The Human Identity Crises

by Vern Baumgardner

Streaking through the cosmos at around 550,000 miles per hour is a beautiful sphere splashed with blue, brown, and green colors. Partially enveloped with wisps of cotton like overlays, this mysterious celestial object harbors the remarkable phenomenon of life that is "seemingly" nonexistent anywhere else in the universe. For thousands of years, religion and science have locked horns and battled over the issue of how life was started on planet Earth. I am caught in the middle of this on-going war and shunned by both sides of the battle front.  While I marvel at the complex mechanics of the earth and search for answers to the scientific anomalies therein, I truly feel everything is the result of “Intelligent Design”; better known as God.

What a remarkable planet we live on; It has everything humans need to sustain life such as water, food, and abundant sunshine for growing crops. Photosynthesis is the transformation of carbon dioxide into organic compounds by means of energy from sunlight and used by plant life as food. I have always wondered if there was more to sunshine besides light and radiation that enables plants to grow. On the 17^th day of October, 2010, I replicated an experiment I found on the Rex Research site that was done in the 1930s by Dr. H.G. Hieronymous where the results of his experiment were nothing short of staggering. I mounted a 6 inch by 9 inch metal plate on the roof of my house and suspended a similar metal plate from the ceiling of a room in my basement. I connected the two plates with 18 gauge copper speaker wire. Under the suspended plate in the basement room, I set a planter for growing plants. In the bottom of the planter I placed a metal plate which I also connected an 18 gauge copper wire to and grounded the wire to the Earth. There are no windows in the room, so unless the lights are on there is absolutely no light. I filled the planter with potting soil and planted a tomato seed. With the same curiosity as a child counting presents under the Christmas tree until Christmas day, I took a flashlight downstairs and checked the experiment before I went to school in the mornings and after I returned home. On the 25^th of October, eight days after planting the tomato seed, Christmas came early for me as I had a tomato sprout and the leaves were green! For me, this created more questions than answers about what sunlight was comprised of. In the future, this unseen energy could benefit man and bring us all together in ways unthought-of by our present day warlord leadership.

 I want the same thing that every winner of a Miss America Beauty Pageant wants- peace on Earth! Unfortunately, due to religious differences, haughty political voracity, and scientific technological advances that are predominantly used for war, peace on Earth is something that only comes to mind between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve. Was there ever peace on planet Earth? The Bible refers to a time of peace before the serpent tempted Eve with the fruit of knowledge causing God to ban her and Adam from the Garden of Eden forever and that is when everything started going to hell. Many people question whether there is a God or not. For myself, I can’t imagine the Earth with all the living creatures and plants as being created from haphazardness. I view the mechanics of the Earth as an organic fractal. The encyclopedia describes a fractal as an object that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced copy of the whole. Could this happen out of spontaneous chance? I highly doubt it; therefore, a Creator with intelligent design far beyond any human comprehension had been hard at work.

It was my God given scientific curiosity that caused me to go back to school at the age of fifty and seek an engineering degree. I have always thought of abstract ideas in a sense of betterment for mankind. I never believed humans crawled out from under a rock and evolved into what we are today, but I do believe it is imperative for science to help man develop a peaceful environment in which ideas can be focused on abundant nonpolluting energy and safe nutritious food products for everyone. I also feel religion must allow science to become part of their curriculum to help better understand what God has created and that humans can continue to advance without destroying planet Earth.       

The Earth is an organic machine. All the living organisms rely on the elements for their mere existence, and the elements would not be necessary without life. I believe God to be the greatest scientist ever. This statement shakes the very pillars of both the religious and scientific communities. If they both gave this statement some profound thought, they would see the connection between God and science, and possibly come to a resolution to many of the problems humanity faces concerning ecology, economics, and social issues. Experimenting is what has allowed the human race to advance; therefore, if God did not want us to experiment, we would still be wearing loincloths and painting pictures on the walls of our caves.