Science at Sea

Cousin Zac was the coolest person Andy and Eva had ever met. For starters, his name was Zac. Classic cool guy name. Also, Zac was only 25, but he owned his own sailboat—a big sailboat with a cabin and everything! And coolest of all, he’d used his sailboat to take the Wander family on a private pirate tour to a deserted island off the coast of Florida.

“All right, mateys, time to head back,” Zac said.

“Aye aye, Captain Zac!” Andy shouted as he lugged a ridiculously overstuffed bag of seashells.

Dad climbed aboard. “Thanks again for today. The kids had a blast.”

“I did, too.” Zac beamed, then he called to Eva on the beach.

“Let’s go! I need my first mate!”

Eva held up her shovel. “One more shark tooth?”

“Those teeth are fossilized,” Zac said.

“They’ve been there for millions of years. I think they’re safe until next time we come.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. “Millions of years, huh?”

Zac offered a sheepish grin. He’d forgotten that his uncle was a creation geologist. “It’s science,” he said with a shrug.

Mom handed her camera to Dad before climbing aboard. “What a perfect day! God held off the clouds long enough for me to get all the pictures I needed.”

Dad looked at the sky and frowned. Billowy, flattopped clouds had started to form. “Want to wait this out?” he asked Zac. “I sailed through a storm once, and I never want to do that again.”

“Nah, we’re fine.” Zac pointed to a screen on the boat that showed the forecast. “Zero percent chance of rain.”

Art by David Leonard

Mom glanced up, exchanged worried looks with Dad, then turned to Zac. “Those clouds don’t look good, sweetie.”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Melisa. This thing’s never wrong.” Zac slapped Dad on the back. “It’s science.”

“Arrrgh! Science!” Andy repeated in his best pirate voice. Shortly after the Wanders set sail, the wind started whipping. At first, Andy and Eva got excited. Stronger wind meant faster sailing, right? But their enthusiasm faded when waves began splashing aboard. The boat rocked back and forth, baaaaaack and foooooorth. Andy’s face turned white.

“Be careful where you lose your lunch, or you’ll be swabbing the deck,” Zac joked.

“Keep breathing fresh air and watching the horizon,” Mom told Andy. “It’ll help you feel better.”

Eva gripped the railing so hard that her knuckles matched the color of Andy’s face. Zac noticed the nervous look in his first mate’s eye. “Just a little afternoon wind. Nothing to be afraid of.” He held out his hand. “Help me steer?”

Eva nodded and walked toward her cousin. She got two steps before a massive wave slammed into the boat, knocking her to the deck.

“Want to ride this out in the cabin?” Mom asked the kids.

Andy shook his head. “I need the fresh air.”

“He can stay with me,” Dad said. “Why don’t you and Eva get below deck?”

As soon as Mom shut the cabin door, rain started pouring. For the first time all day, Zac looked nervous.

“How about we heave to?” Dad asked.

“I’ve, uh, never had to do that before,” Zac replied.

“Let’s do it together,” Dad said. “Sheet the jib in tight.”

Dad continued giving instructions filled with strange sailing words like “tack,” “mainsheet,” and “tiller.” Together, Dad and Zac pulled off a complicated maneuver that somehow parked the sailboat in the middle of the storm.

As they tied the last knot, Andy spotted an impressive lightning strike on the horizon. “Whoooaaaa,” he marveled.

“Whoa what?” Dad asked.

CRASH!

Dad’s eyes widened when he heard the thunder. “We’re onboard the tallest thing for miles! We don’t want to be out here with that lightning. Let’s get to the cabin, now.”

When Dad opened the cabin door, he spotted something that gave him an idea. “Eva, throw me those jumper cables!”

“Huh?” Eva asked.

“Behind you! The red cables with clamps on both ends.”

Eva tossed the cables to Dad, who ran back to the deck, then returned seconds later empty handed.

“We should be okay in here,” Dad said. “Don’t touch anything metal, and—”

KABOOM!

The thunder crash was so close that it felt like the boat had exploded. The floor buckled, throwing everybody to the ground.

Art by David Leonard

“Did we just get hit by lightning?” Eva shrieked.

She got her answer 10 minutes later when the storm let up and the family returned to the deck. The top of the mast was completely charred.

Everything else looked normal except for the jumper cables. For some reason, Dad had clamped one end to a line and thrown the other end overboard.

“What’s this for?” Andy asked.

“Jumper cables are usually used to send electricity from one battery to another,” Dad said. “I thought that would make them perfect for sending electricity from a lightning strike into the sea rather than our boat. By providing a clear path to the water, the cables were able to steer the dangerous electric surge away from us.”

“How did you know to do that?” Zac asked.

“It’s science,” Dad replied with a smile.

Zac winced when he recognized his words from earlier.

“No, no, no, I’m not trying to throw your words back in your face,” Dad said. “But science tells us that electricity likes to travel along paths of least resistance—paths like jumper cable wires. We can observe that. We can test it.”

“But the stuff I was talking about before—that’s science, too,” Zac said.

“When we try to predict the weather, we have to rely on things we observe in the present—things like clouds and weather patterns—but those are only clues to the future. We need to accept that our interpretation of those clues is often wrong. That’s also true when we’re trying to understand things that happened a long time ago. God is the only one who knows the future and the past.”

Just then, Andy gasped and pointed to the horizon. “Land ho, Captain Zac!”

“I see!” Zac said. Then he smiled and turned to Dad. “I see it now.”

What’s the Point?

Creationists are often accused of not believing in science. But we love science! We just know it’s important to understand the difference between observational science and historical science. Observational science can be tested and repeated in the present. By experimenting on what we can touch, see, and hear, we begin to understand the world around us. But we must recognize the limitations of the scientific method when trying to predict the future or understand the past. Since we weren’t present for creation, we choose to build our knowledge on the foundation of the Genesis account to understand our origins.