2019-10-10. Engineering – A Serious Responsibility
Illawarra District, Australia, October 10, 2019. – GEO #191010
Midwayer Mathew: (greetings not recorded).
Teacher Samuel of Panoptia: (greetings also not recorded).
Subject: “Engineering – a Serious Responsibility.”
Message received by George Barnard.
Mathew: “You asked for me as a matter of procedure and yes, I’m a lot more often available to you both than are your regular Teachers and even your long-time Midwayer Friends. Clearly, outside of the now-common Midwayer tasks are both, the Damascus Scribe and Samuel of Panoptia. Samuel is right now ‘on the line’, as it’s called.”
Teacher Samuel: “Engineering is a profession of much public responsibility. Imagine you are an engineer and you are to design a bridge or a high-rise office block. The responsibility lies with you in the very first place that the design is sound and, thereafter, that construction makes use of the best materials available. If not properly done, cars may be seen to fall into a river, office workers may be crushed under broken concrete. It is rather a trustworthiness in the engineer everyone is looking for and counting on. So it was with my effort of making an all-round meal out of one special fruit.
“Did I, or we, manage that? No, not completely. Between the Life Carriers and I we failed to ‘load’ any appreciable content of protein into the fruit – a most difficult assignment, I’ll have you know, but we did one thing right. For every step of the way, I proposed to include certain new properties into the mix and then I waited until I heard from the celestial Designers that such was proper and safe. This is not now happening with what you call ‘a film of good-tasting strawberry flavor build around a tasteless chunk of white turnip center’. It may well be that. And, it may herald the disappearance of the natural and organic fruit you once knew and propagated.
“Do not make the mistake of ‘minimising’ my life’s work and successes, but they are only such because I was careful not to move ahead of myself. Seriously, if the local, original plant was to have taken on features of my painfully-slowly engineered fruit, it would only be a plus for birds, mammals and insects that lived on them. The fruit would still be safe. That claim cannot be made for the diverse groups of vegetables and fruits on Urantia that are being so hap-hazardly re-engineered.
“Another matter that I am meant to mention here and now is that if you are allowed to modify food sources in this unrestrained way, you may well end up with merely the rogue end result of your meddling. And, yes, that rogue species and no other. There’s nothing new under the sun, indeed, under any suns and the modification of all aspects of nature and creature is a favored pastime.
“It leaves me here with just one thing to warn you about. Due to your oft-interrupted evolutionary path – a record far beyond what you are allowed to either know or understand here and at this time – the Urantia human’s physical body’s strength is hardly something ‘to write home about’ to any universe center. Other human species are generally much, much stronger than you and rogue species of plants and fruits will likely become detrimential to your health and your longevity as some now already are.
“This is Samuel of Panoptia, your friendly Horticulturist and Teacher.”
