Re: Harvard Crimson: Requiem for Environmentalism and Earth Day

Janice wrote:

> The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old,
> 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid
> hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits
> merrily.
>
> So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do
> not think this will be easy.
>

Two likely asteroid collisions with the earth didn't
"destroy" the earth, nor did they wiped out _all_
life in a single grand slam, but one at the end of
the Permian age seems to have wiped out 90% of the
species in the ocean, and the other at the end of
the Cretaceous seems to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

Sure, the "4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne
ball of iron" can endure. It was here long before we came think
about it, it can endure quite well long after we are gone too.
Moreover, life (of some kind) can surely endure. Roaches survived
the Permian extinction. They have a good lead, and can quite likely out
live us, if we don't learn to reign in a little of our arrogance. Ants are
a good candidate too. Indeed, sharks are remarkable survivors. Rats?
Don't know, but they can clearly live with us or without us. Our
technology is little more than a few hundred years old, yet sometimes
I sense us acting as though we've been here for an eternity.

So the question is not whether the earth will endure; short of
getting sucked into a black hole, something will surely survive.
The question should be, will the human race make it, and, if so,
in what condition?

I know in the age of science, we don't usually attribute punishment
to God when it comes to matters of natural disaster, but God did
grant us a brain and a rational world where we can see consequences.
If he punished Israel for sins of idolatry and corruption of the heart,
something that is a matter of faith and obedience, how much more
would he be prepared to punish us for ignoring something so prosaic
as that which we can acquire by way of scientific investigation and
rational inquiry in an age of technology?

by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
Received on Tue Apr 25 20:15:05 2006