Kickin' the Old Can

                I like science.  One of the great lessons I have been taught since my conversion is how to have a relationship with science.  There are many Evangelicals that have an enmity towards science.  Anglicans used the 150^th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” to hand science a blank check, expressing an embarrassment for having too Biblical of an interpretation of the origins of our species and thus acquiescing in all things species origin oriented. 

                Blessed Pope John Paul the Great describes faith and reason as two wings of a single bird which climbs towards the truth in his encyclical “Fides et Ratio”, September 14, 1998.  Without reason God is deprived of His dignity as the source and summit of all that is reasonable, faith creates order and meaning, and answers questions science cannot answer alone.

                “With the rise of rationalism, faith and reason became separated with disastrous consequences.  The end result is the nihilism that we are now experiencing. Nihilism contains no hope of meaning and admits of no objective truth.  It recognizes only the utilitarian ends of power and pleasure.  Men and women are treated as objects to be manipulated rather than persons to be honored.”  (47, The Teachings of Pope John Paul II)

                The rational science camp looks at the creationist camp with disgust, but refuses to see its own short comings.  I call it “kickin’ the can”.  I saw an example of this last night, on a channel rife with examples, “The Science Channel” had a show on which posited that an asteroid seeded the bacterial life which started every other life form on our planet. 

                Ok fine, I find it fascinating that microbial life could adapt so incredibly that it would be fine in the freezing temperatures of space and then survive first the crucible heat of entry into our atmosphere and then the destructive energy of impacting with our planet.  Those are examples off the top of my head they may be totally practically explained so I concede them.  What I find incredible and “can kickable” is that the life on the asteroid then should become the new target of inquiry.  It does not however it is simply the starting point of life on Earth. 

                The attempt is to slide a hypothesis in as fact because it is introduced as such for the sake of the story which the producers are trying to tell.  The sleight of hand is ironic because it is the charge leveled against Evangelicals by militant science.  The sleight of hand I speak of is the ability to try to kick the can so far down the road that no one can see it, but the can is still there.

                The “can” is the point of life’s origin, not just on Earth but the actual origin of life and it would not be an acceptable answer to say another asteroid seeded life on the asteroid which then seeded life on Earth. 

                A similar Science Channel statement I remember stated, “Religion says, ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’, but physicists say supernova dust to supernova dust.”  See again the source of all life rendering materials is the supernova and a supernova will eventually remove or at least redistribute the particles of that life, but the origin of the star going supernova is not discussed.  The can can only be kicked so far.  The questions are shuffled not answered. 

                Why is it important to have the initial question answered?  Why does it matter if God created us or if any number of theories could be correct?  The answer is the conclusions drawn from the initial assumption.  In Christianity human beings have and deserve dignity, but in any other postulated theory humans are a matter of the most improbable chances, but so is everything else so we are not at all special but just something else.  Since we know we exist we can draw any number of wild hypotheses and say we are the final proof of that hypothesis.  We say the probability for the ratio is not ten to the 500th power but one to one.

                We may be annihilated by an asteroid, which may seed new life on our planet at the same time!  We may be annihilated by a supernova reclaiming what it has given like Shiva!  We will definitely be bodily annihilated by time.  My sincere suggestion is that we not let the nihilism of materialist rationality destroy our knowledge that human beings must do the most good for one another in our time on this amazing planet.  Otherwise it doesn’t matter where we came from anyway.