In the last few days we have been captivated by the arrival of the Rosetta space craft at, and the landing of the Philae Lander on, the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasminko after travelling for 10 years across 300 million miles of space – amazing! Staggering!
No wonder there was such jubilation, all that investment and work done ten years ago and more. The ability to plan and land it 10 years on. To match the speed, some 30,000 miles an hour, to land, take pictures, gather samples and beam back the results, is indeed the stuff of science fiction.
We have celebrated the achievement and rightly so. What we have failed to recognize is that it would have been impossible without a stable, consistent universe. The fact that there is order and not chaos to the world and universe we live in made it all possible.
Another thing, the hope is to find out if comets could have seeded the earth. I seem to remember that a similar hope existed at the time of the missions to the moon – that we might find answers as to how earth and ourselves come to be here, but with no real answers. I don’t hold out any such hope for this mission either. The science is good, it’s right that we explore this amazing place, but the questions are wrong. If it did so happen that comets seeded the earth, the question still remains – where did they come from? where do we come from? where did it all begin? why are we here?
It’s as if we don’t like the answer to the question that stares us in the face. If only we could find another one.
No the answers to these questions will never come from exploring ever deeper into our solar system but rather must come by revelation, something that is given to us. Scripture says that God created and ordered this vast cosmos, putting everything in its place, that day by day it speaks of Him, and that whoever we are, wherever we are, it is indeed possible to know.
The arrival of the Rosetta space craft at comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasminko, and the landing of the Philae probe could not have happened in an evolving and chaotic universe, but only one that it was possible to understand and work with because indeed it was created and ordered and is sustained in such a way.
The Word 4 Life 