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While the 1999 television version stayed true to the script, there were some scenes changed that I would characterize as stronger feminism statements. After reading the Wikipedia "facts" about the
Scopes "Monkey" Trial, I think the fictionalized movie did an adequate job of depicting the 1925 trial - even the "deliberately staged reason" for the small town of Hillsboro (really Dayton Tennessee). However there were some radical inconsistencies with the actual facts - but that's what movies and revisionist history is all about.
I got "wind" of this movie during the Sunday sermon at ACUMC on belief and faith. Also my breakfast book club with P.N. and R.M. on Ancient Faith and Modern Physics and my recent read of "Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind" has spurred my thinking about apologetic arguments for Christianity.
The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy about the inconsistency of evolution and religion continues to this day. I haven't been to the Creation Museum (right here in Cincinnati) but have been to the Ark Encounter several times (Ky - but a short drive from Cincinnati). It becomes a tension (like the courtroom) of education and ideas. Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? the inspired word of God? or just another set of ancient texts to be read as mythological stories by unenlightened ancestors?
I prefer how C.S. Lewis would have answered the question above if he had been in the courtroom:
“We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "pagan Christs": they ought to be there-it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic-and is not the sky itself a myth-shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.”
The yearning for knowledge points us to some ultimate source. The tension of arguing about that ultimate source allows each individual to explore their faith and beliefs. What better way to draw closer to God?
I loved the ending of this movie (watch the last 5 minutes):
Drummond: I pity you.
Hornbeck: Ha Ha You pity me.
Drummond: Isn't there something... What touches you? Warms you? Everyman has a dream. What do you dream about? What do you need? You don't need anything do you? LOVE, and IDEA … maybe to just hold on to.
Drummond: You're alone and when you go to the grave there will be nobody to pull the grass up over you. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give one damn. You'll be what you've always been. ALONE
Hornbeck: You're wrong Henry. You'll be there. You're the type. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?
