I personally think that one of the most important phrases I have ever uttered is: "I don't know."

We all want to know the answers to what I call, "The Big Kahuna Questions." So, we begin with observations (such as, "the universe seems to be expanding"), and inevitably wind up with Big Kahuna. Other people vehemently disagree, and guess what: they also wind up with their version of Big Kahuna. I guess it's just human nature. When we observe something, we are driven to explain it.

In every "scientific" statement, there are two distinct parts: observation, and interpretation. "Aye, there's the rub." Interpretation is where we begin to get into trouble.

Some people "observe" things and see "science," while others observe the same things and see "God" or "gods." But, I think that we lack any objective basis from which to "conclude" which one of these viewpoints is actually correct. Some people look at a pin and wonder how many angels can dance on its head. Others do not. So, maybe we all should agree to disagree. We will never actually know what "the elephant" looks like. An observation can be useful to us, even if we have no way to know – and we very often don't – if it is correct.

I have seen science, and I have had unexplainable, "mystical" experiences. I was once startled-awake by a voice. I listened to what that voice was saying and it led me out of a difficult situation. My grandfather once gave a warm coat to a man at his front door who suddenly wasn't there. I don't try to "explain" these things. I don't think anyone can. But you can never tell me that these things didn't or couldn't happen, because they did. As the Good Book said of Mary, "I treasure them in my heart." I embrace every mechanism that we have to understand our world and our very-brief place within it. I don't need to "know it all."

Interestingly enough and as noted by many, "The more you know, the more you realize you don't know." That implies one must know something just to ask a pertinent question. It's quite unlikely an ant is going to ask how an automobile works. 2000 years ago no man was likely to ask "Why does the Earth orbit around the Sun". They were far more likely to ask "What sort of pedastal supports the Earth?"

So it is indeed important to realize what we don't know, but all the while recognizing that actually comes from the struggle to know something with progressive accuracy in order to ask better questions. I can accept that sundialsvcs' grandfather perceived events as he related them, and not presume to have the definitive answer as to what actually occurred, all the while discarding the idea that an actual man can just pooof! disappear.

My grandfather lived on the end of a rural street and he immediately wasted no time looking at every possible place where this man "might have gone in three to five minutes." The man was "gone." I accept my late grandfather's testimony at face value. There is no "rational explanation."

But you also bring an important point: thousands of years ago, no one knew that they were living on a "planet" that "orbited." Yes, they really did believe that the Earth was flat, because they'd never yet encountered anything which was contrary to that idea. Centuries later, it was established religious dogma that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and that the Sun revolved around it. You could get your head cut off if you didn't "preach the party line." Galileo took an extraordinary risk.

So: politics. But also: the existential limits of human knowledge at any one time. We must not judge our human ancestors too harshly. "They were just doing, then, the very same things that we are doing, now." And for the very same reasons. Just like us, they were simultaneously dealing with "science and religion and politics" . . . within the limits of the knowledge of their time.

They could not know what they did not know. I can only hope that "our children's children's children" will be equally kind and forgiving of us.

The last 2 posts must have been made where the Bermuda Triangle intersects with the Twilight Zone, because curiously, the Bible agrees after a fashion with you both