Current Events Watch

It’s amusing how the media fawns over politicians like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. There he is in all his glory, on the cover of the June 25 issue of Time Magazine, snuggling The Terminator, also known as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And there the good mayor was at Google™, or to be precise, on the Google campus, offering his wisdom to the ultimate Geek Squad. Is the mayor a closet candidate for a presidential bid?

The New York Sun reported Bloomberg is really bored with the presidential debates, saying they’re a waste of time. But what really worries Bloomberg, says the Sun, has to do with matters of the spirit. Bloomberg counseled the Google-sters as follows:

“It’s probably because of our bad educational system, but the percentage of people who believe in creationalism is really scary for a country that’s going to have to compete in a world where science and medicine require a better understanding,” he said in one such foray.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still turning that statement over in my mind. For me, the one doesn’t necessarily follow the other. I mean, you got your faith and then you got your science. The two are not necessarily exclusive.

Until recent times, most scientists practiced some sort of faith, simply because faith was in vogue until now. Those scientists got us to where we are now. So what’s the problem with faith?

The way I look at it, God gave us the common cold, right? I mean, if you believe in God, all things come from his or her power.

Science gave us decongestants and saline spray, right? I mean, if you believe in self-help, you get a nasty cold, you medicate.

The thing is, science hasn’t found a cure for the cold. Or for menstrual cramps. Or arthritis. Or a zillion other conditions and illnesses. Perhaps as an apology, science came up with narcotics.

Science has sent men to the moon too. So that’s pretty impressive. But the learned men and women still can’t tell me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the moon actually came from.

Some might stipulate that science as well as God put us in the dire situation the world is in today. Remember Hiroshima? Anthrax? Hitler’s death chambers? Iran’s (alleged) nuclear weapons program?

I’d like to present a scenario.

You got two men in a room—a scientist and a preacher. Both have the power to blow up the world. I say they’re men because I don’t think most women would even consider blowing up the world.

So the scientist makes calculations, he wants his explosion to occur by the most efficient method possible. Energy-savings and all that. Naturally, he wants the process to be painless, because he’ll be a goner too.

The deacon on the other hand will likely pray. If he believes in the Ten Commandments (and probably the Golden Rule too), he will not be capable of total devastation.

So which fellow is the scariest?

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