Gone, just like that: 200 years of evolutionary theory!
SYNOPSIS: In the first panel Chick stereotype fat bearded and balding University lecturer asks his students Sunday-School fashion: "How many of you believe in evolution?" (Yeah, right, that’s what happens at the start of every university lecture...) Of course, to a man (and woman) they all leap to their feet and chorus: "We do sir!!!"
Ah well, not quite all. One lone clean-cut lad (and oddly, he’s blonde which is unusual for a Chick hero), humbly ventures to disagree. Prof’s first thundering reaction is to throw him out of the class, but then he foolishly relents and sneeringly allows the boy to have his say.
Of course in Chick’s inimitable salvation-fantasy-for-losers-who’ve-got-nothing-better-to-do-than-hand-out-ridiculous-religious-comics-style ;-), the lad proceeds to make mincemeat out of Prof’s cherished theories until he is finally forced to resign in despair. The students then all mill around the lad begging for guidance on how they can be saved. Warm fuzzies all round....
That caption at the bottom is an afterthought! It wasn't there on earlier versions of this comic! So what the hell does it mean now?!!
ONLY IN THE CHICK UNIVERSE...Naturally, what the lad says about evolution is the usual heady mixture of complete rubbish, misapplied and outdated science, and meaningless drivel, so beloved of Creationists. (Mind you, if the only facts that support the notion of evolution were those that Chick’s lecturer presented to "prove" it, I probably wouldn’t believe it either! However, any resemblance between a real scientist and the Chick version has got to be an oversight...)
Towards the end, (and most people would wonder to God knows what point), the lad then proceeds to demolish the notion of the "Gluon" subatomic particle (essentially a "useful fiction" devised by Physicists to help them understand the mysterious Nuclear Strong Force, which is what stops the entire universe from exploding into a cloud of gamma-ray-hot plasma).
It’s true that we don’t really know what the Strong Force is, but that hasn’t stopped us working out how to build hydrogen bombs and other things that wouldn’t work without whatever-it-is-gluons-really-are. It also gave us an explanation of what makes the sun shine, something that sorely puzzled 19th century Physicists! (See below).
Just to gild the lily still further, the description of the atom the lad gives is essentially the "Bohr Model", which is that basis for the popular notion of what atoms look like, and is for a fact still widely used as the symbol for atomic energy, but this was discarded by physicists early in the 20th century! The fact is, atoms don’t look anything like a miniature solar system, and visualizing what they do look like is well beyond the capabilities of the average layman, Creationist or otherwise! (Indeed, in the non-Chick universe, a professor of Biology or Palaeontology would be more likely to respond that nuclear physics is not his field).
But all that to the side, precisely what has all this got to do with the subject of evolutionary theory?
I thought you’d never ask! This is a genuine Creationist "living fossil".
The thing is, the main thrust of a lot of Creationist propaganda is set towards proving that the world is only 6,000 years old, as outlined in Genesis. Unfortunately, in the 19th century scientists began amassing an embarrassingly large amount of hard evidence that the earth is a lot older than that, and among the many puzzles that emerged from this was where the sun got its energy from. An inert but white-hot ball of gas would have cooled down to blackness in a very short space of time, and no known chemical or mechanical process could generate such a stupendous amount of energy for much longer.
A clue came in 1919 when Sir Ernest Rutherford demonstrated that all atoms were at least partially made from hydrogen nuclei, which were originally called "H particles" and later renamed Protons. It was soon realized (as the Christian lad pointed out) that something extraordinary must be going on in the nucleus of most atoms, since the electrostatic repulsion between the positive charges of two or more protons in such close proximity would be enormous.
But (as out illustrious lad seems to have overlooked) the universe does not seem inclined to go bang so something obviously overrides this repulsion.
And there at last was an answer to the sun puzzle. In the 1920s a theory was devised that, under the enormous pressure of the weight of all the sun’s hydrogen, protons are forced into close proximity to form helium, and the defeated repulsive energy is dissipated as heat. At the time they didn’t know about neutrons, but it was later realized that when two protons are forced into close proximity one of them spits out its positive charge in the form of a positron, becoming a neutron in the process. The positron (which is the antimatter version of the electron) immediately annihilates the leftover electron, which is where most of the energy comes from.
This is the principle of hydrogen fusion, and was naturally roundly condemned by creationists, as was anything else that cast doubt on the veracity of Genesis!
Unfortunately, in 1952 the US exploded the first working "hydrogen bomb" at Bikini Atoll, which made it a trifle difficult for Creationists to argue about the "theory" of hydrogen fusion anymore, so that argument fell into disuse. But obviously not in the Chick universe...
ARTWORK: So-so. The drawing is a bit poor, but it carries the "story" well enough I guess. The usual computer typeset lettering.
MEMORABLE POINTS: In the opening panel behind the lecturer is a portrait of a gorilla holding a banana, titled "Our Father".
The instant the lad mentions the Bible, Prof thunders that he could have him "jailed for that!" What university is this?!
WEAK POINTS: Other than that, the strip is more annoying than memorable. Apart from being patently ridiculous, the story doesn’t really go anywhere. Just more wishful-thinkers' "evangelist porn":-)
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