detailed observational evidence that an Albatross over and over again repeats exactly what it does even in seemingly unidentical circumstances.

At the end of the programme Al-Khalili then seems to play a sleight of hand. At the beginning of his programme he told us that the "big question" was HOW did we get here" and this seems to be a perfectly valid question for science to answer. He now says in conclusion "The big question is can natures ability to turn simplicity into complexity in this mysterious and unpredictable way explain WHY life exists, can it explain how a universe full of simple dust can turn into human beings, how inanimate matter can spawn intelligence?"

The shift during the programme from HOW to WHY is significant, perhaps because science is at it's most impressive when it seems to answer WHY by actually demonstrating HOW. So, did a small regional group of Hebrews in 1000bc fare any better?

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Part Three - Genesis 1 11 October 2011 17:20

So now we turn to that part of my talk which I know you will have been most looking forward to, now we get to read Genesis 1 together. Those of you who have brought along Bibles may have a different version of the text to me, I will be using the New Revised Standard Version throughout.

This will not be a problem because most of my observations will derive either from the original Hebrew or from a contextual appreciation based on locating the text in its environment, and I will attempt to provide that as we go along.

Genesis 1 pre-dates classical Greek thought by at least several hundred years. Today we are accustomed to reading Biblical texts through the individual disciplines (though I would rather call them rituals), of Science, Religion, Philosophy, Myth and History. This is a fractured way of reading an ancient text backwards, and it is not really appropriate for getting at a sensible understanding of a text like Genesis 1 which comes from a time before rationalism. Let us try to take the text simply at face value.

Modern scholars such as Nick Spencer and Dennis Alexander [13] whose work for the Theos Think Tank [14] I shall be quoting at length here would today try to understand Genesis 1 by means of close textual analysis conducted in the light of the contemporary ancient Near Eastern culture and literature, techniques that were not employed by the prosecution or the defence at Dayton 1925.

We must free the text from the distortions of viewing it variously through the many lenses of rationalism. We will discover much that will give us confidence that both Genesis 1 and the Origin of Species can sit comfortably on the same bookshelf and can, and indeed should, be read one after the other without confusion of conflict.

The subject of Genesis 1 is foundational for the ancient Hebrew peoples and it can be compared and contrasted to other creation stories that have been recently discovered in Akkad, Sumer and Egypt.

These are available to us in copies dating from as far back as 3000BC, from as far back as the time that writing was first used.

Genesis 1 effectively and daringly addresses the concerns of the early Hebrews about the nature of the beginning time. Most of the text directly challenges and refutes the world view of other contemporary accounts.

The text of Genesis 1 is the first of two 'creation' writings to be found in the Hebrew canon. Another one appears at Genesis 2. Furthermore, there are many later discussions in the Hebrew canon that are developments and re-interpretations of these two accounts. Why are there two accounts? For me the question is rather why are there not three? The creation account in chapter two focusses on the relationship between man and God as expressed in familial and ancestral terms. It thus puts creation in a context that gives significant meaning to one of the three groups who probably went into the formation of the ancient Hebrew people when various migrating groups settled in Palestine about 1000 BC. The Chapter two account probably comes from the community we know about from their ancestor Abraham who travelled to Palestine from Ur.

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It is important that we don't forget that at the time the Abramites moved onto the land the Canaanites were already there. We know the Canaanites best from archaeology at Ugarit and we know that they wrote creation stories that described how the Gods, and there were many, caused cities to be built on earth for the Gods to dwell in. In every other ancient account of creation that I have studied the cities of the first half of history 4000bc to 1000bc feature as the main purpose of creation. The people simply come with the land as a resource to be used. Kings and Priests therefore come into the equation to manage, control, direct and even own the people. This kind of creation story is missing from the Bible though it was indeed very common across the whole of this time period and also across the whole of the then known world. The Babylonian Enuma Elish is perhaps the most renowned version that we are aware of today. That there is no equivalent to this creation story in Genesis of this type is I think deliberate and is very telling for the whole story of the Hebrews which is about to unfold.

So we note that the king / priest creation story is absent and the ancestor creation story comes second in the Bible. We get at the very beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures the text of Genesis 1.

"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth", Let us unpack this important statement. The Hebrew term for God used here is Elohiym, the supreme God. In other contemporary accounts we find that the task of creation is most likely delegated to a minor deity. It is as if the activity of earth making was seen as 'work' and as such it was beneath the remit of the supreme God. So why is the creator God of this opening verse described as the 'most high' God? This show that the Hebrew creator God is universal and above all. God is not here a God of a particular tribe or city.

The rare Hebrew word ba’ra translates here as created and it means, to “create without effort”. The Hebrew Bible only ever uses this verb to describe God’s creative action and it is used only three times in Genesis 1. Two of the uses, in verse 1 (relating to “the heavens and the earth”) and in verse 27 (relating to “mankind in his own image”) are perhaps to be expected. It is not immediately obvious why the verb should occur in verse 21, relating to “the great creatures of the sea”. In other ancient Near Eastern creation stories, such great sea creatures commonly symbolised the powers of chaos, with which the gods had to wrestle and overcome in order to create and bring about order.

The use of ba’ra in verse 21 deliberately rejects this worldview, thus asserting that the Hebrew God did not need to do battle with any such semi-divine monster in order to create and that, therefore, the forces of chaos are not divine and are not a threat.

The second line says "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep" The Hebrew word Tehom is usually translated as “deep”. It is used in the text in a “depersonalised” and “non-mythical” sense. It is understood as “a passive, powerless, inanimate element in God’s creation.” This would seem unremarkable but for the fact that, just as the great sea creatures were understood by other contemporaries as symbolic of the forces of chaos, so were the waters they inhabited. Genesis 1 rejects all notions of superstitious forces. The creation story of Genesis 1 it is now clear is devoid of mythical connotations. A major and ground breaking redefinition of the cosmos has taken place here.

Thereafter, the first half of God’s activity in days 1-3 gives form to the creation, separating light from darkness, water above from water below, and sea from dry land. The second half in days 4-6 give content, in the form of lights in the sky, life in the sea and air, and life on land. Genesis 1, we see has a formal poetic structure. This is in part because the text has an important liturgical function and in part to enhance the status of the account in the understanding of the early Hebrew community.

Our attention is immediately drawn to the matter of "days" in this text and what they might mean.

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Our attention is immediately drawn to the matter of "days" in this text and what they might mean.

So much criticism of the text from the sciences seizes upon this seemingly impossible timescale, and especially given our modern evolutionary understanding. This was the cause of much rancour in the Dayton courtroom in 1925.

A nuanced reading would notice that the way in which dates work within the rhythms of the genesis 1 text strongly associate this text with many other texts of great antiquity in terms of stylisation.

Dates in Genesis 1 it seems, share the same format and function as they do in other contemporary texts. It would be extremely inappropriate to imagine that the writer had a modern 24 hour clock in mind here or that alternatively he did not understand accurate measurement. Noting that the days in the text always progress in a poetic form "there was evening and morning the end of the day" links the days of creation to the rhythms of Jewish life, in the temple, the home and the field. We should perhaps read here that "after this work came a natural rest". These six rests must be seen as prefiguring the great "rest" of the Sabbath on the seventh day, which is a rest of completion and fulfilment.

It is usual in very ancient texts to find number used both poetically and polemically rather than mathematically. In fact number is rarely used mathematically in texts unless those texts are themselves commercial. Throughout the rest of Genesis we can see numbers being used in this non mathematical way. It seems that the writer was rather more flexible, and more imaginative in his choice of language than we are today.

There is even further evidence of the subtle and precise choice of words in the text. The story describes the creation not of the “Sun” and “Moon” (in verse 16) but of “the greater light” and “the lesser light”. The Hebrew here is chosen with great care and purpose for Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, had perfectly good words for Sun and Moon but these were also the names of gods worshipped in contemporary cultures. The description of the heavenly bodies in genesis 1 as “lights” rather than by name deliberately demystifies them, undermining the supposed divinity of other contemporary gods and placing them within the ordinary ambit of matter.

In concluding this section we can clearly see that Genesis 1 is an exciting, revolutionary, liberating and demythologising account of the beginning time. It is the first truly modern beginning story. It is also the beginning of our story which moves from here on a continuum to Newton at least. It also describes a world where a universal God has a direct and equal relationship with both man and woman. A world where no hierarchies are recognised, where no partisan gods or demons exist, no city, or king or priest has ownership of souls. We can clearly see here the beginnings of our scientific thought and our civic thought.

My reading here is not I would suggest in any way controversial and it is worth remembering that reading Genesis 1 in non-literal ways is an old and deep tradition. Writing in the third century, the theologian Origen was scornful of those who read the opening chapter literally. "What man of intelligence, I ask, will consider that the first and second and the third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening, existed without sun and moon and stars, while the first day was even without a heaven? And who could be found so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer “planted trees in a paradise eastward in Eden”…I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history."

The early chapters of Genesis might not be good science as we see science today but it is quite possible that without them science would not have developed when, where and how it did.

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Closing Remarks 11 October 2011 17:20

To conclude.

Douglas Linder in closing his analysis of the Stokes Trial calls for a more balanced approach than that shown by many scientists and theologians to the issue that we have examined today. "What society needed in 1925 and still could use more of today are the thoughtful intellectuals and opinionshapers that comprehend the human costs of dying gods. Much has been lost, and those who best understand the tragedy are in the best position to provide the guidance now needed. With tact rather than ridicule, these men and women can help plant the seeds of new, non-supernatural beliefs that will preserve human dignity and moral engagement."

On moral engagement, G K Chesterton [15] the celebrated philosopher of the time of the Dayton trail argued frequently with Charles Darrow and he wrote: "Reason and justice grip the remotest and loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires?

Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice board, "Thou Shalt Not Steal" Jim al-Khalili in the BBC programme Complexity - Secret Life of Chaos - BBC 2010 sets out to answer the big question HOW did we get here and then slips deftly in to pretending that he has instead or perhaps also answered the question, WHY life exists. He relies heavily on biblical thought throughout the programme. He dismisses Newton in these terms: "the truth of the clockwork universe turned out to be just an illusion. Something which had seemed a logical certainty revealed itself merely as an act of faith". We must not forget that it was Newton's science that was supposedly on trial at Dayton in 1925. al-Khalili's work is too close in my view to being a theology of science.

I hope that I have shown that a close examination of the text of Genesis 1 goes some way to position this text as one of the most profound and far reaching statements ever made by man. It establishes for the very first time a cosmos of matter devoid of gods, where all things, including life itself in all of its forms is made of the same basic stuff. In the view of early Hebrews all men (and women) are created equal and no nation, city state or despot can claim ownership of the people. This text ranks at least as high, if not higher in my view as the Origin of Species in the development of rational thought, and it is foundational for modern science. It is however not science and to try to make a science of religion is to fall into the same error as that of scientists who today and at Dayton Ohio in 1925, try to make science a theology.

Simon Conway Morris says "The trial achieved little, other than to increase the rancour and suspicion between the religious fundamentalists and the scientists. In America the skirmishing continues unabated, with one side unable or unwilling to comprehend the methods of science, and the opposing party all too often exhibiting a lofty arrogance, mingled with contemptuous disdain, which presupposes that any religious instinct is a mental aberration".

I said at the beginning of my talk that I thought that behind both of the extremist positions lay a kind of Greek rationalism and that the misuse of rational thought today must take much responsibility for the immense problems brought into the popular mind at Dayton by bringing science and theology into sharp conflict in this unhelpful way.

In conclusion I offer the last word of appeal to Robert Barclay [16], Quaker Theologian. I'd like to Speech, Rugby rationalists Page 11

In conclusion I offer the last word of appeal to Robert Barclay [16], Quaker Theologian. I'd like to read from his 'Apology for the True Christian Divinity' written in 1676. Written we should note well before Newton's time. He was responding to the new fashion of rationalism and how it was then pervading all areas of thought and in particular science and religion. It is remarkable I think that Barclay could in a way foresee Dayton and the problems of the misuse of rationalism.

"That man, as he is a rational creature, hath reason as a natural faculty of his soul, by which he can discern things that are rational, we deny not; for this is a property natural and essential to him, by which he can know and learn many arts and sciences.

Neither do we deny but by this rational principle man may apprehend in his brain, and in the notion, a knowledge of God and spiritual things; yet that not being the right organ, it cannot profit him towards salvation, but rather hindereth; ... man hath sought to fathom the things of God in and by this natural principle, and to build up a religion in it, neglecting and overlooking the...seed of God in the heart;" Ladies and gentlemen may I move that Tennessee House Bill 185 be declared 'bad law', and that the John Scopes trial at Dayton in Ohio in June 1925 be finally dismissed? Unless we now lift Cassandra's curse and finally agree with the words of the Appeal Judge that "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case." we risk being doomed to endlessly re-run this trail which indeed is making monkeys of us all.

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Bibliography and notes 06 November 2011 18:52

[1] William Jennings Bryan - (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States (1896, 1900 and 1908).

He served in the United States Congress briefly as a Representative from Nebraska and was the 41st United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1916. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a supporter of popular democracy, an enemy of gold, banks and railroads, a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, and an opponent of Darwinism on religious grounds. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was one of the best known orators and lecturers of the era. Because of his faith in the goodness and rightness of the common people, he was called "The Great Commoner."

[2] Clarence Darrow - (April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the Scopes Trial (1925), in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan. Called a "sophisticated country lawyer", he remains notable for his wit and agnosticism, which marked him as one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians.

[3] Jim al-Khalili - (born 20 September 1962) is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. He has hosted several BBC productions about science and is a frequent commentator about science in other British media venues.

Part two of this paper is based entirely on his television programme, Complexity - Secret Life of Chaos BBC 2010.

[4] Simon Conway Morris - FRS (born 6 November 1951) is an English paleontologist made known by his detailed and careful study of the Burgess Shale fossils, an exploit celebrated in Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould. His own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation, however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation.

[5] John Butler act - AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.

Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed March 13, 1925 W. F. Barry, Speaker of the House of Representatives L. D. Hill, Speaker of the Senate

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Approved March 21, 1925.

Austin Peay, Governor.

[6] Douglas O Linder - is a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor and author. He attended undergraduate at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, before graduating from Stanford Law School. He started the Famous Trials website in 1996 and developed two casebook websites, Exploring Constitutional Lawand Exploring First Amendment Law. He is also the co-author of The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law. Part One of this paper is based on Professor Linder's published analysis of the Scopes trial.

[7] George Wald - (November 18, 1906 – April 12, 1997) was an American scientist who is best known for his work with pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit.

[8] Alan Turing - OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

[9] Boris Belousov - (19 February 1893, Moscow – 12 June 1970, Moscow) was a Soviet chemist / biophysicist who discovered the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (BZ reaction) in the early 50s. His work initiated the field of modern nonlinear chemical dynamics.

[10] Benoit Mandelbrot - (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, and he acquired dual French and American citizenship.

Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public.

[11] Edward Lorenz (May 23, 1917 – April 16, 2008) was an American mathematician and meteorologist, and a pioneer of chaos theory. He discovered the strange attractor notion and coined the term butterfly effect.

[12] John C Greene - Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar, (Regina Books, Claremont, 1999) CNN University of Connecticut professor emeritus of history John C. Greene has turned a longstanding dialogue with two renowned evolutionary biologists into a new book. In Debating Darwin Adventures of a Scholar, Greene, a leading figure in evolutionary ideas, discusses what sparked his interest in the history of evolution and evolutionary thought, and how he came to know 20thcentury evolutionary biologists Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky.

[13] Nick Spencer and Dennis Alexander - Rescuing Darwin, God and Evolution Today Theos 2009.

Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos, the public theology think tank. Denis Alexander is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

Part three of this paper is based on their paper above.

[14] Theos - is a public theology think tank which exists to undertake research and provide commentary on social and political arrangements. We aim to impact opinion around issues of faith and belief in society. We were launched in November 2006 with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Our first report "Doing God": A Future for Faith in the Public Square examined the reasons why faith will play an increasingly significant role in public life.

[15] G K Chesterton - KCSG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. His prolific and Speech, Rugby rationalists Page 14

[15] G K Chesterton - KCSG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." For example, Chesterton wrote "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."

[16] Robert Barclay - (23 December 1648 – 3 October 1690) was a Scottish Quaker, one of the most eminent writers belonging to the Religious Society of Friends and a member of the Clan Barclay. He was also governor of the East Jersey colony in North America through most of the 1680s, although he himself never resided in the colony.

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