B000SKMT1A EBOK by Carson M.D. Ben

Author:Carson M.D., Ben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

Living Your Faith in an Uncertain World

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A TIME WHEN I WASN’T SURE I WANTED TO explain what I believed—in front of the most formidable audience I ever faced. Talking to fifteen thousand science teachers about evolution and creationism didn’t compare, nor did the opportunity to address the most powerful leaders of our country who attended the President’s Annual National Prayer Breakfast when I spoke there a few years ago.

My most formidable audience was the ultra-prestigious Academy of Achievement. They had invited me to take part in a panel discussion on the subject of “Faith and Science” during their annual International Summit. The prospect gave me serious pause. The membership of that organization is imposing. Every living former president of the United States had been inducted, along with numerous other heads of states and Nobel Peace Prize recipients such as Poland’s Lech Walesa and former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. The Academy also honors high achievers in

the arts—from Maya Angelou to John Grisham, from Quincy Jones to Stephen Sondheim;

business—from Disney’s Michael Eisner to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, and Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express; public service—Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and consumer advocate Ralph Nader are both members, as was the late Rosa Parks; science and exploration—from the late economist Milton Friedman to Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary (I can’t even count the number of Nobel Prize winners there are in medicine and the sciences); and sports—whose achievers include such athletic luminaries as Dorothy Hamill, Willie Mays, and John Wooden.

Did I really want to discuss my spiritual beliefs in front of such an august assembly? My years of membership in the Academy had provided some wonderful experiences, and I had made a lot of friends whose opinions, goodwill, and respect still matter to me. But did I want to risk all that to share honestly with them my views on faith and science? How much of a risk might it be?

My Best/Worst Analysis was similar to the one I did before the National Science Teachers Convention in Philadelphia, but the stakes felt higher this time.

The possibility of embarrassing myself in front of all those Nobel scientists seemed a potentially worse worst than being written off by a group of public school science teachers. Still, the same positive potential—the chance that this opportunity could open objective discussion and might help others find the courage to talk about what they truly believe—also seemed like a better best.

That wasn’t so much because I thought anything I said would change the thinking of the Academy’s distinguished members, but because we invite as guests to our summit each year three hundred or so of the next generation’s best and brightest (Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, White House Fellows, and the like) who might benefit from hearing that belief in God doesn’t have to be anti-science.

So I decided to accept. The experience proved to be every bit as challenging and interesting as you might expect. One of the other panelists was Dr.

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