The following was written shortly after Susan’s death.  I repost it here as a tribute to her memory, and to the Lord’s unfailing love in a time of sorrow.

A Death Observed

The last “good” day of Susan’s life was Friday, July 11.  By “good” I mean when she wasn’t sick in bed at the hospital or at home.   In the preceding week every other day was good followed by a bad day, when she was very ill.   For example, on Wednesday the 9th, she had her regular visit with Dr. Savin, and felt good enough to go shopping at Sam’s where we stocked up food for all the family that was arriving.  David came in from Atlanta that evening, and Susan prepared a wonderful dinner for him and 14 others-just like old times.    We couldn’t keep her sitting down.   She was up serving everyone just like she always did.

But then on Wednesday night she got very sick with nausea and pain.   Even the new pain killers were barely enough to comfort her.   Finally, at 4 AM,  they kicked in and she slept until 1:45 PM on the 10th, our 38th wedding anniversary. Traditionally, we go out with the Clellands on our joint anniversary: they, too, were married on July 10, 1965.   But the previous night’s struggles were too much for her.   We told Dave and Gayle that we would try to go out with them the following week when Susan was feeling better, and would save our energies for the party the family was throwing for us on the 11th.

Sure enough Susan had a good night on the 10th.   I was exhausted when we finally came to bed, and lay flat on my back waiting to fall asleep.   Susan came to bed slightly later, and asked if I wanted to have a time of prayer with her.   I said, “Sugar, I’m just too tired to even pray.”   With that, she climbed into bed, and then kneeled above me and began praying out loud.   She thanked the Lord for me her husband of 38 years.   She thanked Him for the good care that I was giving her during her illness.   She thanked Him for our family, and prayed for each family member by name.    It was a moving prayer.   I wished I had had a tape recorder so that now I could savor every word.   But it brought peace to my soul because I knew deep inside where she lived-whatever was about to happen-that she would be all right.   And so would I.

The daylight hours of the 11th turned out to be good ones for Susan, as Elizabeth arrived from Atlanta to join David.   This evening was to be the zenith, because all 16 family members who were in town were available for dinner at the new Luna Del Noche in Plano.   It was a wonderful evening of celebration and laughter and enjoying one another.  Peter even captured the two of us on his digital camera, both smiling, and Susan looking like her beautiful self in the new blue slinky knit outfit that Shari had bought her from Chico’s.

Then came Friday night.   It was the worst of all: so much nausea that Susan could not even hold down any pain killers.   By Saturday noon, she was already running a high temperature and in great discomfort.   So much so that when Dr. Rogoff told us to come to the ER he said “call an ambulance if she can’t make it by car.”  And so I did, and shortly there were 5 firemen standing in our bedroom followed by two paramedics from the ambulance.   I rode in the front of the ambulance as we traveled-without sirens-down to Medical City.  In the ER they began to stabilize her pain and temperature and nausea.   Fortunately, we were able to get a private room for her on the 8th floor of the South Tower (the oncology floor) that Saturday afternoon.  Thus began the process of assessing what was wrong.  After three tries they finally got a NG tube down into her stomach through her nose to help clear out the gastric juices that were causing the nausea.  Then at 11 PM we were called down to Radiology for a CT scan.

I spent Saturday night with her in her room on a sleeper sofa they rolled in.   Sunday morning Shari came to relieve me and I went home for a nap and a shower.  As I entered her room around noon on Sunday I found Susan sitting on the floor on the side of the bed away from all the pump lines.   Apparently, as Shari left the room for just a moment to show some visitors to the elevator, Susan-in a semi-delirious state from the morphine they were giving her-decided to get up and go to the bathroom.   In her disorientation she got out on the wrong side of the bed, and pulled out both her NG tube and the IV going into her mediport.   In the process she fell down next to the bed.   Fortunately, she had not seriously injured herself, but the NG tube and port line had to be reinstalled once again.  And from then on we decided someone had to be with her 24/7.

After this episode Shari related the conversation that she and Susan had with Dr. Munoz while I was away.   “Your abdomen is full of cancer, sweetie.   There is nothing more I can do.  You need to enter a hospice program.”

Monday came more testing-of the worse sort-down in Radiology.   They took her down in a wheelchair, and made her drink awful stuff that made her nauseous.   Finally, I got them to find a gurney for her to lie on while she waited for more X-rays to be taken.   Somehow we managed to get through this and back to her room where she could finally get some rest.   With the previous day’s conversation with Dr. Munoz in mind, I steeled myself for Dr. Savin’s visit.   As it turned out both he and Dr. Rogoff appeared outside Susan’s door within a few minutes of each other.    “It’s a full intestinal blockage,” they reported.  “Is there anything more you can do?” I asked.  “No, they replied.   It’s time to enter hospice.”    “How much longer does she have?” I asked.   “Days to weeks,” Dr. Savin replied.   Then Dr. Rogoff asked Dr. Savin if we should continue TPN-the nutritional supplement Susan had been getting through her mediport-and on which she had gained 11 pounds in the preceding two weeks.   “No,” Dr. Savin replied, ” we would just be feeding the tumor and not the patient.”    This meant, of course, that Susan would slowly starve to death-with the attendant symptoms that this would produce.   This was hard news, indeed.   For three years I had thrown myself into project managing her treatment.   From Texas Oncology to M. D. Anderson to Dr. Munoz, I had tried to find anything and everything I could to battle this disease.   My hard drive is filled with articles on ovarian cancer and its treatment.   Yet, standing above all my research stood a single finding: “the average survival time for advanced ovarian cancer patients is 37.5 months.”   On July 1, Susan had been battling the disease exactly 38 months.  During that entire period I had hoped that the Lord, in His mercy, either would heal Susan supernaturally, or else would providentially provide a “silver bullet” that would heal her medically.  I had hoped that TLK286 would be that bullet, but it proved not to be the case.   So, this was devastating news, particularly coming from Dr. Savin, who is the eternal optimist.    This was really the end.

It now remained only to make Susan as comfortable as possible during her final days.   A major issue was her sensitivity to morphine, and the delirium it produced.     Between Dr. Savin and a pain specialist it was decided that hydromorphone (dilaudid) would be a good substitute, since chemically it was like hydrocodone (vicodin) which she tolerated well.  This switch in pain medications did seem to cause improvement in Susan’s mental condition.   However, between the disease itself and the lack of nutrition there was a strong tendency for her to go in and out of delusional periods.    This continued to worsen for her remaining days.    Once, in the hospital, she called out to her mother to come back into the room.    Since the dying often see family and friends that have gone on before, I was never sure as to whether this was that experience, or simply a “waking dream” that Susan seemed to have more and more of in her final days.

In many ways the delusional state that Susan was in was more painful than watching her suffer the physical pain itself.    Susan was the most together person I ever met.   Rarely would she get flustered.   On the few occasions when this happened, I was the cause-doing something totally wrong, or silly, or mean.   In the delusional state she began talking to all sorts of people that weren’t there.    Sometimes she would catch herself, and say “there I go again.”   Her last days in hospice at home became increasingly delusional until she got to the point where she no longer spoke-but I am running ahead of my story.     I share this now because for me, this was the most theologically challenging issue in her illness.   “What good is this type of suffering doing her?” I would ask.   Indeed, it was like her coming down with Alzheimer’s compressed into a single week.   We discussed this among family members, and decided this was a test of faith: my faith, not hers.  Could I trust that God was still showing her and me good, even though she was totally out of her head?   Could Abraham trust that God was showing him good even though he was asked to sacrifice Isaac, the child of the covenant?  The answer to both questions was, “yes.”

The other major issue in terms of Susan’s comfort was the NG tube that was basically a suction line that ran from the port on the wall next to bed, into one of her nostrils, and then down her throat and into her stomach to suck out the gastric juices that the stomach manufactures day and night no matter what else is going on.  This was very uncomfortable for Susan, and we very much wanted to find away to eliminate it.  The first try was on Tuesday (July 15).  Dr. Rogoff wanted to bypass the NG tube by placing another tube from the stomach to the outside.   He attempted to come from the inside out using a probe that he placed down her upper GI tract to guide him.   This failed.   To him it appeared that the tumor was so large that it was blocking any path from the stomach to the outside.

The one good effect of the failed procedure was that the anesthesia allowed Susan to have a very good long sleep, freed from the delusional state that she had been in before.   The next day, Wednesday, she actually felt much better.    By Thursday, however, she was having more pain and more spaciness.    On Friday we were startled when the radiologist entered the room and told us that he thought there was another way to get a line into the stomach.   He would come from outside in, using Xrays to guide him.    After a long period where they gave up on the first Xrays, and sent her to the CT machine, it finally worked.   By going into her side between two ribs they successfully placed a small drain line from her stomach to the outside world.   This was in turned tied to the vacuum line to suck the gastric juices out, bypassing the NG tube.   That evening Dr. Rogoff himself personally removed the NG tube, and Susan looked like herself again, instead of having the elephant-trunk-like appendage attached to her nose.   This was a huge step forward.

Friday was also a big day psychologically for me, because that was the day I called St. Paul Hospice to arrange for Susan’s care at home beginning on Monday.  I was admitting to myself the unthinkable: that Susan’s days in this flesh were numbered.

This week in the hospital was meaningful in a special way, because each night the family gathered around Susan’s bed for “family commotions” as we used to call them.   Someone would read a passage of scripture, and then we would pray and sing the doxology-just like in the old days when the boys were growing up.     One of these evenings was very memorable because Susan was pretty much spacey during the daytime hours.   On this occasion, after the scripture was read-Psalm 103 I believe-someone asked Susan to lead us in prayer.   It was like a light bulb had been switched on in her soul.   She prayed the most marvelous prayer, perfectly lucid, and just like Jacob praying for the 12 tribes before his death.   She prayed for each family member-present or not-by name.    Each intercession was perfectly worded for that person, just where they were in life.   Then she closed by praying that all future generations of our family would know the same blessings that she had experienced, and that each would be faithful to the covenant promises they had received.   We were all deeply moved.   It appeared that the Holy Spirit Himself had descended on Susan to guide her-with groanings too deep for words-to pray the perfect prayer for the occasion, and to pass on her legacy of faith to next generation.

Finally, Monday came, and in the afternoon Susan was transported by a non-emergency ambulance back to our home on Ash Circle.   Peter’s digital photos show her in her new hospital bed in our master bedroom, with that peaceful look on her face.  It was about this time that her agitation and delirium worsened.    I don’t believe she ever really slept for about 72 hours-or else she was continuously sleeping with her eyes wide open.   The conversations with non-present parties continued unabated.   My own workload increased greatly as I became her primary caregiver-supplemented by daily visits from the home health aid, Frances, and by every-other-day visits from the hospice nurse, Mary.  I was administering all kinds of medications into her IV port: zofran, protonix and dilaudid, along with saline containing Mg & K.    I also had to man the portable vacuum pump that continued to drain her stomach while at home.   The first night home I slept next to her on our bed-but sleep was very little.   She continued her talking throughout the night, and I kept adjusting her painkiller to help reduce the groanings that I heard.   I got so little sleep that David insisted that he do the next night-during which he got even less sleep than I did the night before.

During this period Susan’s delirium manifested itself in odd ways.   On one occasion she was convinced that the ceiling fan was falling on her.   On another, she was certain that the old Sanders family photo that hung directly in front of her was cracked, and made me take it away.   At yet another time she screamed out that she had dropped the baby, and it was hurt.   It took me a long time to calm her down after that, and to convince her-if I ever did-that the baby wasn’t real.  Yet once again she would have moments of lucidity.   These would occur during family devotions in the evening-though not as long as in the hospital-or when people would drop by to visit.    On Wednesday, Karen and Jill brought dinner over, and Susan decided to get out of bed and into her wheelchair and go outside.   She greeted Karen correctly by name, but called Jill “Michelle.”   That evening she had her last “meal” sitting at a table.  She was even able to swallow some rice that the ladies had brought over.   That evening Terrie dropped by, and we had prayer with her as she prepared for her major surgery on Friday.   This time, when asked to pray, Susan forgot what she was praying for.  She prayed a fine prayer about children, but it had nothing to do with Terrie or her operation.

By Thursday morning the delirium worsened and I called the hospice nurse to see if they could send out something to help Susan sleep.  While I was waiting for this to be delivered Judy Hewlett dropped by to give us a CD of Stephen Jones’ wedding.   Susan was lucid enough to talk to Judy, and I left them alone.   Afterward, I noted Judy in tears as she realized the state of decline in Susan’s condition.   This conversation and those she had with us that day were the last of her life.   Shortly after noon the prescribed ativan arrived and I immediately gave it to her in her IV line.   Very shortly afterward, she went to sleep, and from then on she was never really awake.

At this point the pace of life slowed down somewhat, since we no longer had to watch Susan to keep her from doing something that could injure herself.   I continued giving her her meds on schedule, but now I could actually sleep through the night next to her.    I would take my arm an extend it into her bed and hold her hand-which by now had lost its grip.   We continued to have nightly “vespers” as we called them, with a lot of singing and scripture, and then me closing with prayer.   There was no indication that Susan heard any of this, for now she had become unresponsive to any stimuli.

On Sunday morning, with only Susan and I in the room, I turned to Proverbs 31.     This has been a controversial passage in our family because some younger members felt that “becoming a Proverbs 31 woman” was overhyped in our conservative Christian culture.  But for me, and for her, it described Susan’s life perfectly.   I read the passage out loud to her-with no indication that she heard it.   Then I told her that she had been the perfect wife and mother for our family, and how much I loved her.  I kissed her, but her lips were unresponsive-while previously, no matter what she was going through, she always kissed back.

By Sunday afternoon, Susan’s breathing changed, and we became sufficiently alarmed that we summoned the hospice nurse on call to come out and examine her.    She had us adjust her medications, and start giving her oxygen from the portable pump that hospice had supplied.   The nurse indicated that Susan’s pulse was still strong, and didn’t seem to think that we were entering a critical phase.  After she left something happened that totally unnerved me.    Susan’s right side had been propped up with pillows to keep her comfortable.   One of the pillows slipped through the gap between the bed and the side rails, and as it did, there was nothing to hold Susan’s right arm.  It swung lifelessly down in the gap-just as you might see happen to a dead body in a movie.   As I repositioned her arm, and then lifted her other arm, I found that she was totally lifeless.   Except for her heartbeat and her breathing, she seemed all but dead.   I was heartbroken.

Sunday night was much like other recent nights until about 4 AM.   Then I heard Susan groaning in a way that convinced me that she was in much pain.  I quickly arose and began giving her pain boosters.   By about 5 AM her groaning abated and I felt secure enough to go back to bed next to her.   Then I was awakened at 8:30  by a new sound: a sound of her breathing in a new way.   As I watched her, I saw that to get enough air-even with the oxygen on max, she had to tilt her head up and open her mouth and gasp.   She did this every 5 seconds or so, and it looked so pathetic that I was completely disheartened.    Yet when I felt her pulse it was strong.

At around 11 AM  Frances came in to give Susan her bath and put her in fresh clothes.   She had been off during the weekend, and the rest of us were so afraid of hurting Susan that we decided not to move her or try to change her outfit.     We left the room while Frances, in her own gentle way, gave Susan her bath and dressed in her in new clothes.   When we came back in there she was, absolutely beautiful with her hair shampooed and combed under her customary red hat, and her makeup applied perfectly.   Yet, she still struggled to get air.    Frances looked at us and said, “it won’t be long now.”  “If anyone has not released her, you should do it now.”    I replied, “I have tried to release her, but I’m having a hard time doing it.”   Then without warning I burst into uncontrollable sobs.   Shari came and embraced me, and for several minutes we stood there hugging and crying.   Frances said her goodbyes, just as Mary came in.   In the room at that time besides Mary were myself, Shari, David, Elizabeth, Peter and Megan.    Mary looked at Susan’s breathing and said that if anyone had not said what they needed to they should do it now.   Shari replied that this was the great thing about our family, that whatever needed to be said had been said long ago.

At that point I kissed Susan for the last time and said,  “Sugar, you’re going to see Jesus face to face!”   Her eyes opened at that moment, and she seemed to be able to see all that were in the room.   Then she closed them, and let out one more breath.   And then she was gone.

Somehow, I managed to pray out loud, thanking the Lord for His promises to her, and for the life she had lived, and for the blessing she had been to all of us.  Then we sang the first verse of  “Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners.”  Then  I asked Peter to read Philippians 3:7ff:
 

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus
Susan’s earthly race was over.   She now was receiving at that moment the prize she had longed for.    As Mary began the necessary processes for readying Susan’s body for transport, we continued to sit in the room.   Susan’s body was partially upright in bed, her head tilted slightly to the right, and her arm resting gently on a pillow next to her.  She seemed totally at peace.   And so were we, though our loss is beyond measuring. Yet someone-Shari I think-observed: “this was so like Susan.  She had to be properly dressed and made up before she took her leave to heaven.”  We all chuckled knowingly, even as the tears streamed down our faces.

 1. Using the Orbitz web site, search for rental vehicles in Mexico City.   As a search criteria select “vans” since there will be eleven of us in two vehicles.

2. Determine that all vans in Mexico City are outrageously expensive.  Select Budget as having the best rate.

3. Begin to wonder about insurance coverage.   Go to Visa & Master Card web sites and read the really fine print about collision loss waiver in a foreign country.   Go to legal web sites to determine what “collision loss waiver means”.    Take two ibuprofen after reading legal web sites and decide this can wait until tomorrow.

4. On the following day, do a Google search for “insuring your rental car in Mexico.”   Find several web sites, one of which recounts numerous horror stories of Americans ending up in jail because they had accidents with insufficient coverage–including credit card coverage.  Site recommends getting maximum rental car coverage from rental car agency just to be safe and to keep from ending up in jail.

5. Get bright idea.  Find Budget site IN MEXICO, rather than the USA version, and use it to book the car.  Fortunately, Mexican web site for Budget has an English version.

6. Use said site to investigate insurance offerings.  Find something called “deductible waiver” (DW).   DW seems to cover every contingency if the (altogether likely) worst case scenario happens.  It is expensive, but allows one to sleep better at night–unless of course one has the Montezuma’s revenge at night while in Mexico–but that is in a separate blog article.

7. Decide to book the Budget minivan with full DW & every other policy they offer just to be safe, and since this “once in a lifetime event” needs to be “the best vacation we ever had” (see Angie’s recent posts).

8. Save booked confirmation in numerous places and formats to ensure that there is no mistake.   Print out copy to present at rental car desk.

9. Go to Mexico City (see separate process flow diagram for details.)

10. Rental car is to be picked up at Benito Juarez International Airport upon the arrival of oldest son & family on Sunday after their flight from JFK, arriving at 10 PM.  Decide that oldest son should be principal driver since his experience in Brooklyn eminently qualifies him for driving skills needed in the notorious Mexico City (aka “DF” for District Federales ((loosely translated)) ) traffic.

11. After late dinner in the DF, youngest son & self proceed towards aeroporto.  As we enter car, instant message from oldest son shows up on youngest son’s elaborate mobile telephony device (EMTD).   Youngest son uses EMTD to determine following message from oldest son: “Our plane is 30th in line for takeoff.  Wife & son chewing on arm and asking “are we there yet?”   Expect substantial delay.”

12. Abandon trip to Benito Juarez International Aeroporto.  Instead, drive to youngest son’s apartment where he will trade EMTD for elaborate IP-enabled voice mail device (EIPEVMD). 

13. On EIPEVMD hear voice message “takeoff delayed at least one hour, maybe two.  Wife & son have switched to other arm.”

14. Decide to go to airline web sites to determine actual arrival time.  Since flight is code-shared between Delta (arrives terminal 2) and Aeromexico (terminal 1) it is critical to determine which airline is actually handling flight.   Youngest son informs self that if arrival at terminal 2, many many problems will arise.

15. Web sites disagree on arrival time and terminal.  Go to Benito Juarez International Aeroporto site.  It shows flight as on time.  No gate information provided.

16. Youngest son calls Aeromexico.  After long conversation in Spanish, he tells me they don’t know which terminal. 

17. Decide to call Budget rental car to tell them that flight is delayed since in their system they show 10 PM arrival.

18. Youngest son calls Budget rental car.  Intense highly articulated conversation in Spanish continues for 5 minutes.    Highly articulated conversation in Spanish continues for 10 minutes.   Highly articulated conversation in Spanish continues for 15 minutes.

19. Am informed by youngest son that the minivan corresponding to our reservation “has been sent back to central site and won’t be available until tomorrow.”

20. Decide to go to Benito Juarez International Aeroporto.

21. At Benito Juarez International Aeroporto, am dropped off by youngest son to go to Budget rental car counter alone while he parks his automobile (in distant land).   Armed with  the four words I know in Spanish (”si,”no”, “bueno,” and “banyo”) enter the madding crowd of brown faces all speaking rapidly in an unknown tongue. 

22. Youngest son has thoughtfully procured simple mobile telephony device (SMTD) for my use in communicating with his EMTD in case I need words translated as I encounter Budget rental car personnel.

23. Arrive at Budget rental car “counter”, which is actually a glassed in room whose door is locked.   Room is empty.  On door is stated: “Open 24 Hours” (in English).

24. Encounter harried international traveler who, in English, wants to know if Budget is open.  Assure him I don’t know.  Said traveler mutters something about no rental car counter being open and wanders off.

25. Youngest son arrives and together we stare at door.

26. Youngest son decides to use his EMTD to call the telephone number listed on the door of the Budget rental car company.   Person answering assures youngest son that Budget rental car company is indeed open, and they will “pick us up”  outside.

27.  Go outside.  Small car drives up.  Two men–wearing no identifiable uniforms or badges–seem to recognize us.  (Explanation: gringoes are readily identifiable in the DF.)  Words exchanged in Spanish.  We enter small car and drive off (to distant land).

28. Arrive at gate in distant land.  Car horn is honked.   Man in guard box sleepily appears and opens gate.  We enter.

29. Exit car and enter small office with sign “Budget Rental Car.”

30. In office greeted by third man (Senor 3) attired in uniform with drooping tie around neck.  He enters a side room and disappers, not to be seen for a long time.   Later discover door of room is labeled Caballeros.

31. Youngest son begins dialogue with driver of small car (Senor 1) who seems to be in charge.  Senor 2 sometimes interjects unintelligible (to me) Spanish words.  Senor 3 emerges from roomed marked Caballeros and disappears for good.

32.  Dialogue between youngest son & Senor 1 becomes animated.  Glance at watch.  Time is 12:30 AM Monday morning.

33. Dialogue continues for 30 minutes.  Youngest son seems to have Senor 1 on the run, but still no rental car emerges.

34. Youngest son translates: no minivan available.  Budget rental car company will provide us a temporary sedan and then present said minivan at this location tomorrow.

35. Dialogue between youngest son and Senor 1 continues for another 30 minutes.  Senor 1 makes phone call.  Youngest son indicates that this phone call is to Senor 1’s supervisor.

36. Senor 2 disappears.   Senor 2 reappears as driver of white Ford minivan.

 37. More dialogue ensues.  Youngest son informs me that yes, they did have the minivan all along, but it was low on gas & had not been cleaned.  They will rent said minivan to us if we agree to accept as is and supply our own gas which they will reimburse us for.  We agree.

38. Dialogue now ensues about insurance.  I indicate to youngest son that I had made reservation with full insurance coverage, including the coveted DW policy.   Dialogue resumes.   Senor 1 informs youngest son who translates that the DW covers full replacement value of the vehicle if totaled in accident, but if the mirrors or wheels are stolen we would have to replace them out of pocket. Youngest son & self exchange confused glances. 

39. More dialogue ensues about the deeper meaning of DW.  Senor 1 does not give gound.   We accept the DW coverage as explaned.  We agree to guard mirrors & wheels with our lives.

40. More dialogue continues about “principal drivers.”  Informed that only 2 can be said drivers at no charge.   Both said drivers must appear in person.   Hence, oldest son will have to go to distant land after arriving to count as a principal driver. 

41. Rental papers signed.  Car inspection begins by Senor 2 & self.

42. Inspection completed.   Senor 2 drives small car containing himself & us past sleepy guard back to Terminal 1 where we hoped oldest son & family would arrive.

43. Stand in front of customs doorway at Terminal 1 awaiting oldest son & family.   Continue standing.   Continue standing.  Continue standing. 

44. Decide to sit in nearby bar overlooking customs doorway.  As waiter arrives to take order, oldest son & family arrives through doorway.

45. We Rejoice.  Time: 2 AM.

46. Youngest son uses EMTD to call Budget auto rental company to inform them that oldest son has arrived.

47. Self & oldest son repeat steps 27 - 29 above.  With some difficulty, since neither of us speak Spanish, sign papers establishing oldest son as principal driver.

48. END–RENTAL CAR RENTING PROCESS.

Appendix:  Oldest son & family 4 days after arrival showing no worse for wear.

Appendix: The famous aqueduct at Queretaro reached by Ford minivan rented to us by Budget rental car company.

The Missing Blog (May, 2002)

What Did Adam Die Of? And Other Interesting Questions.

Disclaimer: The material below is highly speculative and may or may not be in line with the views of religious, scientific or other organizations that I am a member of or have an interest in.

Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. (Gen 5:5)

While reading an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about the challenge retirees face in preserving their investments, I was directed to a web site maintained by Harvard Medical: http://www.livingto100.com/. The WSJ columnist wanted his readers to realize that they might live a lot longer than they think, and thus need to plan to make sure their assets outlive them instead of the other way ‘round. So I dutifully filled out the 20 or so questions on the site, and lo and behold, it predicted I would live to be 95.2. I am highly skeptical of this result—the WSJ and Harvard Medical School notwithstanding—because it didn’t ask me about my current health, like “have you ever had angioplasty?” (Answer: yes: subtract 10 years…) Instead I believe my high score was due to the quiz’s genetic bias, and the fact that at 98 (and a half) my mother is going strong. “Has a parent lived in excellent heath to an age greater than 90?” A strong “yes” to that one!The quiz also has some other interesting and revealing questions, such as: “Do you floss your teeth daily?” (A yes buys you some extra years because the medical gurus think that not flossing makes you more susceptible to disease.) You also get positive credit if you drink 2 glasses of wine a day (the French paradox), but negative credit if you drink more (the Russian orthodox).

Even if I believe the 90+ years predicted by the livingto100 guys, it’s still a factor of 10 less than our forefather Adam. Can you imagine him taking the quiz? Did he floss, for example? How many glasses of wine did he consume each day? Was he French? And what did he die of? For us 21^st century Americans, it’s likely to be either heart disease or cancer. Did these two maladies exist in Adam’s day? Since he probably had a pretty low fat diet (no Mickey D’s then), could he have died of cancer?

Readers of these pages know of my intense interest in cancer, in light of my beloved’s experience with it over more than a decade. Recently, an article appeared in the journal Nature which gives an overview of what is known about this dread disease. It can be found in the free issue at www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nrc/journal/v2/n5/full/nrc795_fs.html. (Note: link no longer works 5 years later.) Here’s the abstract:

Cancer arises from a stepwise accumulation of genetic changes that liberates neoplastic cells from the homeostatic mechanisms that govern normal cell proliferation. In humans, at least four to six mutations are required to reach this state, but fewer seem to be required in mice. By rationalizing the shared and unique elements of human and mouse models of cancer, we should be able to identify the molecular circuits that function differently in humans and mice, and use this knowledge to improve existing models of cancer.

Sounds impressive, but also daunting what with words like: “neoplastic,” and “homeostatic.” The article itself I found impervious to understanding as a mere physicist. Clearly, the biology course I took in high school is going to fail me in understanding what the article says. But I could take away a few conclusions. First of all, the biological processes that govern the creation and reproduction of each cell of our bodies are incredibly complex. For example, see the reference above to “molecular circuits.” The authors of the paper even publish what they call a “subway map” (because of its resemblance to the maps seen in Manhattan for example) showing how these molecular circuits interact. Here is the map:

In addition to showing how cancer develops the map demonstrates just how complex are the normal cellular processes needed to sustain life: human, animal or even plants. Basically, these process have to do with information. To state it simplistically, cellular processes are concerned with moving proteins around. But proteins are manufactured in the cell through a complex coding process that uses software instructions stored in the double helix molecule known as DNA. The various software modules are called “genes” which refer to a specific region of the DNA molecule. This molecule in found in the nucleus of every single cell, and is the most efficient information storage device in the universe.

Now those of us in engineering, particularly electrical and software engineering, are very familiar with “circuits” and “software code.” The modern microprocessor like the one running the PC that you are using to read this page, is at its heart a combination of electrical circuits and on board software code (in a read only memory or ROM for example). Each move made by the microprocessor is dictated by the coded instructions that it receives from various memory units, just like what happens in a biological cell. Except each cell is much more complex, and furthermore is self-reproducing. Think of it like this: suppose each Pentium IV could produce an identical Pentium IV using only materials available to it locally. In actuality, a Pentium IV requires an elaborate set of manufacturing elements found in clean rooms that approach a billion dollars in cost. The cell, on the other hand, does it using just the stuff you eat! (Even those greasy burgers from Mickey D’s…)

This common sense comparison between human-designed processors and the workings of the biological cell have led a small, but increasing number, of scientists to say about the cell: “it must have been designed!” (See for example Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box.) These brave souls have risen up, under the umbrella name of “intelligent design,” to challenge the ruling paradigm of Darwinian evolution, which says that all these complex biological objects we see only appear to be designed: they really evolved by undirected natural processes that didn’t have them in mind to begin with. Readers interested in the ID movement are directed to www.arn.org

But back to Adam. Could he have died of cancer? I, of course, don’t know. A second conclusion one can draw from the article above is that cancer arises in stepwise fashion as a result of 4 to 6 genetic mutations. Normally, these mutations are initiated by environment factors (tobacco smoke being the most famous) and require time. That’s why most of the people Susan and I see in the cancer centers we go to are older. They’ve lived long enough to have the 4 to 6 mutations finally take place over their lives. ( In Susan’s case, the mutations were given a head start since she was born with one of the mutations in place already. This was a single missing letter “A” in the genetic code that has to do with cell reproduction in breast and ovary cells.)

Since Adam and his early descendants all lived extremely long lives (by our standards) he certainly had years and years to allow these mutations to build up. On the other hand, maybe he just caught the flu and died of a viral infection. Ah, viruses! They have cells also, and thus exhibit the same biological complexity as a human cell, for example. In other words, they too appear to be designed! In fact looking at the cancer map above with all its complexity suggests that cancer itself is designed by an intelligent agent!
So who is the intelligent agent? For Christians it is not hard to see that the Intelligent Designer of the biosphere is none other than Jesus Christ the Son of God. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. (Colossians 1:16).

But what about objects that aren’t good, but bad, like cancer and viruses? Was He the creator of these also, as part of the judgment on man after the fall of Adam? Or could there be another intelligent agent for bad things like cancer and viruses?

In a recent book entitled No Free Lunch, the mathematician Bill Dembski develops his idea that information cannot be generated by natural forces, but rather it must be created by an intelligent agent. We see that every day in the activity of human intelligent agents, such as those that wrote the software that runs this program called “Word for Windows.” So could a human agent have created the complex information processes associated with viruses and cancer? Not likely. The finest minds among us have yet to figure out how cancer “works” much less how to cure it. What other intelligent agents are candidates? The Bible would appear to give us 3 other choices beyond a human agent: God Himself, angels, or devils (including the prince of devils, Satan). Both angels and devils are presumably highly intelligent beings with the possibility of “designing” things, including disease.

Now here’s where we get speculative. There’s an enticing reference in the (English translation) of the book of Job, which some scholars tell us is possibly the most ancient of the Biblical texts (older even than the books of Moses). Here it is:

“Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. (Job2:11ff)
The dialogue between the Lord and Satan is interesting as regards who will strike Job with a physical illness. Satan tells the Lord to “stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones.” But when the Lord acquiesces to Satan’s request, He says “he is in your hands” and indeed the end of the passage indicates that it was Satan who did the afflicting.

So, is it possible that Satan is the intelligent designer of viruses and cancer, and a host of other illnesses that afflict humankind?

In the New Testament we see another interesting connection between disease and demonic activity. For example:

That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. (Mark 1:32ff)

In this passage from Mark’s gospel we see Jesus healing diseases and casting out demons simultaneously across a spectrum of individuals in an entire village. This is certainly consistent with a linkage between demonic intelligence and the creation/existence of disease.

This explanation might work for influenza viruses, say, or the bubonic plague. But cancer is a more complicated situation. As opposed to a distinct creation, it seems to be a defect in an intelligently designed system, namely, the process of life itself at the cellular level. Usually, this defect is generated by an environmental factor, like a cosmic ray or a tobacco carcinogen, etc.

This leads to an intriguing question. If Adam has passed the test regarding the forbidden fruit, and therefore obtained the right to eat of the tree of life, would he therefore have figured out how to overcome these environmental factors and provided for himself the cure for cancer? Or perhaps the fruit itself would have changed his cellular processes to insulate them against his environment. Or perhaps the environment itself would have changed. Of course, it could be argued-and probably is held tacitly by most Christians-that had the Fall not happened, there would be no disease at all. Implicitly in this view the processes of life would somehow be shielded from environmental factors so the 4 to 6 mutations would never happen.

Human curiosity loves to speculate-just read some neo-Darwin “just so” stories about evolution, or cosmologists’ conjectures on oscillating “big bang” universes. But with no data there is no way to confirm or deny the speculations. Likewise so with the speculation on Adam. Perhaps someday in eternity we will know the answers to these “what ifs”; but more likely we will be told that such “what ifs” are inappropriate questions in the first place. Although Adam had a true choice, in the mystery of God’s providence there was no way the Fall could not have happened, given that the Lamb of God was foreordained from eternity to bear His people’s sins.

So where does that leave us vis-à-vis cancer? It appears our generation has been given the opportunity to overcome this disease through the means of medical research in the spirit of the original pre-Fall commandment to Adam to subdue the earth. As the microscopic understanding of this part of the “earth” is enlarged at the molecular level, ultimately one hopes that cancer will be defeated. (On the other hand, a true plague of our times: HIV seems almost invincible.) When cancer is finally conquered, what is the spiritual implication? Unfortunately, in our secular society such victories as the one over polio two generations ago, are viewed as the triumph of science over against, say, the “superstitions” of religion. Yet, the conquest of polio from the Christian perspective can and should be regarded as a spiritual victory also, just as Job’s eventual healing was.

Dave,

Here are my thoughts on this passage per your request to provide input on the fine tuning, size, etc. of the universe.

Per Calvin et al, God has written two books: special revelation in the Bible, and general revelation in His creation. Our generation has been the recipient of unprecedented “data” through the second book. We now have knowledge about the vastness of the universe on one hand, and the minuteness of the universe on the other hand.

For example, astronomers using their wide variety of telescopes, including the Hubble which orbits the earth outside its filtering atmosphere, have determined that the universe is immense beyond our comprehension. Most astronomers believe there was a single creation event (called the Big Bang) that occurred about 14 billion years ago. Since light travels at a finite speed of 186,000 miles per second, the age of the universe suggests that the size of the universe is about 14 billion light years in size. However, since the creation event, the universe has been expanding, so much so, that it is now believed that the “diameter” of the universe—if we conceive of the observable universe as a giant sphere—is in fact about 92 billion light years in length. That is the distance that light travels in 92 billion years.[1] For comparison, the distance from the earth to the sun is about 8 light minutes.

Because of the extraordinary position of our solar system in the Milky Way galaxy we are able to observe not only our own galaxy of about 100 billion stars, but also the other 80 billion or so galaxies in the observable universe. If our sun and its planets were closer into the center of our galaxy we would be bombarded with deadly radiation that would not only obscure our observation, but would kill the human observers! Likewise, if we were too far out, in one of the spiral arms, a rocky earth-like planet probably could not have formed, and if it did radiation there would also be too high for life to exist.

As a result of our unique position in our galaxy, our telescopes are able to “count” stars, and thus conclude that the entire universe has at least 80 billion galaxies, each containing about 100 billion stars. That’s 8000 billion billion stars: an unimaginably large number.

Interestingly enough, on the opposite end of the size scale, the number of gas molecules in a cubic box about 3 inches on each side is comparable to the number of stars in the entire universe. So there is this tremendous span of sizes in the created universe, from the minute size of atoms to the vast expanse of the universe itself, all comprehensible by instruments made by man in the last century.

Finally, there is in the laws of physics what is called the “fine tuning” of the universe. It is observed that very small changes in the so-called constants that enter into various physical laws or formulas that describe the forces & particles of our universe would make carbon-based life, us, impossible. Changes in certain constants as small as 1 part in a billion billion billion will produce a universe hostile to life.

In Peter’s day, there were scoffers. In our day, there are skeptics—some of them quite hostile to Christian faith such as the author of the recent best seller The God Delusion. Like Peter’s scoffers, today’s natural man looking only at the Book of General Revelation, unguided by the Book of Special Revelation, will say “when is he coming?” Or more accurately, “there is no he at all.” They see this incredibly vast universe with its glorious tuning just right for human life, as a colossal accident, and concoct theories to support their claims.

It’s worth noting in passing that current understanding about the future of our sun, based on its similarity to other older stars, suggests that its temperature will rise sufficiently in about 500-700 million years so that all water on earth will be boiled away, making life impossible. By then, and hopefully well before then, Peter’s prophecy of the earth’s judgment being reserved for fire will come true.

John

[1] [Reference: Scientific American Article at: 

I don’t remember a whole lot about that day, except that another older guy who was joining the Labs at the same time was going to work on vacuum tubes—a little strange I thought. As for me I was setting off to explore red light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) from a compound known as gallium phosphide.

Here’s a picture taken about that time (actually 10 months later) at my graduation from CMU. I had to go back to get my diploma since I finished my dissertation a month too late to make the June graduation in 1967. Fortunately, BTL didn’t hold that against me and let me join them anyway.

One other memory from that date. Susan & her sister dropped me off at the Lab in Murray Hill (NJ) so they could use the car while they worked on our new apartment in Chatham Township. I waited a LONG time for them to come get me after the work day was over. They couldn’t find their way back to Murray Hill. (And cell phones hadn’t been invented yet.) Even I have to admit driving in that part of Jersey was challenging, particularly at the intersection of Mountain Ave. with…..Mountain Ave!
I

Undoubtedly, Dr. Osborn had read Zeno, the Greek philosopher of the 4^th century before Christ. Zeno is famous for his paradoxes. One of them shows that “you can’t get there from here.” In fact you can’t get anywhere from here. Suppose I’m standing on the goal line of a football field. I want to get to the other goal line on the other side of the field. According to Zeno, to get there I first have to traverse half the distance, namely, to the 50 yard line. But before I can get to the 50, I’ve got to go halfway to it: namely, the 25 yard line. But to get to the 25, I have to traverse 12.5 yards. But to get there I have to….

You get the point: to get anywhere I have to journey a succession of intervals each of which is exactly half of the one that follows. How many “half-intervals” of this type are there? Infinity. There, I’ve used the word. So if each half-interval takes a finite amount of time to traverse, and there are an infinity of them, it will take infinite time to reach the other side. QED: I will never reach the other side.

Obviously, Zeno’s paradox is paradoxical because we know that we can get somewhere from here. (Although in some places it harder than others. Just try to go around the block in Pittsburgh, Pa.) Yet it took about 20 centuries of human history before men like Isaac Newton would “solve” the paradox using their newly invented mathematics of The Calculus.

Writing before Newton invented calculus, the Westminster Divines had no trouble using the concept in their definition of God. God is infinite in His being, they said. What exactly did they mean?

Because they said that God was also eternal and unchangeable in His being, it seems to me that they must have thought of infinity in terms of purely spatial parameters. God is infinite in space. Just as a straight line extends indefinitely in space, so also is God infinite in His spatial dimensions. But what does it mean for a “spirit” to occupy “space”? A spirit is intangible. How can an intangible thing even exist in space, much less occupy all of it?

Whether we appreciate it or not, we use this concept of an intangible thing occupying all of space routinely. Whenever we use our cell phone, for example. One of the great triumphs of classical physics is its description of something we call the electric field. Take a positively charge particle—say a proton. If it sits stationary in space, it is surrounded by an intangible, but very observable, electric field. How far does that field extend away from the proton? Answer: infinity. Of course the farther away you get the smaller the magnitude of the electric field (it falls off inversely with distance), but it is still non-zero as far as your mind can conceive of. In the real world where nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, you may have to wait awhile to “see” the electric field where you happen to be. In fact the act of “seeing” literally is an observation of the electric field, since eyesight is nothing more than having certain cells in our eyes having their molecules jiggled by an oscillating electric field. Likewise, our cell phones work because the electric field—along with its cousin, the magnetic field—produce motion in the electrons of the antenna of the phone which gets amplified and demodulated into a signal that we can hear with our ear.

So, two of the things we are most familiar with: human vision and cell phone calling are the result of intangible things occupying infinite space. Are the new new atheists opposed to the concept of an infinite God because they can’t picture something they can’t see or touch? Yet surely they know that their physics is full of such things, such as the electric field, the magnetic field, gravity, quantum particles, etc. Do they refuse to believe Einstein who showed that matter (which we can touch) is equivalent to energy (which we can’t) through his magical equation E = mc²?

We need to address one issue about infinity that may be confusing. Is “infinite in His being” the same as omnipresence? Omnipresence is being everywhere all the time. But a thing can be infinite without being omnipresent. For example picture two lines hanging in space but not intersecting. They are both infinite, but there is a huge region of the remaining space that is not filled by these lines. And being on one of the lines means not being on the other line. Each of these lines consists of an infinity of points. But a plane, defined by two (infinite) intersecting lines contains a much larger infinity than the two lines themselves. Likewise the 3-dimensional space inhabited by our colossal universe contains an even larger infinity of points. Following Francis Schaeffer (who liked to use double adjectives to make a big point) the space we inhabit is an infinite infinity of points, even if the universe turns out to have a boundary.

So I take it that when the Westminster Divines said that God was infinite in His being, they were thinking that He was omnipresent—i.e., there is nowhere in the universe where He is not. I imagine that the Divines had Psalm 139 in mind:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

The psalmist believed that God was everywhere, even in Sheol.

The great French theologian John Calvin said that in knowing something about ourselves we know something about God, because we are created in His image. A less famous theologian (apparently unknown) is purported to have said: “there is a God, and you are not Him.” Combining these two ideas around the concept of the infinite, we conclude that one of the most important things we learn when we say that God is infinite in His being, is that WE ARE NOT!

I become acutely aware of my finitude whenever I go out biking. To me riding a bicycle (not a motorbike) is the finest experience of the man/machine interface ever invented. The bike becomes an extension of oneself. The feeling of speed as your legs are able to propel yourself much faster than mere walking. The stabilization due to the conserved angular momentum of the spinning wheels giving you a sense of balance, and yet gracefulness as you lean into a turn. The whishing of the wind in your ears and in your face—filling your lungs with oxygenated air at a much higher level than mere breathing while stationary. And the play of gears as you continually adjust them based on the terrain, using the lower gears along with a higher revolution rate on the pedals as you ascend, and then the incredible sense of acceleration as you descend while using the highest gear to input even more energy into the machine as you reach unimaginable and even dangerous speeds. And all of this done noiselessly, so even the pedestrian sharing the walkway with you is unaware of your presence until you go shooting by them on their left side, perhaps startling them as your sudden and unexpected presence and equally fast disappearance into the distance sets them wondering as to what had just gone past them.

But the very act of traveling on a bike is a reminder that when I’m here, at this mile marker which I’ve just passed, I’m therefore not at the previous one, or yet to the one ahead. By going from point A to point B, I’m reminded that I can’t be at both points at once. I am finite in space.

Sometimes, to try to picture what it might be like to be less than finite, I visualize a clone of myself riding on an identical bike, but 180 degrees ahead (or behind) me on the 3.3 mile park loop that I daily traverse. Suppose my clone and I could share a single consciousness. So, simultaneously, while he dodges a pedestrian on the downhill slope on the north side of the loop, I’m gazing at the dam on Rowlett Creek on the south side. And we/I see and experience both events as one. It would be like the times TV networks split the screen to show two live events going on at the same time. Except, even in these cases, our eyes dart back in forth from one image to the other. In the hypothetical case of my clone & I, there is no darting. Both events are present and apprehended as one.

Now suppose I multiply the clone analogy by 2, so there are four of “us” riding around the loop. And then I double that so there are 8 of us, and the single conscious “me” simultaneously experiences 8 different events, and keeps track of them without interference or confusion. Impossible you say. Of course you are right. It’s hard enough for my finite mind to keep track of even one event, much less 8. Multi-tasking, a skill much in demand in today’s business world, is really not the parallel processing I’m speaking of, but rather the ability of some individuals to rapidly go from one task to another, presumably by efficiently storing information about event 1 in their neurons, and then equally efficiently retrieving stored data about event 2, acting on it, and then going on to event 3, and so on.

In the clone thought experiment above, I’m attempting to get at what it must be like for a Spirit that is infinite in space. I’ve stopped at eight clones, and already it’s boggled my mind attempting to think how the simultaneous experience of 8 events or places could be realized by a sentient being. For the God of the Westminster Divines, ALL places in the universe are simultaneously present to Him, because He is everywhere (omnipresent).

So as I zoom by a grassy field on my bike, and pick out a single blade of grass to think about, God is aware (more fully than I) of all the blades of grass in the field. In fact all the blades of grass in all fields in all countries and in all places on the face of the earth. And if there are other blades of grass somewhere else in the universe, He is aware of these also. And suppose I begin to think of the interior structure of the single blade that I’ve chosen to focus on. I think of the interconnected web of molecules that make up that blade, and then the individual atoms of those molecules, and then the individual electrons and protons and neutrons that make up those atoms. In my finite mind I can focus on say a single proton in one of the hydrogen atoms that are part of the molecular chain of high complexity that makes up the blade of grass. But God knows simultaneously all the protons (and all the elementary particles as well) in all the molecules in all the blades of grass in all the grassy fields in the universe SIMULTANEOUSLY. His awareness of any one is equal to His awareness of any other. Like Peter encountering Jesus after the miracle of the catch of fish, I say, “away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Or as the psalmist in Psalm 139: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it.”

To the new new atheist all the above is preposterous. No such Being exists. Who could conceive of such a One?

Yet what does the data say. Over the history of humankind, our understanding of the size of the material universe itself has expanded immensely. From the original idea of the ancients, with the earth as the center of the cosmos, and sun, moon and stars being stuck on some firmament that rotated around the earth every 24 hours, we have been led by scientific discovery first to the idea of the earth in a solar system, and then to the fact that the sun itself as an ordinary member of a galaxy of 100 billion stars (the Milky Way), and then finally to the realization that there are at least 100 billion of such galaxies each with a hundred billion stars reaching over distances so large that we have to measure them in units of light-years. At the same time in the realm of the microscopic, we have come to realize that a single teaspoon of the air we breathe consists of a trillion trillion molecules of oxygen and nitrogen. Both in the very large and the vary small the numbers we encounter are enormous. For all practical purposes, to our finite minds they are “infinite” . Doesn’t such an infinity give us a clue that their Creator is also Infinite in His Being?

The title of the book has to do with they way Charles Darwin and his peers viewed the fundamental building blocks of life in their day. Just as the atom is pictured as the building block of chemistry, so the cell performs the equivalent function for biology. Plants and animals are made of up cells—at least a trillion of them for human beings. Darwin, who could only dimly view cells without the help of the high powered microscopes we have today, thought each cell was simply a blob of protoplasm. In this way, the cell was a “black box” whose contents were likely to be simple and not important for his theory of evolution.

Fast forward a hundred years. Microscopes became very powerful. In fact advanced microscopes no longer use visible light, but electrons. A scanning electron microscope and its kin can probe the microscopic world with a power that rivals the Hubble telescope in its grasp of the cosmos. Individual atoms can even be viewed in all their glory.

So what happened when modern scientists finally opened Darwin’s black box? They were amazed! Rather than blobs of protoplasm, they found that each individual cell was a tiny, but highly organized factory, of miniature molecular machines. Examples of such machines can be found at www.arn.org/mm/mm.htm . A spectacular DVD showing the inner workings of the cellular factory is entitled Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Now if you take the trouble to view some of these molecular machines, say by following the hyperlinks that branch off the above page and others that you will encounter, you find something striking: these structures appear to be man-made. For example, the bacterial flagellum motor looks very much like an electric motor made in some coil-winding shop in downtown Kearny, New Jersey! But in spite of its appearance, this “motor” is an object in nature. Somehow, “nature” was able to generate it from raw bits of molecules and atoms from “plans” it had encoded in the DNA of the organism that produced it. Very clever, Mother Nature! But Mother, where did you get the plans, and once you had them, what were the processes that you used to put the thing together?

That’s exactly Behe’s point. The theory that he, a professional biologist had been brought up on, aka Darwinian evolution, says that the processes at work are UN-planned and random. How is it possible that an unplanned random process can generate objects that in our macro-world are clearly planned and non-random?

For this I give Behe credit for being as good an engineer as he is a scientist. Engineers like me know that it is HARD to get machines to work right, even after many tries. Scientists, on the other hand, while very clever in their theories, usually are immune from actually having to make things that work and keep on working. Biologists, particularly, are principally observers—observers of things already with the appearance of design built in. They don’t actually get to design those things that are apparently designed. Oh, they might design a clever experiment to study their biological entities. But I’ve been there, done that, in my days as an experimental physicist. I can tell you it’s much much easier to design a clever piece of experimental apparatus, than it is to build some piece of electronics equipment that has to work perfectly for 20 years in the telephone system, where literally lives are at stake. (Think calling 911 when the electricity goes out.)

We use to have a saying at Bell Labs as we “interacted” with the marketing department. My colleague Gary Edmonds came up with it: “It’s not what you know that makes it hard, it’s what you don’t know that makes it easy.” By that he meant that the marketing folks were always wanting you to add features to your product that had never been done before. In their mind—not being real engineers—it should be easy to add those features. It was what no one knew (the new features and what it took to produce them) that led to the assumption that it would be easy to do. (It never was.)

And so it is in biology. The non-engineer biologist, like the marketer, can dream up all sorts of “just so” stories to explain how various biological entities came to be from other, simpler entities. The question is, can the biologist explain—by providing the detailed step-by-step processes—how a complex biological object came to be?

That was Behe’s first question. If Darwinian evolution is true, he said, then I should find in the biological literature (journals, treatises, papers, talks, books) a detailed step-by-step explanation of how the molecular machines I and others observe in the laboratory can come into existence by a series of small random steps predicted by Darwin. So search he did. For a long time. I imagine him slumped over his desk in the wee hours of the morning turning the pages of a densely printed journal looking for the article that explains the existence of the bacterial flagellum. But it didn’t happen. He never found such an article, nor any other that remotely explained in detail how any molecular machine came to be. His faith in the theory he had been taught in biology school was faltering.

Then came a second realization by Behe. The structures he was observing had an aspect about them that demanded an explanation. If you were to take one piece of the complex molecular machine away, the machine no longer functioned. At all. It wasn’t just partially broken, with some function left. It was a dead machine, that did nothing. But according to Darwin, complex machine C must have evolved from some less complex machine B, which in turned evolved from even less complex machine A, etc. And all of these machines: A, B, C…. should have some function! Because in the chain of A evolving to B evolving to C, if B had NO function, you would never GET to C. The B species would die out because there would be no reason to reproduce it. It was not “fit” as Darwin put it. And only the fittest survive.

So where did object “C” in the above example come from? If taking away ANY single component reduced it to a non-functioning clump of molecules, how can its origin be explained? Behe came up with a name for objects such as C. He called them “irreducibly complex.” By this he meant that such an object could not be reduced to a set of simpler functioning objects. Hunting for a simple non-biological example, he pointed to the lowly mousetrap. The common household mousetrap made by Victor (with the capital V emblazoned on it) has five components: a base, a spring, a hammer, a catch and a hold down bar. (Behe’s discussion of mousetraps can be found at www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_mousetrapdefended.htm .) If any one of these components is missing, the trap won’t catch mice. So all the precursors to the 5-component mousetrap that one can think of are non-functioning and therefore useless. Their biological analogs would not exist in nature because they confer no advantage and would leave no offspring.

So where do irreducibly complex objects come from? In our world, things like the Victor mousetrap are intelligently designed. That is, an intelligence with foresight and the ability to manipulate the environment with non-random movements produced such an object. Random movements without foresight won’t produce a mousetrap. Is it so large a leap to conclude that objects in nature that look like they are designed (irreducibly complex) are in fact designed? Mother Nature is intelligent. But Mother Nature is much more akin to an Intelligent Spirit than to a random non-planned Darwinian process.

This excursion into Behe’s argument brings us back to the stark contrast we looked at in the last entry. Where do the facts lead? Which of the two parties is suffering the delusion: Richard Dawkins or the Westminster Divines? Dawkins has criticized Behe for “not trying hard enough” to find a “natural” (non-theistic) explanation of his irreducible complexity. On the other hand, the noted (former) atheist Anthony Flew has examined the facts of biochemistry and become a theist! His story can be found at: www.biola.edu/antonyflew/ . To his credit he was willing to allow the data to overturn his presuppositions about the very nature of reality.

But long ago, before the biochemical facts we are discussing here became known, a logical argument was put together by the philosopher Blaise Pascal that bears repeating. This is sometimes known as Pascal’s wager. Suppose there is no God, but you decided to believe in Him anyway. One day you will wake up dead and He will not be there. But of course neither will you. You have lost nothing (since there truly is nothing to lose), and in the meantime you have had the comfort of your belief during your life. On the other hand, suppose there is a God, and you don’t believe in Him. Some day you will wake up dead, and He WILL be there, and hold you accountable for your unbelief. If life is truly a gamble, are you better wagering for God or against God? To Pascal it was obvious.

In our next entry we will return again to the definition of God from the pens of the Westminster Divines with a view toward seeing its practical implications for us as “spirits” created in the image of The Spirit. And we’ll consider a bit more about Behe’s more recent findings.

Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today’s bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America’s destruction.

Got your attention? It got mine. And it led me to ponder anew what is it about the concept of “God” that so stirs men’s emotions, even to the point of committing extreme acts of terrorism in his supposed name? In fact what IS God?

What is God?

My life, or perhaps I should say, my mind changed dramatically beginning in 1967 when Susan & I moved to Chatham, NJ and we began attending Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in nearby Morristown. There I encountered the Rev. Calvin A. Bush, the pastor, and began attending his Saturday morning studies on the Westminster Confession of Faith, and hearing his weekly sermons every Sunday.

Although I had been a Presbyterian since my teenage years, and throughout my high school, college and graduate school days, and had sat under a number of pastors, it was only under Cal Bush’s tutelage that I finally began to understand—if in fact this is actually possible—what the Reformed & Presbyterian Faith was all about. Of all the topics that Cal led our men’s group through, and which he covered in his preaching, one stood out: Question 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Q4. What is God?

In the first place, I was always struck by the question itself. Why did the writers of the Catechism (the so-called Westminster Divines) use the word “what”? Why didn’t they say “who”? Were they so prescient of discussions taking place in this present century that they didn’t want to presume that their readers knew that God was a Person?

The question itself is thought-provoking, and I don’t (yet) have an answer as to why the Divines used “what” instead of “who”, but the answer they gave is literally one for the ages. Cal usually found a way to get the answer to Question 4 into every sermon I ever heard him preach. To some this might seem boring or repetitious, but there was method to his madness. I found I had memorized the answer without even knowing that I had. By osmosis from his preaching I had had a permanent change in the neurons of my brain where this answer is now residing.

Here is the answer (which I proudly quote from memory):

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

Does this answer help? At first it may seem to be an attempt to define an indefinable concept with another indefinable concept. As a scientist and engineer, I might have attempted to answer Question 4 by saying: “God is the Creator of all this stuff we call the universe and us as well.” Of course, that kind of definition just pushes things back one level, since now we have to define “Creator,” or “Designer.” And this definition would probably suit the Greek deities just as well as the Judeo-Christian One. Zeus presumably was a creator, but very unlike Jehovah.

So in attempting to understand the Westminster Divines’ definition of God, I am immediately drawn to the word “Spirit.” There is an implied equation:

GOD = SPIRIT

But notice they use the little word “a” in front of Spirit. God is “one of the spirits.” Here again I might have wanted them to say that God is THE Spirit of all spirits. But apparently they wanted to define God’s “substance.” Their sentence is like this one:

“Wine is a liquid.”

This sentence is telling you the principal nature of the concept “wine.” It’s not a solid or a gas, it’s a liquid. And we all know what a liquid is. Right?

So, likewise, we all know what a “spirit” is. Right? Yes, because we are one, also!

But, there’s the rub in whole debate. The materialists who write the books on the new new atheism don’t believe in the concept of spirit. Particularly as applied to us homo sapiens. We are biochemical machines. Complex machines undoubtedly. But machines nonetheless, obeying strictly the laws of physics and chemistry where law and randomness reign. “Spirit” to them is an illusion created by our highly structured brains whose sole purpose is to produce other brains through the process of Darwinian natural selection and reproduction. This illusion of our being free-willed spirits is simply our brain’s way—shaped by eons of natural selection—to fool us in to making more brains who then reinforce those brains to think they are spirits who want to make more brains, and so on ad infinitum. And since our “spirits” are illusions, so is that Spirit we call God. In fact, to quote the title of Richard Dawkins’ latest book, it’s not just an illusion, it is the God delusion.

Let me attempt to put it starkly. Here are two statements. Take your pick.

Dawkins: Your whole life—everything that seems important to you—is delusion. That warm feeling you get when you see a baby smile. The sense of awe when looking at the Grand Canyon. That emotion we call love between a man and a woman. That sense of injustice when you are wronged by someone, or you see an innocent person wounded or killed by random violence or premeditated murder. Even acts of courage you might perform in which you sacrifice your own well being for that of your child or friend or mate. All of that is delusion, put there by evolutionary forces which act totally randomly on the molecules and electrical circuits of your body and do not care at all about the consequences. Its purpose—if we can even call it that because it is unplanned and simply happens—is to produce another you which if it is a stronger, fitter you will leave more offspring than a competitor to you.

Westminster Divines: Your whole life—everything that seems important to you—is utterly meaningful. It’s meaningful because you have a spirit—independent of but strongly coupled to your body. That spirit first of all is an image of THE Spirit who created it. Because of that when you see a baby smile the emotion you feel is a reflection of your spiritual nature that rejoices (as does the Creator of your spirit) when it sees new life. A life that is starting out with all the potential and richness of experiencing everything it means to be human. And when you sense deeply that a wrong has been done to you, or to someone you care for, that too is an expression of your spirit. Your spirit has been defined to follow—not the laws of physics and chemistry—but a higher law, the moral law which is a direct reflection of the nature and character of the Spirit who created your spirit. And when you are motivated to act against your own interests, and to perform acts of sacrifice in order to help or even save from injury or death another person, that is also a consequence of your being at your very root a spiritual being. And so your very existence is not simply to reproduce your kind, but to “glorify and enjoy” the Spirit who created your spirit (see Q.1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism).

To choose between those two statements means thinking deeply about which one is more likely to consistent with the facts of life as we observe them. The materialist, as exemplified by Dawkins, is required to explain how strictly materialistic processes acting randomly could produce over time the incredible complexity we see in our biosphere and the universe as a whole and in us thinking, speaking beings. In contrast, the believer in the Spirit we call God must postulate a Creator whose power and intelligence is so great that the complexity is “no problem”!

Enter the man named Michael Behe. How he influences this debate is a discussion for the next entry.

The latest trip was yesterday. It was occasioned by an assemblage of factors that conspired to overcome my natural aversion to making trips of this kind. When I awoke yesterday, I found that upon standing by the bed I could not stand by the bed. That little computer in the brain that tells you which way is up/down left/right was seeming in a suspended state. I tended to rotate to the left while leaning toward the same direction. My first thought as a physicist was that the Coriolis force had somehow strengthened during the night. This would have vast geophysical implications, including ones that should have been apparent in the ceiling fan rotating above me. Since it seemed to be humming along quite nicely, thank-you, it began to dawn on me that it was I, not the rotating earth, that was experiencing abnormal rotation.This was confirmed by the funny feeling of pressure in my head and my subsequent walk toward the bathroom, staggering like a drunken sailor on a pitching 4-master. (We had viewed Pirates of the Caribbean recently.) I finally staggered my way to the kitchen to imbibe a hot cup of tea, 2 ibuprofens and an aspirin in case it was a Sxxxxx (the dreaded S word for a person of my age and heart history.) These actions settled me down somewhat, and my walking became semi-normal, although Kevin noted I tended to tilt left.

I decided the best course of action was to wait the malady out by resting, and watching the 17 episodes of The Dog Whisperer that we have recorded during Dog Whisperer Week on the NGO channel, which we dutifully search to see if Cesar Millan EVER takes a fearful passive dog, like our Callie, and makes them into an aggressive dog–a state we would dearly love to achieve for our Shih Tzu, about whom the Rescue folks said was “she is the shyest dog we’ve ever seen.” So far, no results. He always is doing the opposite: taking aggressive dogs and making them calm again. I’d love to see our Callie be aggressive for just one minute, enough to play “tug with socks” like ole Alexander the daschund, who finally had to be given away when he chewed up the lady-of-the-house’s precious sofa one day. But that, too, is another story.

One of the advantages of marrying into a family of sisters, several of whom hold degrees in the medical field, is that you get focused attention on any medical issue. Before long, the sisterly communication network had kicked into gear with Kevin talking to Linda who talked to Laura, who was vacationing in Colorado. So it wasn’t surprising to me that by late afternoon I got a call from Laura who wanted to discuss with me my symptoms. It’s not for nothing that Laura won “Woman of the Year.” In her gentle but persuasive way she pointed out that my initial symptoms where consistent with the classic symptoms of a mini-stroke or TIA, that it was easier to treat an impending major stroke before you got one (the TIA being a warning sign that one was coming), and that major strokes tend to be irreversible. Couple that with my age and my previous heart conditions made for a strong case to take action. Such compelling logic was hard to resist, supported by my strong Presbyterian belief in providence, so I decided to follow Laura’s advice “to be seen today” by a medical practitioner who could do classic blood tests and scans to “manage by fact”.

Even then I opted for the simplest route: to go to the Primacare facility next to our church. I went to their web page to check their hours, and sure enough they were closing in 5 minutes. Sigh. So hoping to avoid the ER, I called my personal doctor’s line and got the covering doctors callback number. Dr. Torres responded quickly, and after a short discussion of my symptoms, he said: “it’s probably not a stroke, but you really should be seen just in case.” Not finding that he was volunteering to see me, the inevitable conclusion was: “go to the ER and take a long book.”

So off we went down Bush Turnpike toward the Medical Center of Plano with Kevin driving. This time it was 6 PM and not 2 AM. Before leaving I packed up my new laptop with 4 DVDs including the Amadeus bonus disc (we’d just watched the Director’s Cut the night before), the Firefly episodes I’d not yet watched, and the “In the Steps of Jesus” which I had just purchased from the History Channel, and prepared myself for a LONG stay. But a funny thing happened on the way to the comfy chairs in the waiting room. When I happened to mention the S word, everything changed fast. I bypassed all that yawning crowd waiting to be seen, and immediately had my shirt stripped off, and many, many electrodes placed on my chest, side, legs, etc. In 5 minutes of arriving I was already having an EKG. Five minutes later I was in a room deep in the bowels of the ER, with an IV, an arm cuff for BP, and all these wires monitoring my heart rate. 5 minutes later Dr. Meek arrived, looked at my ears to determine that the left one was filled with fluid, and who then paced me through a battery of tests to see how my brain was operating, including the game where he holds up his fingers and I attempt to touch them. I did. His comment: “it’s probably not a stoke but we’re going to check to make sure.”

Checking to make sure meant: blood tests, CT scan, chest X-ray. So, I did get to use my laptop after all (I watched “In the Footsteps of Jesus”). My faithful wife shivered in the cold ER room with a blanket around her and became an expert in the King Tuts and their female Pharoah relative on the History Channel. (Why do we like that channel so much?) Finally, the doc returned and pronounced his judgment: no sign of a stroke; evidence of sinusitis and blocked eustachian tube. He gave me a steroid shot, and a prescription for an antibiotic, nasal spray and another steroid and sent me on my way.

By this time it was 9 PM and we hadn’t had any supper. So in celebration of a better outcome than might have been expected, we did the drive-thru line, ordered two Whataburgers, (and I got a malt) and drove home. We even got back in time to watch our favorite British sitcom: As Time Goes By. In this episode the 60-something husband Lionel is told by his wife (played by Judi Dench) that he’s hard of hearing. It had a familiar ring to it and was a perfect close to a somewhat imperfect day.