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40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania

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Not since early Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe have I had as much fun reading a witty, provocative piece of journalistic writing as I've had in screenwriter Matthew Chapman's "40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, GOD, OxyContin AND OTHER Oddities ON TRIAL IN Pennsylvania". It's an enthralling, often humorous tome, that owes more to the mordant humor of Frank McCourt, in his bestselling memoirs "Angela's Ashes" and "Teacher Man", than it does to the rather dry, but never dull, prose of Chapman's great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, in his scientific classic, "Origin of Species". In the fall of 2005, Chapman attended the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District Trial, as an accredited journalist and filmmaker, intent on making a documentary film on the trial, the town and its people. However, this would soon become a personal trek of self-reflection and discovery, in which he would make a most remarkable conclusion on the teaching of creationism in science classrooms. A trek which took him back to Dover, PA often, holding substantive conversations with the key players on both sides of the issue. And while Chapman truly strives for a cinematic narrative, fading in and out between brief discussions of the 20th Century Scopes Trial, the Discovery Institute, and his illustrious ancestor's revolutionary scientific research, the book's emphasis remains focused upon himself and his conversations with the people of Dover. So those in search of an extensive, truly profound, overview of the trial's origins and history might be best served elsewhere, most notably by reading Edward Humes' definitive, well-written account of the trial in his book "Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul", but they would miss much of the personal drama that Chapman has vividly recorded, using his prose as though it was his video camera lens, exquisitely recording all of the detail present.

Chapman's narrative is more linear in focus than Humes' comprehensive account, and adheres more closely to a chronological perspective. One that starts with the Dover Area School District board's decision in the fall of 2004 to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution, unexpectedly starting a civil war within the town itself, led by the ardent Fundamentalist Christians on the board, against those in the Dover community who were appalled by the board's decision. Among the most sympathetic figures is unexpectedly the board's firebrand, Bill Buckingham, who ruefully admits to Chapman that he's addicted to the painkiller OxyContin, and blames it, not himself, for some of his most outlandish comments, at the board's meetings, that were reported accurately by the local press. Chapman's truly moving, poignant portrayal of him strongly hints that he is, indeed, a lost soul afflicted by drug addiction. It is through moving portraits like those of Buckingham, and his arch-nemesis, former board member Barrie Callahan, that we get a strong sense of the political and religious strife which embroiled the people of Dover for more than a year, beginning in the summer of 2004, when the board left the Dover High School science teachers twisting in the wind, simply because Buckingham had objected to the teaching of "Darwinism" - and that mentioned only briefly - in the newest edition of a popular high school textbook co-authored by Brown University cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller, who, himself, is the subject of a sympathetic portrayal by Chapman in which he explains the rationale for science's faithful adherence against "dealing with issues of meaning or purpose" during his court testimony.

However, it isn't Kenneth R. Miller who emerges as the hero of Chapman's vividly told tale. Instead, the honors rest upon the attorneys for the plaintiffs, most notably, lead attorney Eric Rothschild, and, quite unexpectedly, philosopher of science Barbara Forrest. Rothschild is depicted as a most congenial, yet still quite, astute, legal warrior in the courtroom, who is able to pry gently from leading Intelligent Design advocate - and star defense witness - Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe a surprising admission that astrology could be viewed as scientific, based on Behe's own broad definition of what science is, one that includes the potential study of supernatural phenomena; a definition which runs counter to the one subscribed to by the National Academy of Sciences and mainstream science: a rational enterprise that is completely divorced from the supernatural realm (During this memorable "duel" of a cross-examination between Rothschild and Behe, Chapman observes Behe "smiling defiantly" as Rothschild reads the infamous disclaimer posted on the website of Lehigh University biological sciences department acknowledging evolution's scientific validity, but noting too Behe's academic freedom to pursue "research" on Intelligent Design. He draws the conclusion that Behe feels intense pain from this rejection by his own departmental colleagues.). Chapman demonstrates why philosopher Barbara Forrest may have been the plaintiffs' most effective witness. Led on by attorney Rothschild, she begins her testimony with an elegant overview of the history of the creationism, especially during the last two decades of the 20th Century, emphasizing the origins and early history of the "Intelligent Design" movement. And then she reveals the pivotal "smoking gun" in an accurate, yet dramatic fashion, documenting the text changes made in the early drafts of the Intelligent Design textbook "Of Pandas and People", noting the ample instances in which "creation" was substituted with "design", not scores of times, but at least more than one hundred different instances in the text itself. Later, she ends her testimony in a memorably tedious cross-examination by lead defense attorney Richard Thompson that drags on for nearly a day and a half.

Chapman concludes "40 Days and 40 Nights" on a most idiosyncratic, personal note, and one that he has alluded to ever since the very first page of his memoir. He contends that we should allow creationism into the science classroom, so that it can be "dissected", in much the same fashion as it was during the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial, by allowing teachers to "explore the limitations of faith through the revelatory methods of science", and resulting in "verdicts" identical to Republican Federal Judge Jones' conclusion that Intelligent Design wasn't scientific. Emotionally, it is a sentiment that I found myself quite unexpectedly, at first, to be in complete agreement. However, on second thought, I concur with Ken Miller's observation that introducing Intelligent Design into science classrooms would be a "science stopper". It would conflate most students' understanding of what exactly is the difference between religious faith and science, though I suppose that some truly gifted students, like those attending prominent American high schools such as Alexandria, Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and New York City's Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School, might readily understand and appreciate these distinctions. And yet I am inclined to agree more with the harsh view articulated by distinguished British paleontologist Richard Fortey in his essay published in the January 30, 2007 issue of the British newspaper Telegraph, contending that it is an absolute waste of time arguing with Intelligent Design advocates, and that they ought to be dismissed as "IDiots"; by extension, so would be the teaching of Intelligent Design alongside evolution in a science classroom. I would rather see talented students from Thomas Jefferson, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant engage themselves fruitfully in genuine scientific research of the highest caliber, than in trying to understand the metaphysical, religious nonsense known as Intelligent Design and other flavors of creationism. I think, in hindsight, so would Charles Darwin.

What Matthew Chapman has written is an account of a trial and a report of an America suffering from a widening cultural gap between the secular protections of the constitution and a segment of the population who want to press a Christian agenda in public institutions. Richard Feynman, the physicist, in characterizing the aim of science and the aim of religion said that science seeks to uncover immutable laws that can predict events. The inverse square law of gravitation, laws of motion, and the effect of acceleration on mass, once revealed, changed how the universe is understood. Scientific method postulates a theory and then tests it, always open to new facts that will refine it. Oppositely, religion formulates opinions as dogma that, like conspiracy theory, is not accountable to fact. Dogma resists information that would compromise its premise. As long as science could not explain phenomenon, religion took as its providence superstitious understanding and assigned the mysteries of the world to an all-knowing God, who spoke to human creatures through inspired texts interpreted by anointed priests and ministered to the uneducated. Little has changed in the process of religious knowing, but much has changed in scientific understanding.
In this compelling report of a forty-day trial, arguments are heard for and against the inclusion of a textbook describing Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolutionary theory in a ninth grade science class at Dover High School in Pennsylvania. The board of education voted the text into the curriculum and several parents who objected, claimed that the content was religiously driven, scientifically invalid, and legally unconstitutional. They won the case, but not before an exhausting, and by turns boring, shocking, outrageous, bigoted, benighted and ridiculous sequence of witnesses had their say in a formal court of law.
It will serve no purpose here to comment on the obdurate convictions of religious people who are simple-minded, except to say that anyone can have an opinion, and everybody does, but an opinion is worthless unless it comports with reality. People in asylums have opinions, but it would be foolish to account any weight to them. In Mr. Chapman's narrative, science represents reality, and in Judge Jones's court, reality obtained.
It's hard to know what opponents of Darwin fear especially. The loss of God from their world is part of it, or more to the evangelical point, the loss of God from your world, which good Christians find hard to countenance. But more fundamentally, dread screams from their intolerance and zeal from a possible awareness of the cosmic fraud in all of it. Matthew Chapman quotes Mark Twain: "Faith believes something you know ain't true."
The constitutional rights framed by the wise fathers of our country stand as a barrier against extremism. In our day religious belief systems are collapsing under the weight of their absurdity. A world view seething in prejudice, misapprehension, sexual phobia and violence handed down to our day from desert kingdoms of the late bronze age is not relevant to what science has learned about the universe within and without since then.

This book is about the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board case.

The school board, controlled by science-illiterate, religious fanatics and following the advice of other, science-illiterate, religious fanatics at the Thomas More Law Center, overruled Dover High's own science faculty and forced through a policy mandating that the freshman biology course include a statement that misrepresented and criticized evolutionary theory and provided information about an untested creationist alternative called "intelligent design." (Intelligent design is a "scientific" theory whose primary advocates are yet another bunch of religious kooks at the Discovery Institute.)

After the school board passed that policy, several parents sued, alleging that the policy violated the First Amendment's provision regarding separation of church and state. After a full trial, the court eventually ruled that, duh, ID was a religious theory and had no place in science class.

The book has three main ingredients. The trial itself serves as the unifying theme for the book, so the first ingredient, of course, is a description of the courtroom action, including very brief summaries of some of the testimony of the experts for both plaintiffs and defendants on the main points of the trial. Chapman does comment on some of the technical aspects of the trial, but only occasionally and very briefly. In general there is very little analysis of the merits of the scientific, legal, or philosophical arguments that both sides presented, so if you're looking for detailed information about those issues, you may want to look elsewhere.

The second ingredient is a brief summary chapter in which Chapman argues in favor of teaching creationism/ID in science classes.

The book's third and most important ingredient is the "human interest" or background stories about many of the characters on both sides of the tragicomedy of the trial; and it is this ingredient that makes the book such a tasty read. The anecdotes and revealing glimpses into the personalities, backgrounds, and motivations of the main actors are generally presented with warmth, sensitivity, and, frequently, with a great deal of humor. Many of the anecdotes were downright hilarious. Unfortunately, several anecdotes were of a more disturbing nature.

The anecdotes revealing the dishonesty of the board members and the hypocrisy of the Thomas More Law Center will probably not be surprising to anyone who has followed the evo/crevo dispute in any detail, but the reports about the school board's arrogant, religious bigotry may be shocking simply for how open and public it was. The cowardice of the Discovery Institute's William Dembski and Stephen Meyer in failing to testify was also interesting, and Dick Carpenter's unexplained disappearance was simply mystifying. (Carpenter is associated with Focus on the Family, another group of religious cranks.) Other anecdotes report on the school board members' appalling lack of intellectual curiosity about the changes they were making to the science curriculum. That will probably not surprise anyone who has followed the dispute in any detail either, since many of the pro-ID statements from school officials in Kansas a couple of years ago were just as appallingly ignorant. The vicious hate mail and personal attacks that the plaintiffs and their school-age children endured show once again that freedom isn't free. In sharp contrast to Dembski's and Meyer's cowardice, the plaintiffs showed a lot of courage in standing up to the religious bullies on the school board and in the local pulpits. If the Christian God is indeed a God of love, then some of those clergymen are going to have to answer some day for their hateful actions and comments.

Again, if you're looking for detailed, technical analyses of any part of the evo/crevo debate or a formal, historical treatment of the trial, this book is probably not going to satisfy you, but the human interest stories in this book are truly a feast.

P.S. Even if you don't buy the book, at least take a look at the inside jacket cover. The picture of Chapman is hilarious.

A lot of people, like me, knew that an important trial was happening in Pennsylvania, but found the issues involved both challenging and confusing. Christian fundamentalists were trying to stop the basic scientific facts of evolution from being taught in their school system. Words like creationism and intelligent design were being thrown around. Sinister-sounding groups and individuals hovered in the background. We were concerned, we were worried, but the complexities as they emerged in the media seemed too complicated to grasp.
Then I read Matthew Chapman's 40 Days and 40 Nights. Turning its pages I was carried along effortlessly by clear prose, simple language, and a narrative so gripping that I simply forgot the difficulties I had anticipated before. The story itself was compelling, but the scientific, religious and political issues were all there, understood by the author and presented accurately and - above all - fairly.
When I finished the book, I realized it had done much more than just take me effortlessly and pleasurably through this highly significant trial. It had given me a portrait of present-day, small-town America, its people, their daily life, their work, their feelings. To anyone who finds the big political stories and so much else coming out of that country puzzling or hard to grasp, take my advice. Read this book.

Honesty and wit, when paired together, can produce astonishing results. Throw in a heated religious, scientific, and legal debate and a dash of rare coincidence, and what you get is this terrific book, 40 Days and 40 Nights.

Matthew Chapman, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin and self-proclaimed high school drop-out, covers the Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education trial, in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005. Technically, the trial concerned whether or not it was constitutional for the local high school to teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution in a freshman science class, but Chapman seems far more interested in the individual personalities and over-arching historical trends which converged in that Pennsylvania courtroom.

Chapman covers the trial well enough for an average reader to understand, but, unlike the majority of law proceedings, which can feel like a big game of hurry up and wait, his account is propelled along by the personal stories behind all parties involved. What is most impressive about this is Chapman's compassion and humor towards the people he observes, even those he seems to almost despise.

He interviews many of them in their homes and at their jobs, not simply portraying them as plaintiffs or defendants. For the most part, this approach creates lively portraits that imprint themselves in the minds of readers, but at times it can bring so many names into the story that some of the minor players aren't easily identified when they pop up in later chapters.

In either case, Chapman doesn't hesitate to speak his mind in playful, unassuming eloquence (his slight British accent can almost be heard in the prose) nor does he hide his beliefs from the reader. Even though I believe myself to be far more spiritual than Chapman sounds, I couldn't help but laugh at and ponder over some of his insights.

Chapman may openly state his extreme agnosticism, but he refrains from piling all of the religious believers into one deprecating heap. He doles out mockery proportionate to the absurdity of the situation, but he also gives respect where respect is due. For instance, Chapman's most respected expert witness is not a scientist, as a harsh rationalist might expect, but instead is John Haught, a Catholic theologian, who summarizes the issue at hand profoundly yet concisely on p.106.

On the other hand, Chapman creates a humane portrait of possibly the most detestable person in the trial, Bill Buckingham. Startlingly close-minded and hot-tempered, Buckingham blurts out fundamental riff-raff throughout the story and possibly takes part in the theft and arson of a piece of student art depicting the evolution of man. Nevertheless, Chapman finds personal parallels between this estranged old man and himself on p.225.

The story is essentially about characters, and, being that Chapman's chief expertise is in screen-writing and documentary film-making, the story has a sort of feature feel to it. Except now this film-maker gets to interject his wit, humor, and insight into the story itself, rather than just sharing it with the crew behind the camera. Chapman's particular brand of honesty feels reminiscent of this type of exchange, as if he has moved himself in front of the lens and made himself a part of the story, which, essentially, he has. Considering he's the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, though, I think that's probably the perfect place for him.

Chapman's account of the issues and personalities that shaped the famed Kitzmiller v. Dover case in Pennsylvania is a truly entertaining read. There's so much great material that one can't help but be fascinated by the trial transcripts, interviews, and examples of Intelligent Design (ID) "literature" that Chapman includes here.

In particular, Chapman does a fine job of illustrating the contrasting personalities that made up the school board which introduced ID to Dover-area public schools. Without editorializing too much, Chapman shows how the board did the public a disservice by letting their religious views blind their commitment to the education of an increasingly lethargic student body. It's sad to hear how Dover-area kids were let down by a cohort of fundamentalists who, as the trial proceedings demonstrate, actually had very little to no knowledge of what constitutes evolution and what constitutes ID (much less what the scientific method is all about). So as the board was busy legislating religion in Dover, students were tuning out amidst a crumbling school infrastructure and an uninspiring curriculum. That's the most unfortunate aspect of this tale.

For me, the problem with this book is simple: there's so much great material to work with here, but Chapman is a mediocre storyteller at best. There are long sections of the book where he quotes from transcripts or interviews without any narrative insight. He describes at least six or seven of the trial participants as "good-looking." His tone alternates between flippant and cavalier -- rarely sensitive to detail and nuance. His account of the trial's finale is reduced to saying, "You've heard this before, so I'll only quote this part of X's closing statement..." And the conclusion to his narrative, "Revelation," puts forth a bizarre rant that attempts to link the rise of religious fundamentalism in America with the demise of the so-called Protestant work ethic.

I wish Chapman had engaged the trial -- the issues and the personalities -- with more tact and intelligence. This is a fun read, but it's too much "wink wink, nudge nudge" and not enough well-rounded description and analysis. For a far better account of this trial, see Margaret Talbot's article in The New Yorker, which appeared just after the trial's completion.

I enjoyed reading Chapman's book. It brought a number of chuckles and a few out-right laughs. The strongest feature of the book was his apparent concern and even fondness for nearly all involved. His quick character sketches humanized the participants in ways that I had not perceived from reading, and even meeting some of the principals.

That said, there were some features that I found odd. My biggest surprise was that Chapman made no mention at all of the famous "Of Pandas and People" "cdesign proponentsists" (Go to the National Center for Science Education website, urls are forbidden here) gaff exposed in Barbara Forrest's testimony. I had been anticipating that his reaction to such a blatant con-job would be particularly amusing. But there was no mention- none. I reread the chapter to see if I had missed it, and then I even checked the page numbers to be sure nothing mechanical had failed. But there was no "cdesign proponentsists" to be found.

Michael Behe's cross examination by Eric Rothschild had similar omissions where I wished Chapman's talent for observation had been given play. For example, Chapman spends some time on Rothschild and Behe going back and forth over the question of the evolution of the adaptive immune system (190-193). A portion of this was a bit of "theater" where Rothschild stacks piles and piles of published research on the evolution of the immune system in front of Behe, who has claimed in testimony that no such research exists. Chapman seemed to have missed that while doing so Rothschild handed Behe several massive textbooks relevant to just this question, and after a time, Behe asked, "Mr. Rothschild, would you like your books back? They're heavy."

Chapman incorrectly called the immune system exchange "Rothschild's last attack on Behe" (190). This lead to the glaring omission of Rothschild's cross examination of the analogy of "intelligent design detection al la the ID creationists, and the real science of archaeology. This followed the lunch break on Day 12 of the trial, and perhaps Chapman never made it back into the courtroom that afternoon. Few would blame him, and fewer notice but me! This is because his omission also stepped all over my 2.5 seconds of Dover fame. Rothschild used as a portion of his challenge to Behe my chapter on archaeology, forensics and IDC from "Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism" (Young and Edis 2004). The end of Behe's cross examination was Rothschild's observation that, "Science fiction movies are not science, are they, Professor Behe?" Behe's answer was irrelevant and this exchange found its way into the Judge's decision.

The real quality of Chapman's writing, observation, and humanity is in a last scene set at the end of the trial (250-251). On one side of the street the plaintiffs, their lawyers, their families, the support crew (including Nick Matzke), and others meet in celebration and good cheer.

On the other side of the street, the defence attorneys sat alone.

I could almost feel sorry for them.

This is the second of at least three books coming out about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, the previous one being Edward Humes' Monkey Girl. However, where Humes attempted to take more of an objective, historian's attitude, showing the big picture without interjecting many personal opinions, Chapman provides more of a personal memoir, providing his own opinions about the various individuals involved. Each time a new personality is introduced, we get a description as well as a capsule summary. Plaintiff Aralene "Barrie"Callahan "was a short, solid woman with a mop of densely curled hair, from under which her blue eyes sometimes took a glowering aspect. She rmeinded me of a female Harpo Marx who had finally gotten pissed off and wasn't prepared to play the clown anymore." Creationist school board member Alan Bonsell "was a good-looking, sandy-haired, gum-chewing man in his late thirties or early forties. He wore casual clothes that looked expensive and had the relaxed, entitled, slightly contemptuous air of a politician or athlete.... His faith seemed to have given him a confidence unwarranted by the facts." It's almost as if he's making notes for the casting of the movie - not altogether surprising since he's a filmmaker and screenwriter.

His narrative is also more focused than Humes', using as its backbone the trial itself and the testimony of the various witnesses, then breaking away to tell the background story behind it, from the school board meetings that led up to it to the entities like the Discover Institute and the ACLU who played such a large part in the outcome. All in all, he provides a very detailed picture of the goings-on in Dover but doesn't really show its significance in the overall creation vs. evolution debate and particularly why this trial was such a blow to the latest version of creationism, the intelligent design movement.

If I had to pick just one book of the two to read about the trial, I think I would go with Monkey Girl as the more thorough and authoritative. However, if you really want to get the feel of what it was like to be in the courtroom, this is the book to read. It's also the livelier and more entertaining of the two.

Chapman's review of the Dover creationism trial is a highly subjective retelling that emphasizes his own personal reactions to the litigants and attorneys. It doesn't explain the science (or anti-science), and it doesn't explain the competing legal reasoning, and without some background knowledge, it's not easy to understand just how calamitous this case was for the Intelligent Design Creationism movement. Instead, Chapman gives us thumbnail summaries of interviews and encounters, which do capture something of the Zeitgeist of exurban America. I didn't, however, share his interest in the clothing people wore (except insofar as it was indicative of educational or socioeconomic class), and he seems peculiarly interested in the physical appearance of the women in the story.

Points that I hadn't seen elsewhere included interviews with the local journalists and an extended description of the lead counsel for the Thomas More Institute. Nevertheless, if you only plan to read one book on this subject—I intend to read more of them than that—Humes Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul is the better choice.

Matthew Chapman has written a fine account of a town divided over its school board's foolhardy attempt to bring creationism into the classrooms via the back door. While Chapman tries hard to make some characters sympathetic, it is impossible for me to admire Bill Buckingham, knowing he was the arrogant, ignorant bully on the school board.

Reading about the lead defense attorney, Richard Thompson, one can only conclude he was born to run fools' errands, such as his latest job as water boy for Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan. Chapman's distaste for Thompson is evident.