Half-blind Faith and Half-baked Science

Well, it all starts with a miraculously convenient find, what appeared to be a finial from a cross at a site probably associated with the Christian Mission. Those of us working on the project had been softened up, conditioned to accepting the axtraordinary by the previous miracle of finding identical artifacts wrought in stone and glass, providing the evidence of Contact we'd hoped for. As with the many peices of the true cross passed off as sacred relics over the years, there was no proof, although in this case it was a plausible and interesting enough story that it tempted faith. Upon further examination, wrought by the dogged (of not Godded) persistence of a scientist not quite comfortable with the all-too-easy retreat to calling an unknown artifact a "ritual object."



Oh well. The story, and my confession at the altar of science, is over at ArchaeOlygy. It is not all a tale of faith undermined, but a strange cycle that may loop back to the Tenino Stone.



So on a day when many of you celebrate a miracle of resurrection, I wish you well. I cannot share ultimate faith in the un-provable, but I share my physicist Dad's awe at the universe wrought by forces we may not yet fully comprehend, but which we can investigate and incrementally come to know for sure.