The Rolling Fog

A silent confusion has drifted almost imperceptibly across the United States landscape.  On many university and college campuses a significant number of professors bombard students’ minds with philosophical relativism guised in the cloak of science; that is, no scientific evidence supports the claim of absolutes.  Students who fail to scrutinize this arbitrary declaration in the light of all evidence often fall prey to this insidious fog!

Indeed, it’s profoundly amazing how doors to very relevant and enlightening avenues of exploration have neatly been sealed off from discussion, and at the same time, mere statements become hinged to the clout of position and prestige to lock those doors of exploration!

But sometimes integrity and stubborn pursuits among those whose inquisitive minds refuse to dismiss any evidence become the only role these mavericks willingly play.  Their unwillingness to compromise has sometimes provoked ostracism, even to some of those who have earned the role of expertise in fields of science.  Sadly, these well qualified and soundly based scientists who have rendered convincing documentations to support their conclusions are quarantined from the mandarins of established science!

This brings to mind this keenly relevant observation:  There are none so blind as they who refuse to see!

But leave it to the very honest and open common people to perplex the minds of those who feel that the universe revolves around themselves and that their words are always invincible, irrespective of any criticism!  The following interaction may well illustrate this point:

“Over here, Gus,” came the shout at the gate.

“Zach,” Gus greeted as he quickly moved toward Zach with an outstretched hand.  “Boy, it’s good to be back in my old stumping ground and especially to see you, my favorite cousin.”

“And good to have you back, old buddy,” Zach responded.  “But you are sporting something you did not have before your departure from here to pursue your academic quest.”

“Huh?” Gus questioned, a puzzled shadow falling across his expression.

“Oh, you know,” Zach insisted.  “Your credentials, your PhD earned at prestigious Yale!”

“I’ll admit,” Gus chuckled and looked toward the ground, “it’s a good boost to establish my ends, but that’s about all there is to it.  I mean, friendships—like yours—mean more to me than placing myself on some sort of pedestal.  As a matter of fact, my educational pursuits have taught me much more tolerance toward everyone else.  Gives me a sense of peace to know I really have no enemies”

“Hmm,” Zach pondered momentarily and responded, “I’d like to learn more, but first, let’s get settled in.  Here’s my car.  Let’s load this luggage of yours and get home to a good meal first.”

“Good idea,” Gus agreed with a smile.  “I’m anxious to learn about your relationship progress with your close friend, Renee.  I haven’t had any communication from you about her for several months, now.”

“There’s a good reason for that,” Zach started with a heavy gravity in his voice.  “As you have also noticed, I’m sure, until I called you last week to wish you the best at your graduation, I’ve written you only every three or four weeks.  Yes, for a good reason.  I’m sure I had mentioned to you that Renee and I had seriously considered marriage.  She was reluctant to consent.  Then, I found out from a dear friend of hers that she suffered from cancer in the last stages.  Then, I found that in spite of her love for me, she did not wish to… to… uh…”

“Oh,” Gus interrupted, “she felt she loved you too much to drag you into her plight.”

“Well…uh… yes.  Kinda,” Zach conceded with a tear trailing down his cheek.  “I tried.  Really.  But she wanted us to be friends with no obligations.  Then, suddenly about a month ago, she… she succumbed to the cancer.”

“Buddy,” Gus spoke softly with a bit of pathos moving him, “I’m so sorry.  I just had no clue about how things were going with you and Renee.”

Then the two continued to catch each other up on other news about acquaintances and events as they traveled down the highway.  Soon, however, they arrived at Zach’s small house at the end of a street arched with tall trees over the street from each side. 

Shortly, the two had settled in and found themselves seated at a table where Zach’s mother, who had come to prepare the meal, visited with them.

“Now as soon’s I asks the blessings, you guys just dig in,” Mrs. Dodge instructed as she seated herself.  “Dear God, bless us and make us so appreciative for all your bounty and help us to see the Giver much more than the gifts!  And thank you fur Gus and Zach.  Give ‘em enough time to get acquainted all over again.  In Jesus name, amen.”

Consuming the meal in the midst of laughter and small talk, much about old times together, the three glanced frequently at each other with a twinkle in the eyes that marked a delight to be back together with each other.

“As good as this is,” Zach remarked after each had finished the desert and sat for a few minutes, “I’m going to steal Gus for awhile in the living room to bring me up to date on his school experiences.”

“It’s like old times,” Liz Dodge, Zach’s mother, reflected.  “I remember when you two would spend hours playing together years ago.  You two just retire and catch up on everything as I tidy and clean the dining room.”

“Oh, Aunt Liz,” Gus protested, “you can just let those matters go and join us.”

“Nonsense!” Liz insisted.  “I won’t hear of such.  Y’all just shush on away and get caught up on news.”

As the two seated themselves on the couch, Gus yawned and sighed as he stretched his arms high.

“Gus,” Zach called, “you look pooped.  It might be a good time to catch a little shuteye before we get into your experiences.”

“You know, Zach, old buddy, you’re absolutely right.” Gus conceded.  “Yes, but only as I have a chance to share with you for a little while, at least.”

“If you insist,” Zach allowed, “but only if you’re sure you’re up to it.”

“Absolutely.  After all, this ol’ Nigger done showed them white folks how to succeed,” Gus mocked with a rolling laughter.  “Here in ol’ Mississippi, nonetheless!”

“Gus, you were always one to speak without reservation, but—really—you could have gone on without that slur!”

“Oh, now come on,” Gus rejoined.  “You offended by Nigger?  Why, I remember some of your best friends from the white neighborhood would say such things as y’all are real good Nigger boys!  And I mean they treated us like family.”

“Now, get off it, Gus!” Zach protested.  “You know very well that they used that slur in ignorance.  We don’t have to perpetuate such language.”

“Still the same old Zach,” Gus mused.  “You never did care much for off color humor, did you?”

“I just don’t see the point of it.”

“Now, you two sound just like old times,” Mrs. Dodge echoed from the kitchen, “picking on each other and needling each other—yeah, just like the best of buddies!”

“Right on, Aunt Liz,” Gus cheered.  “We do have fun returning the ball to each other’s court and in the end find ourselves to be fairly close to agreeing.”

“But we’ll see about where we end this time,” Zach cautioned.

“And as I indicated, Zach, old buddy,” Gus stressed, “since I’ve had the fortune to soak up the finest education, ending up graduating from Yale, the big lesson I learned is tolerance.  I assure you I respect your views because each of us is right in creating his own world of views to suit himself.”

“Well, Gus,” Zach began in a deliberating tone, “I’m quite familiar with humanistic/materialistic philosophical approaches to relativism.  I seriously question the validity of those presuppositions leading to that perspective.”

“Wow!” Gus exclaimed.  “You have done a lot of reading, haven’t you, old buddy?”

“Oh, yes.  I’ve read some, and even books that I totally disagree with, just to get a feel for how the academic world deals with issues.”

“Really!  I’m quite flabbergasted!” Gus reflected.  “Why, you almost sound like some of my professors.  You would have made a good student to bring out their expertise to deal with your ideas, especially since you’re so very well versed on ideologies.”

“However,” Zach hastened to add, “no other book can stand up to the foundational revelation through the Bible.”

“Excuse me, my friend,” Gus cautioned.  “Although I have a lot of respect and believe people have a right to develop their own religious outlook, religion is religion and the real world fostered from scientific research are two separate worlds!”

“Really?  And scientific research is based on facts?” Zach reflected.  “Does that mean that scientists recognize absolutes, after all?”

“Well, facts only reflect observable, measurable and definable substances and/or behavior that provide possible predictable outcomes that can be subjected to testing in order to demonstrate validity of proposed theories,” Gus spouted off nonchalantly.

“Don’t circumvent the issue!” Zach reproved.  “As a matter of fact, old boy, you have succeeded in over complicating the starting point of the scientific method!  Now, let’s go back to facts.  Is what you observe, measure and define reality?  In other words, are they absolutes?”

“OK!  OK!  If you put it that way,” Gus conceded, “we tend to treat them as absolutes, but they mirror the end of aimless, random and accidental coalition of matter and reflect no intelligence or purpose.  We attribute values to them out of our need to bring meaning to give ourselves some sense of direction or purpose.”

“Sounds to be a neat way to evade responsibility and accountability in life, Gus,” Zach reasoned.  “But such dismissal speaks nothing concerning the origin of human conceptions of intelligence, purpose or values.  Just how could that come about without having any reason or source?”

“Just the same way the whole universe originated out of meaninglessness and accidental coalition,” Gus insisted.  “We as observing beings attribute causes to what we see from the accidents of the end product of random, senseless motions.”

“So-o-o, when you reason back toward your nothingness, you arbitrarily decide that what did not exist gave birth to existence,” Zach mused.  “Just where in all of human experiences do you have a concrete example how such could happen?”

“Oh, boy!” Gus exclaimed.  “Not to have ever attended a university, you certainly know how to keep pushing, don’t you?  Well, we only pursue from what we know—not from what we do not know.  For example, we can observe nature.  We see how nature gives rise to patterns and orderly complexities.  But the simple gives rise to that developmental avenue—evolution, if you will.  Things evolve from the simple to the complex intellectual ends.”

“So something different keeps coming out of accidents?”

“Hardly,” Gus declared emphatically.  “Adaptation is the word.”

“But adaptation implies an inward sensitivity to survival modes,” Zach pointed out.  “The need to survive in and of itself can scarcely translate into a meaningless happenstance!”

“I tell you, Zach,” Gus responded with a heartily laughter, “I am shocked that you are turning out to be a very worthy opponent.  You argue from a viewpoint based on a presupposition of meaning.  I simply say that the concept of meaning evolved through an evolutionary process of millions of years.”

“I don’t want to sound unkind or insensitive, Gus,” Zach responded, “but you may not be aware of your skill to evade and beg issues.  Please allow me to press you back to consider the earliest and simplest cells.  Even the one-cell organisms have complexities of DNA and RNA.  DNA provides a whole library of information that determines the very nature and function of the one-cell organism.  The RNA houses the mechanisms to translate that information into the structures that provide highly specialized functions.”

“Again, you are quite right in your knowledge of DNA and RNA, Zach, but those building blocks evolved over more than a billion years.”

“What?” Zach pressed.  “Were you around to make that observation?  Of course not, but I have a point to stress.  Just suppose there is a planet four times the size of earth.  In our imaginations let’s pretend hypothetically that we have advanced to the level that astrologists could observe that planet that existed more than a hundred light years away from earth.  Just for the sake of our point, suppose that they also determined that this planet consisted entirely of marble-sized crystals.  Through some miraculous means, they were able to determine that every crystal was black, except for a single one that was bright white.  Now, they also made an amazing discovery as they continued to study that plant.  They were privy to its explosion that suddenly came to earth from a hundred years ago.  They knew that the explosion scattered all the crystals in all directions throughout our galaxy from that explosion a hundred light years ago.  Further calculations determined that about four million years into the future one or two of those high speed crystals had about one in a million chances of reaching earth.  There would be another of about one in a million chance that the speed of the one or two crystals could be coordinated with the movement of the earth by that time as to survive the atmosphere and land somewhere on earth.  Suppose a child in the yard of his house were holding a bucket up such that one crystal would fall into his bucket.  That crystal turned out to be the white crystal.  Now, my friend, could you project the probability of this happening?”

“Totally incalculable!” Gus exclaimed.

“And, knowing you, Gus,” Zach continued, “I think you know where I’m headed with this.  As with that simplest cell, for all conditions and all elements to come together at the right place at the very split second even over the expansion of billions of years would be less likely than the child having that only white crystal from the exploding planet fall into the bucket in the child’s hand.”

“I’m not so sure about your illustration,” Gus cautioned.  “It could be a bit askew.   However, I catch your drift.”

“To be honest with you, Gus,” Zach added, “I just could not rally enough faith to believe in such a very far-fetched theory that seeks to counter the compelling evidence of intelligence.  While you may be too reserved to draw such a conclusion, intelligent design gives a much more plausible explanation.”

“Of course, I respect you too much to interfere with your right to stack your world the way that best serves you,” Gus assured.  “But I’m very interested in how you came to be so well versed on such issues.”

“Daddy Dan,” Zach responded.  “He…”

“You mean to tell me that old Daddy swallowed you up in his niceties?” Gus laughed.  “Why, that old white guy gathered a mixture of whites, blacks and Mexicans and ran them around town doing yard work for senior adults, feeding the hungry and needy people and in general talking about the Bible all the time.”

“Yes, the same guy,” Zach affirmed proudly, “but he saw my zeal and really took me under his wing.  He made me his assistant!  Can you believe that?  A struggling young Negro as ignorant as they come and not very refined—even uncouth—at best.  He took a lot of us guys proudly right into his church.  You know, that old, old church building on the corner of Jesse and Starford Streets.”

“Ah, yes,” Gus admitted.  “That old Baptist Church that burned a couple of years ago.”

“Yes, the very same.  How I miss it!  And strangely enough, that was the same night that Daddy Dan was shot and killed by a drug trafficker he caught dealing in illicit drugs—very, very sad!  When I lost him, I lost a real dad—I mean, since my real dad died before I was eight years of age, he really took the place of my real dad whom I never had a chance to grow up with!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.  You never mentioned him in your correspondence with me.  I…”

“I know,” Zach explained.  “It had always been a sensitive matter between us.  You always suspected him to have some ulterior motive and didn’t spare your expressions of indignation toward him—even to his face.  I saw no reason to stir up hard feelings all over again between us.”

“Of course,” Gus acknowledged.  “You know, I could have been wrong about him.  I just could not understand that anyone could give so much to others without manipulating them toward some sinister end.  But if he had been up to no good, it would have surfaced sooner or later.  I’m very sorry, Zach.  At least, now I’m a bit more tolerant and a little less suspicious.”

“Well that’s water under the bridge,” Zach assured.  “The important thing now is that we can look to the future.  Daddy Dan helped me do just that.  Even in his death he willed me all he had—to carry on in his footsteps.”

“At least, you did get a little toward helping you.”

“I don’t consider nearly a million dollars little assets!”  Zach rejoined.  “He accumulated much from his investment savings.  He had great dreams of expanding missions work throughout the United States and eventually to the ends of the world.  He had always given much all his life, but also had this automatic investment savings that grew over the years.”

“Wow!”  Gus exploded with glee.  “Here I am speaking to a rich man!  Can you imagine—you, rich, and still living in this… this little shack?”

“Woe!  Hold on!”  Zach cautioned.  “I’m reinvesting all this into mission work—just as Daddy Dan envisioned this taking place.”

“You don’t mean to say,” Gus stressed boldly, “that you can’t use some of this for yourself?”

“Legally, I could,” Zach explained, “but as a Christian who shares Daddy Dan’s vision, I would not place myself into such bondage.  I love giving it all for God’s use.  After all, He owns everything and we are His stewards.”

“Hmmm,” Gus mused, “I’m beginning to sense genuine authenticity in you.  How wrong I must have been about Daddy Dan since I can now see that he must have passed that genuine attitude and love on to you.”

“I have always thought highly of you, Gus,” Zach reiterated, “but I feared you had drifted into the clutches of a naturalistic and relativistic world view.  I hope I now see some light in your concession here that you see genuineness in Daddy Dan and me.  If so, I think you are on the right tract.”

“And I think the world of you, too, Zach,” Gus assured, “but I don’t make any promises.  However, I will give a lot of thought to what I have learned from you.  I’m going to try my best to sort through things and research a bit.  All I can really say at this point is that we’ll see.”  (Also see Relativism)