This morning while driving Mike to school he made some random comment to which I replied, "Thank God!" Maybe that he might actually do his homework or something. Okay, probably not that drastic a statement. Since he likes to torture me with his professed agnosticism he replied, "Thank Science!" I think my response was to affirm his proclamation and say that yes, he should thank science when his body is dead and rotting in the ground being eaten by worms since there is no God. I'm just fatherly like that.

His deliberately antagonistic comment did cause me to consider the position of those for whom God is not a reality, although admittedly I probably can't do that particularly well. In my world we are made in the image of God who is Love. In the world of science we are evolved monkeys whose stronger survival instincts or accidental physical mutations somehow allowed us to travel up the evolutionary ladder rather than be converted to a vague fossil remnant buried in the substrata.

Somehow this rumination made me recall President Obama's inauguration speech yesterday in which he called for life and liberty for all, during which I could not help but think, "Including the babies developing in the womb and those whom doctors tried to kill but who somehow managed to survive a savage egress from the womb."

Yes. Thank science. We have a lot to thank science for, but science is a discipline used to gain knowledge. More knowledge is usually good, but needs the added controls of wisdom and understanding lest we put 500 horses under the hood of a vehicle incapable of steering or braking with that much power and unwittingly cause death rather than the improved transportation for which we strived.

So I'm going to thank science for inventing the material used to make the shell and lining of my winter coat as I clutch it close around me against the bitter winter cold and wind. I'm looking forward to the summer when I can thank God for the stars, the closest one which I hope will again warm me without the benefit of science as I leave transitory marks behind me walking along the ocean shore.