The Science Club

At Whit's End, Jill Segler is stuck. Mr. Whittaker has asked her to write a newspaper article exposing ideas that kids are taught as fact when they are really only theories, starting with the theory of evolution, but Jill can't find an angle - a real story to make the article interesting. Right on cue, Nelson Swanson bursts in with news: he is the new president of the school science club. Since the club members decided elections are just popularity contests, they take turns being president, and for his month Nelson must give a presentation on a topic chosen by the club's sponsor, Mrs. Galbreath. The topic is Charles Darwin and evolution, and Nelson admits he is tired of hearing the same old things about it. Jill realizes Nelson's project might be her story, and Whit offers a risky idea to get the club talking.

In the Kids' Radio studio, Whit plays clips from an unfinished radio mystery that Connie wrote. In the first clip, a man growls, "You get him in position, and I'll take him out," and both kids conclude he is a hitman planning a murder. A longer clip reveals the men are talking about a championship football game, so the kids decide the plan is to injure the other team's star quarterback. Then Whit suggests the character really means to take the quarterback out for a meal and offer him a deal to throw the game - but since the drama isn't finished, the kids will just have to take his word for it. That, Whit explains, is the theory of evolution: Darwin and his followers have taken pieces of a bigger story and drawn conclusions, filling in the missing pieces with educated guesses. Believers in creation can go back to the Bible to check the whole story, but evolutionists can only go back to the same incomplete pieces. And since the radio drama clearly needed a writer to exist at all, Whit points out that even some scientists who don't believe in God now argue that the complicated world must have begun with an intelligent designer. Nelson is thrilled, though Whit warns them both that questioning evolution can upset people. Nelson isn't worried - his club's motto is "follow the truth wherever it leads."

The warning proves right. When Nelson raises these questions at the science club, the members erupt, and Mrs. Galbreath dismisses the whole thing as a joke, declaring that science and religion don't mix. Privately, she accuses Nelson of turning his presidency into a pulpit. Nelson protests that he never mentioned God, only an intelligent designer, but she snaps that "intelligent designer is code for God." When he points out that the fossil record has huge gaps, she refuses to argue and tells him to either approach his presidency with a scientific mind or reconsider his position - in other words, quit.

Jill is furious and ready to blast Mrs. Galbreath in her article, but Nelson stops her. The science club is one of the few places he has friends and feels he belongs, and he wonders whether the world's great minds might simply be right. Jill understands more than he knows: when the Odyssey Tribune wouldn't let her tell the truth, she walked away without a fight, and she has regretted it ever since. Sometimes, she tells him, you have to hang in there and fight for the truth. Whit offers Nelson a third option between keeping quiet and quitting: give his presentation anyway, with the offer that he will resign if it doesn't make the club think twice. Then Whit asks a curious question - has he ever told Nelson about the Acme Rainbow Marble Company?

On presentation night the room is packed. Nervous but determined, Nelson produces a jar that no one can see into and spins a tale: he has paid the Acme Rainbow Marble Company to make marbles in every color of the rainbow. As club members draw marbles one by one, they call out yellow, red, orange, green, purple - but never blue. No matter how many times the company promises the blue marbles are in there, none ever turn up, and eventually any sensible customer would stop believing the promise. That, Nelson says, is how he feels about evolution: scientists talk about the fossil record as if it proves the theory, but the most important fossils - the ones linking the biggest changes from one stage to another - have never been found, no matter how long scientists promise they will turn up. When Mrs. Galbreath calls this mere opinion, Nelson presses her on where everything began. She concedes it wasn't random and suggests an alien civilization may have triggered the original event - aliens, but not God. Nelson quietly observes that the club apparently follows the truth wherever it leads, "as long as it doesn't lead to God." Stung, Mrs. Galbreath declares he shouldn't lead the club, so Nelson invokes club rules and calls for a member vote on whether he should resign. She sends him out of the room with a parting shot: "And take your marbles with you."

Back at Whit's End, the news is happy - every member voted to keep Nelson, and Mrs. Galbreath walked out without a word. Whit reflects that scientists once understood that the marvels of nature pointed back to God, but in trying to explain the world's beauty, many have removed the very thing that gives it meaning. Jill finally has her article and knows exactly how it will end: with the words of Psalm 19, which declares that the heavens proclaim the glory of God and the skies show His handiwork.