I really wanted to write a post about the U.S. Federal Court slapping down “Intelligent Design” in Dover, Pennsylvania today:
A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that it is unconstitutional to compel teachers there to present “intelligent design” as an alternative explanation to evolution because it amounts to establishing religion in public schools.
I couldn’t find a strong Desi-angle beyond what we’ve already blogged about though. So instead, I’ve decided to write a post about “Un-intelligent Design.” Most people know that Hitler’s Third Reich was fascinated by the occult and was always looking for mystical weapons and methods in order to defeat the Allies. Essentially, that is what the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark is about. He is also thought to have been fascinated by Eastern religions. After reading the following article out today in the Scotsman, I wondered if the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin might have been reading up on his Hindu mythology when he came up with this VERY unintelligent design idea:
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia’s top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior…According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: “I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat…”
Mr Ivanov’s experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail. [Link]
Sick, sick, sick. Nothing is going to convince me that they were really “volunteers.” I wondered if Stalin may have been inspired by Hanuman’s story. He is after all the mightiest of warriors and proved himself during the Ramayana War. He was conceived more naturally…well sort of.
The story of the birth of Hanuman goes thus: Vrihaspati, the preceptor of the gods, had an attendant called Punjikasthala. She was cursed to assume the form of a female monkey — a curse that could only be nullified if she would give birth to an incarnation of Lord Shiva. Reborn as Anjana, she performed intense austerities to please Shiva, who finally granted her the boon that would cure her of the curse.
When Agni, the god of fire gave Dasharath, the king of Ayodhya, a bowl of sacred sweet food to share among his wives so that they may have divine children, an eagle snatched a part of the pudding and dropped it where Anjana was meditating, and Pavana, the god of wind delivered the drop to her outstretched hands. After she took the divine dessert, she gave birth to Hanuman. Thus Lord Shiva incarnated as a monkey, and was born as Hanuman to Anjana, by the blessings of Pavana, who thus became Hanuman’s godfather. [Link]
As for Ivanov:
A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar… For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years’ jail, which was later commuted to five years’ exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. [Link]
Abhi, I am here to help. Try here. Hohoho.
On an entirely serious note, I recently read a detailed account of the medical experiments carried out by the Nazis. I’m quite insensitive and this historical document didn’t make me cry or feel sad – but it did near make me vomit. It was the single most horrific thing I have read.
Animal Husbandary!
Intelligent Design is neither.
Am not so sure it failed… on the contrary one of those hybrids (the facial resemblance to its lineage is unmistakable) has succeeded in penetrating the highest levels of the government and has started instituting Soviet style domestic spying on citizens. Stalin would have been proud. 😉
Your learn something new every day, don’t you? I had no idea that this is how Hanuman came into being. I was thinking something more along the lines of Pavana courting Anjana etc.
Also, in terms of
, why wouldn’t they do it the other way and impregnate a monkey with human sperm?
That result is more likely to have come from a Nazi experiment!
A more promising brand of products are Stalinists and Leninsts 🙂
Siva just shows up everywhere. “It’s not my myth, but I’ll work my way into it somehow.”
…Imagine a monkey giving birth to a semi-human baby. Oh the pain…
Why bother with half men, half apes when they could go with winged monkeys?
Ok, Abhi, this is the biggest stretch of a post I’ve seen in a while. Linking to Intelligent Design via Stalinist experiments with Hanuman in mind? There’s a movie with Kevin Bacon in there somewhere.
Tre-mendous.
Anyway, here’s yer link to Intelligent Desi-gn. A great many Native Americans are anti-evolution, and thus (bizarrely and mistakenly, in my opinion) supporters of the religious right on this issue (whoops, wrong kind of Indian…dammit, where did that thought go?).
Wait, wait, no, here it is. How come even Indian fundamentalists (of all religions) aren’t flat-earther, Darwin-was-a-jerk, read-this-book-dammit types? It’s like even though you can be an idiot religious fanatic, you still want to be well-educated and tell your kids to study hard in school…especially science.
Why is evolution so not-troubling to desis?
Why is evolution so not-troubling to desis?
Probably because death isn’t a big issue for desis either. Anyone who’s lived in India can tell you that death is a fact of life to be accepted and lived with. Hindus and Buddhist accept death as either a means to reincarnation or a means to Nirvana(correct me if I’m wrong). I’m not entirely show how most muslims stand on the issue of evolution, though I suspect that a lot of Indian-American Muslims, especially the liberal ones, find no reason to quarrel with the issue because most aren’t stringently Muslim and i doubt few want to add to the anti-Muslim sentiment already pervading this country. Wow, sorry for the run-on. As for the Christian desis, like myself, I suppose the reasons vary between members of different denominations, Catholics being the most lax on the issue. I console myself through what I read on sites like this: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
sure* not show. Damn this late night spelling.
my own theory is that given the whole Indian Karma-rebirth thing, the idea what we were (and could again be) monkeys and other creatures is just not all that shocking.
Also, I’m not sure there’s a consistent creation myth all over India. Nobody really seems that concerned with creation. It seems quite ok to believe that the Universe has always been and will always be, in some form or the other.
Thanks Salil. That’s why SM signed me to a long term contract 🙂
But you are right. There are many desis who are looking for a non-identity politics issue to get involved in as a community. This is a good one in my opinion since it SHOULD be troubling to education valuing desis.
How about genetics ; in the southern Europe, the Neanderthals and the Cro-magnons cohabitated some tens of thousands years without producing any hybrid offspring because of genetic incompatibility.Why talk about monkeys ? Don’t mistake me , I like Hanuman and all the Ramayana epic.
You are right. I respect other religions and all but I dont want psuedo-science stuff like Intelligent Design being taught in schools. I’m sure there will be a huge outcry in the US if schools started teaching … ahem … Reincarnation as a possible alternative to evolution.
Ummm I graduated from Dover Arrea High School…I hate to inform you that the book that you referred to concerning ID is not what the media had cracked it up to be. All it says is that evolution is a THEORY and that it is to explain change over time. The resulting court case stemed from the election of school board officals that were replaced over the issue of a tax increase. The former board members filed sute to outs the new members on this charge on behalf of the school in Iowa that did in fact have the text book introduced into their circulum that does say that ID is possible and that it too is a theory. Dover’s text book did not have the part of ID, it was a cover for self-rightous people in a position of power to regain what was lost. Many of them were using the position of school board as a political stepping stone, this how ever is not the case seeing as many of them are facing time behind bars for various infractions of the law. If you would like to find out about the school in Iowa pleas do so I think that you would find their situation more genuin than that of Dover Area Highschool. One thing is true thoug, Dover was not the front runner in this debate-turned-freak-show Dover was a scape goat and Pat Robertson needs to get his facts straight before he tries to condem people to hell… just makeing shure isn’t that God’s job and God’s job alone? Or did I just mis-understan my pasor???
Kate