I am among those who prefers life to be understandable, explainable, and—for the most part—predictable. I don’t understand all the Laws of Physics, but I believe they are “essentially” true: What goes up, must come down; Earth rotates on its axis and around the sun; the seasons change on a relatively fixed schedule, even it there are variations from year to year. Gravity is a good thing in spite of the numbers of people who fall from high places in the course of a year.
In general, I think that we (humans) do better when work with the laws of physics and chemistry than we do when we attempt to defy them. Nevertheless, history abounds with mysterious events.Some healings, for example, are rightfully called “miracles” because they are so out of the ordinary. Some people survive horrendous accidents that kill everyone else involved. In general, “religion” begins where “science” ends.
When our ancient ancestors experienced changes in the seasons, they had no way of understanding the relationship of Earth to the Sun. Until Galileo most people had no idea how our solar system worked. For eons people thought that the Earth was the center of everything, with all other planetary objects circulating around it. We thought it was only right that God put us at the center of everything….
It is easy to think of our ancestors as “ignorant,” even when they knew how to do things we would be hard-pressed to do. Most of us, for example, don’t know how to harness a horse to a plow, or, for that matter, how to milk a cow. In general, humans adapt to the conditions they find themselves in. Most of us don’t know how to care for a horse or how to use one for practical purpose. At the same time, if you were able to bring one (or more) of our ancestors back from their lives in the past, they would be astounded. Can you imagine a Medieval person’s reaction to riding in a car on one of our expressways?
Humans have, of course, been learning more about the laws of physics and chemistry over time. Most of us don’t know very much about either physics or chemistry, but we (at least some of us) know more about physics and chemistry than even the well-educated knew 100 years ago. Can you imagine, for example, taking a “Time Machine” trip back to meet Edison and explaining television to him? Or taking what you know about medicine back to a eighteen-century hospital and explaining sterilization to the staff?
At the same time, however, I would be hard-pressed to shoe a horse. I think I could saddle one, but I wouldn’t be able to guarantee the saddle would stay on. One of the things humans forget is that horses learn. Horses will do what they can to “puff” themselves up to prevent the saddle strap (it probably has a technical name) from being tight enough to actually hold the saddle in place. A well-trained horse doesn’t need a mouth bit as much as it needs a rider who knows enough about horses to persuade it to change directions by laying the reigns across the horse’s neck.
The relationship between riders and horses is one of life’s enduring mysteries. In other parts of the world, humans and elephants have a similar relationship. Although it is not common, I have seen people who have similar relationships with cows and with birds. One summer when I had a lot of humming birds coming to the feeders at my house, I had a hummingbird come to the window of my living room where I was sitting and reading. It “knocked” on my window until it caught my attention. It then flew to the feeder and then back to the window and then back again to the feeder. I went out and discovered that the level of food in the feeder was too low.
The hummingbird somehow knew that the human in the house was the one who could fill the feeder, which is exactly what I did. Hummingbird migration is, in my opinion, one of life’s miracles. My sense is that we need to pay more attention to such “everyday” miracles. I suspect that such “everyday” miracles are the most important aspect of life.