Jennie A. Brownscombe: The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth (1914). Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Last Thursday, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving. The early settlers had a tradition of giving thanks to God for a good harvest and the last Thursday in November has during subsequent centuries been part and parcel of the American heritage.
Recently, LifeScience editors Jeremy Hsu, Stephanie Pappas, Wynne Parry and Jeanna Bryner suggested a way for altering this tradition. They recommend that we should thank science for all the good that it has given us.
Few people would deny that science has brought about many good things. The medical sciences have given us cures to many diseases, and microscopes and telescopes have enabled us to understand life both on the micro and the macro level. However, science has also brought us some bad things, such as pollution, atom bombs and land mines.
That what the LifeScience editors advice us to do reminds us of a tradition that skeptics have embraced in recent years, i.e. celebrating the birthday of a man instead of Jesus at Christmas.
These ”free thinkers” obviously failed to realise that they will actually celebrate the birthday of the best-known creation scientist of all times, a man who wrote about Bible prophecies and definitely believed in a recent supernatural creation.
Sir Isaac Newton wrote, for instance:
” This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. … The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect.”
Newton praised the Almighty God for His wisdom. In contrast, skeptics hope to deny His existence and praise man’s achievements instead.
Sources:
10 Science Discoveries to Be Thankful for. LiveScience 24 November 2010.
Thayer, H. S. 1953, Newton’s Philosophy of Nature: Selections From His Writings. New York: Library of Classics.
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