With a movie out about the global warming threat (The Day After Tomorrow), maybe we should take a closer look at our world.

In the 16th century, when Copernicus proposed that the sun, not Earth, was the center of the solar system, the religious world was shocked. When Galileo found untold numbers of stars with his telescope, the pope placed him under house arrest.

The ancient cosmology that the universe was composed of planets and stars under the dome of our sky and that God's throne lay just beyond had been shattered.

It had been logical that to get to heaven one simply floated upward through the blue dome. The story in Acts about the resurrected Jesus disappearing into the clouds fits with this view. It also explains Muslims' belief that Muhammad leaped into heaven from Jerusalem. Revelation conceptualized a time when Jesus would return from heaven. There would be a great conflict, called Armageddon, and God would destroy the universe.

But in 1961 a Russian, Yuri Gagarin, orbited Earth, and when he returned Nikita Khrushchev gleefully announced that he had not found God out there, or heaven either.

Today, the Hubble telescope has confirmed that our universe is composed of billions of galaxies and that our earth rotates around a third-rate star on an arm of one of those galaxies. Yet many cling to the ancient cosmology and the expectation of the universe's destruction.

Today, astronomers tell us there are two likely cosmic causes of the end of either human life or the destruction of our planet. One is Earth being hit by an asteroid of such size as to end life as we know it. The other is the eventual expanding of our star so that it absorbs Earth.

There is a third way, however. Every day, we humans are working to make our planet unlivable by our pollution of the environment, our production of greenhouse gases, and our development and use of weapons of war.

History reveals that God allows humans to make a mess of everything without intervening to stop the destruction of our world or our slaughter of one another.

We need to realize that this planet is the only one we will ever inhabit and to shift our priorities away from war, environmental destruction and useless personal animosities. We need to work together to ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy life on this planet.

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Dean C. Kallander resides in Hamilton.

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