I have had one thought bouncing around in my head for a few days now and a recent article in the New York Times (“Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole”) prompts me to post it and other thought.
First
What is the ethical or religious response to the prayer at the beginning of this essay? What do you say to a person whose creation or invention can, if used one way, benefit mankind but, if used in an entirely different manner, destroy mankind?
And yes, this is the question that we faced in 1945 with the development of the first atomic weapons? My father was one of those who knew that his life was spared because we dropped the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the likelihood is that your father might have been one as well.
So how do we respond?
Second
Whether you think that our first encounter with other life forms is a derivation of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Independence Day”, or “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, what should be our response? How do we relate the Good News to another intelligent/extra-terrestrial life form?
Just some things to think about today.
