Search for What?

When I was a teen, the space program was new and exciting. Seemed like everyone was interested. I remember our family standing outside watching one of the first satellites pass overhead—one for which my dad had machined parts. Putting a man into space, and then on the moon—that was great stuff.

Later, we began to hear grumbling. Why all this waste of money on a space program. What about the needs of the poor? Then those in the know showed how the space program benefited our daily lives—flight technology, weather and communications satellites, new materials, medical research, and data on earth’s geology.

From the press releases I read now, however, it appears that the focus of the space program has changed. It’s all about forming incomprehensible theories of the nature of matter and how it all might have come into being.

Some of the main objectives are to find stars forming, other solar systems, water on other planets or their moons, and extra-terrestrial life. Atheistic philosophy wants evidence that the earth is not unique, that humans are only animals, that all came about in an explainable manner. It’s about intellectual and philosophical questions, about proving man’s mastery over the material universe, and about dismissing any need for God.

Too bad for their fruitless search. God created the earth for mankind, and mankind for Himself.

It is here that God divided the waters and called forth the dry land, here that He caused plants to grow, and populated the water and land with living things. And it is only here that He formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life, so that man became a living soul.

Isn’t it a comfort to know God cares so much for His creation and for us in particular? How could there be any good in the idea that we are accidents of chance, and that there is nothing special about our solar system or our earth?