The Blue Disc
Page 26
“Not being challenged has a lot of appeal,” said John, “but it’s poor social policy. Although we have social wealth, ultimately our resources are limited, so we must be selective about who gets further training and other benefits. Not only do we use merit as the basis of our choices, we attach strings to the support we give. We monitor performance and stop the benefits if recipients don’t merit more. In short, we test because it helps us identify the most capable in our society, so we can reward and develop them. It seems like the only fair way to make the best use of our resources.”
“Are good test results the only basis the society uses for giving out rewards?”
“No, we reward other achievements that benefit society, for example, for conscientious labor, a valuable invention, valor in paintball warfare, skillful negotiation, or a good theatrical work.”
“Then further education isn’t the only form your rewards take?”
“Rewards from the society come in different forms, but the two most common are opportunities for personal development through education and career advancement after schooling has been completed. Others prefer priority in going to the coast. Admittedly, there are usually monetary rewards as well, but they’re not much—and they don’t have to be much if they distinguish high achievers from others in the society. Finally, higher status is always conferred as an accompaniment to achievement and that’s the most important reward.”
Rick had a lot to think about after their conversation as he was sitting in his room making notes. His privacy disc was in place.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Adams
CHAPTER 22
Darwin and Others
During the week after Rick’s visit to the school, he thought about how the villagers used education to foster Euromamo values. They also used their two denominations for that purpose. The sermons by Archbishop Witch Doctor Richards and Reverend Scientist Watt had been laden with values. To find out more, he decided to attend another service of the Church of Science. In the posting room in the entertainment center, he learned that Reverend Scientist Watt’s sermon that week would be about Darwin. How would she treat the renowned Charles? Rick decided he would go to this sermon by himself, fieldwork journal, and Albatross in hand, of course, and, if he had any questions, he could get answers from John afterwards. Wednesday afternoon, he got ready for the service in plenty of time and was among the earliest arrivals in the main room of the entertainment center. The four large symbols (#, %, ?, and lightning bolt) stood prominently on stands behind the lectern as before. At the appointed time, Reverend Scientist Watt walked to the center of the rostrum, smiling.
“Welcome all of you. I am happy today, but not because it’s commonly expected of religious leaders. Personally, I hate it when preachers plaster big fake smiles on their faces like they have some mystical key to happiness and truth. It would be much better if they furrowed their brows reflecting their hard work in trying to figure out at least some peg of truth they could hang a miter on, so to speak. After all, questions regarding how to live are very difficult. With that off my chest, we have an engaging topic today: Charles Darwin and some other scientists who expanded our understanding of our place in the universe. During the mid-nineteenth century, the scientific discoveries of Darwin made monumental contributions to the biological sciences, even as they roiled religious beliefs from Genesis. Darwin’s thought is highly important to our denomination—the Church of Science—as it goes to the relationship between science and religion. That’s why I have chosen it as the focus of my comments today.
“The impact of Darwin was so great that many assume biology was the first scientific field to challenge Genesis. However, that isn’t the case. The dispute between science and religion predates the nineteenth century, so let’s start with the traditional scientific view that’s consistent with the Genesis account, namely Ptolemy’s view of the universe from the classical world. He thought that the world is stationary at the center of the universe with everything else revolving around it. Before there’s any snickering, let me add that his view was quite reasonable based on common sense. If you go out at night and look up, the earth seems to be motionless while the stars chart a circular path through the sky. Stationary Earth, moving stars. Therefore, it should be no surprise that, until recent centuries, almost all peoples have believed in an earth-centered universe.
“The most famous account of creation is, of course, from the book of Genesis, which had already established its place in Judaism by the time of Ptolemy and would spread its influence to Europe when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity. I quote Genesis from a modern edition:
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the heavens to separate day from night, and let them serve as signs both for festivals and for seasons and years. Let them also shine in the vault of heaven to give light on Earth.’ So it was; God made the two great lights, the greater to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night; and with them he made the stars. God put these lights in the vault of heaven to give light on Earth, to govern day and night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. Evening came, and morning came, a fourth day.
“According to Genesis, the lights in the vault of Heaven were put there by god for the purpose of lighting the earth and separating light from dark. It is all Earth-centered with god hovering above. This is the version of creation that most of our forebears brought from England to the rain forest in 1750. Today, however, our denomination rejects the account from Genesis and embraces the findings of science regarding our place in the universe. How did this transformation occur? Tracing it requires going back to discoveries in astronomy in sixteenth century Europe, well before our forebears arrived in the rain forest.
“Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish scholar associated with the Roman Catholic Church, became puzzled by the complex movements of celestial bodies. True, the stars seemed to be fixed in relationship to one another and they seemed to move together around the earth in a predictable manner, once a day. However, the sun blazed on its own path across the sky so there had to be a different explanation for its movement. The same was true for the moon. The planets posed another problem for Copernicus and other astronomers as they seemed to wander among the stars at their own speeds and on their own paths. In fact, the word ‘planet’ is from the Greek word for ‘wanderer’, a name that reflects the difficulty that astronomers had in devising rules to explain their movements. There were other strange phenomena in the night sky, for example, bright comets that could not be ignored and were extremely difficult to explain. Similarly, meteors would cut across the sky in a brief streak of light. Occasionally, unusually bright stars would appear in the sky and then disappear. We now know that these are supernovae, an exploding star that is dying.
“In the sixteenth century, these heavenly objects were believed to be affixed to rotating glass spheres that surrounded the earth. Each separate heavenly motion required a separate glass sphere. As astronomy made more discoveries, more spheres were needed to accommodate the various motions, all based on the notion that the earth was the center of the universe. Where did this leave the cleric Copernicus? He challenged the elaborate, glass-sphere model by simplifying it, specifically by reducing the number of spheres that were needed to account for all the observed motions in the sky. His proposed model needed fewer spheres because he placed the sun at the center of the universe and had the earth orbiting it as merely one of several planets. His explanation was, at base, an appeal to efficiency, to parsimony.
“Poor guy. He was aware of the impact his work would have within the Catholic Church, which he loved dearly. If his findings were borne out, the church would be pressured to abandon its long-standing position that the earth is the center of the universe. If the earth isn’t the center of the universe, if it’s merely one of several planets, how could
we be sure that god was hovering above the clouds of Earth, intimately concerned about what we were doing? Maybe god was worrying about other planets instead. As a result of Copernicus’ concerns about repercussions from the church, he didn’t allow the publication of his major work until 1543, after his death. He was right to have been apprehensive as his book was banned by the Catholic Church and remained so until 1835, 292 years after his death. This was a tough fate for someone who had been nominated to be a canon.
“Then came Galileo. In 1609, he made a telescope in his shop in Italy that allowed him to observe the sky in greater detail than was previously possible. While he rightfully deserves credit for this significant contribution to scientific instruments, it was a tiny instrument by today’s standards, only about a foot in length and with a correspondingly small aperture. Yet this small instrument provided its images to the great mind of Galileo. In 1610, he observed four large moons orbiting Jupiter. Pause for a moment to consider the implications of this discovery for the Earth-centered theory of the universe. Galileo’s observations were the first direct proof that objects in the night sky orbited bodies other than the Earth. If Galileo was right, the Catholic Church surely had to give up its belief that everything orbited the Earth. Instead, its response to Galileo’s significant scientific discovery was rejection of his findings, excommunication, and house arrest, a sentence that was not retracted until 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s death. The Popes and Cardinals should have looked through the telescope themselves. By the way, any of you who wish to observe the Galilean moons revolving around Jupiter, can do so through our telescope that’s available from the library.”
Reverend Scientist Watt paused, raised her arms, and stated in a sonorous tone, “If you think that Copernicus and Galileo are right, you must give up the belief that Earth is the center of the Universe.”
“We must give it up,” replied the congregation in unison.
“May science be with you,” said the Reverend Scientist.
“And with you,” replied the congregation.
“In spite of this challenge, many parts of the Genesis version of creation remained unchallenged and even received additional support, albeit of an unscientific nature. In books published between 1650 and 1654, Bishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland took it upon himself to calculate the age of the earth using the Bible as his main reference. He traced the ‘begats’ in the Bible back to Adam and Eve, using a standard life expectancy where the Bible didn’t indicate a life span. Using this amazingly unscientific assumption for his calculations, he determined that the earth had been created in 4004 BC. That was the year when god performed the acts described in Genesis. Ussher’s influence was such that 4004 BC became the standard year for the creation of the earth throughout the Christendom.
“Notwithstanding the Bishop, the march of science proceeded, chipping away at unsubstantiated religious belief. Only a decade after Ussher’s work, the great British scientist, Isaac Newton, formulated a model of the universe based on the universal applicability of the force of gravity. He discovered that the same force that makes an apple fall to the ground holds planets in their orbits around the sun. It explained so much of the universe around us that it’s remained in common use among non-scientists even after it was refined by Einstein in the twentieth century for precise calculations.
“For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on only one aspect of Newton’s scientific contributions: the idea that the universe operates like a clock. God had created it and had set it in motion according to laws, particularly the law of gravity. Once started, the planets continued to orbit endlessly without any further intervention by god. It followed that god was able to step back and tend to other matters. Perhaps, after creation, earthly man was no longer the center of god’s attention as religious leaders had preached. At the least, current events on Earth did not seem nearly as likely to be driven by god’s active hand. This is not the last we will hear of this theme.”
Reverend Scientist Watt paused again, raising her arms, “If you think Newton is right, you must give up the belief that god’s ongoing intervention is necessary for the continued movement of heavenly bodies.”
“We must give it up,” replied the congregation in unison.
“May science be with you,” said the Reverend Scientist.
“And with you,” replied the congregation.
“These discoveries occurred in Europe before our forebears left England on the Cork. They had heard about them, especially the work of Newton, who was a national hero, but our forebears didn’t appreciate the full implications of the discoveries until they settled in this valley and were exposed to the widely varying religious views of our neighbors. Only then were they able to cut free from their religious upbringing and chart a new path. During the first seventy-five years our forebears lived in the rain forest—isolated from outside society—they learned that all of their neighbors, without exception, had creation myths that described their origins. Although each of these myths was different, many of them had elements that were found in Genesis, elements like floods, a fall from a period of innocence, and pestilence sent by the spirit world as an expression of disfavor. Initially, our forebears regarded the natives’ versions of creation as fanciful because they were espoused by ‘primitives’ but, over time, the similarities of these versions to the creation story found in Genesis were impossible to ignore. There was no reason to put their own version on a higher plane. Before long they regarded Genesis as merely one myth among many.
“While our forebears became much more critical of Genesis, they did not give up origins rituals totally. It was during this time that they wrote the ‘Origins Poem’ to preserve the story of their forebears’ arrival in the rain forest and to give proper tribute to the brave efforts that established our society here. The Poem would educate our young people about the history of our group. They were careful to make it as accurate as they could so they would avoid replacing the Genesis story with an unsubstantiated myth of their own.
“Beginning in the late eighteenth century, only a few decades after our forebears arrived in the rain forest, a second scientific field, geology, presented a strong challenge to the Genesis version of creation. Of course, our forebears were only able to learn of these discoveries after they started making regular book-buying trips into La Puerta several decades later.
“According to Genesis,
In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and Earth, the earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the abyss, and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters.
God said: ‘Let the waters under heaven be gathered into one place, so that dry land may appear’; and so it was. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters he called seas; and God saw that it was good.
“Relying on these Biblical passages, and using Bishop Ussher’s work to date creation, religious leaders believed that the earth we see today with all of its features was just as god had created it in 4004 BC. No changes had occurred since. However, beginning in the late eighteenth century, two Scottish scientists, James Hutton and Charles Lyell, challenged this belief using their research in geology. They established that the earth’s current features have been altered over many years by natural forces that generally work very slowly, for example, erosion. These forces have continually modified the earth’s surface and do so today. Importantly, because these forces work as they always have, they can be observed in operation. They are not only geological principles, but also observable processes—facts, if you will. However, because the forces that are shaping the earth do so slowly, a long period of time is needed for them to produce major changes, much longer than Bishop Ussher’s few millennia.”
Reverend Scientist Watt paused, raising her arms, “If you think that Hutton and Lyell are right that natural geologic forces have changed the form of the earth’s surface, you must give up the belief that the earth is exactly as god created it according to G
enesis, and that it has not changed since.”
“We must give it up,” responded the congregation.
“If you think that Hutton and Lyell are right that natural forces modify the earth’s surface, you must give up the belief that god directly causes such geological phenomena as erosion, tidal waves, and volcanoes.”
“We must give it up,” said the congregation.
“If you think that Hutton and Lyell are right about the slow speed of geological change, you must give up Bishop Ussher’s short time frame for the creation of the earth.”
“We must give it up,” responded the congregation.
“May science be with you,” said the Reverend.
“And with you,” said the congregation.
“Finally, we get to Darwin and the impact of biology on religious belief during the nineteenth century.
“According to Genesis,
God said, ‘Let the waters teem with countless living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of heaven.’ God then created the great sea monsters and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters, according to their kind, and every kind of bird; and God saw it was good.
God said, ‘let the earth bring forth living creatures, according to their kind: cattle, reptiles, and wild animals, all according to their kind.’ So it was; God made wild animals, cattle, and all reptiles, each according to its kind; and he saw that it was good.
“These passages reflect the conventional religious belief before Darwin that god had created all species as set forth in Genesis and that their form had not changed over time. A cow had always looked like a cow. It was also believed that, because god’s creation was perfect and complete, no species had become extinct. Even Jefferson, with his first rate scientific mind, did not accept that some species were, or could become, extinct. Then along came Darwin.