Inherit the wind
(1960) - starring Spencer Tracy Ms. Donna Anderson           

"Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady that neither of them care for." - George Savile, Marquess de Halifax 

Latin expression for the positions taken all too often by all too many on relevant issues of importance politically and to our sense of community on the planet it would appear:
"Nos populo damus" - translated; "They go with the crowds"     

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 its 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 (Ireland educated) contemporary philosopher Mr. Walter Stace (in an essay called "man in darkness")  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 also too may 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.

Michael Rizzo Chessman
(moviesbyrizzo)

michael@moviesbyrizzo.com