Faith

 

Faith—is cliché;

something we pretend to believe in—wish we could believe in,

but laugh at,

cynically;

knowing we are better—alive.

 

         One warm March day, my daughter Ani was driving North on Highway 101 with her 10-month-old son, Kai, fastened snuggly in his car seat in the back. As they were leaving Cardiff and entering Encinitas, she decided to follow an impulse and stop briefly to check out the surf. She pulled into the center lane, signaled to make a left-hand turn, and while still moving at a good clip, made the turn. A car was driving towards her, but she had gauged its speed and distance and knew she could clear the intersection in time. What she didn't know was that the car coming towards her in the center lane was racing a second car in the adjacent outside lane; this second car, accelerating to a speed approaching 50 mph, hit her broadside. She blacked out, never to remember the devastating incident again.

         Ani didn't have her seatbelt fastened and was thrown out the side window, landing about 20 ft. from the site of impact. Both cars were totaled. Miraculously, Kai wasn't hurt in the least. Ani, unconscious, was rushed by ambulance to Scripps Hospital, and soon thereafter, we were notified. I got there before Jeanne as she had further to go. We weren't allowed to see our daughter as her condition was critical; she'd broken her neck, her right arm, some ribs, and she was bleeding profusely. They didn't know whether she'd live or die, and if she did live, whether she'd ever walk again. The prospects did not look good. We were at our wits ends, waiting for news that didn't come. While waiting, we grew increasingly tense, weary and discouraged.

         Ani was not the only one who had been in a serious car accident that day. A teenage boy had been admitted into the emergency room just hours before Ani, and he was in a similarly critical condition having also broken his neck. His parents had been waiting much longer than we, but there was still no news for them. Like us, they were exhausted and could only wait helplessly.

         At that point a middle-aged woman came up to me and gave me a round pin, about 2 inches in diameter, on which was printed in large letters: "BELIEVE IN MIRACLES." She said, "I want you to have this." This warm, caring person had sensed my anguish and wanted to help. Even her good intentions were tremendously appreciated, but her message "believe in miracles" had an uplifting effect. She wanted to say: have faith; there's hope.

         It's amazing how little things can sometimes pick up your spirits, especially when you're focusing on unpleasant prospects, not considering the potential for a more optimistic outcome. I kept that pin for over 10 years. When I did finally relinquish it, it was because someone else needed its message just as I had.

         Faith has many benefits. It gives us hope for a better tomorrow. It helps carry us through times of adversity. It allows us to generate and maintain a positive attitude. I'm convinced it can be instrumental in allowing our bodies to heal physically when we're injured or diseased. In Ani's case, recovery was complete. Her conviction that with help, she could overcome her unfortunate circumstances may have been instrumental to her recovery. She's again an avid surfer and sportsperson. But the teenager who entered the emergency room hours before Ani will be paralyzed for life. The fact that nearly 50,000 Americans lose their lives every year on the U.S. highways cautions us of the dangers of driving. It forces us to be realistic about the risks involved when we get into a car.

          Benefits sometimes emerge out of calamity. Ani became soundly convinced that the acupuncture treatments she'd received during her convalescence were instrumental to her recovery. The relief and confidence she gained from the use of this ancient Chinese method gave her life a new dimension. She had always been a happy-go-lucky child with little professional direction. After the accident, she remained easy-going, but she gained a strong desire to become an acupuncturist. She entered the American University of Eastern Medicine, and four years later, she graduated with expertise in herbal medicine, massage, and acupuncture. As our younger daughter Amanda is a nurse practitioner, trained in Western medicine, we feel we have our bases covered.

         It is almost impossible to overestimate the beneficial consequences of faith. However, one can ask: can faith lead to detrimental consequences as well? Every coin has two sides, so we can expect that there might be. But how?

         Last week in conversation with my sister-in-law, for whom faith is of utmost importance, the topic of global warming arose. She recognized the potential grave consequences of our industrialized lifestyles and knew that something had to be done. Her religious convictions as well as her knowledge that many religious people consider birth control to be unnatural led her to suggest an alternative solution. What was that solution? Well, she noted, human achievement is truly remarkable. We can now communicate by e-mail with people scattered over the surface of the globe, and we can convert electronic signals into a printed text faster than we can say ‘Jack Robinson'. These achievements, she noted, had been made possible by recent technological advances that had been unforeseen by most of us. She expressed confidence that thanks to human ingenuity, man will find a solution to the greenhouse effect before it's too late.

         Let's reflect on her positive attitude and its consequences. Faith gave her the confidence, the belief that things would work out for the best. Interestingly, however, it was not her religious faith that led to her optimism, it was the faith she had in modern science. She felt sure that mankind could find a solution before temperatures rose to an unbearable degree. And in that confidence she felt so secure that she was sure we wouldn't have to take measures to curtail our use of fossil fuels or reduce the human population.

         The principal greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. We humans produce it in tremendous quantities when we burn fossil fuels. We currently produce over 10 trillion pounds of CO₂ every year. That is, ten million million or 10,000,000,000,000 pounds of CO₂ every year! This amounts to over one billion pounds per hour, or about one third of a million pounds per second! This tremendous quantity of gas is emitted from our cars, trucks, vans, homes, and industrial concerns. It's the interaction of natural sunlight with CO₂ and other man-made greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The entire photosynthetic capacity of the Earth's vast biosphere can convert only 1% of this CO₂ into organic material. So what's to be done?

         Several solutions have been suggested. First, plant more trees. Unfortunately the human population is destroying the world's forests at a rate of 2.5% per year, and no significant effort to protect or replace these wooded areas has been made. Second, reduce the amount of sunlight that enters the atmosphere so as to decrease global warming. Unfortunately we don't know how, and even if we could, such an action would reduce the amount of photosynthesis that can take place and disturb the Earth's ecosystem. Third, increase the oceanic phytoplankton content. Experiments indicate that this can be done, but not to the extent necessary, and a dramatic increase would disturb the ocean's natural ecology, probably leading to the extinction of thousands, if not millions of animal and plant species.

         My nephew, Todd, suggested another potential solution. Why not just create a man-made photosynthetic machine, or reverse the biological oxidation process that results in CO₂ production by animals? But how? My nephew admitted that, not being a scientist, he couldn't answer this question or appreciate the complexity of the problem. Like his mother, he just had faith - hope that a solution might be found without inconveniencing the present human population. Leave it to science!

         Plants and other photosynthetic organisms, including algae and bacteria, can fix CO₂ into organic carbon. Plants and algae have this capability because of the presence of chloroplasts in their cells. These organelles evolved from blue-green bacteria following a process known as degenerative endosymbiosis. It may have taken bacteria over a billion years to develop the capacity to catalyze photosynthetic CO₂ fixation, and it undoubtedly took many additional millions of years for these bacteria to degenerate into the plant organelle of photosynthesis. Evolution is a very slow process that involves chance mutation followed by selection under competitive or cooperative conditions.

         The photosynthetic process is multi-step, including both light and dark stages. The light stage involves light absorption, activation of electrons to an excited state, electron flow through protein carriers, the generation of reducing power, and the production of chemical energy. The dark stage involves the use of the chemical energy and reducing power made available in the light reaction to fix CO₂ into an organic compound followed by conversion of this compound into utilizable sugar. The CO₂ fixation reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, RUBISCO, which because of its inefficiency, is the most prevalent enzyme found in living organisms on Earth. However, it is only ONE of the essential enzymes required for this process. Dozens of enzymes are required, and these enzymes must be in the chloroplast or the bacterium in order for the entire process to work. The complexity of the photosynthetic process precludes its artificial duplication for the design of one of man's machines.

         Let's for a moment suppose we could build such a machine. Then in order to be effective in counteracting the Greenhouse effect, the man-made process would have to fix CO₂ at more than 100 times the rate at which all the plant life on Earth can do so. It would need to convert nearly one million pounds of CO₂ into solid matter EVERY SECOND! We therefore have to consider not only the complexity of the process, but also its efficiency. We must remove ten trillion pounds of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year just to keep up with the current rate of production.

         The U.S. National Institute for Resources and Environment (NIRE) includes a subdivision called the Global Warming Control Department. On their web page they state: "The expansion and development of human activities has been accompanied by a tremendous consumption of fossil fuels, resulting in global environmental changes. Global warming, caused mainly by carbon dioxide from combustion, is perhaps the most serious problem mankind faces today. Research and development of solutions to the global warming problem include projects on "artificial photosynthesis" and the chemical fixation of CO₂."

         The process that NIRE calls "artificial photosynthesis" has nothing to do with biological photosynthesis. It uses a photocatalytic surface of solid semiconductors and metal complexes rather than a complex of enzymes to convert CO₂ and water into methane and other organic compounds, or it uses catalytic hydrogenation, both well-known and established methods. However, both of these approaches require huge expenditures of money and resources in order to process large quantities of CO₂. Although the U.S. government has earmarked billions of dollars to counteract terrorism, less than 0.1% of this amount is being invested to provide possible solutions to global warming through scientific developmental approaches. Such are the priorities of our present administration. Clearly without the funds, agencies such as NIRE will be all smoke and no fire. However, even if billions or even trillions of dollars were to be put into NIRE and other research institutes, there would be no guarantee of success.

         So how do things currently stand? Has the scientific community made breakthrough discoveries that lead to the possibility that we will be able to convert hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ into solid matter? The answer to this question is simply: "No." What is even more upsetting is that all knowledgeable scientists I have spoken with on this topic conclude that the eventual answer will be: "We never will." They believe it can't be done. They recognize that this is a problem of magnitude far greater than any mankind has yet encountered.

         Considering both the complexity of the process and the quantities of material that need to be processed, a man-made photosynthetic machine is therefore nothing more than a pipe dream. In other words, the blind faith many non-scientists put in science is not justified. Why is their faith problematic? Because it prevents them from taking an obvious and achievable route. We need to restrict our consumption of fossil fuels and reduce the birth rate so as to drastically decrease the human population. Such actions would solve the problem without creating human suffering and without asking the scientist to achieve an unattainable goal. There is no question that this simple solution, though distasteful to some, is achievable. We just need to convince the population of its necessity, and then implement it.

Ani's faith in acupuncture was not blind. It was based on her first-hand experiences, and careful research conducted at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda has verified the value of this ancient method. Researchers and other rationalists depend upon their knowledge and powers of reason to provide a basis for their faith, and consequently they are guided in their quest for truth by a reliable although fallible process. By contrast, the faith of irrationalists reflects their ignorance rather than their knowledge. Thus, the blind faith of Todd or his mother was not justified. Such faith can be misleading and even dangerous, particularly in a democratic society where illogical people are in a position to wield power. We must therefore turn to and depend on the experts who are best equipped to understand and deal with any problematic phenomena. The only reliable alternative is to take the time and effort to get a solid education. Unfortunately, few irrationalists consult the experts or immerse themselves in the educational process.

If we are to hope that human life will continue on Earth, we must do everything possible to eliminate global warming, and the only approach currently available is a preventative approach. We must return to more primitive lifestyles or find non-polluting sources of energy. We must reduce the human population and replant the forests we have destroyed. These are difficult but achievable goals.