I started to pack up, preparing to exit the room, when I noticed the students in a huddle having a hushed discussion. Pete seemed to be taking the lead. He stuck his head up from the group and stated, “Don’t leave yet, Doc.” He put his head down into the huddle again. I stopped what I was doing, wondering what’s up.
Shortly, the huddle broke up and Pete addressed me. “Doc, do you have any specific plans for this next hour?”
“No, nothing in particular. I’m meeting with Father Flanagan, but that’s not until noon for lunch.”
“Good,” he replied. “We want to do another class session.”
“Really?” I’m taken aback.
“None of us have any classes this period; and all of us want to continue the session.”
“All of you?” I’m astounded and flabbergasted.
“Even Jude?”
Jude stepped forward stating, “I’ve read the Art of War by Sun Tzu. His premise is that in military strategy one must understand ones enemy’s philosophy and tactics better than the enemy does himself in order to defeat him.”
“Well, Jude, I never considered myself and Christianity your enemy. But let me warn you, one of our tactics is to win over your heart and soul from the dark side.”
Matt, our adept sci-fi wiz, is enthralled with this. “Oh, way cool. The Matrix is the Dark Side versus Christianity, the Light. Is Mother Gaia the Death Star or should I say, Star-lette?” He laughed at his own joke.
The class booed Matt, and fake hissed at him while also laughing along with him.
“Actually, Matt, that’s not a bad analogy. Okay then, we’ll continue.”
Maggie raised her hand. I nodded in her direction.
Maggie looked at me, but then turned to address the class as a whole. “Just so we are all on the same page,” she said, pausing momentarily to look at me, “if I’m … we are to understand this Noah’s Flood thing, you are saying that the Flood buried all the animals and plants that were on the earth, many of which fossilized. Is that correct?”
“Correct,” I looked at Maggie, while speaking to all the students. “With the exception being those animals on the ark with Noah. That occurred about sixteen hundred years after God created Adam and Eve, or about forty-four hundred years ago.”
Jim finally grasped the precept and stated, “Therefore, if the Deluge in Genesis truly happened, all the fossil layers represent death after Adam, and Moses and the Bible are … a … vindicated!”
Nate added, “But if the fossil layers, which represent dead things occurred millions of years ago, before man or Adam evolved, then the Bible is … a … Barbra Streisand from the get-go,” he said looking at Jude. “So why believe the rest of the book?”
“So, if I got this straight,” Jim said, thinking out loud, “those priests and theologians, who tell us we can believe the Bible together with the millions of years, don’t know what the H-E double hockey stick they are talking about.”
“And my former minister as well,” Maggie added.
“Now I understand why my dad and mom barely practiced Judaism,” Matt exclaimed, “with the exception of the tradition of the High Holy Days and Hanukkah. I know that my parents believe in ‘millions of years,’ my dad has told me as much. That’s the reason why they felt Moses, Genesis, and the Flood were all bunk,” Matt stated contritely as he reflected back on his childhood.
Matt was still looking down at his desk and continues to reminisce. “My parents had a ‘do your own thing’ philosophy with an open marriage, which ended in divorce. I now understand why.”
The class was silent. The wheels were turning in their heads, and I sensed they were taking a decisive introspective and contemplative turn in their thought processes. Wanting to bring Matt out of his doldrums, I teased him a bit. “So what was it you were saying on that first day of class about only wanting to memorize books and notes?”
“Huh?” Matt grunted still in deep thought. “Oh yeah, this is much more fun using your brains.” The stillness broken, several of the students around him started laughing.
“At the rate you guys are going, ICC will need to confer PhD’s and D. Div. degrees on all of you.”
Claudia raised her hand. “Dr. Lucci, I would like you to explain more about those layers of the geologic column from the viewpoint of the Flood, and how life was buried.”
“As most of you surmised from Claudia’s original observation, a world-wide flood would have covered the lowest and deepest animals and plants first—the sea life. That’s why it’s found in the bottom-most layers.”
“Evolution says,” Juan correctly determined, “that the next animals to evolve upward from those invertebrates of Pete’s were the vertebrate fishes.”
“Okay, Juan, can you give me an example of one, just one in-between animal found in the fossil layer—or alive, for that matter— that is transitioning or halfway evolving from an invertebrate to a vertebrate?”
Juan and the class remained silent.
“I see you’ve drawn a blank. How about between fish and amphibian?”
Silence.
“Amphibian to reptile?”
Silence.
“Reptile to bird? Bird to Mammal?”
Jude raised his hand. “What about archaeopteryx? The reptile becoming a bird?”