Whenever I do these Candyman posts for LNM, I always feel like starting with a Krusty the Clown Hhhhhhhhhhhi, kids! (Sigh.)
First I wanted to write a piece about how Miriam sang out loud at the Sea of Reeds and inspired everyone. But women's lib is old news.
This week, my inspiration comes not from the past, but from the present. Most of my waking hours, I'm a molecular biologist. I'll be the first to admit, science is *hard*. Modern biology is about trying to see the invisible. We're trying to figure out what's happening in a world so small that it can never be photographed or videoed. 95% of the experiments we do never pan out. The postdocs I know are all depressed and nervous. It takes a couple of years, on average, to produce a single publication. And no matter what you do, people are always finding problems with your work. Talk about wandering in a desert for 40 years!
What keeps us going? Simple. It's the miracles. One of these happened this week, when tissue engineers grew a rat heart from a bunch of stem cells. But this accomplishment didn't happen overnight. It was a development. Scientists first had to learn to grow beating heart cells (decades ago) and fetal stem cells (last decade). Then they had to engineer a proper organ mold for the cells (in this case, a dead, hollow heart) and figure out how to keep that mold oxygenated and happy. The rat heart that succeeded was only one in many hundreds of such attempts that have been tried over the last ten years.
It took a long time, but it was worth it. One day, this technology will be used to provide new, bio-compatible hearts for human beings who would die without them.
The Bible charges humans with mastering the natural world and tending to God's garden. I think scientists take this mission to heart, whether or not they believe in a personal God. It's not easy work, you don't get paid a lot, and there's a lot of delayed gratification. But you get to do cool stuff, and you get to help people. So I am inspired... not only by the miracles of science, but also by the hard working scientists who make it all possible by spending their nights working their butts off in the lab. These miracles are wrought by human beings.
Every once in a while, something so inspiring comes out of science that it makes it all worthwhile. Well, almost.
12 comments:
>It's not easy work, you don't get paid a lot, and there's a lot of delayed gratification.
Don't be so modest. Everyone knows all the scientists land all the chicks.;P
"Most of my waking hours, I'm a molecular biologist."
No wonder you're an apikorus. Seriously.
>>"Most of my waking hours, I'm a molecular biologist."
>No wonder you're an apikorus. Seriously.
Nah, Jonathan Wells is a molecular biologist too ;)
"Jonathan Wells is a molecular biologist too"
That makes it about a 1,000,000:1 ratio. No any other fields as corrosive to religios faith? (The Larson study found biologists the least religious of all scientists.) Thus the "no wonder."
Anon,
>> I'm a molecular biologist."
> No wonder you're an apikorus. Seriously.
Are you saying TheCandyMan became an apikorus because of his work in biology?
anon, I was an apikorus well before college. It happened in my third year of yeshiva, when I started memorizing the Chumash/Pentateuch. The first couple chapters totally contradict each other. There were a ton of anachronistic verses and contradictions everywhere. By halfway through Exodus, I knew I couldn't believe in OJ anymore.
As for science, it makes no judgments about the existence of God or the correctness of any religions. These are not hypotheses that can be tested by experiment or simulation.
Stop the presses! Memorizing Chumash is corrosive to religious faith!
"Are you saying TheCandyMan became an apikorus because of his work in biology?"
No, of course not. I'm not going to confuse correlation and causation. It could just as easily be that only apikosrim go into the corrosive-religious-faith field of biology. In reality it's probably both, but I don't care which it was in regards to the individual--not statistic--Candyman.
"Stop the presses! Memorizing Chumash is corrosive to religious faith!"
LOL. V'hamayvin yavin.
"The first couple chapters totally contradict each other."
That shouldn't mean a thing. If you have a book which contains contradictions does that mean that there is more than one author? I think you first probably encountered other things and then it influenced how you looked at the Chumash.
I also find science fasinating, especially the brain. It's an amazing world we're in
Candy Man,
I would agree with Ivnsm27. Science truly is amanzing. The thought that scientist have been able to create a living organism is truly miraculous. Maybe one day, science will be able to explain all of the biblical phenomena's , but I wouldn't be quick to discard the power or the existance of God. I truly believe that God gave us the brains to reproduce such miracles.
Nevertheless, congratulations to you all.
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