Lee - Thank you Lee, from those of us who want to lose weight.  You've suddenly made us feel a lot smaller.  (Offset somewhat by your Milky Way reference and thoughts of candy bars.)  Nim

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From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk on behalf of Lee Reed
Sent: Fri 10/28/2005 4:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A deterministic view of the science-faith debate



Pastor Pearson on one side. Faithless Frank countering. Even a
witticism from Grandpa Dunfee. Thank you all for enlivening my
afternoon with your tales of science and faith as I spend my
fall break in Nowhere, Alabama, waiting like Godot for my
wife's 40th high school reunion to begin. I don't have the
advantages of a good grounding in science or intelligent
design, but I did once teach astronomy (skywatching really) at
the state botanical garden on clear evenings for several
years. Anytime discussion gets too earth-bound and
human-historically dependent, as it may have here, I like to
remind everyone where we are in the universe.

If the earth were the size of a pin point, the sun, our
nearest star, would be the size of a quarter and seven feet
away. The next nearest visible star Alpha Centuri would also
be the size of a quarter but would be 400 miles away. We live
in the podunks of the Milky Way galaxy, out on a  spiral arm.
Our galaxy has upwards of 300-400 billion stars in it. If you
count out several stars from the square of Pegasus this
evening, you can see the only other galaxy we can see with the
naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere, the Great Galaxy. When
the photons from this fuzzy patch of sky hit your retinas, you
should know that when the pyramids at Cheops were being built,
those very photons had travelled 99.8% of the distance between
Earth and the Great Galaxy. In other words, travelling at
186,000 miles per second, every second for the last 4000
years, those photons travelled 2/10 of 1% of the distance
between here and there. But that's not all. Recent galactic
density studies of the visible universe suggest at least 130
billion galaxies. Yes, GALAXIES. And don't miss "VISIBLE."

The point is that our human beliefs about this versus that
creation perspective also need the illuminationto be put into
perspective with what we know about the physical universe
outside of our atmosphere. Happy argumentation all.

For those of you who have survived this far you might want to
read, "The Case Against Intelligent Design" by Jerry Coyne, a
professor of evolution at the University of Chicago. Just
Google the title to get it. But for the rest of you, wnen I
think that this weekend will soon be over, yes, I say, "Thank
God"!