Monkey Girl

On the recommendation of a fellow blogger, I picked up a copy of Monkey Girl by Edward Humes from the library. It is a chronicle of the infamous Dover, Pennsylvania, incident in which the local school board desired to teach creationism in its high-school science classes. Eventually this led to a national firestorm on evolution, creationism, Intelligent Design and the like. Humes retells the story, and he proclaims on the inside flap of the dust cover that the book covers the perspectives of all sides of the debate. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Humes has the worst kind of bias—one that is not admitted. In fact, he gives a façade of objectivity by claiming to be a simple journalist, one who is committed to the truth. In reality, he is committed to the status quo. He sees the standard scientific model as unassailable—any dissent is jumped on, with all weaknesses exposed. What he fails to do is understand his own position’s weaknesses. He has no time to waste analyzing his own belief in evolution, because he is much too busy producing ad hominem attacks on William Dembski, Michael Behe and others and using suspect arguments in his defense of naturalistic science.

There are two incredibly frustrating leitmotifs in Monkey Girl. The first is his insistence on the absolute dichotomy between science and religion. I have a simple rebuttal for this: Why? Why must science and religion be separate? Science with its methodological naturalism has no room for divine activity in the physical world. (To be true, science will occasionally throw the dogs of religion a scrap from the table—God could have used evolution as his means of creation, but that’s for the theologians [said with great disdain] to worry about—we deal with the facts.) But consider this: If it is true, as I believe, that God was and is actively and detectably involved in nature, then methodological naturalism has a false presupposition. Everything, then, that flows out of it is also suspect. Given the implications of this, is it not prudent at least to investigate such an idea? Science answers with a resounding No! The fact that science is unwilling even to ask such a question is evidence that there is more than just science at stake in this debate. Philosophies and worldviews are on the line.

The second continual source of frustration in Humes’ book is the all-too-common tactic of using a slippery definition of the world evolution. Evolution can mean anything from the breeding of dogs to the common descent of all animals from a single cell, depending on the context. After all, what does “change over time” really entail? It depends on whom one asks, and how it is asked of them. Humes uses this slippery word to his advantage numerous times, especially by stating repeatedly that evolution has been proved. To which type of evolution is he referring? The reader can never be sure, and I doubt that this is unintentional.

You might note at this point that I have not mentioned much regarding the actual content of the book but have only identified certain of the author’s presuppositions. This is purposeful; in light of his deliberate biases and dogmatic support of the status quo, I find that the content of Humes’ book is worthless in the science/religion/whatever debate. In fact, the main bit of knowledge I came away with after reading it was a hefty insight into the author’s “objective” belief system. Do I have biases? You bet. But at least I try to be honest and open about them. I don’t pretend to tell “all sides of the story” as Humes does.

That being said, I would not recommend this book. Humes’ declared objectivity is extremely suspect, which therefore causes me to doubt the entirety of Monkey Girl’s content. In my mind, he is little more than a minion of methodological naturalism, a serf of the status quo. Had he really strived for objectivity, perhaps he could have composed a book worth reading. In this case, he did not.