Skepticism

As her 5th period filed out that day, Brandon was at the back, as he always was, letting everyone else go ahead of him.

"I listened to your podcast again," his teacher quietly said with a smile.

"And?" he asked, stopping to smile back and wait for a reply.

"Honestly? I enjoyed it."

Brandon laughed politely, leaned down a little then quietly said, "Don't let the administration know that."

Monica was surprised that his comment surprised her. He was clearly a very bright young man, and that was something he would almost certainly know intuitively. Then again, it's quite possible the principal had asked him and/or his parents to come in and discuss their 'lighting rod of a son' in her rather blunt way of doing business.

Whatever the reason, it made her laugh, too.

"You have a...unique take on things," she told him, still smiling.

"I believe that means you don't necessarily agree me with," Brandon replied, still smiling at her.

"Not on everything," she said, hoping he wouldn't ask for specifics.

"I'm just honored to have you listening, and if you ever hear me say something you'd like to discuss, please let me know."

As she stood there looking up at the 6'2" senior, Monica realized this was the first student she'd ever spoken to who made her feel like he was the teacher. Maybe it was just the fact that he had a podcast with a modest-but-growing following, but maybe it was something more. What that might be she couldn't say, but it was a distinct possibility.

"Okay. I'll do that," she said very cheerfully as Brandon mentioned he needed to get going.

"Can't have any tardies on my record, right?" he told her.

It took her a second or two to realize he'd winked at her before turning around this time, and it took a few more seconds for her to understand why her body had reacted the way it had.

As before, her next period class began entering the room, and that was all she needed to shake off the very unusual set of feelings she experienced almost every time she spoke with him.

Later that week, Brandon found his mom after looking around the house for her and said, "Mom! Guess what?"

"You know I can never guess," she replied. "Just tell me."

"I have a sponsor. For my podcast."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. Now that I'm over 18, they're paying me for advertising."

"Honey! That's wonderful!" she told him as she gave her son a hug before asking who it was and how much he was talking about it.

He answered her questions then said, "I don't suppose Dad'll be quite so happy about it, though."

"Your father is still really hurt by all this, honey. I have to admit I don't understand, either, but I'm finally able to accept it, and nothing—and I mean nothing—will ever change the way I feel about you. You know that, right?"

"I love you, too, Mom," he told her as he hugged her again.

While Brandon had vowed to himself he would never again blindly accept ANYTHING he was told, he couldn't help but hurt for his parents who'd not only lost their baby girl, but who'd raised him with the expectation of one day being a missionary for what they called 'The Church'.

Not only would he not be going on a mission, he knew they believed he wouldn't be with them in heaven, a place 'The Church' called 'the celestial kingdom' where faithful Mormon men and their wives progressed until attaining godhood. From there, they would 'create worlds without end' though the 'power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood' and further create 'spirit children' who would then be born to populate those worlds with people just as our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (or...Mothers) had done on this earth.

For Brandon, it was all manmade nonsense. And not just Mormonism. ALL religions were creations of man, and while he couldn't rule out the possibility of God (or some god) existing, he just couldn't buy into it anymore. But to his mom and dad, all of that was fact. It wasn't just a belief, it was reality, and he knew there was nothing he could say to convince them otherwise. Of course, convincing them wasn't his goal. He had no issue with people disagreeing with him, and like everything else, he couldn't demonstrably prove they were wrong.

He recalled how his father had once asked him a year or so ago, "What would it take to convince you again The Church is true, son?"

Brandon thought for a moment then said, "I don't know, Dad. But I DO know that an all-knowing God would know what it would take, and that He would be capable of presenting whatever 'it' is in a way that would convince me."

Trying to ease the sting, he smiled and said, "And if He did that, I'd be back onboard in a heartbeat."

He still clearly remembered seeing his father tear up for the first time since watching his daughter take her last breath. He'd turned away as soon as it happened, but Brandon saw it, and he knew the reason why was because of him.

It had hurt him deeply, but he could no more turn his back on this new way of viewing the world than his father could abandon a lifetime of teaching and training; things Brandon now privately considered to be indoctrination.

Brandon was convinced that had his father been born in Saudi Arabia he would be a Muslim. Had he been born in Mumbai he'd likely be a Hindu. And had he been born in Alabama, he'd quite possibly be a Southern Baptist. But he'd been born and raised in Utah, and he was a Mormon, through and through.

With all that in mind, he thought that if his mom wanted to share the information he'd just told her about the sponsor with her future, God-to-be husband, that was fine. If not, that too, was okay with him.

In a kind of deja vu moment later that same week, the day after his podcast, Ms. Traxler again told him she'd listened in.

"I've heard the term 'logical fallacy' before, but I have to admit I really didn't know how many there were or even what they were," she told Brandon who smiled.

"You're not alone, Ms. Traxler. In a nation where people can't name the oceans or tell you how many branches of government there are, it's not at all surprising. Then again, logical fallacies are a fairly arcane concept most people will never once think about. And even if they never do, it won't have any impact on their lives, right?"

Monica told him she agreed then said, "The 'argument from ignorance fallacy' was the one I enjoyed the most. You know, where someone who doesn't know the reason why something happens just plugs in an answer that makes sense to them without evidence for it."

"Ah, yes. 'The butler did it'!" he Brandon said, suddenly animated.

His enthusiasm proved infectious as his teacher laughed and said, "Exactly! He's spotted leaving the mansion with a bloody knife, and 'everybody just know's Butler's do it', so...who else could it be?"

"Then you were paying attention! Nice!" Brandon replied with another smile before adding to her words. "So yes, he was seen with the knife, but only he knows that's because he found the owner dead with the bloody knife laying next to him. He panicked, picked it up, and ran out of the mansion to get help when this other person saw him and assumed he did it. Because—who else could have done it, right?"

He waited for a second then became much quieter and almost sad as he said, "This is the kind of thing my parents say about my lack of faith in our church's teachings or religion in general."

You know, 'How else could all this—meaning the beauty of nature—have gotten there if God didn't do it'? They can't imagine any other alternative so they plug God in, and in so doing, commit the logical fallacy called 'the argument from ignorance'. Of course, they'd never admit that. They'd claim their beliefs are well-grounded, and you'd just go 'round and 'round with them until one of you got tired of it and gave up."

Monica couldn't help but wonder if there was tension in the Holtz house, but that wasn't her business. Rather than ask about it, she only smiled at him before commenting.

"You really make me think, Brandon," she told him as she narrowed her eyes but also smiled.

"Well, you do the same in class, Ms. Traxler," he replied before winking at her again.

This time, the feeling his non-romantic gesture caused was unmistakable, and just having it scared her as much as anything ever had. The reason why was obvious. Not once had she ever had any feeling whatsoever for any student, and the thought of that ever happening had always made her sick.

As she watched Brandon walk away, she thought, "Or at least it used to."

Over the next month, Monica found herself not only looking forward to Brandon's podcasts, but they were becoming the highlight of her week. As she settled in to watch and listen to one in early October, she laughed out loud as she told herself she had to get out more.

That was true, but after having been deeply hurt by someone less than a year ago, she was more than a little gun-shy about dating. Her friends tried setting her up with single friends of theirs, but she'd only been out a half-dozen times since learning her former boyfriend was also 'dating' another woman on the side. As in—screwing her brains out—'dating'.

At 30, she was in no hurry to find a husband, but she'd really believed he was Mr. Right. And had he been able to 'keep it in his pants', it was quite likely she'd have said 'yes' to a proposal. But he hadn't so there'd been no such offer of marriage, and now she was effectively back at Square One and not really even looking. That didn't mean she wasn't still interested in marriage, it just meant she was being extremely cautious.

And with that, she settled in to see what her favorite new student would be talking about.

As a science teacher, Monica's ears perked up when she heard Brandon announce the topic of this week's podcast.

"This time we're going to be talking about the origin of life on earth by purely random, materialistic chance. Specifically, we'll be exploring the probability of a single protein of 150 amino acids, a very modest-sized protein, arising by chance alone on the pre-biotic earth. I hope you paid in attention in math class, because we're going to be talking about some really big numbers. Not millions, billions, trillions, or even quadrillions. We're going to be talking about numbers so large it'll blow your minds. So, after a quick word from our sponsor, I'll be back with more."

"Sponsor?" Monica said when another advertisement came on. "Oh, good grief!"

An hour later, she was deep in thought and on the internet trying to verify or refute what she'd just heard. Brandon quoted a microbiologist who'd spent 14 years at Cambridge University in England studying genetics. The PhD's claim was that to get just one functional protein chain of that very modest length to correctly fold in order to perform a biological function was 1 in a hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

But even if that somehow happened, many other such proteins would be needed to service a simple, prokaryotic cell—one without a cell membrane. Making matters worse, all of those proteins, plus the information needed for DNA, etc., so the cell could self-replicate, would have to come together at the same time without something in the pre-biotic soup destroying it before it could. That cell would then have to survive in a very hostile environment AND reproduce with self-replicating offspring continuing to reproduce, etc.

Were this true, that meant that even in the 4.6 billion years since the earth formed, there wasn't nearly enough time for even ONE such protein to ever form, let alone all of the other stuff needed to get life going. And even if that did somehow happen by natural means, one still had to account for the diversity of life by natural means after life got going.

The first topic was, of course, called 'abiogenesis', the term used for how life began by purely random, materialistic processes. It was sometimes referred to as 'chemical evolution' because inorganic matter had to somehow become organic matter, and then become not just life, but self-replicating life.

Biological evolution could only begin AFTER the first life appeared so that Natural Selection would have something to act on, so it couldn't be used to explain the origin of life on earth.

So what was Brandon saying? He'd clearly said many times he didn't believe in God, and yet he was now arguing that nature, acting alone on the 'pre-biotic soup' couldn't do—even in 4.6 billion years—what would have to have been done in a few hundred thousand years in order for more complex life to evolve leaving some four billion years for it to evolve. At least that's what she remembered being taught about how long the first, simple life form had been on earth in some undersea volcanic vent or in Darwin's 'warm little pond'. After that, Natural Selection could start doing its work, and that would then account for all of the various forms of life on earth.

Monica was certain she was still missing something in the big picture in addition to all of her still-unanswered questions—a list that kept growing with each passing week.

There had to be very easy, very simple answers to these seemingly complex issues raised by a high school student, no less. But here she was, a college graduate with a degree in science, and she didn't have those answers; even after hours of reading and research online and going through old textbooks.

More determined than ever to find the answers, she spent several hours reading and researching again that evening before becoming so frustrated she temporarily gave up and went to bed. Alone. Like she did every night.

The next day, and the entire next week, Monica fought off the temptation to ask Brandon for more information. She knew she shouldn't be embarrassed about not knowing some particular thing, but this wasn't just 'some thing'. This was her area of expertise, and she had no desire to let one of her students know she was really foundering.

The best she'd come up with in terms of answers were what Brandon called 'just so stories' in which proponents of evolution or origin of life researchers offered logically-possible solutions to such questions without actually explaining the details. And, just as he'd said, the examples were often the human eye or various diagrams of horses or people with the arrows Brandon mentioned and an appeal to 'long periods of time'.

In spite of her growing frustrations, she laughed when she recalled Brandon also referring to these kind of explanations as 'science of the gaps' answers.

It was an obvious play on words to 'God of the gaps' arguments where people plugged God into any gap of scientific knowledge. When the gap narrowed, they just inserted Him into smaller gaps until they were filled and so on. Specifically, that's what he claimed biologists did when using the 'bait and switch' tactic he'd explained several times already.

Two weeks later, she was so utterly confused it was keeping her up at nights.

How could Brandon be an atheist or an agnostic and sound like he was supporting an argument used by proponents of Intelligent Design? How could he simultaneously reject the neo-Darwinian synthesis and reject the notion of God having created life on earth?

Weren't they either-or questions? And wasn't this whole 'Intelligent Design' thing just another term for creationism? And then she'd recall his 'third way' comment and threw her hands up in exasperation.

And the number of advertisements were increasing and annoying her to no end—just like the podcasts themselves. And yet she couldn't wait to hear the next one no matter how exasperated she felt by the time it was over.

What she didn't know was that another retailer had contacted Brandon and agreed to sponsor him, too. This meant that he was now making a fair amount of money on his podcasts. With just one sponsor, he'd been earning a rather modest amount, but now with this second, more-generous sponsor, he was making a decent amount of 'cheddar' as kids his age often called legal tender.

"I don't suppose you'll be paying tithing on your earnings," Brandon's father said when he learned about the increased income.

"No, but I will be giving 10% to charity, Dad," his son said respectfully.

"That's nice, but it's not the same thing," his father told him.

Making sure not to roll his eyes or show any sign of disrespect, Brandon waited for his father to finish speaking and stand up. Only then did he give serious thought to something he knew was possible.

The truth was, Brandon would have enough credits to graduate at the end of the first semester. And with the money he was now making, he would be able to afford a place of his own, or at least find a roommate with whom he could share expenses. With just one additional sponsor, he would be earning more than enough to afford a place of his own, and were this thing to get even bigger, he'd be able to support a family, something that he'd been raised to believe was the most important thing in life.

He still believed that, he just believed it for very different reasons these days. In spite of his physical appearance, he was a very-marriage minded young man, and was still a virgin by choice. As far as that went, he was in no hurry to lose it, and somewhere deep inside him, he wanted to save that for the woman he would one day fall in love with and marry for life. Not for 'time and all eternity', but divorce was still something he strongly opposed except in cases where their was abuse or some other very serious problem.

Whatever good feelings he was having about his future plans, they stopped when he headed to the kitchen for something to eat and heard his parents talking.

"I don't know. I've always voted Republican, but this president is...vile. I didn't vote in the last election, and I don't think I'll be able to in 2020."

"Oh, I know," he heard his mom say. "I feel the same way. He's getting a lot of things done I really like, but he's such a...bully."

It was an obvious reference to the current president after slamming the former president for eight long years. Politics was yet another roiling cauldron of controversy; but one that didn't interest Brandon at all. He had too many other irons in the fire, so he turned around and went to his bedroom rather than let himself get sucked into another no-win Q&A session with his dad.

Once he was there, he started prepping for his next podcast and smiled as all of his other cares melted away.

As money started piling up in Brandon's bank account, the biggest surprise in his young 'broadcasting career' happened in November when the man who'd spent 14 years at Cambridge called into his show. He, like many other proponents of Intelligent Design, lived in the Seattle area, and he said he'd heard about his podcasts and listened for the last two weeks.

When the man signed off, after sharing his opinion with the listening audience, he asked Brandon to stop by his research lab at his convenience. Assuming he was only kidding, Brandon laughed and said, "Okay. Sure."

But when the Cal Tech-trained, former Cambridge University researcher said he was serious, Brandon was more than a little surprised. But two days later, when school let out at noon for the Thanksgiving break, he drove to Redmond, the city where MicroSoft was headquartered, and found the biotech lab he was looking for.

He was even more surprised when the very attractive woman at the front desk told him she was not only told to expect him, but that she, too, had been listening to his podcasts.

"Give me just a minute, and I'll get him for you, okay?" she said as she dialed an extension.

"Yes, sir. He's at the front desk," Brandon heard her say as she smiled at him.

The man came out a few seconds later, shook Brandon's hand, and spent the next hour giving him a tour of the facility and discussing the topic of abiogenesis and the work he'd done on it over the last 25 years or so.