Bill, I for one have really appreciated your thoughtful and insightful
comments on this list for a long time. I hope we can meet some day at
an ASA meeting. Or maybe later....
Which brings me to my point: It is well and good for us as believers to
talk about getting answers to our questions in heaven. But to the
outsiders - for whom we are to be ambassadors - it looks like nonsense.
And if it looks like nonsense to them, it should not be reiterated
by us. As far as I know, nothing in the Bible says either that we
will be able to discuss anything with anyone, or that we will not do this
in heaven.
It is helpful sometimes to play the Devil's advocate in order to
see the other point of view. So I'll play this out. Suppose you were
to run into a Hari Krishna devotee who described the passage in the
Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna took off in a big blue airplane.
(I'm not making this up.) This was written at least 1000 BC.
Suppose I express skepticism of this event, and in response the
Hari Krishnas say, "well, we will find out when Krishna explains it
to us in heaven." How does that impress you?
I've been listening recently to tapes of Carl Sagan's last book,
'The Demon-Haunted World'. It is very preachy, but I had to agree
with much of what he says about science and reason, and I think
you would too.
This is an age of relativism, fideism, and subjectivism. In such a
climate, some hard-nosed skepticism sounds refreshing. Christianity
is rational; always has been and always will be. I recommend
Carl Sagan's book to all those in the ASA.
Paul Arveson, Research Physicist Code 724, Signatures Directorate, NSWC
9500 MacArthur Blvd., Bethesda, MD 20817-5700
arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil bridges@his.com
(301) 227-3831 (W) (301) 227-4511 (FAX) (301) 816-9459 (H)