In my recent reading I have sometimes felt barraged by contradictions, paradoxes, disagreements, variant conclusions all garnered through the same evidence. In the reports of a number of experiments and field studies I am informed that the archaeological evidence is not complete enough to decide who burned Hebron, as noted in the Book of Joshua. One editor does not presuppose God at work in any of the studies. The impression is that of humanism. The preponderance of authors support the burning by the invading Israelites under Joshua in natural course. Other serious scholars in the field offer this cause, or another, and so the saga continues. A book by an eminent scholar relates the differences in those students believing the western hemisphere was discovered by sailors approaching from the east in the lower hemisphere is stronger than the argument that the people crossed from Asia through the Aleutians, and downward from what is now Alaska. Apparently in meetings between the groups the tension became so great that there had to be a timeout period so to cool objective minds for a future go at it. Some of the studies were humorous, even by the opinions of naturalists committed to the processes. They were serious in publishing the results of a study that showed there were more babies born to Islamic women nine months after Ramadan.
Apparently intimacy grows when persons are devotional – or on a holiday. (A number of studies show that there is an increase in the birth rates in this or that region after some experience, perhaps of severe winter storms appearing daily for a period of a week.) It was assumed that perhaps grief determines what may happen to gender survival in births in that there were more male fetuses lost to mothers nine months after 9/11 in New York than occurred the days before the attack, and after its intense period. Will that bit of information heighten or lower objectivity? Can studies be controlled to discover if assumptions are valid? We are told that persons of faith are guessing at some details of their faith. Of course they are, just as some scientists are guessing at much of what they publish, and sometimes doctoring the evidence for better acceptance. Sincere scientists seek important information that will improve the understanding of the life benefit that some new information or discovery may offer. They are interested in replication so as to match whatever has preceded the first claim. There is an inborn skepticism that we rightly appreciate.
There was leadership at the time of Galileo that faulted church leaders for not accepting his experiments at the early stages. The church authorities were closed minded – is the accusation. To study the events of the era, and the persons in the debate, we can understand the impasse. Had Galileo been a bit less arrogant, had the leadership recognized the growth of knowledge, and the discovery order, matters would have gone better. No matter who is right and who is wrong there needs to be the understanding that when a society has believed something for centuries, and must immediately change, the result is like the breakdown of a dam, when the water races to the destruction of the valley below. If ideas, right or wrong, were held to change easily with new information or demonstration, we may be sure the tragedies would be greater than that for a steady and incremental absorption of a truth or even a fiction. Far better is it that the discoverers combine in fellowship and effort with the patterns of believers in a society so to gain change and forward movement to truth and better contexts for human life and safer planet. Truth is patient with us, but will out.
I have observed this objectivity in the work of missionaries overseas. They accept the people where they find them, in the culture of their backgrounds, the language they love, the simplicity or complexity of their lives, and propose the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ, a way that can be applied in lives and with the normal concepts of growth from odd inventions of religions, ignorance of the better ways for themselves and their children, to a faith of hope and recourse from the rigors of sheer survival, destitute of some necessities for life as God would have it for them and everyone. Pharaoh saw the context in Joseph (Genesis 41:39-40); Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel and friends, (Daniel 1:4); and, Gamaliel saw it in the Apostle Paul and Christians (Acts 5:34-39). We seek applied truth to thought and conduct. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020