Final report- installment 1 Isha Mudgal #10

# 10 Futurama and the philosophy of evolution and God

Based on S6E9: A clockwork origin

Futurama is an American animated science fiction comedy series created by Matt Groening and written by David X. Cohen. The series follows the life of a late-20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry. Fry is unwittingly cryogenically frozen for a thousand years and wakes up in the futuristic 31^st century. He finds employment at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company where he works alongside Turanga Leela, the competent one-eyed Captain of the Planet express space-ship, Bender Bending Rodriguez, the foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniacal, egocentric, self-centered robot manufactured by Mom's Friendly Robot Company, and Professor Farnsworth, the owner of the company and Fry’s 160 year old distant nephew (this is the future!) amongst others.  

Every episode of Futurama tackles one of the many political, moral, ethical, religious and scientific issues that our world currently faces, and each episode leaves you with a different outlook on that specific issue. That is probably because to avoid controversies, the show tries to depict every one’s point of view, and makes people (or at least me) a little more understanding towards those views. Being amazed by science almost every day of my life, naturally, Futurama is one of my favorite TV shows. Having said that, I find that the episode titled ‘A clockwork origin’, is one of best depiction of the never-ending debate over the creator (god) and evolution in our world.

And that is why I chose to write about it.

At this point, I would like to introduce the term Creationism. Creationism is the belief that the universe and life originated from acts of divine creation, as opposed to the scientific conclusion that they came about through natural processes. Futurama introduces this term as ‘Creaturism’ (perhaps to avoid controversy). The episode begins with the mention of a large mob of people who believe in creaturism. After numerous failed attempts of proving the origin and evolution of creatures to their leader, Professor Farnsworth finally gives up and decides to leave earth. The planet express crew lands on an uninhabited planet and sets up all necessary requirements for the professor to spend the rest of his life there. Professor Farnsworth introduces some nanobots into a dirty pond to turn the water into clean, drinkable water. However, through the duration of the night the nanobots evolve into trilobots and devour the spaceship and everything else. The crew is stranded and decides to spend the night in a cave. The next day a whole forest of mechanical trees has evolved with a number of robotic dinosaurs roaming about it. The nanobots have very quickly evolved into flora and fauna.

Shortly after, a solar flare causes a mass extinction on the planet killing all big Robosaurs while the smaller ‘mammalian’ robots stay safe in caves. The next day, the mammalian robots have turned into cavemen and the day after, into civilized human like robots. That day they come across a robot naturalist who takes them to the museum of natural robo-history. In his speech professor Farnsworth accidently blurts out that he is proud of the nanobots’ growth since he dumped them in a pond a few days back. Every robot is astonished and as the plot twists, professor Farnsworth is now the one being accused of believing in creaturism!

-Next installment: Analysis of the plot and conclusion