Or Ten Million Years

The majority of us over a certain age are familiar with the stage play "Inherit the Wind", by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, dramatizing the Scopes trial in Tennessee in the 1920s.  The rest of us remember the movie, a brilliantly cast piece featuring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March and Gene Kelly, with a few cameos by Harry Morgan as the judge, and Dick York as the defendant -- the same Dick York who would become Darrin on the TV show Bewitched.

The actual Scopes trial was, of course, about the right of a high-school teacher to teach evolution in the face of a state law banning the teaching of the concept.  It became a national story as soon as Clarence Darrow materialized to lead the defense, and former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan showed up as a guest prosecutor.

I first saw "Inherit the Wind" as a kid on TV when some local channels would replay the same movie 5-6 times in a row or more.  It was certainly a spellbinding story with, of course, outstanding acting talent.  But more importantly, I kept coming away from seeing it with more faith in the power of God -- so much so that I wondered if the authors had a subtle message in there.

At the end of the movie, the cynical reporter portrayed by Gene Kelly confronts the agnostic Darrow character (Spencer Tracy) mourning the sudden death of prosecutor, and strong Christian, Bryan (Frederic March).  "You're more religious than he was!"  And in truth, he might have been.  Religious enough a movie character to turn me.

In a key scene, the defense attorney (Tracy) calls the prosecutor (March) to the stand as an expert in creationism.  In the course of it, the prosecutor cites his belief that creation had happened around 4,004 BC, "at about nine A.M.", after counsel shows him a rock with a fossil dated at some 10 million years.  In going through the first days of creation, counsel notes that the first day of creation couldn't have been a 24-hour day, since the sun, moon and earth weren't created on the first day.  "Was that Eastern Standard Time?", asks the counsel.  "It can't be daylight savings time, because the sun hadn't been made yet."

"It could have been 25 hours ... or a week ... or a year ... or (waving the rock in the prosecutor's face) ten million years!"

Does it make sense to you that that was the point in my life when I realized that God's powers were ubiquitous enough to handle something like Creation even as understood by science.  That scientific discoveries were the discoveries of what God had indeed done.  And most importantly, that faith was the attribute that allowed us to decide on our own to accept that natural law is indeed His province. 

There is zero contradiction between faith in God and in scientific understanding.  If the Big Bang indeed happened, it happened because it was a plausible way for the universe to be created; that ultimately man would study the universe's origins back to such an event, and come to understand what indeed had happened.

I do believe that Pope John Paul II tried to make that point in the later years of his papacy.  It seemed to get very little ink and, as a non-Catholic, I didn't follow it very much.  But I do recall reading his statement and thinking "Redeemed!".

We study science to our own benefit and betterment.  We study God to our own benefit and betterment.  In church, I thank God for a universe barely explicable, but enough so that honest faith rationalizes the world we see around us.

Explains everything.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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