Letter: Refreshing to read others with critical thinking skills, he says

TO THE EDITOR: In an age when the graduates of our finest institutions of higher learning are struggling to discern the difference between “opinion” and “fact,” and those who major in education struggle the most, it is refreshing to read the thoughts of others who exhibit critical thinking skills.

From http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/, Will and Ariel Durant write:

“At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set our little globe turning topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the smiling sun may slip off tangentially—as some think our planet did a few astronomic moments ago—and fall upon us in a wild embrace ending all grief and pain. We accept these possibilities in our stride, and retort to the cosmos in the words of Pascal: ‘When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing.’

“History is subject to geology. Every day, the sea encroaches somewhere upon the land, or the land upon the sea; cities disappear under the water, and sunken cathedrals ring their melancholy bells. Mountains rise and fall in the rhythm of emergence and erosion; rivers swell and flood, or dry up, or change their course; valleys become deserts, and isthmuses become straits. To the geologic eye, all the surface of the earth is a fluid form and man moves upon it as insecurely as Peter walking on the waves to Christ.” (Lessons of History, Chap. 2)

Whether you believe the natural world is your mother, your god, yourself or a blessing from the creator, it is evident that nature keeps demonstrating that we are not in control. Acceptance is humbling.

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