GOD AND HUMANITY: CREATING THE FUTURE

 

A Symposium
Sponsored by

Foothill Community College
and the
Presbyterian Church of Sunnyvale

 

Held at
Foothill Community College
Los Altos Hills, Calif.
on October 2, 1976, Saturday

 

Edited by
John Williamson – Foothill College
and
Brad Fregger – Moderator
January 1977

*****

Foreword and Introduction
Mr. John Williamson and Brad Fregger

SPEAKERS

Dr. J. Bruce Coleman
“The Person for the Future"”

Mr. Maxwell Hunter, II
“The Relativity of Relevance”

Dr. Edward B. Lindaman
“The Christian Perspective in Futures Thinking"

Dr. Jacques Vallee 
"UFO’s: The Psychic Component"

Mr. Willis Harman
“The Changing Role of Science and Tecnology: Its Immplications for Our Ability to Cope with the Problems of the Earth”

Rev. John Turpin  
"Encouraging Signs about the Human Future"

Mr. Tom Gates
"The Future and Self Awareness"



*****

Introduction

John Williamson

Welcome to our second symposium. This one, ladies, we called “God and Humanity: Creating the Future,” (instead of “God and Man”). We’re fortunate to have a place like this to live and work in, among these beautiful hills, and I am most happy to welcome you to this place. I’m very proud of it as a place to be, and I’m very proud of the things that go on here.

I’m also very proud to be a member of a very thinking and alive congregation in Sunnyvale, and I see many familiar faces from that group. I’m particularly happy to be a friend of one of the members of that active organization that puts together these conferences, and without further ado, I’d like to call the members of the panel to sit here, and our moderator, Brad Fregger, who will introduce them to you.

Brad Fregger

This is going to be a very relaxed conference today, and we have the opportunity for all to take part. We’d really like to have you take part and express your viewpoints. We are going to have Ed Lindaman first from Whitworth College, John Turpin from the Presbyterian Church in Oakland, Bruce Coleman from the Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church, Max Hunter from Lockheed, Tom Gates from the college here is also a member of the panel and Jacques Vallee who has not arrived yet. Willis Harman, or Bill Harman from Stanford Research Institute called to tell me he’d be in this afternoon for his speech and panel discussion.
I’m wondering: the first thing that comes to my mind is why should we dream at all Why should we dream about the future? For me, as I am sure for you, today is slipping away fast enough, and in many instances as I look back, today was hardly felt and quickly forgotten. What are we doing here worrying about what’s coming? I’m not really sure we have any business trying to shape the future, create it, maybe not even to plan for it.

Isn’t the future God’s problem? Sometimes I get kind of confused, maybe as all of you do. I think of when we were going into outer space people said, if God wanted us to be out there he would have put rockets on our tails! And if he wanted us to shape the future, create it, do you think he would have given us some hint as to what it will be like? Yet it remains a puzzle.

The present is all we have and today is where we’re living. Tomorrow never comes, does it, it is always today. Tomorrow is always out there someplace. If we’re going to start something, it seems to me that today is when we have to start. If we’re going to change something, we have to begin to change it today. And if we’re going to forgive someone, we have to forgive them today. We can’t put that off until tomorrow.

Does that mean we’re wasting our time here? Is this all just counting the angels on the head of a pin? I don’t think so, and I only wanted to remind us that the present is what we have to deal with, the present is where things begin.

But to me, the future relates to the present, and how I think about the future, the visions I have of it, affect how I live right now. Not tomorrow, but how I live right this minute, right now. Thinking of the future is valuable for that reason, because it puts a perspective on today, a new perspective on today.

In this fast-changing world, we must think about how our day-to-day decisions are going to have an ultimate effect on ourselves, on our families, and on humanity as a whole. And I think we have a moral obligation to consider the long-range effects these decisions make.

A very dear friend and I went on a backpack a couple of weeks ago. We had a beautiful trip. We walked from Tuolumne Meadows to Yosemite Valley. It took us two-and-a-half days, and along the way we kept running into a couple of young men about 20 to 25 years of age. We were very careful. We made it with the food we had. You can imagine how hungry you get when you are climbing from 8000 to 9600 feet and back down to 4500 feet.

Well, we came down the final trail the last day. Walking into the Yosemite Valley you know you are back in civilization because the first thing you see is a snack bar with people crowded around it. There were our two friends, both of them downing sandwiches and coke like eating had gone out of style.

We stopped and talked with them for a few minutes. We discovered that they had eaten everything they had taken with them the first day, and they gone the other day and a half without any food. That probably didn’t hurt them very much; it probably gave them a feeling of what real hunger must be like. But there is only one thing wrong with the trail we are on, and that is, there just may not be a snack bar at the end of it, and I think we’ve got to remember that.

I started by saying, “I’m not sure,” and I’m really not sure what’s in store for me, for you, and for us, as far as the future goes. The future is really in God’s hands, but could it be that this curiosity that we have, this drive to try and shape it, could that be part of God’s plan too? I think so.

NOTE: What was interesting to me as I reread this symposium’s proceedings, after 42 plus years has passed, is how relevant it continues to be. In many ways, this symposium could have been given this year; the concepts presented are still viable and are still being seriously considered.

 

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