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If enough of us open our minds, this trend towards control,
power, and domination by those with an agenda can not continue. Particularly if those
who think and those who have faith take the time to reconcile their respective data,
and recognize when there is a match between true religion and real science. Sure,
there are a lot of things we don't understand yet. And it has been that way since
before Moses went up onto Mount Sinai. The thing which is pretty obvious to me is
that with the current rapid knowledge explosion it will only be a short time before
many things we currently don' t know will be understood. This is the scientific method.
It is also the natural fruit of faith. And in my mind these two facts combine and merge
as eternal scientific facts are identified and correlated with eternal religious truths.
Scientists set out an hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and
after it has been demonstrated to occur the same way a sufficient number of times it
becomes a scientific law. For instance, consider the replacement of Newtonian Classical
Mechanics by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Scientists recognize when valid and
documented exceptions are found, this law again reverts to being a theory. An exception
example, of relevance to the theme of this book, was described by Melvin A. Cook in his
1968 book "Science and Mormonism."P9 He describes wood found in a mine in Canada in
undisturbed Cambrian rocks. Geologists date the rocks at over 1 billion years old.
The wood was 500 feet below the surface and was dated by radiocarbon dating as being
4,000 years old. Based on this one example, at least one student paper has dismissed
the entire geologic time scale. With more and more data available there are more and
more anomalies, even if the percentage of anomalies becomes smaller. Often exceptions
are not well documented, sort of like most UFO sitings, and are misused to promote an
agenda. In this 4,000 year old "Cambrian" wood example, there are numerous questions
which come to mind and which the student paper does not consider. What kind of mine?
When was the mine shaft sunk? How is the mine supported? How much recent sediment is
above the Cambrian rocks? Were the Cambrian rocks ever close enough to the surface
for trees to have grown down into them? Were hydrothermal fluids involved in
mineralization of the surrounding rocks? If so, when did the mineralization occur?
Were any other pieces of wood found? And there are numerous other questions which,
when answered, could each explain the exception. Yet none of them are discussed,
because none of them fit the predetermined thesis of at least one closed mind.
In matters of daily living of our faith, we follow a similar
process. We plant a seed, although it be the size of a mustard seed, one of the
smallest of all seeds, and as we water and feed and take care of our faith, we see it
grow into a mighty tree (Matthew 13:31-32P10). Some see an exception, say an unjust
accident involving themselves or someone they care about, and the event so colors
perception as to make it seem impossible to believe in God or to have faith. For
those folks I encourage them to read "Men's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl.
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paradoxes