Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

We scheduled a 1 P.m. interview with "Gerald" and decided to grab some lunch, joining
the mass of students pouring out of chapel and into the dining commons. There were
thousands of them, young men in shirts and ties and khakis, young women in their anklelength
skirts. You could say we stood out. We were about to face our first test.
His name was Doug, an intense, though extremely nice, finance major. In an effort to
appear as if I had nothing to hide, I said hi. Doug squinted, looked me over skeptically, and
decided to keep an eye on us. Very nicely, he offered to help us get lunch and sit with us, and
then asked us lots and lots of questions about who we were and why we were there.
I took this as an opportunity to take our elaborate ruse out for a little test drive. Andrew's
dad, dead. Mom, depressed. Mom finds Jesus. Wants Andrew at BJU. Throws out
back carrying boxes of blood. Doug asked if Andrew wanted to go there. Andrew didn't
know, but I pointed out that his mother really, really wanted him to. Doug said that Andrew
shouldn't go unless he really wanted to. Hadn't Doug read "The Three Shipwrecks"?
Then things started getting sticky. Doug was asking me questions. Like, what did I do
for a living? And why did I look familiar? I told him I was a writer, which is true, by the way.
Remember, I lie only when it's absolutely necessary.
To get us off a potentially incognito-blowing line of questioning, I cleverly changed
the subject to creationism. You really believe it? Doug said he did, and so did all his friends
sitting around us. According to Doug, evolution made no sense at all. No mutation, he insisted,
had ever been beneficial. I looked at my thumb, but said nothing, as I used it to hold
my fork and shove the worst lunch I've ever had into my mouth. It was some kind of creamed
broccoli on a bun. But then again, you don't go to Bob Jones for the food!
Doug told us that the chances of protoplasm evolving into a human being were infinitesimally
small: one over ten to the 256th, or something like that. Duane, an intense, but extremely
nice, business administration major, came up with a vivid analogy. "The chances,"
Duane said, "of protoplasm turning into a fully formed human being are worse than the
chances of an explosion in a junkyard yielding an intact Boeing 747."
Doug could tell that I wasn't buying. "So, Alan," he said. Oh, I forgot. I had changed
my name to "Alan" as part of our undercover operation. My name really is Alan-remember,
only when absolutely necessary. "So, Alan," he said, "why do you believe in evolution?"