“Y’see, you scientists are too skeptical.” From the sidewise motion of his head, Ellie deduced that der Heer was also included in this assessment. “You question everything, or try to. You never heard about `Leave well enough alone,’ or `If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ You always want to check out if a thing is what you call `true.’ And `true’ means only empirical, sense data, things you can see and touch. There’s no room for inspiration or revelation in your world. Right from the beginning you rule out of court almost everything religion is about. I mistrust the scientists because the scientists mistrust everything.”
Despite herself, she thought Rankin had put his case well. And he was supposed to be the dumb one among the modern video evangelists. No, not dumb, she corrected herself; he was the one who considered his parishioners dumb. He could, for all she knew, be very smart indeed. Should she respond at all? Both der Heer and the local museum people were recording the discussion, and although both groups had agreed that the recordings were not for public use, she worried about embarrassing the project or the President if she spoke her mind. but Rankin’s remarks had become increasingly outrageous, and no interventions were being made either by der Heer or by Joss.
“I suppose you want a reply,” she found herself saying. “There isn’t an `official’ scientific position on any of these questions, and I can’t pretend to talk for all scientists or even for the Argus Project. But I can make some comments, if you’d like.”
Rankin nodded his head vigorously, smiling encouragement. Languidly, Joss merely waited.
“I want you to understand that I’m not attacking anybody’s belief system. As far as I’m concerned, you’re entitled to any doctrine you like, even if it’s demonstrably wrong. And many of the things you’re saying, and that the Reverend Joss has said–I saw you talk on television a few weeks ago–can’t be dismissed instantly. It takes a little work. But let me try to explain why I think they’re improbable.”
So far, she though, I’ve been the soul of restraint.
“You’re uncomfortable with scientific skepticism. But the reason it developed is that the world is complicated. It’s subtle. Everybody’s first idea isn’t necessarily right. Also, people are capable of self- deception. Scientists, too. All sorts of socially abhorrent doctrines have at one time or another been supported by scientists, well-known scientists, famous brand-name scientists. And, of course, politicians. And respected religious leaders. Slavery, for instance, or the Nazi brand of racism. Scientists make mistakes, theologians make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. It’s part of being human. You say it yourselves: `To err is.’
“So the way you avoid the mistakes, or at least reduce the chance that you’ll make one, is to be skeptical. You test the ideas. You check them out by rigorous standards of evidence. I don’t think there is such a thing as a received truth. But when you let the different opinions debate, when any skeptic can perform his or her own experiment to check some contention out, then the truth tends to emerge. That’s the experience of the whole history of science. It isn’t a perfect approach, but it’s the only one that seems to work.
“Now, when I look at religion, I see lots of contending opinions. For example, the Christians think the universe is a finite number of years old. From the exhibits out there, it’s clear that some Christians (and Jews, and Muslims) think that the universe is only six thousand years old. The Hindus, on the other had– and there are lots of Hindus in the world–think that the universe is infinitely old, with an infinite number of subsidiary creations and destructions along the way. Now they can’t both be right. Either the universe is a certain number of years old or it’s infinitely old. Your friends out there”–she gestured out the glass door toward several museum workers ambling past “Darwin’s Default”–“ought to debate Hindus. God seems to have told them something different from what he told you. But you tend to talk only to yourselves.”
Maybe a little too strong? she asked herself.
“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.”
Joss now stirred a little, but it was Ranking who replied.
“The revelations, the confirmed predictions by God in the Old Testament and the New are legion. The coming of the Saviour is foretold in Isaiah fifty-three, in Zechariah fourteen, in First Chronicles seventeen. That He would be born in Bethlehem was prophesied in Micah five. That He would come from the line of David was foretold in Matthew one and–”
“In Luke. But that ought to be an embarrassment for you, not a fulfilled prophecy. Matthew and Luke give Jesus totally different genealogies. Worse than that, they trace the lineage from David to Joseph, not from David to Mary. Or don’t you believe in God the Father?”
Rankin continued smoothly on. Perhaps he hadn’t understood her. “…the Ministry and Suffering of Jesus are foretold in Isaiah fifty-two and fifty-three, and the Twenty-second Psalm. That He would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver is explicit in Zechariah eleven. If you’re honest, you can’t ignore the evidence of fulfilled prophecy.
“And the Bible speaks to our own time. Israel and the Arabs, Gog and Magog, American and Russia, nuclear war–it’s all there in the Bible. Anybody with an ounce of sense can see it. You don’t have to be some fancy college professor.”
“Your trouble,” she replied, “is a failure of the imagination. These prophecies are–almost ever one of them–vague, ambiguous, imprecise, open to fraud. They admit lots of possible interpretations. Even the straightforward prophecies direct from the top you try to weasel out of–like Jesus’ promise that the Kingdom of God would come in the lifetime of some people in his audience. And don’t tell me the Kingdom of God is within me. His audience understood him quite literally. You only quote the passages that seem to you fulfilled, and ignore the rest. And don’t forget there was a hunger to see prophecy fulfilled.
“But imagine that your kind of god–omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate–really wanted to leave a record for future generations, to make his existence unmistakable to, say, the remote descendants of Moses. It’s easy, trivial. Just a few enigmatic phrases, and some fierce commandment that they be passed on unchanged…”
“Joss leaned forward almost imperceptibly. “Such as…?”
“Such as `The Sun is a star.’ Or `Mars is a rusty place with deserts and volcanoes, like Sinai.’ Or `A body in motion tends to remain in motion.’ Or–let’s see now”–she quickly scribbled some numbers on a pad–“`The Earth weighs a million million million million times as much as a child.’ Or–I recognize that both of you seem to have some trouble with special relativity, but it’s confirmed every day routinely in particle accelerators and cosmic rays–how about `There are no privileged frames of reference’? Or even `Thou shalt not travel faster than light.’ anything they couldn’t possible have known three thousand years ago.”
“Any others?” Joss asked.
“Well, there’s an indefinite number of them–or at least one for every principal of physics. Let’s see… `Heat and light hid in the smallest pebble.’ Or even `The way of the Earth is as two, but the way of the lodestone is as three.’ I’m trying to suggest that the gravitational force follows an inverse square law, while the magnetic dipole force follows an inverse cube law. Or in biology”–she nodded toward der Heer, who seemed to have taken a vow of silence–“how about `Two strands entwined is the secret of life’?”
“Now that’s an interesting one,” said Joss. “You’re talking, of course, about DNA. But you know the physician’s staff, the symbol of medicine? Army doctors wear it on their lapels. It’s called the caduceus. Shows two serpents intertwined. It’s a perfect double helix. From ancient times that’s been the symbol of preserving life. Isn’t this exactly the kind of connection you’re suggesting?”
“Well, I thought it’s a spiral, not a helix. But if there are enough symbols and enough prophecies and enough myth and folklore, eventually a few of them are going to fit some current scientific understanding purely by accident. But I can’t be sure. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the caduceus is a message from God. Of course, it’s not a Christian symbol, or a symbol of any of the major religions today. I don’t suppose you’d want to argue that the gods talked only to the ancient Greeks. what I’m saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job. And he hardly had to confine himself to writings. Why isn’t there a monster crucifix orbiting the Earth? Why isn’t the surface of the Moon covered with the Ten Commandments? Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?”