Thoughts in a Haystack

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Sometimes people get it so right that you have to take your hat off ... even when what they're so right about is why they're wrong.

Al Clemens of Springfield, Missouri, in a letter to the editor of the Springfield News-Leader, has had such a perfect insight:

Of course, the vast majority of "evolutionists" (a term proper only to evolutionary biologists) don't lay awake wondering how life began. Most of them are too busy figuring out how the life that obviously does exist has changed over time. Some scientists do wonder about how life began but any worrying they do at night is over how to better experiment on the problem the coming day.

Al's perfection comes in seeing that what creationists want above all is certainty. It doesn't matter if the "answer" is right or wrong or even if it is an answer at all. It can be nothing more than an assurance, in the form of a "mystery," that no answer is needed in order to be certain.

And therein lies the difference between creationists on the one hand and scientists and those who value science on the other. For certainty is the enemy of learning; the antithesis of asking "why?" and "how?" Certainty is an excuse not to think; the rationale against reason. Certainty needs no testing and, if you can keep your eyes screwed tight enough shut, your fingers buried deep enough in your ears and hum loud enough, certainty will permit no chance of your ever being wrong.

Do it just right and you'll never experience a troubling thought again.
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