Titanium and Dinosaurs

Once upon a long time ago, I was sitting in the back pew during a weeklong revival, three-quarters asleep, and praying for the evangelist to be short-winded that night, as the next day was a workday. The evangelist then woke me up by uncorking this little tidbit of startling news : . "It's a fact!" said he, "Scientists have actually spotted the New Jerusalem with their telescopes out in deep space! But they're not telling anyone about this because they're godless heathens. It's in the shape of a giant cube, and its heading towards earth!" . Since people knew I was a chemist, the rest of the sparse Pentecostal congregation turned around and gave me an accusing "look", wondering why I was deliberately withholding such important information. . I went up to Mr. Evangelist after the service was over, and asked him just where he might have heard about this little conspiracy of scientific silence. His answer was, "Oh, another evanglist told me about it a couple weeks ago." Apparently that was good enough documentation for him. . Folks, when he's at work, your average scientist doesn't think at all about his religious beliefs. When I do a Total Sulfur determination, I don't pray to God for the answer, I follow a scientifically-proven method. We didn't conjure up evolution to destroy a believer's faith in the book of Genesis (there's actually no contradiction between the two, but that's a subject for some other post). And we didn't invent the Periodic Table just to give little Johnny and Susie more things to memorize than Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Just because titanium and dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the Bible (the bible doesn't mention cats either), doesn't mean they don't exist. . And, no, I'm not covering up about the New Jerusalem. If I do happen to spot it (which is very unlikely since I'm not an astronomer), I will announce it immediately, and submit my discovery for next year's Nobel Prize. As would every other scientist.