Much of what I will offer here has been percolating through me since I was a child. Its refinement - to the extent that it is more so - is owed to a significant extent, to scientific facts I have learned through John Walker and his offspring, Fourmilab, Ratburger and Scanalyst. I am also very grateful to Roxie Walker for preserving these unique and wonderful resources; they represent what the internet is capable of being and what it ought to be…
Chief among the things I’ve learned here are the works of Stephen C. Meyer and Bernard Haisch. Both may be found in Fourmilab.ch book reviews as well. Many other people have also contributed to my worldview. These two men stand out however. I also extend gratitude to the many unnamed individuals whose works and words have molded the variegated, un-homogeneous stuff that I am - the physical, emotional, spiritual and maybe even some, as yet unknown, facets of the whole.
Growing up in a secular Jewish family in the suburbs of NYC in the 50’s and 60’s, the existence or nature of God wasn’t much on my mind; only occasionally in the small hours alone in bed. I don’t recall ever having any discussions with either of my parents, whose own parents - immigrants from eastern Europe - were also mostly secular. I never had any such talks with any of my grandparents either. I had a Bar Mitzvah as a rite of passage when I was thirteen. Even that, in a reform temple, included no real discussion of God or theology that I recall. To me, Bar Mitzvah was a performance I had to act out. Nonetheless, I had independently begun to develop some vague longing for purpose or belonging or meaning beyond my mere existence and beyond earning the approbation of those around me - especially I needed my parents’ approval. I was under the mistaken belief back then, that my worth as a human being was measured by my outward and visible accomplishments. At the time, I didn’t recognize such musing as being possibly related to God.
Importantly, much less was known back then about the nature of the universe or of how it began. The sub atomic world was a mystery - at least to me as part of the general public. DNA, though discovered in 1953, was as yet largely unknown and there was as yet no intelligent discussion about the origin of first life - only limited-by-dogmatic-materialism guesses. The process of evolution which by definition applied only to complex biological organisms, was incoherently applied to chemicals believed to exist in a hypothetical “pre-biotic soup”. That passed for science and was “settled science” of the cognoscenti.
When I went to college in 1962, in my mind reality was divided in two: it was either religion or science with no middle ground (or maybe a DMZ). I believed reality existed as only scientific facts; the rest was bullshit. In an attempt to bridge this gap, TPTB at F & M college caused me to read The Two Cultures by C.P. Snow for college orientation. Things have changed rather dramatically in each of those regards - certainly insofar as I understand the nature of reality in my dotage.
I suppose you might say that, today, humility ought to reign, as we occupy a minuscule middle space in the range of the size of all things material, which far exceeds our mind’s ability to encompass it. Existence, we now know, extends from the quantum level to galaxies 13 billion light years distant. Phenomena at the smallest end of the spectrum are all-but incomprehensible in terms of the physics woven into our experience of reality at the human size range. It’s downright weird down there at Planck distances.
Even at our familiar level of physical reality, things are not quite as they seem, now that understanding of physics and cosmology have progressed. For example, were the proton of a hydrogen atom represented as the size of a baseball, the electron shell would be about two miles away! The same principle applies to the sizes of all atoms. The volume of an entire atom is 15 orders of magnitude larger than the volume of the nucleus! This means that all of the oh-so-solid physical reality, any of which could smash our bodies into mush - literally - is actually mostly empty space (with a vanishing probability of encountering a fleeting electron at various specified distances)! Familiar (to humans) physical interactions, therefore, are almost entirely in the category of electromagnetic forces exerted between atoms and molecules, rather than collisions of particles; even billiard balls or trains colliding. And then, this size discrepancy is tiny when compared to the space between planets and then that between stars.
These distances are quite literally beyond human ability to even imagine them. Though strangely jaded in my youth (probably as an emotional defense against the speed with which knowledge was accumulating), I stand in literal awe of these facts. Would that TPTB of today possessed some shred of this natural humility which arises in normal human beings when brought face to face with the profound knowledge of the context of our small existence.
Almost as though by reflex, a mere glimpse of our tininess and vulnerability evokes in normal, social creatures, a sense of simple care for other such creatures who are similarly situated. Though it may seem odd, I think of this whenever I see roadkill - flattened to mere two dimensions - yet reminding me this is a potential end of my two beloved cats. Who has not thus once loved a pet, not to mention some other human being, so as to not dread their careless or unnecessary, violent killing? I am forced to ask, then, whether our “leaders” see anything beyond their own self-righteous, preening pomposity as they go about the business of making roadkill of us all. I only acknowledge this satanic awfulness here in this essay on God (which is not usually part of my lexicon) because of the very real threat that NATO’s longstanding and unnecessary, premeditated aggressions may - at any moment - bring civilization to an end via a nuclear WWIII.
Long before these facts as to our relative puniness were known and long before mathematical notation existed to even attempt to quantify it, the Psalmist wrote: “Who is man that thou art mindful of him”? This very wonderment, this curiosity, may actually represent deep insight into human ontology. Those who have long believed man is created in God’s image, might well say it is the essential reflection of God’s curiosity as fleshed out - as it were - in running what just may be His one experiment - this Creation. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
My earliest musings, maybe in my teens, were of a God whoso powers somehow resembled my dad’s; visualized as the father figure so stunningly portrayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I existed in his shadow and I saw him as the ever present judge, before whom I was usually guilty. Insufficient. Lacking. His love was entirely contingent and I was not enough to merit it. God the disapproving father. Unsurprisingly, I grew up an overachiever, in a single-minded effort to earn the love and acceptance I so desperately craved. The outward and visible letters after my name - A.B. M.S. M.D. J.D. Commercial Pilot - never delivered either the approbation or the fulfillment of believing myself “good enough”.
What I have been thinking recently, as I approach my 80th year (where did the time go? It seems to have been contained in a single flash of a strobe light), is very different from the God as dad-like. I have actually evolved toward the ancient Hebrew practice of declining to even name Him, lest He be blasphemously circumscribed by the contours of a name; He is, rather, scrupulously referred to as “hashem” - “the name”. In writing, Observant Jews write G-d, for similar reverent reasons. As I consider the matter, I find it rather silly as a matter of philosophical/cosmological truth-seeking to refer to God with any pronoun signifying sex.
I’m pretty certain the God of my ever-evolving understanding as of this moment, does not have sex organs. Nonetheless, here, I will follow the long tradition of using male pronouns in deference to the written tradition from the Torah to the King James Version. These and other texts, like Cranmer’s stunning Book of Common Prayer, are insight into the way human beings wished to speak with God as they made the intellectual and material progress history teaches us they made over the millennia covered by those writings. A good bit of what I hope to explore here, in contrast, is the nature of the spiritual progress we may have made in our newly-augmented humility, based in large part on understanding both our place in the universe - our tininess - and simultaneously, what may turn out be our centrality to it - our possible role in the universe becoming conscious of itself!
Perhaps the best way to undertake this one man’s exploration of God’s nature is to describe the changes in my own conceptions over the years. It began as raw, unfocused curiosity about the nature of things in my youth. For as long as I can remember, I had a deep need to observe my surroundings at every level and figure to out how it all fit together - I always needed to know context. Understanding context has, without doubt, been my main psychic mechanism and driver of my very consciousness. This need likely has its roots in survival skills - today called “situational awareness”. Context, curiosity, causation; these were the pulleys and levers of reality - a virtual jigsaw puzzle - and it was my job to find as many pieces as possible and fit them into the whole. This has been a singular motivation of my life, with many gaps and incompleteness of course. Nonetheless, a blurred and incomplete image has begun to be revealed. I find myself saying I long for a “God’s eye” view of all existence.
Consistent with the nature of God, that “God’s eye” view is difficult to describe. Maybe some vignettes may help. When I see a grand geologic formation like the Grand Canyon, for example, I wish I might see a time lapse video of its formation, complete with simultaneous information from all the senses of everyone who has ever had any experience of any part of the entire process. I would know how every rock and particle of sediment got there and what was its individual history. Similarly, when I consider an historical figure or event, I would know all the surrounding events and persons. Where did each fit into the chain of causation; what was the inner experience any conscious observer of it at any time throughout its history?
With an impossible level of granularity, I would know the experience - physical, emotional and spiritual - of every person involved or with awareness, before, during and after every event - right up to the present. It’s rather like asking to view and comprehend the rings, ripples and waves created in every body of water, resulting from every pebble thrown into it for all time. I.e. to know the chain of causation of every historical event which ever happened - both proximate and remote - along with the inner experience of everyone, however distantly involved. I wonder about the vast majority of humans who ever lived, but about whom nothing is remembered due to their ordinariness and/or non-involvement in the events we know about and which history has recorded. There, after all, lies the greatest “reservoir” of human consciousness; the “silent majority” of all history, everywhere.
As time passed and factual knowledge of the nature and extent of material reality grew - literally exponentially - my concept of God similarly expanded - to the extent I was able to become aware of it - as we became better at sharing what we learn. Lest it be a “spoiler”, I must say at the outset that I no longer believe my above-average human mind is anywhere near capable of formulating, understanding or containing the nature of the God I now believe must exist. I will also jump ahead to my present conclusion that I have no idea whether or not God’s consciousness is anything recognizable to us as such and thus I have no idea whether He attends to us or intervenes in our lives or the universe at any level. I plead not only ignorance, but more importantly, incapacity. If He indeed does these things, I may simply be incapable to seeing them by virtue of my human nature.
Though David Hume, patron saint of modern atheists, argued there was no rational basis for belief in the existence of God, his conclusions, such as they are, via his, similar, human nature, were rooted in 18th century ignorance of the scientific facts (and many more!) summarily mentioned above. In light of these facts, applying the scientific technique of inference to the best explanation for them, one may reasonably conclude that the action of mind - a rational intelligence separate from and outside of the material universe - is the only rational explanation for the scientifically-determined facts which are reliably and reproducibly observed using the scientific method.
Given our far greater knowledge of the material universe, life and the statistical impossibility of their origins through random processes or self-assembly, materialism simply lacks the explanatory power to justify itself. It lacks the explanatory power to account for existence of all those things we now observe scientifically, especially observations with modern instruments, which seriously undercut Hume’s epistemology. Reality at many levels is amenable to observation by means which extend those of our meagre biological sensors. Neither the beginnings of matter nor of life can be explained by random, unguided processes - without the kind of faith usually so discounted by modern atheists. including those adherents who promiscuously apply the rubrics of scientism.
I now write on Tuesday, having begun this effort Friday past in the morning, shortly after which I was struck down that Friday afternoon with shaking chills and fever. These symptoms have come and gone several times. There is no option other than to get into bed with lots of blankets when they hit. All thoughts of God left me, even as my teeth chattered and my mind searched diffidently for possible causes. Because of my wife’s cancer and consequent immuno- suppression, I go out only for necessary shopping. I wear a mask at all times. I use hand sanitizer after leaving places where I handle any items. In short, I can’t figure where this came from - unless it is not infectious and rather a harbinger of one of the several diseases of old age which could present this way and proceed to end my life. At first blush, I thought it strange that my train of thought on God had been interrupted by illness. This morning - after sleeping later than I had in years, until 09:30 - I awakened feeling quite weak, soaked in sweat, but mentally much better than last night; at least I could think straight. This, too has recurred several times over the past five days. As a doc, I know I’m not continually sick enough to go to the ER - yet. If it becomes continuous or worsens, I will be forced to reconsider.
With the ups and downs (I actually felt well enough to exercise for an hour yesterday, before it recurred last evening). I wondered: why, when I thought I might possibly be at the beginning of the end of my life, did I not think of God? Maybe because - as is my wont - I only wanted to “figure it out” to find the context - to find something to relieve my discomfort. Do I only think on God when I am feeling well and fit to philosophize or else when I am certainly in extremis, as in the foxhole - with “God, save me”? I don’t know, but I am back at it this morning, even as I worry whether I will be able to continue taking care of my wife, Gigi, who may be having a relapse of C.diff with the absolute torture of constant diarrhea. Not long ago, she had a full month of that >20 times/day! - including 6 days hospitalization - during which she was offered zero help (and several inane impediments - to physically getting to the bathroom!! For me, the physician, it was yet another lesson in powerlessness. I could do nothing to help, until near the end from the eventual correct antibiotic treatment, I prescribed the old standby symptom reliever, paregoric, which did help a bit.
By way of digression, I want to say that in 1965, I met and quickly married my first wife, lest she get away (she looked like Brigitte Bardot and a few years later, she did get away, nonetheless - but that’s another story). The point is that she was a musical prodigy, precocious in the fullest sense of the word. She became organist and choir director of her family Methodist Church at age 11. She was 18 when we met; I was 21. In addition to her, that ever-lurking part of me which longs for meaning was attracted to the music and I became the most faithful member of the choir. I was drawn and warmed by the words and melodies. I found the Christian theology similarly beckoning. Though it is beyond what I hope to say here, given my evolving humility as to all things spiritual - referenced above - it still seems to me that even were it merely allegory and not strictly factual history, the New Testament story of Jesus of Nazareth just might be the best way to to permit Man to approach and understand God the Creator. This is so given both God’s ineffable nature and Man’s incapacity to grasp it. The mind of God is too ‘big’ and the mind of Man is too ‘small’. This inequality required a timeless ‘retail’ allegory relatable to the most ordinary of us.
Based on the 90th Psalm and written by Isaac Watts in 1708, the hymn O God Our Help in Ages Past is set to the tune Saint Anne by William Croft. I have never failed to be stirred - brought to transcendence - whenever I have heard this hymn. I refer to hearing it because I am actually unable to sing it, as I am so moved - to tears - that I just can’t get the words out. Such is the awe - the overwhelming, inspiring power of word and tune over me; and the feeling is awe or wonderment. It is surely what “art” is when word and melody combine to encompass the emotional reflection of what is the essence of the human condition - the complete context within Creation in which human ontology exists. Hume says the five senses are all there are, and that they are insufficient to this kind of knowing. Through this example (and others) I believe our senses and ken may be expanded - at least in some perhaps, mystical moments by what I can only see as the grace of our Creator.
O God our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.
A thousand ages in Thy sight
are like an evening gone,
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream
bears all its sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the op’ning day.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.
While Hume could see the limits imposed upon human knowledge by our five senses, he did not foresee the extent to which technology would extend them. Neither did he account for the synergy resulting from their combination, as here in the form of melody plus logos. Such is art, then, where the human intellect - limited though it is by biological constraints and bounded inputs - sings and thereby catches a glimpse of the mind of God.
The best guess I can make - assuming the universe we experience is not merely a computer simulation and we all player/characters or NPCs - derives from the tension between spirit and flesh. In much literature, we see that each longs to become the other. Numerous others have written at some length to say that creation of biological life may have been God’s way of making the universe conscious of itself. One early expositor of such a theory was Peirre Teilhard de Chardin. A Jesuit priest, his work, The Phenomenon of Man was written in the 1930’s but only published posthumously in 1955, because it had been silenced by the church (and you thought de-platforming was new!). Maybe the best evidence de Chardin was onto something is the book’s characterization by Richard Dawkins as “the quintessence of bad poetic science”.
The thesis of that book is that consciousness is a fundamental component of all matter; that through increasing complexity (“complexification”), consciousness becomes more concentrated; that the universe has a direction and a goal: the “Omega Point”, at which consciousness is maximized and shared by every individual and everything - yet each individual remains, nonetheless, aware of self as a separate entity. In this way then, greatly shortened and oversimplified, God’s consciousness expands as to Himself is joined the consciousness of all matter in the universe - both living and inanimate. Theologically, this may be seen by some as a means of God receiving maximal praise from his Creation. Of course, this analysis suffers from anthropomorphism - but at some point - we have to go with what we’ve got. It works for me as an operating premise I can live with… . and die with.
