Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

• Matthew 13:13-17

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

• Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death

The day that I wrote this, I woke up with this on my heart.

First, the quote above is often attributed to Einstein, but no one has any proof that Einstein ever said or wrote it.  Thus, Rita Mae Brown, a mystery novelist, gets the credit, with a character in a novel saying it.  That quote fits in with the burden on my heart.

Back roughly 35 years ago, I was given the assignment to create a course that lasted two days.  I was to put a group of engineers through a grueling test of their engineering skills, the more stress, the better.  My subject was one that I was very familiar with, Thermodynamics.  I loved those courses in my undergraduate studies, and over half of my graduate level courses were in Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow which dovetail into Thermodynamics easily.

So, the course was tough, but to be tough, I had to know that they could get a proper answer using their knowledge of Thermo (for short).  In one problem on their four-hour long final exam, I had to guess at the ultimate answer to even start the problem.  The convection heat transfer coefficient, needed for the formula, was dependent upon the temperature, but that is the one thing that I did not give the engineers.  That was the answer to the problem.

So, I made an estimate.  I solved the problem, but I was off by ten degrees.  I used the result, thinking that the next iteration of the equations would lead to less error.  The calculated temperature was now 25 degrees different. Undaunted, I plugged the answer into the formula and did it a third time, and the error was about 50 degrees different.  At this point, the water should be boiling.  I was in a whole lot of hot water.  Actually, that was the problem that I was trying to illustrate.  If they did not fix the problem, and fix it quickly, the water would boil, and they would be in big trouble – according to my fictional scenario.

Hmmm.  I was getting nowhere. This was a few years after Rita Mae Brown wrote her book, but I had not read it.  It was before the quote was ever attributed to Einstein.

But I thought to myself that continuing on this line of inquiry, I was going to get greater and greater error.  I had to take a step back from the problem and address it from a different angle. In coming at it a different way, even using the same science and same equations, my first estimate had about a seven-degree error, and the next iteration was well within statistical accuracy.

I had my answer because I saw that when my theory had failed, I had either made an error or my theory was incorrect.

This became the focus of my instruction.  When your calculations give you nonsensical answers, change the way you are approaching the problem.  Otherwise, you will get worse and worse answers, and nothing will make sense.

The lecture was well-received except from one arrogant jerk that thought his education was superior and his decisions and calculations were not to ever be questioned.  I told his supervisor about him, and he admitted that he had run-ins with the guy and he might be washed out of the program – not because he could not do the work, but he was too arrogant to admit he made a mistake, and the job these people had was to prevent others from having the blinders on, missing the obvious problem.  When you have the blinders on, how can you help others?

But I thought about Evolution.  Darwin’s theories of how Evolution is the origin of all life on earth has been proven false at every point in his theory, but we still force feed the theory to children because it is a way of explaining how we got here without having God do it.  In recent discoveries, the Evolutionists have even created a sentience called “Nature” to apply design, since they just cannot get around that hurdle.  Saying “Nature” is ignoring the God in the room.

Millions of years of the earth cannot explain many things found in the Grand Canyon, and before you say that the Grand Canyon in Arizona is just one canyon, there are about 300 similar canyons worldwide with the same evidence.

And the theory of how each planet in the solar system was created millions of years ago does not match the evidence that deep space probes are revealing.  What do they do?  They do not abandon their failed theory.  They postulate that an asteroid crashing into the planet would provide whatever was missing from their theory.  Every planet?  In the entire solar system?

But I learned a long time ago, in a world, far, far away (South Carolina in the late 80s), that when your theory fails, you have to reevaluate your theory.  You have to admit that you might be wrong.

Will we ever get to the point where we can teach our children the truth in public schools?  I doubt it.  Their instructions are to eliminate God from the thinking.

I watched a video recently, and a renowned anatomist was explaining how we, as humans, were fearfully and wonderfully made.  At one point, he was asked how unbelievers could explain any of a hundred or more things that are basically inexplicable other than God designed it that way.

The scientist, who has now passed on, smiled at the interviewer, and he said that it was such a blessing to believe in God, for we can see the wonders that God has designed, and we can rationally see that God had done it that way.

Yes, when a theory fails, you can irrationally create a fantasy story that is illogical and beyond belief or you can rationally accept that God designed it that way.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.