You are able with junior high

school mathematics to determine for yourself whether or not all the animals

really did, two by two, climb on board the ark.

A reader, a high school student,

asserted several times my ignorance of basic facts. I must admit that

I am extremely ignorant about many things and in fact have no idea how

to remedy this personal lack of knowledge. Here are a few examples:

(1) Astronomers have located

over 80 planets. I don't know whether there is, or isn't, life on any

of them. I don't even know how to define "life" so I could recognize

it. (Are all life forms carbon-based?) How can I say that God did, or

didn't, create all life when I don't know what it is?

(2) I can write numbers down

like this: 11, 101, 1001, and continue to include more zeros as I go.

I can prove that 11 and 101 are "prime numbers." Are any of

the other numbers in this sequence prime? Nobody at present knows!

(3) It is often claimed in

the Bible the God is infinite. Georg Cantor in 1874 proved the existence

of many, very many infinities. How can I decide which infinity belongs

to God? Who owns the others?

My personal ignorance weighs

heavily on me on many nights. I lay awake and ponder: (1) Current cosmology

theory gives an age for the universe and astrophysics gives an age for

the oldest stars. The stars are older than the universe; so one or both

theories need fixing, but how?

(2) The discovery of non-Euclidean

geometry banished forever our certainty of a privileged space in which

to live. Likewise, does the discovery of the independence of the Continuum

Hypothesis in set theory by Paul Cohen in 1963 make current mathematics

less certain?

I urge the students of Georgia

to ponder the unsolved problems of science and mathematics and not waste

precious mental effort on discredited ideas such as the Flogiston theory

of heat or the Creationism theory of life. There are many wondrous discoveries

to be made in the world of ideas. Become famous, become rich: prove that

there is an infinity of twin prime numbers or clean up the mess in elementary

particle theory.

Peter Duran

Fayetteville