Summary Of The Novel 'Monkey Girl' By Edward Humes

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Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for America’s Soul, is a non-fiction based novel that was written by Edward Humes. Edward Humes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Humes has also written various publications, which include Los Angeles Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Readers Digest, and many more (Humes). Throughout Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for America’s Soul, the focus is on the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Trial. It all began in 2004 when the Dover Area School District of Pennsylvania decided to modify the curriculum in biology, which required that Intelligent Design to be taught as a part of the scientific theory of evolution …show more content…

In the novel Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for American’s Soul, Humes tells the story of how 11 furious parents in the Dover Area school district decided to sue the school board and the district, because of the new learning objective requirement saying that all of 9th grade biology classes had to be taught Intelligent Design (ID), which is basically a form of creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution. They also believed that it “violated their first amendment right to information and ideas in an academic setting” (Humes, 2007, p. 221). This was the first legal trial to the perception of Intelligent Design. This novel is a narrative that captures nearly everyone’s view point in the Dover Area school District on the issue of Intelligent Design replacing evolution. There were numerous groups and organizations involved the trial including; The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans Unites for Separation of Church and State, Pepper Hamilton LLP, and the National Center for Science Education. This Trial was so major that even that national government was involved. George W. Bush sent a conservative appointee (John Jones) to the bench, which was done because it was “the early handicapping in the trial suggested a

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