"Welcome to the Christ Vineyard Church, Miss Dinh," Pastor Brown said. He turned to his audience of at least a hundred teenagers. "Miss Dinh is going to tell us about evolution," he told his flock. He sat down.
I reached for the microphone and cleared my throat. I peered through the audience. In the back row, a friend of mine smiled at me. He'd come to support me. "Greetings," I said. "As Pastor Brown has told you, I am here to talk about evolution. I'm going to start by telling you about the theory, and then we'll take questions.
"You all know about genes, DNA, and so forth. You all know that your DNA is similar to-but not identical to-that of your parents. Now, sometimes one generation's DNA will be, on average, different from its parents' generation's DNA in some statistically significant way. For example, one generation could have the genes that tend to make things taller in greater frequency than their parents' generation. This is evolution: the new generation being genetically slightly different from their parents."
I took a breath. "The theory of evolution states that these kinds of changes can add up over many, many generations to produce very dramatic changes. Thus, over a few thousand years, from wolves you can make all the present species of dogs evolve, and over a few million years, all of the present species of mammals can evolve from rodents.
"Natural selection is a mechanism for evolution. It is Darwin's suggestion for how evolution probably happened. The way it works is as follows: animals with genes that let them be more effective tend to leave more offspring. For example, if a given mouse had genes that built better eyes than most members of their species, then that rabbit would be able to see predators better, so it would probably live longer than most of its species, and thus would be able to have more children in its life.
"However, natural selection is a statistical process. There is no guarantee that the rabbit with the best eyes will not catch myxomatosis and die young; it is just that the rabbits with the best eyes are more likely to leave more offspring than most rabbits.
"Thus, the genes for good eyes tend to be more strongly represented in the next generation."
I took a deep breath. Now, at least in speaking to a religious audience, was the key point. "The thing is, evolution is only a theory of biological change. It's a theory that tells how the different species of animals on this planet derived from one original species. But the theory of evolution cannot possibly tell us how that first species got here. It could have arisen from inorganic chemicals, or been created by a fiat miracle by God, or been dropped here by aliens, or any number of other things. The theory of evolution would not care. The only point is that somehow, a species of life, probably bacteria, was on the planet. Evolution then took it from there. But Darwin wrote, in the last paragraph of his book, that God must have created the first organisms."
I turned around and turned on the slide viewer. "Now, here's some evidence for evolution," I said. I showed a picture. "The vertebrate eye. The fact that it works so well is evidence that something must have been going on besides random chance-that some sort of force shaped the eye. However, we do have the blind spot." I showed a picture of a retinal cell. "This is a cell in the vertebrate eye. As you can see, the light-sensitive parts are at the back of the cell, with a bunch of cellular clutter in front of them. The nerves from the eye have to travel across the retina until they finally dive through the retina. This leaves a hole in the cover of photosensitive cells-the blind spot. Now, evolutionarily it makes perfect sense that photosensitive cells would start out backwards and stay backwards; however, it does not make sense for someone to design them that way."
I turned and held out my arms. "Second evidence. There is hair on my arms. It's not enough to keep me warm, or to do anything else useful. It does make sense, evolutionarily, as a vestige left over from our nonhuman past.
"Third evidence." I showed a slide of a dolphin. "Dolphins spend all of their time in the water. They die if taken out of it. They would be a lot better off if they could just breathe water, and not breathe air. Yet they have lungs and no gills. This makes a lot of sense if you assume that they evolved from air-breathing organisms, but no sense at all if you assume that they were created specifically for the water."
I turned off the slide viewer. "Any questions?"
One girl stood and shouted out, "You claim we evolved frommonkeys? Then why are the monkeys still alive? Not one evolutionist can explain that!" She sat down, giggling.
Another girl raised her hand. I called on her. "Hello, my name is Gina, and I was wondering why we don't see more fossils of animals in between other animals."
I smiled. "A very good question," I said. "We don't see many transitions between species for a simple reason. According to modern evolutionary theory, a new species of animals arises very quickly in a small group. A small number of animals get isolated-on an island, on the other side of a canyon, or whatever-from most of their species, and interbreed with each other. Over a relatively short period of time, they then form a new species.
"We do see transitional species between larger groups. For example, we have the Archaeopteryx. It has some characteristics of a bird, such as feathers and wings-but many characteristics of a reptile, such as a bony tail and teeth. There are many, many fossils of transitional species between modern human beings and our more apelike ancestors.
"Also, you have to remember that fossilization is very rare. We have very few fossils of many species. Some species simply didn't get fossilized. So it's not unreasonable to think that some species are missing from the fossil record entirely."
"Hey, are you afraid of my question?" the first girl yelled.
I turned to her. "What is your name?" I asked.
"Beth."
"Well, Beth, in fact I wasn't. I had two reasons for answering Gina's question first. The first is that hers was a better question. Darwin actually worried about that. However, evolution has absolutely no trouble explaining the presence of monkeys. It's very simple, actually: evolution works by new species breaking off from older species. There is absolutely nothing that prevents a single older species from producing two descendant species.
"Human beings did not evolve from monkeys. They evolved from a single species that produced two descendant species, one of which led to humans, the other to monkeys.
"The second reason was the way you asked your question. Quite frankly, you were rude. First, I could answer your question, which makes your comments about how 'not one evolutionist' can answer you just cheap insults. Second, I do not like being laughed at. Asking a question is one thing. Using a question as a way to insult whoever you're questioning is quite another." I looked at the audience. "Any more questions?"
Another girl raised her hand. I pointed at her. "Why do goldfish have as many genes as us? Why are they as complicated as us?"
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Amy," she replied.
"Amy," I said, "why shouldn't they? The ancestors of goldfish have been on this planet just as long as we have. Their ancestors have had just as much time to evolve complexity as human ancestors have.
"The idea that human beings are somehow better than other animals is a very old theological idea. The theory of evolution does not claim that human beings are perfect, nor that they are better than other animals. We are not biologically superior. We did not evolve from currently living animals. We are not biologically better than them. We simply happen to be smarter. I value intelligence enough to think that makes a person more important than an animal. But I don't and can't base that judgement on evolution." I paused and looked at the audience. Another girl raised her hand. "Yes?" I said.
She stood up. "Hello, my name is Renee. The Bible says that sin entered the world when Adam and Eve fell from the Garden. Could that explain some of the evidence you showed?"
I smiled. "The idea that we are fallen from an initial perfection. That idea can explain some of the imperfections in nature, but not all of them. Remember the dolphins? Their lungs are not only as good as yours, but are beautifully adapted to life underwater; however, they would be better off with gills. You cannot argue that lungs could develop from an initial 'perfect' gilled state by simply degrading. Conversely, you cannot argue that dolphins developed their wonderfully hydrodynamic bodies by degeneration from an original land-bound creature. So you have to postulate some fairly major evolution, or that God originally created dolphins with lungs and not gills.
"There are other evidences of this sort: things that work too well to be the product of degeneration, but which could very easily be better. Things that could not be degenerate versions of an originally perfect state, but are rather variations on a flawed design." I paused. "Any more questions?"
The room was silent.
I bowed, then left. I walked to my car, where my friend was waiting.
"I thought it went quite well," he said.
"Me too," I replied. "I don't think I converted anybody, but I may have gotten some of them thinking-and that, after all, is what we're trying to accomplish here."
"It would be easier to just tell someone the truth by divine revelation," he said.
"True, but that would be betraying the mind. God set up evolution and waited for four billion years for something intelligent enough to comprehend the least part of him to evolve. Now that it has, it would be betraying that intelligence if we didn't force them to use it to gain knowledge."
"I know," he said. "But it seems so slow."
"What's your rush?" I asked. "You've got time. You're dead."
And I drove off, with the spirit of Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of knowledge, sitting in the seat next to me.