Open in New Tab Here

Darwin and I at the Ophthalmologist

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  Rom. 1:20

Sometimes, as I permit some much-needed introspection, I find myself musing related to my newly formed interpretations of some of the things that are said to and about me.  For instance, I find that I am pleased to hear my doctor say, “Don’t worry about this, Mr. Moore, you will die before it gets you.”  I repress a new impulse to gleefully crank my arm and exclaim, “Awwright!”

For about the last forty years I have been engaged in a personal battle with glaucoma.  The fact that I am writing this little encouragement and NOT dictating it should signify to the astute reader that things are going fairly well.  However, I do find myself to be not entirely happy with the entire doctor/patient relationship.  Over the years I have spent an unjustifiable amount of time waiting.  When I was forty years younger this was less painful for me – I had a lot more time then!  Now the calculus has changed.  I am 85 years old (this month).  I do not know a lot of 86-year-old folks.

I don’t like to wait and don’t have a lot of tolerance for it.  How then, you might ask, do I pass the time?  Well, I sit there in the little plain room and try to engage my mind with thoughts of other things.  The rooms tend to be pretty spartan.  The place of my last incarceration did have some wall art.  I suppose the few objects that were hanging there might be better described as drawings or charts.  They depicted the human optical system from the eye to the brain.  I was quite taken by them and enjoyed, for the duration of my forced and lengthy confinement, examining and studying them.  I was joined in my musings by Charles Darwin.  He is a seldom, but enjoyable companion.   I call him “Chuck”.  He calls me Mr. Moore (it is my imagination and my rules).

“What do you think of all of this, Chuck?”, I asked.

“Whadda ya mean, Mr. Moore?” Somehow, in my daydreams, Chuck is not always the most articulate of speakers.

“Well, for instance, where did this wonderful system come from?”, I responded.

Chuck had a ready answer.  It involved mud, a lot of ooze, and billions and billions of years.  Chuck is used to conversing with me.  “You don’t believe what I just said do you, George?”

“That’s Mr. Moore, Chuck!”

“Right.  Got it. You don’t believe that do you, Mr. Moore?”

“No, Chuck, I do not.”

“I guess I knew that.  But why don’t you? You have never shared that with me.”

“I think, Chuck, that I simply cannot muster the faith.”

Chuck seemed disturbed with my answer.

The scripture tells us that God is clearly seen in the creation.  When one beholds the perfection, design, and beauty of the things that our Maker has spoken into existence, it should excite exclamations of praise to our Creator God. This should be our natural and reasonable reaction.  To reject the obvious truth and substitute mindless mud, ooze and time requires a dark and damning faith.

Robert G. Ingersoll was a prominent figure in nineteenth century America.  I would describe him as an “evangelical atheist”.  He was a sought-after speaker and writer.  I was introduced to his writing while in high school.  I have long admired him for his command and use of the English language.  Henry Ward Beecher was a similarly prominent Congregationalist / Presbyterian preacher of the same era.  Beecher’s daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe authored the great American classic:  Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Jackie and I visited the church that he once pastored when we lived in Indianapolis.

The men knew each other.  They met casually one day aboard a train in the midst of their travels.  Someone had given Beecher a scale model of our solar system.  It had all of the planets and possessed gears such that the movement and relative positions of the components were accurately represented.  Beecher had the model in his lap when Ingersoll approached.  Upon seeing it. Ingersoll admired it and asked, “Henry, where do you get this wonderful thing?  Who made it?”  Beecher replied, “Why nobody made it, Robert.  It just happened.”

I think that the next time I am imprisoned in a doctor’s waiting room, I may just have a chat with Mr. Ingersoll. If I do, I intend to call him Bobby.

George Moore
Elder Emeritus