Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s)
Sage 1: “Go on back to your ship and play with your molecular micro scanner.”
Sage 2: “You’ve tried all that already, but it didn’t work. Kes didn’t get better.”
Captain: “No, she didn’t.”
Sage 2: “Why not?”
Captain: “The doctor couldn’t explain it.”
Sage 2: “So an inexplicable, miraculous, non-recovery?”
Captain: “We haven’t found the reason yet.”
Sage 2: “But of course you will. You’ll find all the answers eventually, with enough time, and study, and the right sort of tools. That’s what you believe, isn’t it, as a scientist?”
Sage 1: “Be honest…”
Captain: “Yes, that’s what I have always believed.”
Sage 3: “Even when her science fails right before her eyes, she still has full confidence in it. Now there’s a leap of faith.”
Tonight I watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager that we have seen a couple times before. It’s called “Sacred Ground”, and the main premise is challenging the supremacy of science in the world of Star Trek.
If you have seen the show, you are aware that everything has a rational explanation. Just as the line above says, given enough time, and study, and the right tools, the answer will always be discovered. Granted, this is TV, but I believe the world of star trek is an extension of modern scientific thought. If we keep working at it, we’ll eventually “understand” it.
Voyager deals with spirituality more than most Star Trek series. There are native American rituals, Vulcan meditation, and several episodes dealing with stories and encounters about the afterlife. But this episode is rather intriguing because, in the end, they do “figure out” the science behind the “miracle” that happens, but the Captain has been challenged enough in her line of thinking to reconsider the “truth” that is possessed by such a “knowledge” of the “facts”.
I have been wanting to write a post here titled “Illusion”, and may do so soon. Several things over the past month or so have reminded me of what an illusion we create for ourselves. The illusion of routine, control, and normalcy. I have written before about how nothing is guaranteed in life. Not a thing. But if we lived afraid of that, we wouldn’t really live. So, I understand, the illusion is necessary to a point. But this show reminded me that so many of us cling to the illusion.
The line, “Even when her science fails right before her eyes, she still has full confidence in it. Now there’s a leap of faith.” was particularly astonishing coming from a show that ordinarily exalts science. But how true it is. I’d say that’s even true of what most people would call religion. There are “facts” that might “disprove” religious beliefs, and yet the adherents hold fast to them, despite the “evidence”. That is definitely a “leap of faith”.
The question is, who are we willing to trust? Or what? Do we trust the tangible “evidence” we see in front of us, and the theories we have constructed in our heads? Or, shall we trust a benevolent deity who has revealed himself through personal encounters throughout history, and through a seamless document that was written over millennia by dozens of authors, and finally, by becoming a man himself?
What we see can be an illusion. Just a notion that such things are constant. Yes, God has designed uniformity and regularity and order into his creation (which I believe is evidence that it can not have randomly come about). But the only constant is him. Not some belief about him. Not a set of principles we have drawn from his teachings. Just, him.
When your science – your illusion – fails right before your eyes, don’t cling to it. Instead, learn to trust the One who is beyond the illusion.
These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. – Col 2:17
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