Thursday, November 29, 2007

1937, 2007, 2077


Quote of the day:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
--Max Planck

I can’t tell you how relieved I was to read this statement from the great physicist Max Planck.

There are times I find it nothing short of exasperating to read statistics that say things like the majority of Americans believe that the creation of the earth happened 6000 years ago, literally according to the Genesis story. No matter what data is laid out, or what careful, rational argument is made, this statistic is unshakeable.

Until some of these people start dying off. I think that’s how the world began seeing that Galileo and Copernicus were right, that the earth revolved around the sun. Over dozens of years, the opponents just slowly died off.

That’s what’s going to happen with creation and the age of the earth, too.

I expect Planck’s statement applies to other kinds of truth, also.

It reminds me of an inside joke I heard just after I was ordained. After being appointed to a congregation for a few months, a minister is asked how things are going. He says, “there’s nothing wrong with this church that a few well-placed funerals couldn’t cure.”

We are indelibly shaped by the culture in which we grow up. Our opinions and beliefs are more part of us and therefore more resistant to change than we think they are.

Think of how you are different from your parents, and how they were different from their parents.

While much about the world is the same, our cultural outlook today is quite different than that of our grandparents. This is largely because of what we have learned in the intervening years. We have come to accept new truths that have emerged.

70 years ago women had had the right to vote for just 17 years. Significant parts of the United States were clearly segregated by race, and would stay that way for years.

There was no television. Major cities each had a few daily newspapers. Air travel was for very rich people, and you there were no commercial flights over the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. There were no malls, McDonald’s or Starbucks. If you wanted to go shopping, you went downtown. Life expectancy was 63.

In 2007, we live differently. Mostly better.

And we believe differently.

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