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<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the first half of 1993, I led a small contingent of fairly advanced undergraduate students of Arabic to East Jerusalem for an intensive five-month language program there.\u00a0 (We also visited Egypt and Jordan.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One of those students, who has been teaching at Cornell University for quite a few years now, contacted me a few days ago, saying that he and his wife and kids would be in Utah for a few days and wondering whether we might be able to get together for dinner at his in-laws\u2019 house.\u00a0 So we did.\u00a0 And it grew.\u00a0 My wife and I are just back from a very pleasant evening with not only that student but three others, with their wives and at least a significant portion of their children.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s astonishing that so many years have passed, that I\u2019m so old now, and that they\u2019re<\/em> so old.\u00a0 But they\u2019ve turned out solidly well.\u00a0 They\u2019re friends.\u00a0 To each other, to my wife, and even, as inconceivable as it may seem, to me.\u00a0 And it\u2019s reassuring to know that even such a merry group of mad and adventurous madcaps can turn out to be respectable, contributing members of society.\u00a0 We liked them then, and we like them now.\u00a0 Tonight was a treat.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n John Charlton Polkinghorne,\u00a0KBE (Knight of the British Empire),\u00a0FRS\u00a0(Fellow of the Royal Society), is an English\u00a0theoretical physicist,\u00a0theologian, writer, and\u00a0Anglican\u00a0priest. \u00a0He was a\u00a0professor\u00a0of\u00a0mathematical physics\u00a0at the\u00a0University of Cambridge\u00a0until\u00a0he resigned his professorial chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained\u00a0Anglican\u00a0priest in 1982. \u00a0He served as the president of\u00a0Queens\u2019 College, Cambridge,\u00a0from 1988 until 1996.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a comment from him that I found noteworthy:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cScience has purchased its very great success by the modesty of its ambition. \u00a0Science does not seek to ask and answer every sort of question. \u00a0It restricts itself essentially to asking questions of process, which are \u2018how questions\u2019 of how things come to be. \u00a0It also restricts the kind of experience that it takes into account in framing and finding its answers to those questions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n (Sir John Polkinghorne, \u201cBelief in God in an Age of Science,\u201d in Eric Metaxas, ed., Life, God, and Other Small Topics<\/i> [New York: Plume\/Penguin, 2011, 9])<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sir John\u2019s point is an extremely important one. \u00a0It expresses one of the reasons why I\u2019m quite unimpressed with people who like to contrast the successes of science with what they see as the lack of such successes in the world of religion.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tape measures have a very successful record in measuring table tops, bedsteads, driveways, growing children, and women being fitted for dresses.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Literary criticism and philosophical discussions come nowhere near the record of objective success and clarity achieved by tape measures.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Does that demonstrate, though, that tape measures\u00a0are more valuable and important than performances of Shakespeare, readings of Moli\u00e8re and Goethe and Dante, or discussions of the good, the true, and the beautiful?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n No, it simply means that tape measures have been developed (very well) to deal with a severely\u00a0restricted and well defined sector of the world. \u00a0Applying a tape measure to a performance of Hamlet, though, or using it to evaluate Goethe\u2019s Faust<\/i> or Dante\u2019s Paradiso<\/i>, or to resolve an ethical dilemma, or to judge between Mozart\u2019s \u201cJupiter Symphony\u201d and \u201cJupiter, the Bringer of Jollity\u201d from Gustav Holst\u2019s orchestral suite The Planets<\/i> would be . . . \u00a0Well, it would be more than slightly mad<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n David Aberg\u2019s painting Mother Earth<\/i>, located in Angelholm, Sweden, measures 86,000 square feet. \u00a0By contrast, Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa<\/i> measures only about thirty inches by twenty-one inches. \u00a0However, only a loon would pronounce\u00a0Mother Earth<\/i> a greater painting than the Mona Lisa<\/i> on the grounds that it\u2019s demonstrably much, much larger, or because it\u2019s composed of quantifiably more daubs of paint.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n From the late Elder Richard G. Scott (1928-2015), a nuclear engineer who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1988 until his death:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Try as I might, I am not able, even in the smallest degree, to comprehend the extent, depth, and stunning grandeur of what our holy Heavenly Father, Elohim, has permitted to be revealed by the scientific method. If we were capable of moving outward into space, we would first see our earth as did the astronauts. Farther out, we would have a grandstand view of the sun and its orbiting planets. They would appear as a small circle of objects within an enormous panorama of glittering stars. Were we to continue the outward journey, we would have a celestial view of our Milky Way spiral, with over 100 billion stars rotating in a circular path, their orbits controlled by gravity around a concentrated central region. Beyond that, we could look toward a group of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster, which some feel includes our Milky Way, estimated to be about 50 million light years away. Beyond that, we\u2019d encounter galaxies 10 billion light years away that the Hubble telescope has photographed. The dizzying enormity of that distance is suggested by noting that light travels 700 million miles an hour. Even from this extraordinary perspective there would not be the slightest evidence of approaching any limit to God the Father\u2019s creations.<\/span><\/p>\n As awe inspiring as this incredible view of the heavens would present, there is another consideration equally capable of confirming the unfathomable capacities of our Father in Heaven. Were we to move in the opposite direction to explore the structure of matter, we could get a close-up view of a double helix molecule of DNA. That is the extraordinary, self-duplicating molecular structure that controls the makeup of our physical body. Further exploration would bring us to the level of an atom, composed of the protons, neutrons, and electrons we\u2019ve heard about.<\/span><\/p>\n Were we to penetrate further into the mysteries of the most fundamental makeup of creation, we would come to the limit of our current understanding. In the last 70 years much has been learned about the structure of matter. A Standard Model of Fundamental Particles and Interactions has been developed. It is based on experimentation that has established the existence of fundamental particles designated as quarks and others called leptons. This model explains the patterns of nuclear binding and decay of matter, but it does not yet provide a successful explanation for the forces of gravity. Also, some feel that even more powerful tools than those used to acquire our current understanding of matter might reveal additional fundamental particles. So there are yet more of Father in Heaven\u2019s creations to be understood by the scientific method.<\/span><\/p>\n