Piled higher and Deeper

I, am quite excited to announce the return to blogging, after a hiatus, of Hugs O’Toole and his fraternal twin, Snotty. We have had a lovely discourse on an older post on this blog, and I’d like to make my reply to him on this post. However, I would encourage everyone to please read his comments on my post, because they are some of the most incisive I have ever received on this blog. This is written to Hugs. By the way, good to have you back, Hugs/Snotty.

Once again, as you have aptly pointed out, the part of my post about “amonotheism” is pretty much me talking out of my @$$. Therefore, I'm not going to really try and defend these ideas other than how I restated them, except for this clarification. I was trying specifically to refer to the ideologies of the French and Russian Revolutions, which both incorporated one or more fundamental concepts as a kind of moral absolute--a philosophical deity if not a theological one. I hesitate to mention even this statement, because it demands a better defense than I am prepared to give. I also did not to intend to put words in your mouth; however, I did not choose my own carefully enough to avoid that appearance, for which I apologize.

However, I would like to proceed down a different track. Before I do so, I would like to issue a caveat. The reasoning I’m about to embark on is by no means airtight, nor will I defend it to the death against all comers. If you have objections to what I’m about to say, they are most likely extremely reasonable and fair. The only thing I will insist on is that there is no one human in the universe that will be able to stand as the final judge on any profound philosophical question.

Therefore, I guess my question for you is this, if there were a truly spiritual component to the universe, how would it manifest itself in our everyday experience of the physical universe?

There are things that are somewhat more than the quotidian--the birth of a baby is the physical manifestation of the love between two people. Or there are even things out of the realm of the ordinary, such as someone suddenly being cured from cancer for no apparent medical reason, or surviving afloat in an ocean for days at a time, or seemingly divine poetic justice--a hurricane destroying Pat Robertson's broadcast center after he threatened that the same hurricanes would destroy Miami for the sins of its gay community.

There are also occurrences that are possibly scientifically inexplicable--ranging from the simple, such as déjà vu, to the truly amazing, such as children being born in California that are fluent in French, or recorded visitations by dead gurus in India.

Anyways, I know that there are plenty of things in our world that are still inexplicable or at least mysterious, and I would suggest that materially reductionist scientists, just as all of us do, prefer to look at the world from their own preconceptions.

That's why it takes people like a Swiss patent clerk or a little known British naturalist to shake up the scientific community. Not that I believe someone will one day take a telescope and discover the mind of God just three parsecs off of Andromeda, however, I think that as the more we explore physics, anthropology, and a whole host of other disciplines, the more ambiguous a purely materialistic worldview becomes.

In fact, I believe that the very power of the myth and the arts of civilization itself to influence human behavior and direct our lives is evidence of a spiritual component of sorts. For I believe that the spiritual nature of the universe is witnessed whenever something becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

For instance, hydrogen is quite exciting all by itself, however, combine it with oxygen and you have created the nectar of life. Throw in some carbon atoms, and you have the very semblance of life itself. Draw these molecules into long protein chains, organelles, cells, organs, systems, and organisms and you have something quite remarkable. Add these organisms together and you get a society. The byproducts of this society are quite amazing--industry, trades, construction, etc... However, what is quite amazing is that among humans, we not only labor on materially beneficial things, but things that seem to have no material value whatsoever—art, literature, music, dance, etc...

All these things are quite a quantum leap from their parts. If human organisms (or other biota, for that matter) were purely meant to be ones that existed on a physical plane, what would the need be for the “humanities?” What possible evolutionary advantage did cave painters gain from their activities, or shamans, bone flautists, jewelry-makers, etc… Even if we could pinpoint a specific biological origin for every human activity, the power of words, ideas, music, and art cannot be solely quantified as a particle or a wave. Even if one reduces music to sound waves that travel through the air and emotions to chemicals released from various centers in the brain, the moment of the translation between the two, even if reduced to millennia of evolutionary development and societal acculturation, is still an inexplicable instance of grace.

That connection between the mind and the body, although I believe it will someday be more fully described by science, is still mystical. Even if one can reduce a medical miracle to chemicals produced by faith in one’s own healing, that faith itself is something that, for a moment, cannot be defined, put in a box, tamed, or rationalized.

Although, as human beings, we flatter ourselves that our species has been a detriment to Mother Nature, the truth is that we are merely a detriment to ourselves. Gaia has gone through many an extinction, and may well survive the extinction of our own species. Why is global warming such a threat—because the temperature of the earth will rise a few degrees? The biosphere has been much hotter in previous eons. It is a threat to the existence of humanity. The fact that, through our arrogance and technology, we are changing the nature of our environment at a rate quite beyond our control is evidence that there is an essence to the universe more primal than our minds can move to fully comprehend.

Or take the prime mover thesis, which Bertrand Russell was so scornful of. No matter how you look at the universe there is an irreconcilable fact—something (whatever it is) exists. Now, that something is quite obviously not nothing. Therefore, either a prime mover made the universe, the universe exists due to a paradox in the fabric of space and time, or existence is merely a fundamental state of infinity. Either way, you are left with a profound mystery that cannot be unfolded any further.

Now, none of these arguments are in any reasonable way satisfactory towards proving the existence of any deity, let alone a specific one. However, I believe that they, in themselves leave an area of reasonable doubt to atheism itself. For, I believe, it is the job of the Copernici, the Einsteins, the people who find themselves out of step with human tradition to prove their case. The vast majority of human experience has born witness to a divinity or a vague spiritual realm beyond our own. So, what profound new truth do atheists, or “rationalists,”—none of whom I am claiming you are—have to share?

However, what I am asking seems unfair, because it is high near impossible to prove a negative. Yet scientific materialists—one of whom I am not claiming you are—also have a fundamental faith statement that they would like us to endorse. This faith statement, one which I find quite plausible and am willing to endorse myself, is that I can truly trust my senses, and therefore trust the senses of those around me. This statement is completely impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, because, as I exist now, I can only know the things that I experience through my physical body.

Therefore, I am left with several fundamental paradoxes. If one is to doubt the existence of God, why shouldn’t one doubt our own experience of the universe? Surely philosophers from Plato all the way to the Wachowski brothers have plausibly theorized about this possibility? Also, there is the fundamental paradox of one’s own existence. “Cogito ergo sum” seems quite airtight, however that means that if I exist, I am something, and therefore something exists as opposed to nothing. That in and of itself begs the question, “Why does something exist?” which is answerable in only mysterious terms—a deity, a paradox, or the simple humanly unfathomable (not incomprehensible, but unfathomable) mystery of infinity.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene V