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This Atheist Teaching Tale by Dr. Eric Maisel is fictional. To comment on it, please drop Dr. Maisel an email at ericmaisel@hotmail.com.
THE MISSING LINK
A young paleontologist, who happened also to be an atheist, had many and sundry religious friends. Knowing that he was both a paleontologist and an atheist, they took great and constant glee in pointing out how the gaps in the fossil record disproved Darwin’s theory of evolution. “Without the missing link,” they chortled, “you have nothing!” Although he had a sensible response to their gleeful accusations, the response was complicated to deliver, not wholly convincing, and typically met with gales of knowing laughter. So usually he made no reply—hardly a satisfying outcome!
Although he knew that the existence of missing link fossils were not required by prevailing evolutionary theory, he did sometimes dream that the perfect fossils had suddenly appeared all at once and answered every question. It was a lovely dream, usually set in a cream-colored desert that was also, as was possible in dreams, a lush savannah full of lions and gazelles. The dig and find were scrupulously recorded in every conceivable way so that no one could doubt that the fossils had been extracted from virgin earth. It was the perfect setting, the perfect dig, and the perfect result. The young paleontologist would smile in his sleep and not feel the slightest twinge of envy that he hadn’t been the lucky—and soon-to-be world famous—paleontologist of record.
One evening he found himself hanging out in a seedy paleontology bar not far from the university. Lost in thought, he sipped his wine and dreamed of fossils that no one had ever seen and the creatures those fossils recorded. A tap on his shoulder startled him. A man he didn’t know, who looked like one of those all-but-dissertation thirty-five-year-old faded graduate students, was breathing in his face.
“May I join you for a second?” the man said.
“Certainly.” The young paleontologist waved him to a chair.
“You come highly recommended,” the man said, sitting down and pulling his chair close. “I’m in sociology. I’ve been studying the worldwide harm done by religions. I’ve spent fifteen years at it. I keep thinking: can’t they be stopped? One day last week a light bulb went on. I had a brainstorm. But I need a paleontologist to pull it off. I asked around—and people recommended you.”
The paleontologist felt a tingle run down his spine. Flattered, intrigued, and excited, he learned forward.
“What’s your idea?” the paleontologist said, his voice lowered.
“You know the missing link thing?” the man said.
“Do I ever!” the paleontologist exclaimed. “I get smacked around with that all the time! And it’s so hard to explain to people that such an idea is not even relevant!”
“Let’s make believe that we found it!” the man whispered. “You will ‘find’ it and I’ll enlist other paleontologists to corroborate the find. Maybe we’ll ‘find’ several missing links at once, like an underground meteor shower! Maybe we can get hundreds of paleontologists in on the gag and have missing links found in every country on every continent! Aren’t you tired of being bludgeoned by the gap argument? Let’s ‘find’ a ton of missing links, all the missing links anybody could want, and then we’ll lock them away like some religious relic and not let anyone else see them. We could pull this off!”
The paleontologist, disappointed at being presented such a ludicrous and unsavory scheme, nevertheless pondered the man’s idea. “Of course, we’d be lying--” he began.
“They lie with their every breath, going on about gods!” the man interrupted. “It’s just tit for tat!”
“More importantly, that’s not the way science operates.”
“Science has to get down off its high horse and fight in the trenches. There’s a war going on!”
The paleontologist bit his lip. “I appreciate your argument and almost don’t disagree,” he said. “Almost.” His head swam. “But I couldn’t do it.” Suddenly his mind cleared. “And you shouldn’t pursue this,” he said. “It’s a bad idea. It’s beneath us.”
“Should I run through a litany of the horrors of religion?”
“Save your breath,” the paleontologist said, turning away. “I’m not interested.”
The man shrugged. “Some paleontologist will join me,” he said, getting up. “Of all the paleontologists in all the paleontologist bars in all the university towns the world over, some paleontologist will join me.”
“I wonder,” the paleontologist replied, turning away from the stranger.
The man’s plan disturbed him. He understood the argument that sometimes you had to fight fire with fire. Sometimes you had to pull off dirty tricks to achieve a righteous outcome. But that truth, while undeniable, was still a souring one. It meant that the battles and wars would never end. It let in everything you wished would one day vanish from the face of the earth. He finished his drink and left the bar in a bad mood.
That night he had bad dreams. Devilish fiends were making false finds in a coal-black landscape, cackling at their tricks, pulling out bones that never were and never could be and parading with them in monstrous dances around bonfires from hell. The paleontologist sat up in bed and shook himself; but as soon as he fell asleep the nightmare returned. It seemed that the man had ruined his beautiful dream of a righteous find.
About two weeks later the young paleontologist was having a drink with a colleague at the seedy paleontologists’ bar.
“Did you fall for that sting?” his colleague asked.
“What sting?”
“That thing that was going on here? That guy from the Freedom from Evolution Foundation, posing as a sociologist? They were trying to see how many paleontologists would be willing to falsify the fossil record!”
“No!” the young paleontologist exclaimed.
“He couldn’t find a single one. Not here, not in any paleontologist bar anywhere. There were some close calls—a fellow in Ann Arbor almost bit, and one in New Haven came this close. But ultimately no one agreed!”
The young paleontologist nodded. After a while, he found himself smiling. Yes, they would always use such tactics; they would fabricate, trick, lie, and scheme. On his side, the side of science, many unsavory activities would also occur: falsified research, unholy marriages with business, and more. But at least this time, in paleontologist bars in university towns everywhere, no paleontologist could be found to falsify the fossil record and provide the world with an unearned missing link.
That night his sweet dream returned. He dreamt that the perfect fossil had appeared and answered every question. It was the same lovely dream, set in a cream-colored desert that was also a lush savannah. The dig and find were scrupulously recorded, so that no one could doubt that the fossil had been extracted from virgin earth. It was the perfect setting, the perfect dig, and the perfect result. He smiled in his sleep; and in the morning he returned to work, a proud and happy paleontologist.
© Eric Maisel, 2008
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