24 BEYOND THE PRIMORDIAL OOZE |^ DINTY W. MOORE
“We got one on every corner,” John boasts.
“We’re in the Guinness Book of World Records,”
Jeff adds, while the rest of the men sip their
coffee and nod.
It is a chilly late-March morning and I’m
an out-of-town visitor as well, on a road
trip to explore the notion that America’s
current political divisions are tied somehow to
conflicting attitudes about science and religion,
rationality and faith. Ravenswood, with its
many churches and dying aluminum industry,
seems a likely spot to ask some questions.
Jeff jumps right in, all too happy to oblige
my curiosity.
“Science and the Bible go together just fine,”
he reassures me. “They’re finding that more
and more once they track the DNA. In fact,
they’re finding that the people who were in
Egypt actually came from Europe.”
Jeff—mid-sixties, stubble-faced, sporting
a US Marine Corps ball cap and green plaid
shirt—speaks at a dizzying pace, rattling off
more ideas than my pencil can handle. But
from the looks of him, he’s just warming up.
“A lot of people don’t know this,” he contin-
ues, “but Einstein got his theory of relativity
directly out of the Bible. Of course, he was
threatened not to talk about it because the pow-
ers that be wanted to push evolution. Science
and religion used to be the same thing, before
the Tower of Babel. You know that, right?”
Do I?
Jeff ’s theories on Einstein and Babel are news
to me, but the others just chuckle and smirk,
like maybe they’ve heard all of this before.
Dave leans forward. “Listen, if you want to
know about Bigfoot and UFOs, that guy right
there’s your best source.” He points to John,
a red-faced, thickset man in dungarees and a
stained white T-shirt. “He got them both up
his holler.”
I’ve clearly lost control of the conversation,
and we’re only a minute or so in.
John puts down his breakfast sandwich,
scowls in Dave’s direction. “They’re just trying
to get my goat, trying to make me mad.” Then
he turns back to the out-of-towner, the scowl
widening into a friendly grin. “But I’ve ...
never ... been mad ... a day in my life.”“Oh really,” Bruce counters. “Not a day in
your life? How many marriages you had?”
“Three, I think.”
Eldon, tall, lanky, and pushing 80, scolds
John. “Now you tell this man the truth about
those Bigfoot stories.”
“All he saw was the hair,” Jeff intervenes.
“Some hair on a tree. He didn’t see no
Bigfoot.”
“He did,” Dave insists. “He just couldn’t get
close enough.”
And then silence, the Sasquatch thread
apparently finished.
Until Jeff decides to fill me in on John and
the UFOs.
“He was out taking a pee and he chased the
aliens away. He saved the world.”for the past year, I’ve been part of a
project titled Think Write Publish: Science
& Religion, an attempt to use the tools of
creative nonfiction to explore the idea that
faith and rationality can coexist just nicely,
thank you, despite various brouhahas over
where we came from, how we got here, and
whether the human species is or is not in the
process of destroying the planet.
As of late, thanks no doubt to a horrifically
contentious election cycle pockmarked by
extended, often hyperbolic skirmishes over
both science and religion, Americans appear
even more divided, locked away in separate,
seemingly incompatible camps. That’s the
dominant narrative in the media, at least, but
my instinct is that it can’t be quite so simple as
all that. I’m guessing the truth of it all is more
complex, less predictable.
Which led me to Ravenswood, and to other
small towns in West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and central Ohio, where I had a series of
conversations with so-called “real” Americans:
folks outside of politics and professional
punditry, and apart from the expert, analytical
academic bubble where I—a tenured professor,
professional skeptic, and inveterate agnostic—
spend most of my time.
I wanted to speak to people who were nei-
ther steeped in political rhetoric nor provoked
into shouting by the presence of television