Outreach no. 250

              OUTREACH OUT eke EAC the newsletter of 7 74 ewtcfr r sfanta Sf shanta anta anca itetcutcu mtwtauonae 76&aaa&oe 2 250 5 0 MARCUS BACH founder N no 0 THE LETTER dear friend of the fellowship let institutionalized religion take a tip from science pool your findings with other seekers in other faiths and come out from behind your warring walls of intransigent claims to infallibility the events of the past week have again confirmed the fact that cooperative methods of research as employed in true scientific investigation would be one of religions finest doctrines adopting sciences systematic investigation of phenomena could be one of religions most exciting pursuits sciences interest in the universe outer space in short the cosmos actually represents a most illustrious laboratory for religions the human spirit if it were willing to apply sciences teamwork in its quest for spiritual understanding could become religions most valiant disciple but there is hardly a sign that institutionalized religions have ever grasped this vision from their inceptions they have been fighting battles over creeds and fostering wars to prove their dominance power and superiority each in its own way insisting that they are gods chosen channels for salvation last week we had more evidence that science without any pretense of being religious again demonstrated its onwardgoing onward going effort to understand the nature of the creative power of whatever or whoever rules the cosmic kingdom consider the circumstances spacecraft voyager 2 probed the planet neptune incessantly sending pictures messages and data back to earth from a vantage point of 2700000000 miles in outer space how far is 2700000000 miles well ill tell you what a man at the pasadena jet propulsion laboratory shared with me voyager 2 left cape canaveral in 1977 at this writing thats 12 years ago the craft traveled at various speeds but averaged some 40000 kilometers per hour are you with me along the way to its objective neptune it swept past mars jupiter saturn and uranus then last week having fulfilled its mission at neptune gathering information on the nature of this planet and its moon or moons its environments its cosmic secrets voyager 2 continued on where to toward the infinite galaxies beyond the 2700000000 miles how many more billions of miles away are the galaxies how many more years of travel are left for voyager 2 god only knows god only knows but the man at the jet propulsion laboratory was kind he answered a host of my amateur questions with a patience greater than that of many a theologian I 1 have interviewed on subjects doctrinaire when I 1 asked him how long they expected to get signals and messages from voyager 2 he hazarded a guess of perhaps 25 years when I 1 enquired how long the spacecraft would roam around in outer space before it died he told me seriously it might never die are you still with me