Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

The campus itself was ringed by parking lots and the bait-and-tackles and convenience stores of Reed Township, whose Main Street offered, for entertainment purposes, a single-screen movie theater and a bar called the Library. Anyone who wanted something better could drive to Philadelphia, forty-five minutes away, but most kids simply skipped town on the weekends to visit their boyfriends or do their laundry back home.

Already parched and overheated in the far reaches of Scientific Hall, Andy hung his blazer on the back of his chair and wrote his introductory statements on the blackboard.

1: Evolution is the explanation for everything

2: Darwin is right

3: And people who don’t believe Darwin are wrong

Then he wiped the dust off his hands (Christ, was it too much to ask for a PowerPoint setup?) and sat down to wait for his students. A few minutes before nine, they started to trickle in, already bored-looking, some wearing clothing they had probably slept in. Andy didn’t begrudge them. Twenty years ago, during his own undergraduate days at Ohio State, he once went two weeks without changing clothes on a ten-dollar dare.

A few of them nodded at him as they took their seats; others, eager to show how little they cared, took out their iPhones and started fiddling. Eight women, four men (on par with the campus 2:1 ratio) and then, in a last-minute dash through the door, Lionel Shell, in a Rick Santorum sweater-vest and the kind of glasses whose lenses turned dark when you stood in the sun.

“Professor,” Lionel Shell said, crisply. He was a skinny devout Christian from rural Delaware who had taken the course three semesters ago as a sophomore, and who had spent those fourteen weeks alternately glowering at Andy and raising his hand with a passion that dragged him halfway across his desk.

“I got special permission from the registrar to take this again for credit,” Lionel said. “Before you give me any grief.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I’m writing a response paper to this course that will change the university’s position on letting you teach atheism every other year.”

“Are you now?” Andy said, outwardly civil, inwardly delighted. When Rosenblum taught this course at Princeton, he had jackoffs like Lionel every other seminar (Andy, who served as his reader/grader, remembered them all). He had always found it a little disappointing that his own course engendered such mild protest, so much acquiescence. “Well, that’s great. I look forward to hearing what you come up with.”

“And when I’m done, I’ll be sending it to the Board of Trustees.”

“Are you threatening me?” Andy suppressed a smile.

Lionel took off his glasses, cleaned them primly, slid them back on his face. “I just think this is an issue that deserves broader attention on campus. It’s not personal.”

“Well, I agree with you, Lionel, that issues of scientific ethics deserve broader airing on campus, and across the country.”

“Indeed,” said indomitable Lionel, refusing to fall for Andy’s condescension. “Still, I think I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Andy said. He stood, eyed his students (the sloppy, the angsty, the covert nose-pickers) and launched into his spiel.

“Are you guys aware that of the eight major Republican candidates who ran for this year’s nomination, six said publicly that they didn’t believe in evolution?” He waited for gasps, and a few students, to their credit, did look faintly surprised.

“Did you know that 71 percent of Americans say that science is a matter of opinion, not fact? And 64 percent believe that God has a place in the scientific curriculum?”

They opened their notebooks, unsure whether or not class had already started. “Friends, I view this set of statistics as a national emergency (calling students “friends”—that was another move from the Rosenblum playbook). And by the way, Lionel, if you want to help me draw attention to these issues, I would welcome the help entirely. Believe me.”

Lionel arranged his face into its glower.

“Now guys, before I hand out your syllabus, I’d like you all to take a moment to read the three statements I’ve written on the board.” He gave them their moment. “Anybody have any questions? Objections?”

Predictable silence. “So who are you people, anyway?”

The thirteen went around the room clockwise, introducing themselves by name and major (seven biology, two English, three chemistry, and Lionel: an independently designed major in Public and Religious Discourse). As always, Andy attempted to link each name to a defining feature, a mole or a haircut; this was a memory-enhancing technique he kept trying but was never quite able to master. These students had all been born in the early nineties, a generation of Maxes and Hunters and Kaylas and Ariels. This particular group was an indistinct mix of Haleys and Jordans, and Andy forgot each name the minute a student said it. But he nodded at each of them and smiled, and most of them smiled back.

“So, as you all know, this is Special Topics in Evolutionary Biology: Ethics and Debate.” Andy, per his shtick, let his introductory smile dissolve into a pissy little frown. “But listen, guys, I have to say, I’m rather interested in the fact that none of you seem to want to debate. Interested, and maybe even a little disappointed.”

The students looked worried. They had already disappointed the professor. One of the Haleys put down her pen; another started frantically taking notes.

Andy walked the perimeter of the room. “I asked you if everybody would agree to the statement that people who don’t agree with Darwin are wrong.”

The class eyed one another, knowing they were being set up and resenting it already.

“Nobody said they would disagree with Darwin, and ordinarily this would make me happy. However, there are thirteen of you in this classroom, and twelve of you seem to agree with what I wrote on the board. But it is statistically radically unlikely that thirteen Americans in the year 2011—even twelve college students, even twelve thoughtful young people like yourselves—it is statistically very unlikely that each one of you accepts Darwinian evolution as the fundamental explanation for everything in the universe, from the way life expanded to fill every niche of habitable space on the planet to perhaps, as physicists are now proving, the universe itself.”

A few of the students resumed note taking. A few others just looked annoyed. “Guys, Darwinian evolution explains everything about us,” Andy said. “Everything.”

He took a second to let this sink in.

“So what that means, of course, is that we do not need a supernatural explanation for life. We don’t need God, or gods, or four turtles carrying the planet on their shells. We don’t need the myths of religion. Americans, as a rule, don’t appreciate this line of thinking. And your accents and presentation tell me that all of you are Americans. And yet each one of you agrees with this fundamental truth—that natural selection, not God, is responsible for the diversity of life on the planet. At least, that seems to be what you’re telling me.”

Now the students checked one another out to see who would crack first. After twenty seconds, nobody did.

“But I would imagine that deep down,” Andy said, “at least some of you think that although maybe God didn’t separate the land from the waters, specifically, he probably got this whole ball rolling, somehow, in a sort of deist sense. Or maybe you hold some kind of Bible-as-metaphor opinion that God might have taken more than seven days to do it, but still he had some hand in fashioning the lion, the lamb, etcetera. Am I right?”