02.21.07
NO TWO SNOWFLAKES ARE ALIKE!
Isn’t it awesome the things we know! I often sit in wonder and amazement (and often skepticism) when I read or hear of all the things that scientists or doctors have discovered about the world we live in. And I’ve got to admit, the idea that no two snowflakes are alike is boggling to the mind, at least to my mind. Don’t you ever wonder about statements like that? I don’t believe that it is true! Now that’s a dangerous things to say, or a stupid comment, because everyone KNOWS that every snowflake is different from every other snowflake. I learned that in kindergarten, I heard it on TV, I read it in my school’s science books, and even saw microscopic photos of at least a dozen snowflakes, and yep, every one WAS different. So why am I now a snowflake differential agnostic?
Mind you, I’m not disputing that SOME or MOST snowflakes are different, I’m just sure that there has been at least one occasion where there have been two snowflakes that are EXACTLY alike. Perhaps no two snowflakes in any particular handful of snow are alike, perhaps no two snowflakes that landed in your yard last week were alike, but to state categorically that there has never been 2 identical snowflakes is a pretty preposterous claim.
Think about that claim for a moment. Can science give us a mathematical formula or a law of physics that demand that there has never been, nor can there ever be 2 identical snowflakes? How many snowflakes have been exhaustively examined and cataloged? How much time do scientists have to gather and look at and record snowflake forms, size and weight? How long would it take to do that to all the snowflakes in one cubic foot of snow? More than has been dedicated to the task already, of that I am sure! And how many cubic feet of snow fell in upstate New York last week? Probably about 6 trillion…and were all of those snowflakes compared to each other to be SURE that no 2 were alike? Let’s jump to the big picture…If you take into consideration all the snowflakes that fell on earth over the past 6,000 years, humans have closely examined about …well, not very many. And that’s my point. You can’t state absolutely that no two snowflakes are alike until you have examined each and every one of them, or conclusively demonstrate the physical laws that prohibit such an occurance, even among deformed snowflakes..(think about that one for awhile). How can we all grow up knowing and believing that no two snowflakes are alike when we have absolutely no evidence to prove it? Yet we still teach this myth to our children, and they believe it also.
Why do I go on and on about this? Because it is not dangerous for us to believe a false statement about snowflakes, but is can be very dangerous to persist in believing other things that ‘everyone knows is true’, when those things are also not true. For instance, I’ve heard people say “You can’t trust the Bible, everyone knows that it’s full of contradictions”. To go on believing this without examining the evidence is dangerous to your eternal soul. Have you read the Bible in it’s entirety and examined some of those ’so called’ contradictions? If you have, I’m sure you came to the conclusion that those statements aren’t contradictory, but complementary, with different writers providing additional details that the other did not.
How about the statement that “Everybody knows that good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell, (well, maybe the hell part, and maybe not)”? And of course since everybody except murders and rapists are good people,(unless you ask their mothers about them), well gee, I guess almost everybody will be having a great time in heaven! That is an extremely dangerous thing to know, since it is most assuredly NOT true! If you’ll read you Bible and see what Jesus said about it, you might have cause for alarm…that is, if an eternity spent suffering the consequences of sin alarms you.
The bottom line…just because everyone knows something to be true, that is no guarantee that it really is true. And if our beliefs are false, it can be dangerous to us.
“There is a WAY that seems RIGHT to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” Pr.14:12. Jesus said “I am THE WAY, the TRUTH and the life, no man comes to the Father except through ME.” John 14:6
