The big news of Wednesday 1st February was the possible sighting of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) or “The Green Comet as people have called it. The only problem was that it was only visible in the middle of the night so most folk were fast asleep when the phenomenon occurred. Fortunately my son in law is fascinated with this kind of thing and was standing out in our front garden at about three in the morning and managed to get this photograph. The amazing thing about the green comet is that the last time it was visible from earth was fifty thousand years ago. It seems remarkable to me that the last people to see this would have been neanderthal man and we have no idea of whether their eyesight was sufficiently advanced to see it, they certainly didn’t have the technology to capture the image.
There was a time when I was a school governor and I can remember having lunch with the leadership team of the high school at a local pub. I sat next to a young science teacher who had a PHD in astrophysics and during the conversation, he clearly thought that because I was a minister of religion, I wouldn’t believe in any of the things he did. The problem is that people with a scientific background seem to believe that we have a choice in life, either we believe in science, or we believe in religion. Science is tested and evidenced, therefore it is accepted as being absolute and consequently there is no place for religion in the modern world.
What I find fascinating about the green comet is that in the twenty-first century, we have the scientific knowhow, to calculate when the comet was last seen from the earth. We have no written evidence of witnesses, we have no way of knowing whether our ancient forefathers ever looked into the night sky and marvelled at the phenomenon, it is maybe fair to assume that they stayed awake in the daylight and slept in the darkness, so might never have seen it. Despite my faith, I can still marvel at that, it blows my mind, and I haven’t got the levels of intelligence to even imagine what the world looked like fifty million years ago.
As I grow older, and hopefully wiser, I find myself being increasingly amazed at the wonders of the world and even though our religious thoughts might differ immensely, I love to listen to scientists talking about mind boggling revelations about the universe. For me, science and religion don’t sit in opposition to one another, I like to think that they can sit side by side. I marvel at where we have come from, and am equally excited by what lies ahead, and as a minister of religion, I thank God.