CREATIVE NONFICTION 67KRISTIN JOHNSON is an
associate professor in the
Science, Technology and
Society Program at the
University of Puget Sound
in Tacoma, Washington. Her
research focuses on the history
of the naturalist tradition and,
more recently, the history
of the relationship between
science and theodicy.tanding before a crowd of listeners in 1914, the
fundamentalist preacher Billy Sunday took a few moments
to ridicule science’s pretensions of being a new salvation.
“People are dissatisfied with Philosophy and Science and New
Thought as panaceas for heart-aches!” he cried:It does not amount to anything, when you have a dead child in your
house, to come with these new-fangled theories ... Let your scientific
consolation enter a room where the mother has lost her child. Try
your doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Tell her that her child died
because it was not worth as much as the other one! ... And when you
have gotten through with your scientific, philosophical, psychological,
eugenic, social service, evolution, protoplasm and fortuitous concourse
of atoms, if she is not crazed by it, I will go to her and after one-half
hour of prayer and the reading of the Scripture promises, the tears will
be wiped away and the house from cellar to garret will be filled with
calmness like a California sunset!S
KRISTIN JOHNSON