The CTCR’s latest report “Together with all Creatures” April 2010 perpetuates a modern myth: that the space program first taught us how small we are.
“Prior to the Apollo program, we had never seen our planet from the outside. Apollo 8 changed all that with the photo ‘Earthrise’ in 1968. People saw the earth hanging in the blackness of space. It looked small and fragile. Six years later, Apollo 17 gave us our first picture of the entire sphere of the earth. When Voyage 1 flew by Saturn [November 1980] and turned its camera back toward earth, it took a photograph that has come to be known as the ‘pale blue dot.’ The earth took up less than one pixel on the photograph. The Hubble Telescope further expanded our sense of ‘aloneness’ within the universe. It seemed that we and the planet on which we live were, as astronomer and author Carl Sagan commented, little more than ‘motes of dust’ within the vastness of space” (7).
Hallelujah! The 2010 CTCR finally caught up with Ptolemy who lived in 2nd century A.D. at Alexandria. In his Almagest (Bk. I, ch. V) he observed that the earth was infinitesimal compared with the vastness of space. He said, “’the earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point!’” C. S. Lewis observes, “The real question is why the spatial insignificance of the earth, after being known for centuries, should suddenly in the last century have become and argument against Christianity” (God in the Dock, 39, 74).
Don’t misunderstand; the CTCR certainly doesn’t argue against Chrsitianity. They say these indications of how small and frail the earth is has “impressed upon people that the earth is all we have. We had better take care of it” (7). No, the CTCR doesn’t argue for taking care of creation on that basis either, they only point out that “people” got an environmental message from the space program. “In brief, the space program has given us a picture of ourselves and our planet that raises questions about the impact of human life and technology on the entire planet” (7-8).
My point is that when a fact that has been well known for centuries suddenly is treated as news, suddenly impacts people, suddenly moves them to do something, with C. S. Lewis you had better at least wonder why. And I wonder, in the case of the green movement, if it’s not a case of salvation by works. The smallness of our planet, of mankind in general, has always been a preaching of the Law in Scripture. If we answer that preaching by a doing or a doing better, than Law has not done its proper work and we remain under its curse.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I am for sustainable farming verses agribusiness. I’m for growing your own vegetables, killing your own game, and making your own beer. (I tried growing my own tobacco. Don’t believe the websites; it’s a lot harder than it looks.) What I’m not for is treating an almost 2,000 year old fact as a modern discovery. Wouldn’t a movement today that got its impetus from their recent discovery of gravity look foolish from the get-go?
It’s interesting that modern science has taught us, on one hand, that we are so tiny and insignificant that what we do doesn’t really matter in the big picture, and on the other hand, that we are so large, powerful, and heavy-footed that we’re in perpetual danger of destroying the planet. This contradiction is found in all snobbery, and this is chronological snobbery: Ancient man (where “ancient” means “before 1980”) didn’t know where babies come from, didn’t know the earth was spherical, didn’t think slavery was evil, etc. All history has striven just to produce wonderful, enlightened US. I’m so glad we’re finally here.
It’s interesting that at the same time Ptolemy ascribes insignificance to the earth with respect to the vastness of the universe, yet he advocated a theory which placed the earth at the very center of the universe, around which every celestial body revolved!
I think many people (especially of the TV age) are very visual. While pictures of the Earth from space don’t necessarily produce any new knowledge, we can pull up that picture and explain to even a young child how infinite God is, compared with how finite and small we are as a speck on Earth.
While scientific research and “discovery” only supports that an all mighty God created everything that is around us, those who don’t believe find ways to push God out of the explanation. Of course it’s not fashionable to talk about God as Creator in public schools anymore either – but that shouldn’t stop me and you from saying it anyway.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ptolemy’s model and subsequently Aquinas’s adaptation came from the fact that they believed man was the focal point of the gods/God. You can thank the Catholic Holy Office/ The Inquisition for teaching the incorrect Geocentric model all the way until the mid-19th Century. Assuming that God is solely focused on mankind is a dangerous belief.
Actually, you can thank science. Here are some quotes from The Galileo Connection by Charles Hummel. “Yet, it was they, the leading scientists, who urged the theologians to intervene, confident that the church would be on their side” (120). “The real authoritarianism that engineered Galileo’s downfall was that of the Aristotelian scientific outlook in the universities. Only after Galileo had attacked that establishment for decades did his enemies turn their controversy into a theological issue” (122-123). “’It has been known for a long time that a major part of the church intellectuals were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular ideas’” (123)
I think many people (especially of the TV age) are very visual. While pictures of the Earth from space don’t necessarily produce any new knowledge, we can pull up that picture and explain to even a young child how infinite God is, compared with how finite and small we are as a speck on Earth. While scientific research and “discovery” only supports that an all mighty God created everything that is around us, those who don’t believe find ways to push God out of the explanation. Of course it’s not fashionable to talk about God as Creator in public schools anymore either – but that shouldn’t stop me and you from saying it anyway.