******
Recently I happened to be talking to a prominent California
geologist, and she told me: "When I first went into geology, we
all thought that in science you create a solid layer of findings,
through experiment and careful investigation, and then you add a
second layer, like a second layer of bricks, all very carefully,
and so on. Occasionally some adventurous scientist stacks the
bricks up in towers, and these towers turn out to be
insubstantial and they get torn down, and you proceed again with
the careful layers. But we now realize that the very first layers
aren't even resting on solid ground. They are balanced on
bubbles, on concepts that are full of air, and those bubbles are
being burst today, one after the other."
I suddenly had a picture of the entire astonishing edifice
collapsing and modern man plunging headlong back into the
primordial ooze. He's floundering, sloshing about, gulping for
air, frantically treading ooze, when he feels something huge and
smooth swim beneath him and boost him up, like some almighty
dolphin. He can't see it, but he's much impressed. He names it
God.
****
That's like what Jastrow wrote at the end of God and the Atronomers, where he
says the scientists have fore decades scaled the peaks of knowledge, and as
they finally lift themselves over the final ledge, they meet a group of
theologians who have been waiting for them for years.
Blind faith in naturalism is leading many off the edge of the Reality cliffs.
Jim