In today’s gospel, Jesus tells a story about two brothers. The message Jesus conveys involves one brother changing his mind and doing the right thing. I wish to share with you an issue from the world of cosmology. I must admit, I wasn’t all that excited about cosmology in school, and the famous atheist cosmologist Carl Sagan left me wondering if he was legit or mistaken. I particularly didn’t like his evaluation of me as an insignificant collection of “star stuff”. My destiny after my death was no different than the destiny of a fallen tree. We were both destined to return to mere atoms and particles of the universe to perhaps be reformed into stars or planets or whatever. Hopes of life in heaven singing God’s praises and communing with the saints was a hopeless child’s fairytale. Such are the thoughts that many modern scientists want us to believe and frankly are convincing many of our young people in high schools and colleges everywhere.

But thanks to a brilliant scientist by the name of Stephen Meyers, his research and evaluation of the evidence of modern science is changing the minds of many. In his book, ‘Return of the God Hypothesis’, he presents new evidence that actually calls into question the apology the modern world has made about Galileo. In other words, there is much evidence to suggest that we should apologize for apologizing to Galileo when he insisted that the earth was NOT the center of the universe. Galileo came to that conclusion when he proved that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around. Now to be fair, Meyers is not denying that the earth goes around the sun, but he is saying that something now known as the “cosmic microwave background radiation map” requires us to re-evaluate our understanding of the earth’s place in the universe.

You see, because satellites can take pictures above the earth’s atmosphere with photographic plates that capture more light than a human eye can, and there are even satellites that have travelled past the orbit of Pluto, something called cosmic radiation is photographed. Scientists who accept the Big Bang theory know that such a bang would have certainly created a huge amount of radiation that would still be traveling farther and farther out into distant space. Here's the amazing thing. Our modern methods of capturing distant light are revealing a kind of sphere out there of this cosmic microwave background radiation. When they “map” it, the most distant of this radiation light at the edge of this sphere shows that no matter what direction you point your “camera” from planet earth, those distances are pretty much the same. One explanation of this evidence is that the earth is in the center of the universe. Or at least our solar system is in the center. That would still allow us to believe the earth revolves around the sun. I may have to change my mind about apologizing to Galileo. And my faith in God as the master of the universe is strengthened.