The Good Fight

The ignorance, uncertainties, preferences, prejudices, contradictions/paradoxes and other limitations of mankind ought to serve first in making us humble.  Humility is a first step in draining from us the negatives related to our limitations.  There are also other graces necessary to the life-student, like patience, respect for others along the route of life and an attitude of discovery with competence in what we do – or try to do.  For more than seven decades I have read contradictions of scientists related to other scientists, and contradictions of theologians related to other theologians.  The same game applies to various fields advancing theories – political, educational, business – various groupings engaging intra-differences.  One wonders if any field can get similar conclusions among its adherents even in using the same evidence.  If the idea of our shared search for truth is to win debates we can readily use the same evidence to prove two or more sides of an issue (question).  Teaching forensic debate I accented to the students that, if winning the debate was the point rather than finding the best solution to the question, they could simply shift presuppositions from one debate to the other, become excellent in presentation (voice, language and bodily action) and skillful development of rhetoric – and they would be declared the winners.  Whose views gain the field, and imply or prove the assumptions that lead to this or that conclusion?  Funding has something to do with it, the acceptance of the most sophisticated has something to do with it, the conflict between groups has something to do with it – especially in the put down between groups occurring along the crowded highways those searchers are traveling to reach the destination of reality or truth.  Human weaknesses noted above have something to do with distraction/confusion along the way that may detour us from truth.

The Smithsonian magazine is excellent in what it has apparently decided to be its mission.  A means to that mission is the straightforward belief in spontaneous evolution.  It simply follows the emerging patterns of science as guided by the natural law of evolution that began at-large acceptance with the scriptures of Darwin.  Like all assumptions the bodies of material emerging from those who believe in them follow a literary pattern that either does not assume vital error in it, or that if carried through to the end it will be found as not having competition.  All this appears to help us to move along with greater efficiency because we are not held up by presenting caveats, doubts, exceptions and the like in getting to our point.  When a story is told covering the variants there is an underlying feeling that it is interesting (as history), and may be an illustration of human problem-solving.  This is supposed to carry the mystery (unknowns) of the conclusions. In the Smithsonian issue for January 2015 the story of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is told.  Five or six theories of what happened to her, the navigator, and the airplane have circulated widely since the 1937 event.  I remember it well, and have reviewed various theories of what happened.  Some of the stories become somewhat bizarre.  Persons who believe strongly in scientific methods and orderly search of information hold theories different from each other, and believe their evidence proves or leans in the direction of their theories.  Here the author reports what is available, but in the end the problem is not solved, the fortunes spent on searching for clues, and the ongoing of the expensive ventures to find the plane seem bizarre given the projects needing attention that would contribute much more to the benefit of mankind.  Some persons might make fun of Christians interested in the story of Ruth or Esther, in the Bible, stories carrying meaning to life context, but devote years of trying to find Earhart’s airplane and two skeletons.  The only purpose is to provide evidence of what amounts to an interest in a rather moot point.

Another story in the Smithsonian issue relates to String Theory.  It is well written by Brian Greene who makes some of the theory understandable for many relating to evolution and mathematics. Greene has given much of his life to the theory – inadequate evidence, extension of space/time, other universes, addition of another dimension than up/down, backward/forward and right/left – and, so the story proceeds.  I wonder why entrancing science is seen by some as violation of faith in God, or cause to doubt God.  Indeed, it can humble persons of faith to wrestle with competing theories that omit faith in God.  Freedom permits it.