One preliminary thought on Just Passing Through

Thanks to Rob for his posting on the Hutchens article. Rob poses a sensible question about how does the theist, the Christian explain to the secularist that Earth is only a “first creation” rather than a “final thing.” It seems that the secularist would not hear this just from religious believers. After all, the scientific community has explained that our Sun will one day enter a phase in its development where it will extinguish Earth and most likely the outer planets in the Solar System. This strikes me as another (and secular) way of translating the point that Earth is not a “final thing.” We probably will have to wait some time for this to happen, but science has spoken that Earth’s future is limited in time; therefore, the reality that Earth is not a “final thing” should be easily accessible even to the most die-hard secularist. But of course theists, including Christian Catholics, have also relied on secular science to reinforce Church teachings on other matters too, e.g., abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and human sexuality, just to mention a few topics that frequently appear in current day political debates.    RJA sj