Recently I got to go an a field trip with my 8 year old son, Jonah, and his third grade class from St. Paul Lutheran school, under the leadership of Prince of Peace’s own organist, Stephen Hoelter, who “sun lights” as a teacher. And let me just use this opportunity to say that, even though I was resistant to having a DVD player in our van at one time, it sure keeps the decibels at a tolerable level when you’re driving 5 boys on a field trip!
Anyway, our destination was the Henry Ford Estate in Dearborn. What a cool place! Ford was a genius and a man ahead of his time in so many ways, like: hydro-electric power from the nearby Rouge River; coal-fired generators as back up, using coke to make the fire burn hotter and longer (common today but an innovation then); pipes that carried steam uphill from the powerhouse to the main house, while the return water pipes flowed downhill so no pump was needed; an indoor pool with easily adjustable water levels to suit children or adults; organ music literally “piped” throughout the house; and who can make it without central vacuum?
Our tour guide kept on saying things like, “Isn’t it amazing the things they could do back then?” Well, yes and no. The ingenuity that God has built into the human race is pretty remarkable. And I suppose what they did “back then” was impressive because it was brand new technology. But people have been achieving remarkable feats of intelligence from the very beginning. For instance, the pyramids of Egypt and the Yucatan Peninsula; the morterless, jigsaw puzzle walls of the Incas; the aqua ducts of Rome; even something as simple as Hezekiah’s tunnel in Jerusalem (nearly a mile long, dug to provide access to water outside the city during a siege) is remarkable when you consider it was achieved without modern equipment.
We think because we have airplanes, space travel, the internet, HD TV, cell phones, I-pods, etc., that we are somehow smarter or more capable than the people of yesteryear. We enjoy the benefits of technology that has accumulated over the 6000 years of human history. We may be a more developed society, with more information at our fingertips, but there is no evidence we are any more intelligent.
Next time you visit the Henry Ford Estate, or some other monument to the ingenuity of yesteryear (Great Wall of China, Easter Island, a European cathedral), think of how that reflects on God’s creation of human beings. Does it fit with an evolutionary model of humankind that is growing in intelligence and ability? Or does it point to a Creator who endowed human beings with incredible know how from the very beginning?
Epilogue: At this point the skeptic will talk about how leeches were once used in medicine, that Malaria was attributed to breathing the cold night air in creek bottoms (rather than the mosquitoes flying around in that night air), or that fire was believed to be due to the presence of a mysterious substance in combustible things called “phlogiston.” Indeed, there will always be advances leading to new knowledge in science. Some day, we’ll look back to this period of history and the prevalence of Darwinian evolution and say, “Can you believe people believed that stuff back then?”
Click here to give feedback or ask a question. |
