In 2006, a documentary was released that followed the daily happenings in multiple Evangelical Christian households and congregations. I rented it to watch with my friends and I have never felt as disturbed by religion before. I was embarrassed to admit that I was from Missouri, where the film is shot. Evangelicals are the most extreme sect of Christianity and known for their radical beliefs and indoctrination of believers. You may recognize one of their most influential preachers, Billy Graham. In a lot of our class discussion, we focused on God-fearers taking the blame for taking creationism as truth. As I reminded Danielle in her post, not all religions are centered around one God. That is prominently Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And not all religions whose deity is a single being that dismiss evolution as blasphemy. Evangelical Christianity fuels the battle for creationism as the acknowledged way of human creation. This clip of Jesus Camp illuminates this.
I felt it was important to distinguish that this is much more conservative than other paths of Christianity, frustratingly so to someone who was raised a Christian and feels that Evangelicals scare bystanders away from the more broad sense of their faith. As the child, Levi, states, he would be more comfortable going to a school that teaches that “evolution is stupid and you are stupid if you believe it.” A reason why this sect fights so hard to creationism in the classroom. And a reason why this sect dominates the homeschooling population. Obviously this can only frustrate our class because it is an ignorant way of dealing with the issue presented to them. After accepting that the evolution and creation controversy was made worse by language, I found that I respected the creationist writers from class more than evolution writers, only based on writing, because of the subtlety versus the forcefulness. This documentary makes me feel that the general population of creationists is hostile towards those who believe in evolution, and that only the few spokespeople are able to find a tactful way to present their ideas.
Before writing this post, I found myself wanting to find more creationism in the media and remembered a South Park episode I had seen with a back-story motivated by this debate. In this episode from Season 10, Go God Go, one of the teachers is made to teach evolution despite his creationist beliefs. He at first makes the theory look disgusting, calling the children the decent of a retardedfishfrogsquirrelmonkey and makes the claim that evolution is just a “theory” and a bunch of “bullcrap”. When the teacher is replaced by an expert on evolution, he mocks all the replacement’s beliefs and gets way out of hand. Most of this happens in the first few minutes and it is so worth watching. While South Park’s politically-fueled cartoons are my favorite, I thought this was particularly relevant and accurate at depicting a similar scene to that of Jesus Camp, a real-life scene of creationists refusing to even respect the beliefs of the other side.
This all ends around 7 minutes, when the comic of the cartoon becomes the most important pull of the episode. But I thought it showed how forward creationists are with pushing their beliefs upon children, like the Dover trial. It was similar in the way of the Catholic family who would rather pull their curious daughter out of a class on evolution before letting her learn. Or in the way of the teacher for evolution being mocked by the teacher who believes in creationism. This semester has shed more light on the ignorant ways that creationists find to deal with a lot of their beliefs that I had defended before. It is quite tragic.
I haven't seen Jesus Camp, but its a documentary that I had been meaning to watch out of curiousity. But similarly to your find of the South Park episode, I found the following episode from The Simpsons that is about the Creationism vs. Evolution debate: http://www.wtso.net/movie/130-The_Simpsons_1721_The_Monkey_Suit.html
ReplyDeleteThe episode is called, "The Monkey Suit", and little Lisa Simpson is the only one in Springfield who supports evolution and disagrees with the new law that only creationism can be taught in schools. She begins to hold secret classes, reading the Origin of Species aloud. She is arrested and then put on the trial "Lisa vs. God", in which she eventually wins because Marge gives Homer a bottle of beer and when Homer dances around like a monkey trying to get the bottle open, Ned (the guy up against Lisa) says “Will you shut your yap, you big monkey-faced gorilla!” Everyone gasps and it is said evolution must exist because there is no way Homer Simpson is not related to an ape.
Obviously this is a humorous take on the issue, but one quote I really liked at the end of the episode by Lisa was, "I want you to know I respect your beliefs and I can see how deeply you feel about them. I just don't think religion should be taught in our schools any more than you'd want scientists teaching at the church." I think its funny how these kinds of politically motivated cartoons always seem to have at least one episode regarding the debate. Like your South Park episode, it "shows how forward creationists are with pushing their beliefs upon children." In the Simpsons they even have Darwin making out with Satan which I thought was pretty ridiculous but gave me a good laugh.
The good thing about these kinds of cartoons is that they are not afraid to depict these kinds of issues. They already know that they are going to piss a certain sect of the population off, but at least they tell it like it is, even though of course everything is exaggerated. In the end this kind of media is just trying to make a point through exaggeration and comedy.