Modesto, California, January, 2078, Tuesday…

KGDY had one of the valley's most popular radio talk shows. Occasionally Rick Rollins wondered why. In a day when the indentured servant of a big agribusiness concern could watch a soap opera or music video in the comfort of his air-conditioned cab on top of his combine, radio seemed to be too old a technology. Yet Rick Rollins was known up and down the valley, from Fresno to Turlock and from Paso Robles to Yosemite. Some technologies just have staying power.

"Today another K-goody special: with us we have Professor Lawrence Brown, from UC Modesto, to talk about his encounter last week with religious hooligans right here on campus." There was the usual sound track that followed the introduction of a new topic. Few listeners knew that it was the century-old Twilight Zone theme. "Professor, you still look like you're in bad shape."

"You can call me Larry. Yes, Rick, I'm lucky to be alive. I'm paralyzed from the waist down."

"Have the police made any progress on the case, professor?"

"Not really. They suspect that one of the students in my course was a member of the group that attacked me. At least he hasn't come back to class. I'm afraid I can't divulge his name."

"Can you tell our listeners what your course was about? Why did these nutcases attack you?"

Professor Brown cleared his throat. It was his soapbox. He briefly gave a summary of the ideas in his course that he thought had created the attack. Then he made a plea for sanity and logic.

"Rick, I want to consider two points that may put this discussion of fundamentalism in a different light. The first is that scientists can also be fundamentalists. The second is that we may be environmentally wired to be fundamentalists."

"I think I can understand the first point," said Rick. "I certainly know pompous and dogmatic academics."

"Pomposity relates to ego, but you've got the dogmatic right. The secularist is in the right only when he says that science works by experimentally verifying truths and accumulating them while revising them if conflicting evidence appears. It would be incorrect to conclude that science must be the be-all and end-all of our existence. Scientific fundamentalism is the belief that the world is understandable and ultimately controllable by human reason alone. This is a dogmatic leap of faith - it would be the ultimate arrogance to believe that the human brain is capable of understanding all of reality. This leap has been made by many and is largely due to the successes of biology and genetics engineering in this century. We can control the world, the scientific fundamentalist says, perhaps making it perfect."