Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story three. Lord Bob and Sir Dick

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

 

Bob and Dick are two British students who are wildly enthusiastic about science, especially natural history. Bob puts down Dick for his failure to understand nature—especially evolution—as well as Bob does. They form a secret club—which meets in an old shed at Charles Darwin’s childhood home in Shrewsbury—in which they become Lord Bob and Sir Dick (based, the author says, on Lord Bob May and Sir Richard Dawkins, both leaders in evolutionary science). They find a bottle of flammable chemical in the shed.

Into this intellectual competition comes mate competition in the form of Betsy, a red-haired Irish girl who becomes Lady Elizabeth in the club. That is, as an evolutionary scientist like Rice would explain, natural selection and sexual selection are both at work. Bob is prevailing to gain Betsy’s interest, especially after he discovers them making love in the shed. As Dick, crazed by lust, considers what he might do, he quietly removes the stopper from the chemical bottle. A fire, caused by a Nazi bomb, makes the decision for him.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story two. Fish Fry

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

Dr. Fishbein is a creationist who runs a Creationist Evidences museum, to which homeschool fundamentalist moms bring their piles of children. The museum is not well-funded, but a rich Christian investor has come to visit his museum. Fishbein proposes a whole new, and lavish, museum which the investor funds. Fishbein has a particular problem with the evolutionary assertion that amphibians evolved from fishes, and that fossils intermediate between the two have been discovered.

The new museum site is a swamp that turns out to be a remnant from what most scientists (but not those who believe in the Flood of Noah) consider to be hundreds of millions of years old. While planning a big fish fry to dedicate the new building, he discovers something that lives in the swamp that discombobulates his whole belief system. What is it? Nobody ever finds out, because the people who come to the “fish” fry eat the evidence.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story one.

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

             What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

Every writer who deals with evolution should have a short story titled The Descent of Man, which is the title of Darwin’s famous book specifically about human evolution. This was the first story in the collection by the artist formerly known as T. Coraghessan Boyle.

Everyone has heard about the combat between creationists and evolutionary scientists. Many people vaguely sympathize with one or the other, but may also think, what difference does it make?

And Rice does not use this story as a way of attacking your beliefs, one way or the other. Even if he did, this story would probably not change your mind. Instead, he uses the story as an opportunity to look empathetically into the lives of a young fundamentalist woman (Naomi) and a young man (Hunter). Naomi’s extreme fundamentalist viewpoint really bothers, but also fascinates, Hunter. She even uses scripture to “prove” that women have one more rib than men, because God made Eve out of Adam’s rib. (Even if this were true, why would the missing rib have been transmitted genetically through all of human history?) This belief is surprisingly common even among educators.

But it is not just Naomi’s beliefs that puzzle him. Hunter also finds her attractive, something he tries to resist. Naomi keeps reality out of her mind by constantly muttering prayers under her breath. She refuses to make friends when she goes to the big university because she is convinced they are all out to destroy her faith. But she is amazed to discover that Hunter treats her with serious respect. When he proposes that she subject her belief to experimental confirmation—by counting ribs on male bodies—she finds herself trapped by honesty; she has to say yes. She has thereby allowed Hunter into an intimacy of friendship. Hunter also discombobulates her beliefs about non-believers when he shows totally unnecessary kindness to her.

Naomi also knows that small religious groups like hers have genetic mutations show up frequently in their bodies, not just because the professor said so, but based on the people she knows in her church.

When Naomi discovers that the male students in the sample have the same number of ribs as she, Hunter makes an astonishing discovery by working his way into her clothes. What is it? Let’s just say that this is the explanation for the title of the book.