Monday 26 March 2007

Pic of the day: To me, there is no conflict. In one, I see the other. A reflection is technically an illusion: If you search for the sky in the river, all you will get is wet, and the illusion is broken. Of course the same will happen if you look for eternity in time.

Deus in machina

This tends a bit toward the white or even violet, but I think it is a timely follow-up to yesterday's entry about the origin of life. The new reader (if any) might read it as "since science cannot account for how life came to be so quickly, this means we might just as well believe God made the world 6000 years ago". (Or perhaps Krishna incarnated as a wild boar and fished the Earth up from the ocean?) Sometimes I see thinking like that, if it can even be called thinking. That is kind of sad, don't you think?

This particular sadness comes from the idea that God is hiding in the cracks of science. I am happy to say that this misconception seems more common among atheists than actual believers. (Scientists, of course, could be any of these.) But yes, there are also a couple congregations, at least one of which is very nice and God-loving people, which think they are doing people a service by pointing out the doubt and dissent in science. Then again, so does the Bush administration. But when I point out doubt and dissent, paradoxes and long odds, I don't do so to insert a glib answer at the end. On the contrary, it is part of my normal habit of making people think.

My God does not hide in the cracks, nor is "He" scurrying in the dark fleeing from the onrushing light of science. My God is a "Deus in Machina", revealing divine truth and beauty and virtue within creation. I suspect all mystics feel the same way.

That is not to say that I see God as a property of the material universe. Rather, I see the universe as a property of God. Both God and man, who is created with a spirit, are able to exist both inside and outside creation. It would be a sad thing if we did not. If man was nothing more than an animal, there would be no science. Or if there was a science, it would have no meaning: It would be just another misguided mating ritual. Much like the weaver bird drags pretty sticks and stones to its nest to impress the female, the scientist would drag pretty facts and theories for the same reason.

I'm not saying that there aren't scientists like that. But I think most of them are more like me instead: Entranced by the beauty and sheer awe-inspiring scope of the cosmos, and convinced that truth exists and can be found... or at least we can very close to it. This is indeed the essence of religion: Not necessarily worship of gods, mind you, but belief in something higher than our own flesh. In this case, "to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

More human thought soon… God willing.