[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 98 (Monday, July 25, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          THE HANDIWORK OF GOD

  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, recent images shown on television 
nationally have moved me to some reflection.
  One of those images was related to the observance of the 25th 
anniversary of the landing on the Moon in 1969 of American astronauts.
  That particular image was of the booted footprint of a man, planted 
deep in the soft dust that reportedly covers the barren, mostly 
monotonous surface of the Moon. That footprint was perhaps of a size 10 
or size 11 human foot--the footprint of one of the first Americans--
indeed, one of the only human beings ever--to set foot on our nearest 
celestial neighbor.
  How properly proud we were as we sat in our living room, dens, and 
kitchens on that July 1969 evening, fascinated to be following American 
astronauts as the supposed vanguard of Earth travelers to other 
celestial bodies, smug perhaps that we had fulfilled President John F. 
Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade 
of the 1960's. I do not intend by my reflections to denigrate that 
achievement.
  I was in the House of Representatives on the day he spoke and I 
listened to President Kennedy issue that challenge and state that 
pledge. What a marvel it was of fulfilling a dream as old as mankind 
himself. For centuries man has stood on this planet and gazed lovingly 
at the Moon. And America put men on the Moon and brought them back to 
Earth safely again. That was mankind's dream and it was America's 
dream.
  De Tocqueville, when he was in our country a century and a-half ago, 
said that the incredible American, ``the incredible American believes 
that if something has not yet been accomplished it is because he has 
not yet attempted it.''
  That dream, of a man's actually setting foot on that gleaming, 
shimmering globe that has added for thousands of years to our species' 
experience of nightime; that shimmering ball that has lighted lovers in 
their romance; that mass of ``green cheese'' that has delighted 
children in their nursery tales and that has inspired fantasy writers, 
both profound and silly--that was a centuries-old dream.
  But compare the image of that revisited footprint with the other 
celestial images that have played across our television screens and 
consumed space in our newspapers during the past few days--the images 
of fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 splashing against the amorphous 
surface of the planet Jupiter--Jupiter, the largest-body-save-one in 
our solar system.
  We are informed that Jupiter is, in mass, 318 times the mass of our 
Earth.
  We are informed that Jupiter is, in total volume, 1,324 times the 
volume of earth.
  We are informed that Jupiter is, in diameter, 11\1/2\ times the 
diameter of earth.
  We are informed that Jupiter is currently 480 million miles away from 
Earth.
  We are informed that Jupiter is carrying through space 18 
satellites--moons, if you will--to keep it company as it spins its vast 
course around our Sun, around Mars, around Venus, and around Earth 
herself.
  Currently, according to astronomers, mountain-sized fragments of 
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 are hurling into Jupiter at a speed of 130,000 
miles per hour, that the contact explosions were reaching 600 miles 
into space above Jupiter, and that the circles of impact on the surface 
of Jupiter were estimated by Spanish and Chilean astronomers to be 
equivalent to those of an impact fireball 1,200 miles wide.
  Compare all of those statistics, Madam President, with a human 
footprint of an American astronaut made by a size 10 or 11 boot on the 
dusty surface of that silvery orb, the Moon.
  Perhaps we can now better comprehend the words of the Psalmist:

     When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the 
           moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
     What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of 
           man, that thou visitest him?--Psalm 8: 3-4.

  What, indeed?
  Compare, Madam President, the immense size of Jupiter with the size 
of a man boasting a size 11 foot.
  Compare, Madam President, the immense size of Jupiter to a planet but 
a fragment of its size--the Earth.
  Compare, Madam President, the current distance of Jupiter from 
Earth--roughly 480 million miles--with the total distance east-to-west 
of the United States.
  From here in Washington, DC, to the State of Washington, from which 
the current Presiding Officer comes--and who presides over this great 
body with a degree of dignity, ability, and skill that is so rare as a 
day in June, I might add--it is roughly 3,000 miles from east to west, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
  Indeed, what is man, that God should be mindful of him?
  I have often wondered how it would be to stand on the Moon and look 
at this tiny speck, this globe, and then to imagine man on this tiny 
globe. What an infinitesimal piece of creation is man!
  What is man, that God should be mindful of him?
  But, indeed, what kind of God Who could create the planet Jupiter 
might be mindful of a creature capable of leaving a pitiful size 10 or 
11 footprint on the surface of the Moon?
  We heard it said, by way of questions perhaps: What if Jupiter should 
come hurtling towards the Earth? Or what if the comet should hit the 
Earth in this area; how it would destroy Baltimore, Washington, DC, the 
Nation's Capital, and everything in between. What if the Moon should 
suddenly--suddenly--start hurtling towards the Earth? What if the Sun 
itself should somehow be moved from its place and, if we can imagine, 
rush toward the Earth?
  Those words from Shakespeare come to mind:

     * * * The great globe itself,
     Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
     And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
     Leave not a rack behind.
     We are such stuff
     As dreams are made on, and
     Our little life is rounded with a sleep.

  Some years ago, a trick survey randomly asked whether the subjects of 
the survey believed that God would understand space travel.
  We human beings can be rather silly, can we not?
  An overwhelming number answered no; God would not understand space 
travel.
  What kind of idea did those respondents have of a deity?
  The Judaeo-Christian concept of the formation of the Universe is 
rendered in Latin creatio ex nihilo--that is, the Creation is formed 
out of Nothingness, creatio ex nihilo. According to Judaeo-Christian 
thought, before the beginning of Creation, Nothing existed--no space, 
no matter, no vacuum, no blackness, no distance, no electrons, no 
neutrons, no protons, no dark, no light, no thought, no imagination, no 
mind--not even an empty void into which created things might be placed. 
More profoundly, the Creator Himself did not ``exist,'' for that would 
have subjected the Creator to the Creation, an utter impossibility. 
Indeed, in Judaeo-Christian thought, to say that ``God exists'' is to 
utter an ignorant blasphemy. In Judeao-Christian thought, ``God'' is 
beyond ``existence.'' In Judeao-Christian thought God creates 
existence; He can in no way be conditioned by existence. In Judaeo-
Christian thought, God is not subject to the limits of the Universe, of 
the galaxies, of ``black holes,'' of quasars, or of any feature of 
reality with which we might be familiar, now or ever. ``Creation out of 
Nothing'' means that absolutely Nothing was before Creation began, and 
that from beyond all existence, God initiated existence.
  In order to begin to fathom even a particle of the reality that we 
have witnessed on the surface of Jupiter in recent days, we must fathom 
the absolute unfathomability of the One Who creates comets, planets, 
Jupiter, the Moon, Earth, and man.
  I am not one of those who believe that man is an animal. We are 
taught that in schools. But, I do not believe it. We are told in 
Genesis that God created man in his own image out of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. God had 
already created the beasts of the field. The beasts of the field are 
animals--but not man. Man is not an animal. We must fathom that God the 
Creator is more immense, more profound, more incomprehensible by our 
little creature minds than any--than any--entity that our little minds 
and imaginations might conjure up.
  Indeed, how can the mind of the creature--how can the mind of tiny 
man, ever grasp the mind of the creator?
  I have been reading Darwin's works recently.
  Darwin, in ``The Origin of Species,'' asks the same question, ``Have 
we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers 
like those of man?'' That is Darwin.
  But the omniscient mind of the Creator has not left himself without 
witness, as the events in recent days occurring on the surface of 
planet Jupiter testify. Once again, let us return to the Psalmist, as 
he muses on Man:

     For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and 
           hast crowned him with glory and honour.
     Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of the hands: 
           thou hast put all things under his feet * * *

  Not under an animal's feet, under man's feet.

     * * * thou hast put all things under his feet:
     All sheep and the oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field * * 
           *

  These are animals.

     The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever 
           passeth through the paths of the seas.
     O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the 
           earth!--Psalm 8: 5-9,

  Madam President, those are words from the King James Bible, the 8th 
Psalm.
  And if the events taking place on Jupiter in recent days signify 
anything, they signify that the Creator has not completed His 
Creation--that our Universe is still being molded, that the Destiny of 
the Creation is not set, and that we as a species are being borne on 
toward higher purposes than even the most prescient of our kind can 
comprehend.
  At this point, reason fails.
  At this point, sense fails.
  At this point, even imagination itself fails.
  Which leaves us, perhaps, with faith alone--faith that the One Who 
set Jupiter in its place, and faith that the One Who has hurled Comet 
Shoemaker-Levy 9 toward the countenance of the most massive body in our 
solar system--that the One Who is doing all of these things is, indeed, 
``mindful'' of Humanity.
  Permit me to close with a poet's affirmation of faith:

                              The Pilgrim

     Man comes a pilgrim of the universe,
     Out of the mystery that was before
     The world, out of the wonder of old stars.
     Far roads have felt his feet, forgotten wells
     Have glassed his beauty bending down to drink.
     At alter-fires anterior to Earth
     His soul was lighted, and it will burn on
     After the suns have wasted on the void.
     His feet have felt the pressure of old worlds,
     And are to tread on others yet unnamed--
     Worlds sleeping yet in some new dream of God.

  I yield the floor.

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