Science and Religion, God and the Universe
Yesterday I posted a video that a high school chum of mine, Joe McDemott, shared with me via email. It’s a short exposition on the size of the universe. I myself have written and posted a blog here along the same line of country. Suffice to say that the universe is so vast that it boggles my mind and churns my stomach. Others have told me they have the same unpleasant physical reactions when they try to ponder it. And yet, the universe is not infinite. Science has satisfactorily shown that the universe is expanding. Into what?
Being the first to admit that I am not the brightest bulb on the human Christmas tree, maybe someone out there has a better explanation than I for how the universe originated and where it is headed. But only God satisfies my curiosity. What scientific explanation tells us how and where the mass and energy of the universe came into being, pre-Big-Bang? What scientific explanation tells us what is beyond the outer fringe of the expanding universe?
Only God will suffice. And, actually, that is no explanation at all.
That we are made in the image of God is absurd, if we are referencing our physical bodies. Just look around you. Look in the mirror, if you dare. If we are referring to the bit of energy that is a mind, or a soul if you prefer, then, yes, we are a self-aware, individual speck of the infinite energy that is God. There’s a substantial body of evidence to support the proposition that the mind is a separate entity from the physical brain. Thousands of reports across centuries, made by people who have had near-death experiences. Others who have retained or re-aquired cognition, despite severe brain damage, radical brain surgery, or congenital brain defects.
To accept the validity of this evidence and to conclude that the mind is something more than the blob of gray matter inside our skulls is NOT to accept that our minds, or souls, are immortal. It’s at least as likely that, when the mind leaves the body, it rejoins the vast ocean of energy that I am calling God. Just as water that has evaporated, entered a cloud for a time, then returned to the ocean as rain drops, loses the individuality those drops possessed for a brief while.
And what of our human values? When I taught in Rider University’s legal studies program, I co-taught an honors seminar that my college, Dr. Jonathan Mendilow, and I called “Theories of Justice and the American Common Law.” We introduced our students to the major theories of justice, from the Greek philosophers, down the decades and centuries, to John Rawls. If there are numerous theories of justice—-and there are—-then is justice a relative concept? Or is there objective justice, justice that is, well, just (objectively fair) for all time and everywhere that cognitive beings throughout the universe would recognize and acknowledge? Does God have a concept of justice?
We humans have often asked, perhaps rhetorically, if there is a God, why does God permit such evil and suffering in this world? Why does God allow innocent children to suffer and die? Religious leaders assure us God has a plan. There’s a reason for everything that happens. Atheists respond that it’s all random. Camus said, “I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.”
We are an arrogant species. Many of us deny God, though we have no alternative explanation for how the mass and energy of the universe came into existence in the first place. Some of us argue that we are the only intelligent life in the universe and even offer mathematical explanations for why that may be so. The Drake Equation tells us otherwise. But we don’t know. And given the vastness of the universe, we may never know.
So, given the vastness and given the uncertainty, the “unknowability” of the universe, how —-to borrow from Camus—- do we insist on having meaning? For Putin it seems to be by making history. No surprise, since he’s probably infused with Marxism, whether he admits it or not. For him, making history means rebuilding the lost Russian empire. For Trump I think it’s more about a family dynasty (but who knows?). For creatives, usually it’s the work we hope will outlast us. For religious folks, it’s life after death, whether in God’s presence or in some other living body. Cultures that place great weight on family worship ancestors and propagate profusely. No one of us, I strongly believe, who is self-aware wants to cease to exist.
Consequently, it takes bravery to be an atheist, I think. It takes faith to be religious, meaning one makes an affirmative decision to believe something we cannot prove is real. Then we look for signs to reassure us. And, like Arthur Conan Doyle and his seances and fairies, if you seek them, you shall surely find them.
Here’s a scary thought in closing: Perhaps no other intelligent life has ever contacted us (Area 51 not withstanding), because by the time any such civilization attained the technology that might make such contact possible, that race blew itself to smithereens.
