Last month, I had an unexpected experience that continues to send waves of awe through my spirit. I held in my hand the oldest known object that exists on earth.

That evening, I had been attending a lecture by a scientist who had brought the object as part of his presentation. He was speaking about the currently hotly debated ways of looking at the origins of the universe and wanted to display something that would dramatize the discussion.

What I held in my hand was part of a meteorite that fell in a field near the small town of Allende, Mexico in 1969. It was a small portion of a larger rock-like substance (perhaps weighing as much as several tons) made up of various iron and calcium aluminum strata. Had it fallen on the town itself instead of an outlying field, this out-of-the-heavens missile could have caused havoc for the people who lived nearby.

As to its age, there is no scientific debate. The long established carbon-dating method has established this object as being some 4.3 billion years old. Simply to have been in the presence of such an object inspired in me feelings of wonder, almost reverence. Lifting up the object and fingering its surface stirred further questions about the time scale of physical reality.

Did handling the rock make me feel any younger? Yes, by providing a new standard of comparison with the length of human life, I suppose it did. A 77-year span of living seems a mere moment next to the amount of time that this meteorite has held on to its admittedly mute, but nonetheless deeply communicative existence.

In a recent article about science and American politics, journalist Jim Holt notes that “three-quarters of the public haven’t heard that the universe is expanding, and nearly half, according to a recent survey, seem to believe that God created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years.”

In fact, many Americans appear terribly threatened by scientific evidence of ages, distances, and sizes that differ from those they imagined as children. Their God seems not large enough to deal with the sheer immensity of the universe and its continuing expansion.

Though I often undergo surprise, and occasional shock, when science reveals new data about the earth, the origins of man, and the behavior of the galaxies that extend so far beyond our small planet, I can reconcile this new knowledge with the religious faith of my early life. A central tenet of this faith is the incomprehensibility of God. The God of my spiritual heritage was always proclaimed to be infinite, that is, without any limit.

The temptation for contemporary religious people, myself included, is to narrow the divine to our own proportions. And, of course, my particular tradition, Christianity, can seem to violate the immensity of God by its teaching of the Incarnation, God becoming man. In a sense, there is a reduction, by virtue of which the divine takes on the limitations of being human.

My tradition has made me comfortable with evolution. The idea that creation as we know it has developed through a variety of forms does not threaten my view of reality. In fact, I consider evolution to be among the most brilliant and most beautiful of the ideas that human beings have ever deduced from observing nature. I don’t know if Charles Darwin was worthy of being hailed as a saint, but I venerate him for the gifts of insight into the natural world that he bequeathed to us all.

I do not need a doctrine of “intelligent design” to safeguard my faith in a creative God. That God has chosen to bring the universe into being by stages and by development suits me just fine. Why must so many of us continue to fear the wondrous ways in which species of living beings have descended through huge portions of time?

Last week’s ruling by federal judge John Jones in Harrisburg correctly defined  intelligent design as a formula used by some religious people to affirm the work of God’s hands in the development of the world. Judge Jones, a Republican appointed by George Bush, stated that this teaching has no scientific standing and cannot be used as an alternative to the teaching of evolution in public education.

This judgment seems unlikely to quiet those many Americans who are afraid of  scientific teachings that leave out God. They can be counted on to press their agenda, even though the new district court ruling adds weight to a previous Supreme Court decision on the subject.

For me, however, the teachings of science serve as a corrective to easy faith. Science does not allow us religious people to domesticate God the way we so often do when left to ourselves. My encounter with an almost impossibly old extra-terrestrial object makes me thankful for touching hard evidence of a vastness that should not be seen as threatening God.  

Richard Griffin