Out Here Among the Stars

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently learned that Carl Sagan's Cosmos series is available through Netflix's streaming video service.  I don't know if it's a new addition to the service, but it is a welcome one.  I've seen most of the series' short thirteen episode run here and there in various different ways over the years, but this gives me the opportunity to watch it all in order and at my own leisure, which, naturally, is the nice thing about the Netflix service.  I find that, like all works that resonate deeply with me, I return to it time and again with a different perspective that reflects my own progress as a person.  It becomes like a touchstone or a familiar place; it remains constant and serves as something to mark your own change and growth by.

For instance, watching it now, I keep thinking about recent conversations with my friend Vincent, who has a somewhat passing, almost mild, antagonism towards science, depending on what kind of mood you catch him in.  Vincent isn't alone, of course, and there are plenty of other people with similar feelings.  Yet, I can't help but wonder if their problem isn't as much with science - as a collection of data and a discipline of factual inquiry - as much as it is with the attitudes and mind-sets of certain scientists who rub them the wrong way.  One might be tempted to cynically conclude that they just resent more sober minds raining on their fairy tales, and that they lash back with any means at their disposal.  But I'd like to think there's a little more to it than that.  I suspect that when Vincent thinks of science, he tends to think of Richard Dawkins or someone similarly disposed.  

Yet, the problem with Dawkins isn't necessarily that he's a scientist or even that he's an atheist.  Rather, the problem is the implicit insistence on an almost militantly prosaic viewpoint whereby he arrives at his conclusions.  He comes off as the sort of smug jackass who subjects a religion to ruthlessly "logical" interrogations, not as a way of trying to learn more about it and gain insight into its tenets, but as a way of holding it up to mockery as an irrational farce.  It's the sort of game a person is up to when they ask how Noah fit all the animals on the Ark or how reincarnation accounts for population growth.  These aren't necessarily invalid points, but the people raising them usually aren't looking to know; they're looking to deflate.  Consequently, some people come to feel like they are under fire from science and reason.  The irony is that the prejudice and dismissive close-mindedness that underpins such smug games goes against the very spirit of science and reason.

Most likely, Sagan would have agreed with Dawkins on nearly all matters of scientific fact, but it's the man himself that makes all the difference in the world.  His Cosmos series was billed as "A Personal Voyage", and it takes a moment's pause to appreciate the significance of this.  Clearly he wasn't talking about "personal" in the sense of "biographical", and there's little about the man himself throughout the series.  What is personal is Sagan's passion and wonder for his subject matter, his sense of amazement when he tells us that we are all "made of star stuff", his hopefulness of finding intelligent life out there in the universe, his benevolent optimism towards the human race, and his urgent concern about the possibility that we might destroy ourselves which he mentions again and again as a warning and a leitmotif through the series.  Sagan sees poetry where Dawkins insists on prose.  They may draw many of the same conclusions and believe much of the same things, but for entirely different reasons.

Throughout the Cosmos series, Sagan displays a boundless enthusiasm that fits him well in his role as a teacher.  He constantly puts things in a perspective that's deliberately designed to evoke awe and curiosity.  I particularly liked the calender model he uses to try to bring the fourteen billion year existence of the universe down to a manageable scale that the mind can grasp.  He stands on a stage with a giant illustrated calender laid out on the floor.  The calender year represents the entire life-span of the universe, and down in the right hand corner is a tiny little spot, the last few seconds of December 31st, which represent all of recorded human history.  "Everyone we've ever known, every story ever told, happened right here.", he tells us, and suddenly the majesty of the universe, and our fragile place in it, is as clear and touching as it has ever been.  This is the amazing achievement of Cosmos.  "What we do at the beginning of the next cosmic year is up to us.", he continues, touching again on the themes of optimism and concern.

So, I come away from all this wondering if there isn't another dimension to how we draw the lines between us.  We get hung up on the differences between our beliefs and ideologies that we tend to lose sight of the fact that it's the people behind those differences that really matter.  Whatever side of whichever line someone falls on, it's the spirit of the person, the humanity, the compassion, that bright eyed warmth that really matters.  A heart in the right place is worth far more than the details of any particular dogma, as far as I'm concerned.  We focus on the difference between things like science and religion, and we forget about the difference between people like Dawkins and Sagan.  We're all on the same journey, turning and revolving out here among the stars.  Sometimes it's how we feel about that journey that makes all the difference.

Reflections on the Meaning of Christmas

When I was a kid, there was a rather strange couple that taught a few of the Sunday school classes at the church that I went to.  Their family adhered to a very strict orthodoxy, which included a few extra and unusual stipulations that they had thrown in themselves for good measure.  For one thing, they didn't believe in owning a TV, as they considered the idiot box to be inherently sinful regardless of what channel it was tuned to.  Furthermore, they didn't really celebrate Christmas.  I mean, being Christians, they naturally believed and observed Christmas, but they didn't celebrate it in the traditional manner.  In other words, they didn't give gifts.

I can still recall that woman's syrupy, pious voice, and all the countless times she explained it to us.  "Christmas is Jesus' birthday.", she told us.  "How would you like it if everyone else except you was getting presents on your birthday?"  Seriously.  She said that.  I can almost imagine a certain sanctimonious wink accompanying this pronouncement.  They thought they were awfully clever.  They were going to celebrate Christmas the right way.  They didn't buy each other gifts.  They didn't buy gifts for their kids.  No fruit basket for the neighbors.  No token of appreciation for the mailman; not even a card.  They didn't even buy a special treat for the dog, but then again, I don't think they had a dog.  They probably considered having pets to be some form of pagan animal worship.  They could probably show you the chapter and verse to back it up too.

But hold up a minute.  Let's think about this.  It's not like you could ever get Jesus a tangible, physical gift.  What are you going to do?  Buy him a pair of socks?  Get him a sweater that says "World's Greatest Savior", or a coffee mug that says "#1 Begotten Son"?  I mean, what exactly do you get the omnipotent Lord of time and space that literally has everything?  Well, what if people presented a gift that could only be offered through their own free will?  Something like, say....oh...I don't know, maybe peace on Earth and goodwill towards men.  Yeah, that has a nice little ring to it.  Oh, and hey!  Maybe they could demonstrate this gesture of peace and goodwill by giving each other gifts and generally trying to be decent human beings to each other.  Crazy idea.  I know.

Of course, when I was a kid I was just appalled at what this woman was suggesting and the whole notion of not getting toys on Christmas.  I was horrified when my mother even seemed to give it a few seconds of serious thought.  But now that I'm older I see that the matter goes beyond Christmas.  These people were an extreme case, but I grew up around quite a number of these "Super Christians" who never missed a church service, prayed before every meal, made sure that the boys' hair wasn't too long and the girls' dresses weren't too short, who could quote you an endless stream of Bible verses for any occasion, and yet they didn't have the slightest clue what their own religion was all about.

Christianity isn't about not owning a TV, or trying to turn your life into an ascetic monument to your own self-righteousness.  Christianity is about accepting that you're never going to be able to mold yourself into this perfect person "worthy of God's love", and yet realizing that God, in His grace, loves you anyway.  It's about opening your heart to that love, and showing that love in return to your fellow human beings.  It sounds like a trite notion, older than the dirt itself, and it's certainly been devalued over the ages by people paying lip service to the words without really embracing the spirit.  It's definitely a case of easier said than done.

Take the present example, this family that I've been talking about.  Part of me clearly harbors a certain anger towards them.  I'm annoyed by their smug "holiness" in the service of such misguided ignorance.  I'm angry that their kids never got to enjoy a proper Christmas, and I'm angry that for a split-second they almost ruined my own Christmas.  And yet, there's another part of me, like a quiet calm whisper out beyond all that, a part of me that realizes that these people were just trying to do what they thought was right.  Christianity is about embracing that feeling, and letting everything else go, the anger and the hostility, because it doesn't do me or them any good.  But it isn't easy.  And this isn't even a difficult case!  There are definitely things that are much harder to forgive.  But beyond all the noise and anger that quiet whisper is always out there, reminding me that we are all lost and confused children in this world, trying to get by the best we can. 

Jesus brought an idea to the world, so enchantingly simple and yet so difficult to practice.  He told people that the vicious cycle of vengeance and retribution could end with them.  They just had to lay down their arms, turn the other cheek, let go of their suspicions and their resentments, sincerely open their hearts, and have faith that their friends and enemies alike would do the same.  It's a risky proposition and few people have been fool enough to commit to it fully, but the stakes are plain to see.  Peace on Earth is at our fingertips, anytime we want it, and whenever we're ready for it.  It's completely up to us.  It's up to us as the whole human race, and it's up to each of us individually.  That's where it has to start.

I may be fuzzy on the details; I may have my own spiritual and metaphysical doubts from time to time, but I believe in the idea.  And the idea here goes beyond a matter of religion, beyond the question of whether there's a bearded man in the sky or whether there's a cloud and a harp with your name on it somewhere.  It's about what we make of life here on Earth.  Jesus has had two thousand and eleven birthdays, and we've had two thousand and eleven chances to get it right, and we keep handing in the same badly wrapped gift with most of the pieces missing and all scuffed up here and there with our wars and the pain we constantly cause each other.  Hopefully one of these days we'll get it right.

(Note: This post is an entry is yet another one of Rachel Hoyt's Sociology Studies.  I could have mentioned that at the top, but I didn't want to break my rhetorical momentum ;D )      

Ballad of a Slender Man

A few years back someone started an internet "hoax" about a mythical creature known as The Slender Man.  I hesitate to use the word "hoax", and I rope it off behind quotation marks, because even at the time of its origin, the creature was never presented as anything other than fake.  I'll say that again, as it bears repeating, The Slender Man was openly and clearly created as a made-up story.  It even appeared for the first time on a forum thread specifically designated for posting fake, photoshopped, paranormal images.  From there it grew on improvised details of child abductions and a catalog of manipulated images that amounted to the creepiest game of Where's Waldo? ever.  And yet, there are apparently people who believe that The Slender Man is real, and they report their own sightings without a touch of irony.

Which brings us to the point.  In the comments below the last post, Mr. Doug Cheese and I had a little tea party where we discussed spaghetti monsters and which one of us has the bigger crush on Justin Bieber (Doug, of course.)  I said that Richard Dawkins and the spaghetti folks base their entire case on the argument that people shouldn't believe something just because the possibility exists that it might be true.  The problem with this argument is that no one, to my knowledge, has ever believed something strictly because it was a possibility.  The poor bastard would be at the mercy of anything you told them.  You could tell them there was a giant pumpkin buried under the Statue of Liberty and they would start shifting anxiously in their seat, eager to get their hands on a shovel.

In fact, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a completely unfair model of belief, precisely because it's deliberately designed to be something that no one would ever seriously believe in.  It's a calculated absurdity.  It really tells us nothing about why someone would believe in something in the absence of solid evidence.  All it does is hold such people up to mockery, and try to make them look like buffoons.  It may be amusing, but it isn't enlightening.

On the other hand, we have The Slender Man here.  This is something that some people apparently do believe in, not merely in the absence of evidence, but with all available evidence actively pointing to the whole thing being an outright fabrication.  So, why?  The skeptical heathen in me would say that once you've removed evidence and reasonable argument, you're left with little more than wishful thinking.  But this comes off as more derogatory and cynical than I intend for it too.  "Wishful Thinking" isn't just the refuge of delusional fools.  It's a significant part of all our lives.  It fuels our dreams and, as the insistence on The Slender Man shows, even our nightmares.  It is a necessary ingredient of any leap of faith, and some leaps are greater than others.  It can lead us astray, but it doesn't necessarily always lead us into error, and this is where our more prudent sides look for proof.  Sometimes we rely on evidence not just as a map of reality, but also as a way of tracking landmarks in our flights of fancy, something to tell us that we might not just be kidding ourselves.  And we all do this.  We all get out ahead of our more sober judgment at times, pursuing the intriguing possibilities.  It may even be an indispensable part of human existence, something we couldn't function without.  It may drive us to make fools of ourselves at times, but before people get too smug in their mockery, they should remember that we all chase our own spaghetti monsters in one form or another.

The cautious, incremental steps of the scientific method are an invaluable aid for keeping us grounded, and keeping us from getting too carried away by these impulses.  But people like Richard Dawkins sometimes come to think of the scientific method as a lens through which you view the world, instead of a tool with which you check your work.  There's always something to be said for dreaming, for speculating, for following a crazy idea just to see where it leads.  It might even lead you to a open clearing of breath-taking truth that you wouldn't have found otherwise.  

Now, Doug, that's a stickman with angst ;)                  

The Richard Dawkins Elimination Scheme

In several interviews I've heard evolutionary biologist and notorious atheist, Richard Dawkins, make a statement to the effect that over the ages mankind has gotten rid of a vast pantheon of gods, and all that remains is for us to rid ourselves of the last remaining one.  He seems quite satisfied with this formulation of his, as often as he's repeated it.  I think its pat simplicity appeals to him.  It suggests that history is on his side, trending towards his point of view.  Now, I'm not here to defend religion.  I'm not even here to take a definitive stance for or against Dawkin's atheistic position.  I'm just here to take issue with this idea of his, which I think gives him the appearance of having a very shallow and superficial attitude towards religion, and which plays into the stereotype of atheists in general.  He comes off as the sort of person who dismisses belief in a deity as a bunch of superstitious poppy-cock, good for nothing but providing comfort to gullible idiots.  Such flippancy isn't going to do much to help his case.

For starters, his formula isn't even accurate.  While it's true that the three major, Western religions are all monotheistic, and that they all have roots in the same Hebrew texts, I'm not sure that anyone can say for certain that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship the same God.  Is the differences between them just a matter of doctrine, or are they all following completely different deities?  Are they on different trains or different tracks?  Who can say?  At the very least, the other two religions definitely don't agree with Christianity about Jesus being God, or a part of God, or a dimension of God.  That alone suggests that they're operating in different spheres.  Also, you have the plain fact that polytheism still exists in the world, most notably among the Hindus.  However, I'm most certainly not here to take Dawkins to task for toe-stepping or offending people.  That was pretty much inevitable from the moment he declared himself an atheist.

No, the far more troubling problem with his formula is the impression it gives that monotheism was arrived at by a process of elimination.  You almost picture an all out death match among the gods, and Jehovah ended up being the last deity standing.  This completely misses the fact that a monotheistic deity is of a completely different stripe from a polytheistic one.  Divine apples and celestial oranges.  Monotheism wasn't the result of some stream-lined clearinghouse of the gods.  It was a revolutionary concept.  A completely different approach to the matter of religion.  Abraham's belief in one "true" God took everything in a fundamentally different direction.

Oddly enough, monotheism opened the road for a scientific outlook to eventually emerge.  Under polytheism, the workings of nature were often attributed to a kind of drama among the gods, this god controlled the wind, this god controlled the sea, and so forth, and the storms and shifts in the air were a result of conflicts between them.  By consolidating the workings of nature in a single deity, monotheism consequently suggested the idea that this deity had designed nature to work by a certain clockwork system, rather than by the struggles and politics between opposing gods.  There is a placid austerity in the creation story recounted in Genesis that stands in stark contrast to the violent chaos found in other creation myths, and it's even been suggested that God's "day of rest" was specifically included to highlight this fact.  The monotheistic universe is not a product of strife and war, but rather of contemplated design.

Also, I believe that it's no coincidence that Abraham's monotheistic revolution came with the stipulation that no one was allowed to create a image or likeness of their new God.  You see, one of the problems with polytheistic gods is that they can't really grow as concepts.  They are almost inevitably bound in the form of concrete, perhaps ever physical, creatures by the relationships between them.  The fact that the dramas between them make it necessary to even imagine them speaking to one another and interacting in a clearly physical way, keeps them tied to Mt. Olympus instead of ascending into the ether.  A polytheistic society can only really progress by outgrowing their gods, to relegating them to the realm of stories and fairy tales.  Polytheistic gods are bound by their presence to one another, but a monotheistic God is present only to itself and only briefly glimpsed or sensed by the creatures on the mortal plane below.  A monotheistic God can be invisible, ineffable, limitless.  It can pass effortlessly in the mind between the abstract and the substantial.  Ostensibly, I'm sure the taboo against creating images of God was considered a token of reverence and respect, but in reality, I'm quite convinced the taboo was there to keep them from trying to place any concrete limits on the concept of God.  An impressive precaution.

As such, there are no limits to which man's understanding of a monotheistic God can grow.  In fact, it is an integral part of the concept of such a deity to perpetually transcend those limits (something I plan to get into in an upcoming post.)  A monotheistic God keeps pace with human progress, rather than falling behind as the polytheistic gods inevitably do.  The human concept of a monotheistic God changes and grows and evolves, and from the believer's standpoint God is up there, constant and beyond comprehension, and it is man changing, growing, learning, and groping up gradually towards the light.

None of this necessarily invalidates Dawkins' atheist position, but it does put a different spin on his dismissive flippancy.  He can't expect a monotheistic God to fall by the wayside like many of the polytheistic ones have.  A monotheistic God is a far more tenacious concept, more resilient and adaptive then he's willing to give it credit for.  I don't think it's something that is simply going to fall out of fashion.  A belief in God may even persist as long as there are human beings.  I'm not sure I can even conceive of a point along the time-line of human progress where a believe in God would become completely impossible or insupportable.  And as long as that possibility exist, there are always going to be people who believe in it.  Richard Dawkins might have to just accept that.                   

The Lasting Appeal of the Star Wars Saga

It's been some thirty odd years since the first Star Wars movie premiered, but Star Wars' place in our culture is as vibrant and thriving as ever.  So much so, that it even gets to be kind of irritating at times, especially its proliferation among faux nerds.  In this internet age, everyone feels that they need at least a modicum of nerd credibility, just enough to come off as smart, quirky and interesting, but not so much that you come off as a socially inept, spastic dweeb, popping their zits in a lonely, subterranean room that smells of dirty socks and old cheese.  Star Wars provides the proper pinch without the danger of overdose.  A few well placed references to Boba Fett, an opinion concerning Han & Gredo, and a liberal amount of tongue-in-cheek philosophical debate about the saga's plot dynamics, and you're accepted as one of the "cool" nerds.  It all gets a little old at times.

Courtesy of Andres Rueda

Fortunately, it isn't all about hip references and ironic analysis.  There is a far more genuine reason that Star Wars has a fan base that spans multiple generations.  It answers a question so basic, that we might not have even realized we were asking it: Can spirituality survive the advance of technology?  And the wonderful thing about it is that it answers this question, not as a matter of abstract proposition, not as speculation or theme, but by providing a genuine demonstration of the possibility.  It gives us a futuristic vision which resonates with a mystical sense of our own past, a galactic civilization from "a long, long time ago."

But the real achievement of Star Wars is in more than just the concept.  It's in the details.  It combined these contrasting elements, past and future, myth and technology, at such a fundamental level that these things grow up together out of the story's universe blended and practically indistinguishable.  This is absolutely crucial to the effect.  If the mythology had been superficially overlaid, or if it hadn't worked in such a creative and esthetic manner, it would have completely undermined the thesis, rather than supporting it.  One fatal misstep, and it all could have easily ended up as "swords & sorcerers in space."  That Lucas was able to avoid this, is something of a small miracle.  He created something... believable, if such a word can apply here.  Not believable in terms of realism, but believable as a fantasy that the audience could invest with depth and meaning and emotion.  We don't believe in the plausibility of the story or the universe of Star Wars.  Instead, we are convinced and compelled by what its vision represents: a mythology for the space age.

Perhaps more than any other element in the Star Wars universe, the light saber perfectly embodies this paradigm.  If the story had featured sword-play involving traditional swords of silver and steel, the mystique of the entire saga would have collapsed, unraveled, and ultimately fallen flat on its face.  It would have turned the whole thing into a completely incompatible farce that no one could take seriously.  The light saber neatly resolved this problem.  It carries the mythical weight of the story, while at the same time being an intriguing piece of technical hardware.  We wonder: How does it work?  Where can I get my hands on one?

Much of the Star Wars universe is composed of these sorts of plunderings from human history, everything from classic cars to Nazi paraphernalia.  These things are treated with that same flawlessly intuitive touch as the light saber.  Every element is tied into the fundamental foundation of Star Wars' unique vision, so that it seems unmistakably of that world and yet it also resonates as something recognizable on an almost sub-conscious level.  It exploits these emotional cues to provide texture and depth, while bringing us out onto a broader stage of advanced technology and wonder among the stars.  It engenders a confused state of mind, rebounding between the distant past and the distant future until the line between them blurs.  This is the special magic that it generates.  It makes you forget the impracticality of the Imperial Walkers or gunner turrets to fight space battles.  It all exists outside of time, somewhere where it all makes sense.

And finally, this brings us to The Force, which is at the core of the story as well as the overall concept of the films.  The Force is the abstract companion to the light saber.  It draws on our religious and spiritual foundations in a general way, and yet it feels completely at home on a grand galactic stage.  It is simple, and yet expansive and enchanting.  It carries an air of the deep and the profound, even though it is provided very little of substance.  But that's how we prefer it.  Giving more detail about The Force just demystifies it, as anyone who's heard the word "midichlorian" will quite readily testify.  We aren't looking for further elaboration.  The Force is a stand-in for that feeling of awe and reverence, magic and mysticism.  It's that thing that we fear to lose when we worry that we might dehumanize ourselves inch by inch with our own technology.  In the end Star Wars appeals to us because it shows us a galaxy where it does endure, beyond hyperspace, beyond Death Stars and droids.

I could go into the reasons George Lucas' return to this material years later proved to be such a disaster, but I think I've said enough for one day.  There's plenty more that could be said about Star Wars, and one of these days I'll get around to saying it.  For now, if you don't find that my treatment of the saga's appeal really captures the essence of your feeling towards it, if you find it all a little too ponderous and complicated...well, then allow me to offer this alternate explanation: 

           

My Favorite Part of the Resurrection Story

The story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the cornerstones of Christianity.  It is the "good news" of the Gospels.  It is not my intention with this post to delve into the meaning and impact of this story in any kind of general way.  Nor am I going to attempt to unravel the apparent discrepancies between the different Gospel accounts of the story.  Nor am I going to attempt to definitively determine what degree of the story is fact or fiction, or whether it is completely one or the other.  As the ringmaster of this nuclear carnival, I reserve the right to put these matters off until another day, or indefinitely if I choose.  For now, I just want to consider one teeny, tiny little detail of the story.

In the story as it is told in the Gospel of Luke, after his resurrection Jesus appears to the disciples in the rooms where they are staying.  While they were staring at him, hardly believing their own eyes, he simply asks them if they have anything to eat.  Now, there aren't many moments bordering on the cute or the comical to be found anywhere in the Bible, but this always brings a smile to my face.  You can picture the disciples standing there with their eyes wide and their mouths open as Jesus strolls in and asks, "You guys got anything to eat around here.  I'm starving."  And why wouldn't he be?  After all, he hadn't eaten for three days.  Strangely enough, of all the details of the story, this one seems to feel the most authentic to me.  If I were to believe any of it, it would be on the basis of this.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility that the story is entirely fiction.  Some ancient storyteller sits down to make all this up.  He reaches this incredibly significant moment where Jesus returns from the underworld and appears before his disciples.  It would seem to be an occasion for some great revelation, some profound statement, the imparting of some incredible secret about life beyond the grave.  Having him ask for something to eat completely underplays the moment, almost comically.  It seems especially out of character for ancient literature, where the characters were usually towering, and yet quite wooden, archetypes.  They barely ate at all, let alone upon their triumphant return from the grave.  Hercules would have broken up out of the ground on a bull of fire that he had tamed in Hades.  Jesus quietly, calmly asks for a meal.

The moment is so absurdly apropos, that if it is fiction, then it's almost a literary anachronism.  It would be like discovering a painting with linear perspective thousands of years before the Renaissance.  It displays a depth of sensibility, involving a subversion of dramatic effect that would have been completely alien at the time.  It's almost...ironic, ages before writers had the sophistication or self-awareness to be capable of such a thing.  It's such a little detail, and yet so oddly appropriate.

Of course, one could make the argument that the detail is included because they wanted to drive home the point that Jesus' resurrection was a physical one.  They wanted to make the point that he returned in the flesh, not merely in spirit.  I completely agree.  Whether fact or fiction, this is undoubtedly why the detail was included in the story.  But this just goes to demonstrate how revolutionary Jesus was, even as a character in a book.  The people of the Bible are in general more human than their counterparts in other mythologies, both literally and in the quality of their depictions.  Zeus and Apollo were gods.  Moses and Abraham were men, and as such, their stories are far more grounded, realistic, and relatable.  But there is no where that this is more evident than with Jesus himself.  Although he is the most divine person in the Bible, he is also, ironically, the most endearingly human.

It is as if, in driving home the point of Jesus' humanity, the writers of the Gospels were forced to really consider for the first time what those truly human qualities were.  Whether they were chronicling or manufacturing the details of Jesus' life, they were forced to break the mold of those old wooden archetypes.  As a result, the Jesus we read about in the Gospels has a substance, a vitality that the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian gods do not.  When he has to be woken from a nap when the disciples were afraid of the storm, it's oddly touching to thinking of Jesus taking naps.  When he turns water into wine, we want to consider him a friend.  We sympathize when he steadily maintains his patience in the face of Peter's continual lack of understanding.  We understand his fear and his ambivalence in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We feel his pain on the cross.

This is something we almost take for granted now, but at the time it was groundbreaking.  Not only the human character, but the human being, was seen in a new light.  Christianity gave rise to a concern for the individual soul and inner life that was unheard of before.  In telling this story of God walking among us as a man, and by considering in wonder the things that made him human, we became aware of ourselves for possibly the first time.  Even by the simple act of asking for something eat, Jesus Christ changed the world.      

The Flat Earth Society

The world is filled with people who have all kinds of crazy ideas, theories and beliefs, most of them not as well thought out as mine, of course.  These people operate on the fringe.  You never seem to actually meet people who believe these things, and when you run them past most people you know, they tend to agree that they sound crazy.  Yet, these people must be out there.  Apparently, there are people who believe that alien lizards are secretly controlling the world.  Still others believe that the government is brainwashing you with messages hidden in bar codes.  But if I had to give out a prize for the absolutely craziest, stupidest, and most flat-out ignorant idea floating about out there, the award would go hands down and without a doubt to the The Flat Earth Society.

These people believe exactly what their name suggests.  They do the geocentric theory one better, and claim that the Earth is flat.  Their membership is small, naturally, but the fact that anyone at all believes this in this day and age is appalling and astonishing at the same time.  My favorite part about their belief is that while other crazy ideas focus on either one narrow aspect of reality or propose a shadowy phenomenon operating behind the scenes and only subtly apparent in the world, the Flat Earth concept represents a completely warped view of the universe.  As a bonus, if you click on the image below showing their model of their world which basically resembles a giant roulette wheel, you'll be able to read the text below the image providing bible verses which "condemn the globe theory."  You knew religion had to come into this sooner or later.

You might be thinking that that's an old picture, but regardless of that, rest assured this group is still quite active.  Some newer images I found also show that they haven't changed their basic model much over the years.  They still locate the Arctic, or what the rest of us in our ignorance designate as "The North Pole", at the center of their flat, disc shaped map.  Antarctica, on the other hand, is a snowy ring that circles the circumference of reality's outer limits.  I'm not sure how they account for the cold climates in these places under their model.  I didn't find any mention of that in my research, and I suspect that they never thought to address the issue.  At least they had the foresight to place the Antarctic on a steep slope.  If you're going to designate an edge to the world, you should at least have the decency to make it fairly inaccessible.  We wouldn't want people unwittingly stumbling into the void.  That was thoughtful of them.

Not all their arguments are based on scripture.  Oh, no.  They've actually got some "science" to back them up.  Their evidence includes such gems as pointing out that all the people and even our oceans would immediately fall off the world if it was round.  After all, you don't see oceans on the side of a beach ball.  Yes, they actually make this argument.  I don't suppose that there's any point in explaining how gravity works to these people or that there's no "down" in the cosmic sense.  Clearly it's beyond their comprehension that water falls off a ball because it's pulled there by the Earth's gravity, not because it's falling "down."  Likewise, they obviously don't understand that things wouldn't fall off the Earth simply because maps of the solar system depict things facing certain directions.  The empty space beyond The South Pole isn't "below" or "under" the Earth anymore than the space is "above" The North Pole.  If we favored "overhead" depictions of the solar system, would they be scoffing that the Earth would fall into the sun?  This is the kind of idiocy that makes witch trials sound downright sensible.

The motion of a round Earth is also problematic for them.  They argue that we would be thrown out into space as we rounded the celestial corner.  This one is a little more subtle.  If the first argument employed a toddler's logic, then this one at least employs a ten year old's logic. Granted it's a ten year old that's had a large rusty spike driven through the comprehension centers of the brain, but at least it suggests a basic understanding of inertia and motion.  The problem is that these concepts are completely misapplied.  For one thing, inertia pulls on the occupant of a swerving car because the car is deviating suddenly from a straight path and there's a struggle between the occupant being compelled to continue on that path, and the pull from the sudden shift in direction.  The Earth moves in an elliptical orbit.  None of its turns are a sudden deviation from a straight path.  Plus, once again there's the play of the Earth's gravity in this and the fact that it can't be transposed to some arbitrary place below the Earth and...but why am I even trying to refute this nonsense?

The funny thing about these arguments is that they're based in The Flat Earth Society's own idiotic misunderstanding of science.  It would be one thing if they had a coherent understanding of the heliocentric model and they were able to stand toe for toe against it.  As it is, they've constructed a straw man even more brainless than the Scarecrow himself.  They see gravity as merely something that makes things fall downward, and under this view a round Earth is unfathomable to them.  They're not engaged in a battle with science, but rather with their own gross ignorance of it.

Wikipedia reports that at the close of the last century, there were at least 3,000 members of the society.  Again, it's a small minority, but they are out there.  Think about that the next time you're standing in a long line at the grocery store.  There could be someone in that line with you that actually believes this garbage.  It shouldn't be hard to spot them.  Look for the drool on the front of their shirt.             

The Existence of God

Some people look at the stars and find God.  Some people find God in the first glimpse of the face of their newborn child.  Some people find God behind the bars of a prison cell, or at the end of their rope, or when they're scraping rock bottom looking for that last fix.  Some people find God at an alter call at a Sunday evening service where the drowsy light of the setting sun shines through.  Some people don't find God until they're drawing that last painful breath.  I found God in the periodic table of elements.  To each his own, I guess.

I grew up in a Christian home.  We went to church three times a week, twice on Sunday and once for Wednesday night prayer meeting.  We were there whenever the doors were open.  I also went to a private school for several years, also Christian.  I was knee deep in the religion.  It surrounded me on all sides.  Through-out my childhood I fluctuated between periods when I would become serious about being a "good Christian", and other periods when I couldn't care less and I just wanted to see what was happening with the TV shows I wasn't allowed to watch.  Regardless of these fluctuations, however, it never once even crossed my mind to question the truth of any of it.  God & the Devil, Heaven & Hell were as real and self-evident to me as my hand in front of my face.  I didn't even know that doubt was an option.

Then one day my brother, who's a few years older than me, came home from his college classes and mentioned that they had been learning about the notion that reality, as we know it, could be an illusion.  I remember his pointing to the light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the hallway and saying, "How do you really know that the light is on?  How do you know that you're not imagining it?  How do we know that we're both seeing the same thing?  How do you know you're not dreaming right now and none of this is real?"  I didn't know it at the time, but I wouldn't be exaggerating now if I told you that this simple moment on a rainy afternoon completely changed my life and who I was as a person, forever.  A tiny little crack had opened up in my view of the world, and I could see an incredible light coming from the other side.

I became fascinated by philosophy after that.  I started reading everything from Aristotle to Nietzsche.  I didn't understand half of it, and the half I thought I understood then, I didn't really understand either.  But the wheels were turning.  I started to keep a notebook of my ideas, a kind of fledgling precursor of this blog.  It wasn't long before the most obvious question of all occurred to me, "How do I know God is real?"  Now, it wasn't that I had been living under a rock and had never heard of atheism.  It was just that up to that point, I had never realized how someone could arrive at that conclusion.  Atheists were evil people, denying God so that they could live a life of sin and excess...or so I'd always heard.  Now I was seeing how reason, rather than sin, could lead you there as well.

Naturally, this didn't go over big at home or at school.  I started to rebel and get into trouble.   I started to ask questions.  Looking back on it now, my questions concerning Christianity and the existence of God could be broken down into three basic sub-categories: 1.) How do we know the Bible is actually the word of God?  2.) If everything that happens is God's will, then how does human free will fit into the equation?  3.) Did God decide and create the ideal of what is good, or does goodness exist independently of God and God is simply the ultimate realization of the ideal?  In other words, how could God be the highest measure of the standard and the creator of the standard as well?

Regarding the first question, the best they could do was quote me a bunch of Bible verses.  I had sense enough even then to know that you can't prove the authenticity of a document by quoting from a document itself.  I could write something on a napkin, and add a footnote that it was the word of God.  So that argument proved nothing to me.  Regarding the other two questions, oh we went round and round in circles on those.  I can't hardly blame them though.  Despite what I said in the opening paragraph, I'm still struggling with those myself.  Anyway, eventually they grew pretty tired of me at the school.  They put me on something they called "spiritual probation", a new type of thin ice that they basically invented just for me, and then they made it pretty clear that they didn't want me coming back to their school next year.  I was trying to open the minds around me in the same way mine had been opened.  Clearly some people were hostile to this.

In the midst of all this, everyday life went on.  In Chemistry class we were learning about the periodic table of elements.  We learned that all the chemical reactions between the elements were due to the fact that all the different elements are trying to reach a stability and stasis by having eight electrons in their outer shell.  Perhaps it was because 8 seemed such an arbitrary number.  If it had been an even 10, I might not have even taken note of it.  But as it was, it made me wonder.  I wasn't exactly seeing God in all this then, that came later.  At the time, I was just wondering.  Here was a rule that governed every physical reaction through-out the universe, but why?  Why did these atoms have such a thing for the number 8?  Who decided this?  The rule caused the reactions, but what caused the rule?

No doubt someone with far more scientific training that I could ever dream of acquiring  would be able to explain exactly why 8 is the magic number, but that would be missing the point.  Such an explanation would only remove the issue back by one degree.  My questioning had led me to that old conundrum that anyone who's ever had a conversation with a four year old child is familiar with.  For every "why?" there's another "why?" waiting on deck right behind it.  You can explain to the Nth degree how everything in the universe works, from the tiniest microbe to the collision of galaxies, but you'll never reach an ultimate explanation of why it just conveniently happens to be that way.  You can take the whole cosmic clock apart piece by piece and show exactly how it keeps time, but you still wouldn't be able explain why we're fortunate enough that this clock even exists instead of just a pile of cogs and gears.  In other words, how do you account for the principle of clockworkness itself?  Why not chaos?  Again, you could go deep, really dig down into the metaphysical foundation of everything and explain why the universe is governed by a system of consistent scientific laws, but you'll find another "why?" waiting right behind that one.  

Take evolution, for instance.  Now, to Christian people "evolution" is a dirty word, but ironically, I see this "God-principle" more at work there than anywhere else.  Just like with the periodic table, someone could explain to me in intricate and minute detail exactly how natural selection works.  I know enough about it myself to see that there's no mysterious magic behind it.  It makes, simple, natural, logical sense.  But aren't we lucky that it does?  There's even a built-in slight degree of imperfection in the universe that allows it to work.  This raises an issue for another day, but for now I'm just pointing out that there's even a perfect degree of imperfection to make it all work out, that slight little hiccup in the clock that keeps it running.

Now, you're thinking that all these issues have been raised before by the theory of Intelligent Design.  I would say, yes...but not quite...or maybe, up to a point.  You see, I'm not looking at all this and seeing the hand of a designer.  I'm thinking God is the design.  Once upon a time, people thought the clock itself was God.  Then someone came along and said, "No, God made the clock."  I'm saying that perhaps God is the principle of clockwork itself.  It's not the gears and springs and scientific laws; it's the thing that allows the gears and springs to work as a clock.  It's the reason a flower is beautiful, that falls as a shadow behind any other reason you might give.  It's not how we came to be here to see the flower; it's why.  It's...well, quite honestly, it's beyond my power to explain.  In fact, it's the very nature of it to reside beyond explanation.  If you try to explain God, you find that it slips another degree away, forever just beyond your grasp.

There might be some fall-out and controversy over this, or it might be met with bland, unimpressed indifference.  I don't know.  I wish I could say I was up to that task of really putting this into words.  I've heard before that writers should never whine about their own inadequacies of expression in their writing.  They should either put up or shut up.  Well, I've done my best at putting up.  I wish I could say that all this helps me sleep at night, and that I'm no longer confused and plagued with doubts.  But I am, and probably always will be.  That light bulb in the hallway changed me in ways that can't be unchanged, even if I wanted to.   All I have to offer is a feeling that I have, a sense and a faith that the ship of space and time is being guided along on a steady course, holding the whole crazy universal carnival together.                          

The Devil & The Information Paradox

According to Christianity, long before the foundation of the universe was laid and the seeds of physical existence sown, there was a war in Heaven.  The archangel Lucifer led a revolt against God.  As punishment for this attempt to overthrow him, God cast Lucifer into Hell along with all the angels who followed him.  The question has often been asked: Why didn't God simply destroy Lucifer?  Why allow him to exist and eventually come to corrupt and cause trouble for mankind?

Well, to look at the story as a simple mythology, the obvious answer would be that the story represents the origin of Evil and its adversarial relationship with Good.  It is a cautionary tale of envy, pride, and defiance.  The story is not constructed around any sort of final, complete victory over evil, because the conflict is meant to be an on-going one.  The Devil is allowed to persist in the tale out of a certain necessity, because the story is told in retrospect.  War, disease, pain, and death are all still with us.  Evil still exists, and its agencies are still at large, engineering sorrow and disaster all over the world.  The story is not an ending but a beginning, with the battle lines drawn and the world itself at stake.  

But this sort of answer only works if you treat the story as a fictional one, and it considers the question above as a matter of plot-construction.  It steps outside the reality of the story.  It deals not with the action on stage, but instead with the scaffolding that supports the stage.  It doesn't really address the problem of why God didn't destroy the Devil.  It merely points out that you bought a ticket for four-hour play, and so the main conflict can't be resolved in the opening act. Needless to say, this answer is an unsatisfying one for those who take the story literally, those who believe this didn't take place on a stage, but in the open air of reality.  Aside from that, it only confesses the necessity of the plot hole.  It does nothing to fix it.  

Now, I'm not here to debate the literal truth of the story.  I can't say that I've reached the point in my life or my consideration of these issues to make any sort of claim one way or the other.  These things, of course, go far beyond the scope of the matter at hand, and hopefully I'll be able to get into these things gradually down the road and reach some kind of satisfying conclusions.  For the time being, I don't mean to offend or mislead anyone about where I stand on these issues.  All I can say is that I'm still in the process of working these things out myself.  For now, I only wish to make a hypothetical proposition concerning the problem above; a proposition that might even lead to some kind of real truth one way or the other.                     

So, the question was: Why didn't God destroy Lucifer and his followers?  I thought about this for a long time, and then it hit me...maybe he did destroy them.  Maybe the idea of being "cast out of Heaven" is really a metaphor for annihilation. But the problem is that destroying them created another problem. It created a void in existence.  Prior to this God had only created.  He had made Heaven and all the angels in glorious perfection.  Then this insurrection took place, and it had to be dealt with.  Out of necessity, God was driven to do something he had never done before, destroy.  This would have an unavoidable side-effect.  For the first time, something that was would be no more.  For the first time, there would be a nothingness. This nothingness would come to haunt existence, like an inexhaustible vacuum threatening to draw everything into its own annihilation.  Satan, the adversary, is the negation of Lucifer.  He is the nothingness, the void, the hole in existence that was caused when Lucifer was destroyed. His whole problem is that he doesn't exist.  He lurks about reality, trying to consume it and give himself substance.  He wants to exist again, even if it means destroying everything in the process.

There is something in the natural universe that provides an excellent example of the process at work here, the black hole.  When a star dies it collapses in on itself.  In scientific terms it condenses to an infinitely diminished point of overwhelming gravity.  This gravity draws everything that comes near it, even light, into it.  In effect, it is the void created in the absence of the star.  Relativity says that gravity is the manifestation of mass warping space, a curvature drawing matter in.  The black hole takes this to its extreme.  It's more than a curvature; it's a hole sucking things into the void.

These black holes pose a problem, known to scientists as the Information Paradox.  The Law of Information basically states that information can not be destroyed.  If you burn a log in the fire, even though the log is consumed, the information of that log still exists and could conceivably be reconstructed on the quantum level from the ashes, the fire, and heat.  Black holes seem to violate this law.  When they consume something, the information it was composed of seems to be destroyed completely.  But this impossible.  The information must persist in some form or another.  Scientists have proposed various solutions to this problem, but they're still working on it.

Likewise, God's initial act of destruction caused its own paradox.  Lucifer and his followers could be annihilated, but the fact of this annihilation could not be erased.  The information of their existence could not be destroyed altogether.  It was merely inverted into nothingness, consumed like matter in a black hole, but impossible to obliterate completely.  An afterimage of their existence remained, like a lingering shadow of a light.  This caused a small crack in the fabric of existence, a tiny seed of corruption.  It was a problem that had to be solved or it would eventually threaten to undo everything.

So here we are again at the beginning, and maybe we've gained a fresh start on the story.  But it's only a start.  I plan to go much further with this down the road.  For me, this idea, starting as it does with the premise that God was driven out of necessity to create an unavoidable problem that had to be solved, provides a possibility to shed a light on some of the conundrums of Christianity.  It gives a reason why there's still evil in the world. It provides a possible driving motive to the overall divine plan and a meaning to the purpose of our existence.  The universe, rather than being created on a capricious whim, might play a part in the solution to this problem.  The fall of man, which I touched on in an earlier post might not be just a regrettable misfortune, but instead an absolutely essential piece of the puzzle.  But these are all matters for future posts.  As I said, this is just a beginning.    

                                

The Garden of Eden

Usually, when I hear someone talk about the Garden of Eden story, they mistakenly refer to the forbidden tree that Adam and Eve ate from as "The Tree of Knowledge."  Actually, the full name is "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil."  The distinction here is a crucial one.  The story isn't so much an indictment of knowledge, as it is a tale of how mankind acquired a conscience and all the burdens, responsibilities and curses that went with it.

The distinguishing characteristic of human beings is not only our intelligence, but also our conscience.  All the other creatures on this planet are driven by instincts.  Instincts which they can neither control or deny.  They form an essential part of their nature and define their every action.  They even seem to be born with the knowledge necessary to follow these instincts.  A bird seems to inexplicably know how to build a nest.  The information seems to be innate and pre-installed.  I don't pretend to know all the scientific intricacies of how this works, but it's the fact that it does work that I'm interested in here.  Human beings don't seem to possess this kind of innate knowledge.  It's true that we have certain predispositions and biological forces that drive us, and these are often referred to as "instincts."  But these don't appear to be the same kind of instincts that make it possible for a bird to just know how to build a nest or a beaver how to build a dam.  Even the most basic and necessary human behavior requires learning.

So it would seem at first glance that the birds have an advantage over us.  They know how to build their nests without being taught.  However, this innate knowledge come with a price.  Birds can only build their nests according to this pre-installed design.  Over thousands and thousands of years, birds have built their nests in exactly the same way.  They can not rethink or relearn the process, because there was no thinking or learning involved in the first place.  They are incapable of true creativity.  But since human beings have to learn how to do everything from scratch, since we have to consciously process new information, we are capable of coming up with different ways of doing things.  We are free to act in a way that the birds are not.  Conscience is the responsibility we bear for this freedom.

The matter of good & evil only becomes relevant when dealing with a being who is free to choose their behaviors and course of action.  Innate instincts serve in the place of conscience for animals and other creatures.  There's no consideration of good & evil when it comes to the nest-building of birds.  They're simply following a natural design.  Human actions come with no such guarantee.  We are free to do anything that we're physically capable of.  We're free to create something new.  But since we are capable of making these choices, the possibility of making the wrong choices comes into the picture.  By being released from the restraints of instinct our eyes were opened to infinite possibilities of creativity.  Conscience is our awareness that we might make mistakes.  It's an expression of our uncertainty when faced with the responsibility of making choices.  It's the sense of the weight of our own potential.  The Garden of Eden story is a brilliant exploration of this problem.  It captures the very essence of the human dilemma.

The Serpent in the story told Eve that they would become like gods if they ate the fruit.  In a certain sense he was telling the truth.  He was being disingenuous, to be sure, but it wasn't altogether a lie.  The acquisition of a conscience came with the power to create, and for the first time the artificial was introduced into the natural world.  Adam & Eve clothing themselves with fig leaves was an act of guilt and shame, but it also represents the first act of genuine human creativity.  With this detail, the story demonstrates how these things go hand in hand, as two sides of the same coin.  All the accomplishments of human civilization owe themselves to the fact that we were able to rise above natural instincts.  Unfortunately, all the atrocities of human history owe themselves to this fact as well.  Jean Paul Sartre said that we experience anguish over the recognition of our freedom.  He said we are doomed to be free.  We are free to create and free to destroy.  The choices are limitless.  Our conscience reminds us that they are our choices, and that in the end we're going to have to live and die with the consequences.