THE ERROR OF SEEING BUT NOT SEEING Gordon Allport, Professor of Behavioral Sciences Harvard University Waiting for the Lord (Macmillan Co.) (compare Romans 1)

In academic life the very conception of idolatry seems like a rather silly anachronism. We are not tempted to make "unto ourselves graven images" and to bow down and worship them – or so we think… And yet, if we take a closer look at the 1^st Commandment we find that it is highly relevant to the daily life of the intellectual.

Idolatry is not only an acute temptation but a common sin. A modern university, Harvard included, is loaded with graven images of things in heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth.

Suppose one turns to astronomy to learn about the cosmos. He may become so enthusiastic about the science that he no longer wonders about the cosmos at all. He confuses astronomy with creation, and all the answers that matter, he thinks, lie in astronomy. He has mad a graven image and bows down before it.

Or one can make a graven image of molecular biology, and worship it as an adequate representation of life. The unspoken assumption is that if we know enough about the nucleic acids in living tissue we shall then have the key to human personality – including the values and ideals of living persons.

Exclusive enthusiasm for any specialty can be idolatrous, whether it be astronomy, biology, literature, psychology, economics, law – or what not. As specialists we know we have sound and useful knowledge, but if we grow preoccupied and satisfied with our partial approach, we are idolaters.

…In academic life the temptation to worship the Part instead of the Whole is subtle and rationally appealing. In the sciences – natural and social – in the humanities, we learn an enormous amount of invigorating truth. We know this search is valid. And therefore it is an aspect of the search for God Himself. But if we stop at halfway houses, if we are content with the likeness of Reality, then we are bowing before graven images. They are not false, they are only seductively incomplete.

DRIVEN TO FIND GOD Sharon Begley Saturday Evening Post Jan/Feb 1999

Astronomer Allan Sandage says he was "almost a practicing atheist as a boy," but was nagged by mysteries whose answers were not to be found in the glittering panoply of supernovas. Among them: Why is there something rather than nothing? Sandage began to despair of answering such question through reason alone, and so, at 50, he willed himself to accept God.

"It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science," he says. "It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence."

CARL SAGAN’S COMMENT ON GOD Sharon Begley Saturday Evening Post Jan/Feb 1999

Since the birth of the universe could now be explained by laws of physics alone, the late astronomer Carl Sagan concluded, there was "nothing for a Creator to do," and every thinking person was therefore forced to admit "the absence of God." Today the scientific community so scorns faith, says Sandage (a 72 year old astronomer) that there "is a reluctance to reveal yourself as a believer, the opprobrium is so severe."

THEY STILL WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT Bits & Pieces 1/9/92

For centuries people believed that Aristotle was right when he said that the heavier an object, the faster it would fall to the earth. Aristotle was regarded as the greatest thinker of all time, and surely he would not be wrong.

Anyone, of course, could have taken two objects, one heavy and one light, an dropped them from a great height to see whether or not the heavier object landed first. But no one did until nearly 2,000 years after Aristotle’s death. In 1589, Galileo summoned learned professors to the base of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Then he went to the top and pushed off a 10 pound and a one pound weight. Both landed at the same instant.

The power of belief was so strong, however, that the professors denied their eyesight. They continued to say Aristotle was right.

THE POTENTIAL OF CLONING Time 11/8/99 p. 66

If human cloning becomes possible – and since the birth of a sheep called Dolly, few doubt that it will be feasible to clone a person by 2026 – even the link between sex organs and reproduction will be broken. You will then be able to take a cutting from your body and grow a new person, as if you were a willow tree. And if it becomes possible to screen or genetically engineer embryos to "improve" them, then in-vitro fertilization and cloning may become the rule rather than the exception among those who can afford it…

In the modern world, you can even have sex and parenthood without suffering the bit in between. Some Hollywood actresses may have satisfied the urge for mothering by electing to adopt children rather than spoil their figures (as they see it) by childbearing. For people as beautiful as this, the temptation to clone a child (reared in a surrogate womb) could one day be irresistible.

Once cloning loses its stigma, the urge to tinker with the genes of offspring may not be far behind. As Cambridge molecular biologist Graeme Mitchison says, "We can all be beautiful – no baldness, no wimps with glasses, no knobby knees."

ALIEN LIFE IN THE BASEMENT Strange Days #2 quoted in Uncle John’s Great Big Bathroom Reader (issued in 1998)

"Astronomers using the radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia thought they had important evidence of alien life when they picked up a distinctive radio signal at 2.3 to 2.4 gigahertz every evening about dinnertime. They later discovered that the signal was coming from the microwave oven downstairs."

WATER FROM THE ROCK Pulpit Helps, 9/92, p.16

In my physical geology class, I have learned that we can actually get water from rocks. Believe me, it was not easy for me to understand this. The process is simple, it is the principle of heat. The rocks are loaded into this furnace then heated. Hydrogen and oxygen are released, these combined to make water (H2O). Geologists have found that they can get about a pint of water for every 100 pounds of rock they heat.

I am amazed. Getting water out of rocks this way is incredible. But just think, years ago Moses struck a rock and water gushed forth. It was enough to quench the thirst of millions.

In the Bible (I Cor. 10:4) we are told that that rock was Jesus, or at least a symbol for Him. It was from Him that the Israelites received their help, and it is from Him that we receive ours. Jesus said, "If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture hath said, streams of living water will flow from within him (John 7:37-38).

MISTAKES GOD DID NOT MAKE Pulpit Helps 9/92 p.24--B.H. Saddock Ph.D.

Scientists tell us that there are nearly a 100 elements in the make up of our world. These elements have affinities and aversions, and are the playgrounds of opposing forces, yet with all their pulling and pushing there is a nicety of balance that is amazing to thinkers. There may be other elements somewhere in the universe, but another element here on earth might upset the balance of those we have, and certainly if any one of a dozen elements that could be named were taken away, earth would be a desert. God has just the right number, in the right proportion, and they behave exactly the right way so that all the pulls balance all the pushes.

Without lime there could be no bones. Without oxygen there could be neither air nor water. Without nitrogen, there could be no life. If there were too much of any one of a dozen elements that could be named, or if some of the deadly poisons were not made harmless by locking them together, life would be impossible - the world would choke us, (poison us, burn us, freeze us, or blow us up).

Most of what man knows he learned from other people's experiments or mistakes, and after a fourth of his life is spent in school, a man fumbles with the mysteries of life and matter - sometimes with an air of profundity. God served no apprenticeships.

If thru the centuries, snowflakes accumulated 1/2 the 1% faster than they melted, the water of the earth would pile up in mountains of ice until the weight crushed the crust of the earth or gathered all the water of the earth in frozen form. Reflect how little change would result in that 1/2 of 1%, and consider that there have been glacial ages. If the melting point of ice were slightly lower, if the earth tilted otherwise than it is, if the highlands were higher, if the atmosphere were thinner or cooler, or farther away, disaster might easily follow.

From absolute zero, 460 degrees below Fahrenheit zero, up to the boiling point of water at 212 above, is 672 degrees. Anywhere between these extremes God could have fixed the freezing melting point, but anywhere except where it is 32 above, would have been a mistake. If water froze 4 percent of the 672 degree range lower than it now does, it could rain in a temperature of 6 degrees above. Man and most warm blooded animals would chill to death with a wet skin in such cold. Where now there are vast fields of snow that store up water against the heat and drought of summer, there would be winter floods and guttered hillsides. If God had fixed the freezing point 2 percent of the range higher, there would be frosts wherever the temperature dropped to 456 degrees above, and snow and ice would never melt in colder areas of the earth. Whatever caused the advance and retreat of the ice fields and glacial ages, there could be no retreat if water froze at 45 degrees above.

Much as the existence of plants and animals depends on the freezing point being where it is, it would never do to have oceans freeze 32 degrees above. In Polar seas the yearly freezing, and ice would accumulate through the centuries. To prevent such disaster, God put salt in the sea and arranged that evaporation takes nothing but fresh water back to the land.

What a fickle substance water is! Its molecules lock together in flinty embrace as ice, covers the earth with a dry blanket of snow in winter, quenches the thirst of plants and animals, shades us from the sun as clouds, drives ponderous machinery as steam, and if super heated, pushes one another thru the steel plates of a boiler. Then if you take water apart and light a match, it will blow up.

Suppose water were more or less volatile. If it evaporated more readily there would be more moisture in the air, more clouds in the sky, but land and vegetation would quickly dry up in drought intervals. If water evaporated less rapidly, more of the earth would be a desert.