Contact

I had been learning and watching some materials about Creation Science and Science in general. Documentaries about space, astronomy and discoveries reminded me about an old movie called “Contact”. During the whole movie, Dr. Eleanor Arroway shows her pride about her knowledge of science and her atheism, until the day she made that voyage across the stars. Her pride and limited vision of the universe is challenged through just a glimpse of the space. That scene in particular made me cry when I watched it for the first time. 

  When I saw the last part of it,  it literately made me cry. It reminded me of this writing from Paul “They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world (κοσμου = Universe) was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” The beauty of the creation and the careful crafting of each particle and atom, just highlights the presence of someone that created all so we can live and exist, and there are not words to describe it. Another part of the movie that made me cry as well was when Dr. Arroway was a child. She wanted to reach out as far as she could with her Short Wave radio, but it was also a way of coping with the loss of her mom and later of her dad. She was lonely even though she was surrounded by people, and her Short Wave was the only thing that made her feel connected. The day her dad dies the first thing she does is to go to her radio trying to reach her dad, wishing he could hear her. Every time I heard scientists talk about the question of being alone in the universe makes me wonder, “How lonely they should feel, just like that little girl, wondering if through science and technology can someday find out if there is life elsewhere, hoping that we are not alone in the universe. As humans we have the need to find something unknown, something bigger than ourselves. Where does that desire come from? That emptiness? the felling of being “So lost, so cut off, so alone.”

 I believe I have an answer: “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created by Him and for Him.” 

That need of a bigger being, more powerful and knowledgeable than ourselves, that satisfies that emptiness and loneliness, the one reason of the amazing design that has no words to describe. 

I imagine that if a atheist scientist, perhaps an astrophysicist, has an encounter with God himself and the extend of his creation, and back to earth without any proof or artifacts to verify his experience, he will probably have the same attitude of Dr. Arroway facing the scientific community saying: “I had an experience, I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am, tells me that it was real. I was giving something wonderful, something that changes me forever. A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how … rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not — that none of us — are alone! … I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope! But … that continues to be my wish.“ 

Something similar happen when you have that special encounter with God, and you know that you know it is real, and that is not just a felling but something bigger than yourself, so awesome and big but you can’t prove it, or describe it, and it is so big that it is hard to express then I guess that it is exactly the way David said in the psalms ”When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” And guess what, He really cares.