Ayatollahs and astrophysics

To commemorate this month's 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a wide range of festivities are on offer. Most prominent in the celebrations will doubtlessly be the recent launch of Iran's first domestically produced satellite. By carrying out this impressive feat, Iran has entered a prestigious club of countries who have also reached such scientific and technological heights. Iranians should be proud of their achievement. And who deserves more credit than the ever-progressive Ayatollahs, without whose ceaseless promotion and support for science such marvels would be unthinkable?

In general, the satellite owes much to those thankfully not uncommon creatures whose commitment to religious scripture is matched only by a boundless inquisitiveness about the natural world. Nothing can stop religious conservatives from tinkering away in their laboratories, their passion for the natural sciences runs too deep! Exactly how do the processes of God's creation play out in this mortal domain they wonder? Leave it to the keepers of the holy books, those robed and bearded old men, it is on them that we must depend if the secrets of nature's abundance are to be made intelligible.

As their facial follicles produce a wealth of hirsute gravitas, so their keen analytical minds produce a proportional wealth of both scientific and religious insight and explanation. At once they gaze from atop those heady vistas of God's word, gently leading us through the gnarled moral complexities of human relations, while at the same time providing experienced advice about proper pipette operation. Where would civilization be without the selfless, visionary leadership of these exemplars of religious and scientific genius? And who better to guide and comfort both our mortal bodies in this world and our immortal souls in the next? God's speed little orbiter of the heavens! May your components and circuits reside safely in the bosom of the eternal almighty!

"Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1820