Archive Home Page From: Joseph C. Uhrig
Subject: Re(9): Christian Education
To: Religion
"There are great idea's undiscovered. Breakthru's available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief"
- on the 25th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
First of all let me state my belief that "Creationism" is not science and shouldn't be presented as science. The attempt by religious fundamentalists to put Creationism on an equal footing with "Evolution" as a part of a science curriculum in the public schools feels like, on one level, little more than an back door attempt to indoctrinate other people's kids with their own beliefs. I have no doubt that the people who have promoted this view sincerely feel some kind of divine mandate to do so. The attempt however does more to diminish Creationism than Evolution for it removes the Biblical story from it's most powerful context. When a religious, mythological, symbolic, or metaphorical story is isolated like that it can lose a great deal of it's meaning.
What bothers me more however is that the attempt polarizes the two views and makes the discussion one of Science versus Religion instead of Science AND Religion. This polarization discourages integrative approaches that attempt to bridge the gulf between the two views.
So with that as a preface let me take a stroll down memory lane and present an alternate view that attempts integrate the two sides of this debate and along the way stroll thru the fields of numerology, mythology, religion, sociology, psychology, science, engineering, and of course history (which I'll define here, somewhat incompletely, as the actions and experiences of human beings thru the field of time).
One of the favorite cultural myths that scientists routinely denigrate is Friday the 13th. Often associated with superstition or black magic, it's real meaning, and the reason for it's endurance in our culture, has always been it's deep symbolic relationship to Christianity. Thirteen of course, besides being a prime number, is the number of the apostles plus Christ. Friday is of course associated with Good Friday or the day of the crucifixion. So Friday the 13th is symbolically when Christ was crucified and died, so small wonder that it's considered to be an unlucky day.
You can take this even further into the obscure hieroglyphics and symbolism of numerology and see that in our western numbering syntax, 13 is the combination of 1 and 3, and in the Roman numbering syntax, XIII is symbolically a cross and three I's. Can you say Trinity? I knew you could :)
So having hopefully established at least a potential relationship between this number and Christian mythology, fast forward several thousand years to 1969. I was at that time a young boy growing up in Florida with a keen interest in model rocketry and a Dad who was an engineer so it should come as no suprize that I was a big follower of the Apollo program. I remember quite literally dancing around the house with excitement when Apollo 11 landed. Of course after all the excitement I fell asleep in front of the TV before the first moon walk, nevertheless these were really important events to me and many other people.
So fast forward again to April 13th, 1970. This was of course the fateful day when the service module exploded on Apollo XIII. Odyssey and Aquarius (the water carrier) were the names of the Command module and the Lunar lander. I've always found it interesting how scientists often evoke mythological themes for important scientific endeavors. Anyway what followed was one life threatening situation after another. Just about anything that could go wrong did go wrong. If these events don't seem familiar to you I recommend seeing the movie Apollo 13. It captures the essence of what happened. The journey home was a real credit to the courage and determination of the astronauts and the people supporting them on the ground. But there was something else that happened.
People the world over were instantly connected to this story. Masses were held, prayers were said. Just in the few years before then we had seen the rise of world wide television, and audiences of hundreds of millions were listening and watching the news, particularly as the splashdown neared. We knew that the heat shield might have been damaged by the explosion, we knew that the manually controlled burns might not have been accurate enough, we knew that there was a typhoon near the landing zone, and we knew that there might not be enough power left for the parachutes to deploy. Then the spaceship went into radio blackout as it quite literally went thru the fire. We watched and waited...
And waited. 15 seconds after the radio blackout was supposed to have ended. Silence. 30 seconds after radio blackout. Silence. I have to tell you that as a young boy watching this my hopes started to fall. 45 seconds. Silence. I remember starting to cry. They were lost. They had died. 60 seconds. And then the radio crackled and they were there. The feedback was instantaneous, despite the manual burns it was one of the most accurate landings in manned space flight. The three parachutes, floating above the single vessel containing three men, were visible from the TV cameras aboard the recovery carrier. The tears never stopped, I went from loss and despair to astonishment, relief, and finally jubilation. They were alive.
Fast forward 25 years. Sitting around trying to figure it all out. The actions and events can all be rationally explained. Skill, determination, even a little bit of luck. I figure that the reason for the silence after the blackout ended was to conserve power. If I was running on the equivalent of a couple of flashlight batteries I know I wouldn't have been wasting energy talking on the radio until I knew the parachutes had deployed. The events can all be rationally and even scientifically explained. Everything can be attributed to actions in the field of time. Except for this.
The emotions I experienced as a young boy were by no means unique. The event though only a minute in duration triggered this kind of emotional response in hundreds of millions of people. They were lost and they were found. They were dead, and then they were alive.
What we experienced, collectively, in our hearts, was a death...
and a resurrection.
It happened right before our very eyes. Not only that but we were a part of it. And if you were like me didn't even notice it at the time. It still can't be scientifically proven, but it was experienced. And everything was linked together by the number 13. That is the power of myth.
So I refuse to believe that the fundamentalists and scientists alike are so narrow as to only see what their beliefs or training tell them to see. In a larger context I see this Creationism versus Evolution issue in Kansas as little more than a reenactment or reenergizing of a old historical conflict. We do after all keep history alive.
The events surrounding the Apollo 13 splashdown may also provide another insight. As many musicians can no doubt tell you, sometimes it is not the note that is important, but the pregnant pause that comes before the note.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it :)