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发信人: bhfbao (嗖嗖与嗖嗖), 信区: SFworld
标  题: Contact II-10
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Wed Feb  2 15:24:28 2000), 转信

发信人: isabel (伊莎贝尔~戒网中), 信区: SFworld
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Thu Jan 27 07:26:44 2000)

发信人: Sandoval (Companion Protector), 信区: SciFiction
标　题: Contact Part II - 10
发信站: The unknown SPACE (Tue Jan 25 01:07:13 2000) WWW-POST

Part ii
THE
MACHINE
The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of
science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to
study and to imitation. It is as if He had said to the
inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I have made an
earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry
heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. he can
now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my
munificence to all to be kind to each other.
-Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason (1794)
CHAPTER 10
Precession of the
Equinoxes
Do we, holding that gods exist,
deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams
and lies, while random careless chance and
change alone control the world?
-Euripides
Hecuba
It was odd the way it had worked out. She had imagined that
Palmer Joss would come to the Argus facility, watch the
signal being gathered in by the radio telescopes, and take
note of the huge room full of magnetic tapes and disks on
which the previous many months of data were stored. He would
ask a few scientific questions and then examine, in its
multiplicity of zeros and ones, some of the reams of
computer printout displaying the still incomprehensible
Message. She hadn't imagined spending hours arguing
philosophy or theology. But Joss had refused to come to
Argus. It wasn't magnetic tape he wanted to scrutinize, he
said, it was human character. Peter Valerian would have been
ideal for this discussion: unpretentious, able to
communicate clearly, and bulwarked by a genuine Christian
faith that engaged him daily. But the President had
apparently vetoed the idea; she had wanted a small meeting
and had explicitly asked that Ellie attend.
Joss had insisted that the discussion be held here,
at the Bible Science Research Institute and Museum in
Modesto, California. She glanced past der Heer and out the
glass partition that separated the library from the exhibit
area. Just outside was a plaster impression from a Red River
sandstone of dinosaur footprints interspersed with those of
a pedestrian in sandals, proving, so the caption said, that
Man and Dinosaur were contemporaries, at least in Texas.
Mesozoic shoemakers seemed also to be implied. The
conclusion drawn in the caption was that evolution was a
fraud. The opinion of many paleontologists that the
sandstone was the fraud remained, Ellie had noted two hours
earlier, unmentioned. The intermingled footprints were part
of a vast exhibit called "Darwin's Default." To its left was
a Foucault pendulum demonstrating the scientific assertion,
this one apparently uncontested, that the Earth turns. To
its right, Ellie could see part of a lavish Matsushita
holography unit on the podium of a small theater, from which
three-dimensional images of the most eminent divines could
communicate directly to the faithful.
Communicating still more directly to her at this
moment was the Reverend Billy Jo Rankin. She had not known
until the last moment that Joss had invited Rankin, and she
was surprised at the news. There had been continuous
theological disputation between them, on whether and Advent
was at had, whether Doomsday is a necessary accompaniment of
the Advent, and on the role of miracles in the ministry,
among other matters. But they had recently effected a widely
publicized reconciliation, done, it was said, for the common
good of the fundamentalist community in America. The signs
of rapprochement between the United States and the Soviet
Union were having worldwide ramifications in the arbitration
of disputes. Holding the meeting here was perhaps part of
the price Palmer Joss had to pay for the reconciliation.
Conceivably, Rankin felt the exhibits would provide factual
support for his position, were there any scientific points
in dispute. Now, two hours into their discussion, Rankin was
still alternately castigating and imploring. His suit was
immaculately tailored, his nails freshly manicured, and his
beaming smile stood in some contrast to Joss's rumpled,
distracted, and more weather-beaten appearance. Joss, the
faintest of smiles on his face, had his eyes half closed and
his head bowed in what seemed very close to an attitude of
prayer. He had not had to say much. Rankin's remarks so
far-except for the Rapture rap, she guessed-were doctrinally
indistinguishable from Joss's television address.
"You scientists are so shy," Rankin was saying. "You
love to hide your light under a bushel basket. You'd never
guess what's in those articles from the titles. Einstein's
first work on the Theory of Relativity was called `The
Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.' No E=mc2 up front. No
sir. `The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.' I suppose if
God appeared to a whole gaggle of scientists, maybe at one
of those big Association meetings, they'd write something
all about it and call it, maybe, `On Spontaneous
Dendritoform Combustion in Air.' They'd have lots of
equations; they'd talk about `economy of hypothesis'; but
they'd never say a word about God.
"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 volcanos, 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?"
Joss had apparently been ready to reply a few
sentences back, a look of genuine pleasure unexpectedly on
his face, but Ellie's rush of words was gathering momentum,
and perhaps he felt it impolite to interrupt.
"Also, why would you think that God has abandoned
us? He used to chat with patriarchs and prophets every
second Tuesday, you believe. He's omnipotent, you say, and
omniscient. So it's no particular effort for him to remind
us directly, unambiguously, of his wishes at least a few
times in every generation. So how come, fellas? Why don't we
see him with crystal clarity?"
"We do." Rankin put enormous feeling in this phrase.
"He is all around us. Our prayers are answered. Tens of
millions of people in this country have been born again and
have witnessed God's glorious grace. the Bible speaks to us
as clearly in this day as it did in the time of Moses and
Jesus."
"Oh, come off it. You know what I mean. Where are
the burning bushes, the pillars of fire, the great voice
that says `I am that I am' booming down at us out of the
sky? Why should God manifest himself in such subtle and
debatable ways when he can make his presence completely
unambiguous?"
"But a voice from the sky is just what you found."
Joss made this comment casually while Ellie paused for
breath. He held her eyes with his own.
Rankin quickly picked up the thought. "Absolutely.
Just what I was going to say. Abraham and Moses, they didn't
have radios or telescopes. They couldn't have heard the
Almighty talking on FM. Maybe today God talks to us in new
ways and permits us to have a new understanding. Or maybe
it's not God-"
"Yes, Satan. I've heard some talk about that. It
sounds crazy. Let's leave that one alone for a moment, if
it's okay with you. You think the Message is the Voice of
God, your God. Where in your religion does God answer a
prayer by repeating the prayer back?"
"I wouldn't call a Nazi newsreel a prayer, myself,"
Joss said. "You say it's to attract our attention."
"Then why do you think God has chosen to talk to
scientists? Why not preachers like yourself?"
"God talks to me all the time." Rankin's index
finger audibly thumped his sternum. "and the Reverend Joss
here. God has told me that a revelation is at hand. When the
end of the world is nigh, the Rapture will be upon us, the
judgment of sinners, the ascension to heaven of the elect-"
"Did he tell you he was going to make that
announcement in the radio spectrum? Is your conversation
with God recorded somewhere, so we can verify that it really
happened? Or do we have only your say-so? Why would God
choose to announce it to radio astronomers and not to men
and women of the cloth? Don't you think it's a little
strange that the first message from God in two thousand
years or more is prime numbers... and Adolf Hitler at the
1936 Olympics? Your God must have quite a sense of humor."
"My God can have any sense He wants to have."
Der Heer was clearly alarmed at the first appearance
of real rancor. "Uh, maybe I could remind us all about what
we hope to accomplish at this meeting," he began.
Here's Ken in his mollifying mode, Ellie thought. On
some issues he's courageous, but chiefly when he has not
responsibility for action. He's a brave talker... in
private. But on scientific politics, and especially when
representing the President, he becomes very accommodating,
ready to compromise with the Devil himself. She caught
herself. The theological language was getting to her.
"That's another thing." She interrupted her own
train of though as well as der Heer's. "If that signal is
from God, why does it come from just one place in the sky-in
the vicinity of a particularly bright nearby star? Why
doesn't it come from all over the sky at once, like the
cosmic black-body background radiation? Coming from one
star, it looks like a signal from another civilization.
Coming from everywhere, it would look much more like a
signal from your God."
"God can make a signal come from the bunghole of the
Little Bear if He wants." Rankin's face was becoming bright
red. "Excuse me, but you've gotten me riled up. God can do
anything."
"Anything you don't understand, Mr. Rankin, you
attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all
the mysteries of the world, all the challenges t our
intelligence. You simply turn you mind off and say God did
it."
"Ma'am I didn't come here to be insulted..."
"`Come here'? I thought this was where you lived."
"Ma'am-" Rankin was about to say something, but then
thought better of it. He took a deep breath and continued.
"This is a Christian country and Christians have true
knowledge on this issue, a sacred responsibility to make
sure that God's sacred word is understood..."
"I'm a Christian and you don't speak for me. You've
tapped yourself in some sort of fifth-century religious
mania. Since then the Renaissance has happened, the
Enlightenment has happened. Where've you been?"
Both Joss and der Heer were half out of their
chairs. "Please," Ken implored, looking directly at Ellie.
"If we don't keep more to the agenda, I don't see how we can
accomplish what the President asked us to do."
"Well, you wanted `a frank exchange of views.'"
"It's nearly noon," Joss observed. "Why don't we
take a little break for lunch?"
Outside the library conference room, leaning on the
railing surrounding the Foucault pendulum, Ellie began a
brief whispered exchange with der Heer.
"I'd like to punch out that cocksure, know-it-all,
holier-than-thou..."
"Why, exactly, Ellie? Aren't ignorance and error
painful enough?"
"Yes, if he'd shut up. But he's corrupting
millions."
"Sweetheart, he thinks the same about you."

When she and der Heer came back from lunch, Ellie noticed
immediately that Rankin appeared subdued, while Joss, who
was first to speak, seemed cheerful, certainly beyond the
requirements of mere cordiality.
"Dr. Arroway," he began, "I can understand that
you're impatient to show us your findings, and that you
didn't come here for theological disputation. But please
bear with us just a bit longer. You have a sharp tongue. I
can't recall the last time Brother Rankin here got so
stirred up on matters of the faith. It must be years."
He glanced momentarily at his colleague, who was
doodling, apparently idly, on a yellow legal pad, his collar
unbuttoned and his necktie loosened.
"I was struck by one or two things you said this
morning. You called yourself a Christian. May I ask? In what
sense are you a Christian?"
"You know, this wasn't the job description when I
accepted the directorship of the Argus Project." She said
this lightly. "I'm a Christian in the sense that I find
Jesus Christ to be an admirable historical figure. I think
the Sermon on the Mount is one of the greatest ethical
statements and one of the best speeches in history. I think
that `Love your enemy' might even be the long-shot solution
to the problem of nuclear war. I wish he was alive today. It
would benefit everybody on the planet. But I think Jesus was
only a man. A great man, a brave man, a man with insight
into unpopular truths. But I don't think he was God or the
son of God or the grandnephew of God."
"You don't want to believe in God." Joss said it as
a simple statement. "You figure you can be a Christian and
not believe in God. Let me ask you straight out: Do you
believe in God?"
"The question has a peculiar structure. If I say no,
do I mean I'm convinced God doesn't exist, or do I mean I'm
not convinced he does exist? Those are two very different
statements."
"Let's see if they are so different, Dr. Arroway.
May I call you `Doctor'? You believe in Occam's Razor, isn't
that right? If you have two different, equally good
explanations of the same experience, you pick the simplest.
The whole history of science supports it, you say. Now, if
you have serious doubts about whether there is a God-enough
doubts so you're unwilling to commit yourself to the
Faith-then you must be able to imagine a world without God:
a world that comes into being without God, a world where
people die without God. No punishment. No reward. All the
saints and prophets, all the faithful who have ever
lived-why, you'd have to believe they were foolish. Deceived
themselves, you'd probably say. That would be a world in
which we weren't here on Earth for any good reason-I mean
for any purpose. It would all be just complicated collisions
of atoms-is that right? Including the atoms that are inside
human beings.
"To me, that would be a hateful and inhuman world. I
wouldn't want to live in it. But if you can imagine that
world, why straddle? Why occupy some middle ground? If you
believe all that already, isn't it much simpler to say
there's on God? You're not being true to Occam's Razor. I
think you're waffling. How can a thoroughgoing conscientious
scientist be an agnostic if you can even imagine a world
without God? Wouldn't you just have to be an atheist?"
"I thought you were going to argue that God is the
simpler hypothesis," Ellie said, "but this is a much better
point. If it were only a matter of scientific discussion,
I'd agree with you, Reverend Joss. Science is essentially
concerned with examining and correcting hypotheses. If the
laws of nature explain all the available facts without
supernatural intervention, or even do only as well as the
God hypothesis, then for the time being I'd call myself an
atheist. Then, if a single piece of evidence was discovered
that doesn't fit, Id back off from atheism. We're fully able
to detect some breakdown in the laws of nature. The reason I
don't call myself an atheist is because this isn't mainly a
scientific issue. It's a religious issue and a political
issue. The tentative nature of scientific hypothesis doesn't
extend into these fields. You don't talk about God as a
hypothesis. You think you've cornered the truth, so I point
out that you may have missed a thing or two. But if you ask,
I'm happy to tell you: I can't be sure I'm right."
"I've always thought an agnostic is an atheist
without the courage of his convictions."
"You could just as well say that an agnostic is a
deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary
knowledge of human fallibility. When I say I'm an agnostic,
I only mean that the evidence isn't in. There isn't
compelling evidence that God exists-at least your kind of
god-and there isn't compelling evidence that he doesn't.
Since more than half the people on the Earth aren't Jews or
Christian or Muslims, I'd say that there aren't any
compelling arguments for your kind of god. Otherwise,
everybody on Earth would have been converted. I say again,
if you God wanted to convince us, he could have done a much
better job.
"Look at how clearly authentic the Message is. It's
being picked up all over the world. Radio telescopes are
humming away in countries with different histories,
different languages, different politics, different
religions. Everybody's getting the same kind of data from
the same place in the sky, at the same frequencies with the
same polarization modulation. The Muslims, the Hindus, the
Christians, and the atheists are all getting the same
message. Any skeptic can hook up a radio telescope-it
doesn't have to be very big-and get the identical data."
"You're not suggesting that your radio message is
from God," Rankin offered.
"Not at all. Just that the civilization on Vega-with
powers infinitely less than what you attribute to your
God-was able to make things very clear. If your God wanted
to talk to us through the unlikely means of word-of-mouth
transmission and ancient writings over thousands of years,
he could have done it so there was no room left for debate
about its existence."
She paused, but neither Joss nor Rankin spoke, so
she tried again to steer the conversation to the data.
"Why don't we just withhold judgment for a while
until we make some more progress on decrypting the Message?
Would you like to see some of the data?"
This time they assented, readily enough it seemed.
But she could produce only reams of zeros and ones, neither
edifying nor inspirational. she carefully explained about
the presumed pagination of the Message and the hoped-for
primer. By unspoken agreement, she and der Heer said nothing
about the Soviet view that the Message was the blueprint for
a machine. It was at best a guess, and had not yet been
publicly discussed by the Soviets. As an afterthought, she
described something about Vega itself-its mass, surface
temperature, color, distance from the Earth, lifetime, and
the ring of orbiting debris around it that had been
discovered by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite in 1983.
"But beyond its being one of the brightest stars in
the sky, is there anything special about it?" Joss wanted to
know. "Or anything that connects it up with Earth?"
"Well, in terms of stellar properties, anything like
that, I can't think of a thing. But there is one incidental
fact: Vega was the Pole Star about twelve thousand years
ago, and it will be again about fourteen thousand years from
now."
"I though the polestar was the Pole Star." Rankin,
still doodling, said this to the pad of paper.
"It is, for a few thousand years. But not forever.
The Earth is like a spinning top. Its axis is slowly
precessing in a circle." She demonstrated, using her pencil
as the Earth's axis. "It's called the precession of the
equinoxes."
"Discovered by Hipparchus of Rhodes," added Joss.
"Second century b.c." This seemed a surprising piece of
information for him to have at his fingertips.
"Exactly. So right now," she continued, "an arrow
from the center of the Earth to the North Pole points to the
star we call Polaris, in the constellation of the Little
Dipper, or the Little Bear. I believe you were referring to
this constellation just before lunch, Mr. Rankin. As the
Earth's axis slowly precesses, it points in some different
direction in the sky, not toward Polaris, and over 26,000
years the place in the sky to which the North Pole points
makes a complete circle. The North Pole points right now
very near Polaris, close enough to be useful in navigation.
Twelve thousand years ago, by accident, it pointed to Vega.
But there's no physical connection. How the stars are
distributed in the Milky Way has nothing to do with the
Earth's axis of rotation being tipped twenty-three and a
half degrees."
"Now, twelve thousand years ago is 10,000 b.c., the
time when civilization was just starting up. Isn't that
right?" Joss asked.
"Unless you believe that the Earth was created in
4004 b.c."
"No, we don't believe that, do we, Brother Rankin?
We just don't think the age of the Earth is known with the
same precision that you scientists do. On the question of
the age of the Earth, we're what you might call agnostics."
He had a most attractive smile.
"So if folks were navigating ten thousand years ago,
sailing the Mediterranean, say, or the Persian Gulf, Vega
would have been their guide?"
That's still in the last Ice Age. Probably a little
early for navigation. But the hunters who crossed the Bering
land bridge to North America were around then. I must have
seemed an amazing gift-providential, if you like-that such a
bright star was exactly to the north. I'll bet a lot of
people owed their lives to that coincidence."
"Well now, that's mighty interesting."
"I don't want you to think I used the word
`providential' as anything but a metaphor."
"I'd never think that, my dear."
Joss was by now giving signs that the afternoon was
drawing to a close, and he did not seem displeased. But
there were still a few items, it seemed, on Rankin's agenda.
"It amazes me that you don't think it was Divine
Providence, Vega being the Pole Star. My faith is so strong
I don't need proofs, but every time a new fact comes along
it simply confirms my faith."
"Well then, I guess you weren't listening very
closely to what I was saying this morning. I resent the idea
that we're in some kind of faith contest, and you're the
hands-down winner. So far as I know you've never tested your
faith? I'm willing to do it for mine. Here, take a look out
that window. There's a big Foucault pendulum out there. The
bob must weight five hundred pounds. My faith says that the
amplitude of a free pendulum-how far it'll swing away from
the vertical position-can never increase. It can only
decrease. I'm willing to go out there, put the bob I front
of my nose, let go, have it swing away and then back toward
me. If my beliefs are in error, I'll get a
five-hundred-pound pendulum smack in the face. Come on. You
want to test my faith?"
"Truly, it's not necessary. I believe you," replied
Joss. Rankin, though, seemed interested. He was imagining,
she guessed, what she would look like afterward.
"But would you be willing," she went on, "to stand a
foot closer to this same pendulum and pray to God to shorten
the swing? What if it turns out that you've gotten it all
wrong, that what you're teaching isn't God's will at all?
Maybe it's the work of the Devil. Maybe it's pure human
invention. How can you be really sure?"
"Faith, inspiration, revelation, awe," Rankin
answered. "Don't judge everyone else by your own limited
experience. Just the fact that you've rejected the Lord
doesn't prevent other folks from acknowledging His glory."
"Look, we all have a thirst for wonder. It's a
deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up
with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories
up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe
enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing
wonders than we are."
"Perhaps we are all wayfarers on the road to truth,"
Joss replied.
On this hopeful note, der Heer stepped in deftly,
and amidst strained civilities they prepared to leave. She
wondered whether anything useful had been accomplished.
Valerian would have been much more effective and much less
provocative, Ellie thought. She wished she had kept herself
in better check.
"It's been a most interesting day, Dr. Arroway, and
I thank you for it." Joss seemed a little remote again,
courtly but distracted. He shook her hand warmly, though. On
the way out to the waiting government car, past a lavishly
rendered three-dimensional exhibit on "The Fallacy of the
Expanding Universe," a sign read, "Our God Is Alive and
Well. Sorry About Yours."
She whispered to der Heer, "I'm sorry if I made your
job more difficult."
"Oh no, Ellie. You were fine."
"That Palmer Joss is a very attractive man. I don't
think I did much to convert him. But I'll tell you, he
almost converted me." She was joking of course.

--
... In 2345, on the 10th anniversary of the Shivan attack
on Ross 128, the Vasudan emperor Khonsu II addressed the
newly formed GTVA General Assembly. The emperor inaugurated
an ambiguous and unprecedented joint endeavor: the GTVA
Colossus...

※ 来源:．The unknown SPACE bbs.mit.edu．[FROM: 204.91.54.100]

--
Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct
oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--
and neither can stop the march of events.

--
☆ 来源:．哈工大紫丁香 bbs.hit.edu.cn．[FROM: baohf.bbs@smth.org]

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