The Evolution of Truth

January 31, 2006

In a leading news item this past Christmas season, a federal district court judge in Pennsylvania held that the Dover Area School Board violated students’ Constitutional and civil rights by requiring teachers to inform their science classes that there are gaps or problems in Charles Darwin’s theory and other theories of evolution.  The 139-page opinion has been hailed as a “strategic defense of Darwinian theory” that “will be extremely useful . . . to science teachers and others who are struggling against . . . tremendous pressure to bring religion into the classroom.”  Darwin’s detractors, it is said, have been left “wounded” and in “dismay.”

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The Hours: a Belated Review

January 31, 2006

“I chose life.”

In this critically-acclaimed film filled with darkness and misery, no line disturbed me more.  Decades after abandoning her family, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), sums up her defense:  “I chose life.”  If she had not run away from her husband, her two small children − from her life − Brown reasons, she would have taken her own life.  Equally disturbing is the apparent reaction of Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), the recipient of Brown’s unsolicited confession.  Vaughn, haunted by the fear that her own life has been meaningless, seems to draw comfort, some sense of peace from Brown’s view of life:  any life lived − no matter how it is lived − is satisfactory, meaningful, and a victory over death.

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