Size Matters (Christianity from the Outside, 3.0)
Tuesday Steph and I drive down and head straight to Catalina; I am trying to be in Long Beach the Monday and Tuesday after that (a week from tomorrow) and hopefully hook up with the so cal blog contingent. I have emails and phone numbers. Things are still tentative, unfortunately.
I've had a good week, though my anxiety is creeping in just a bit and I need to get on it. But I've had more freedom this summer from my ocd than maybe ever. Thank God for exposure work.
I had some ideas kicking around in my head over my last vacation: it feels good to sort them out here. Thanks for reading if this grabs you.
Size Matters
Physicist Richard Feynman, in a popular essay on religion and ethics, questions the veracity of human religion due to the size of the universe we find ourselves in. It is a powerful point. Two intelligent complaints can be posed to anyone who believes in the special creation of humans and who claims to have found her creator/God: one, the universe really is very, very big compared to the earth, and two, there is a multiplicity of religious points of view. While there is agreement among major religions on some points, there are great differerences; this is an interesting issue which I'll have to pick up another time. What I want to focus on here is the first problem: does religion, Christianity in particular, make any sense considering the size of our present cosmos?
I find this a perplexing problem, and right away I have to admit I don't know very much about the limited information science itself is able to tell us about our universe. But I do know one thing: it appears to be unimaginably enormous. We inhabit such a tiny plot it is chilling. According to Brent Tully, the visible universe is 28 billion light years across. Compared to the national debt these days that doesn't sound so big, but consider: it takes light eight minutes to get from our sun to Earth and that light is coming a long, long way, many times the size of our own planet. Eight minutes divided into 28 billion years is...I don't want to do the math. But it's damn big. Our solar system inhabits a miniscule portion of our galaxy, which is one of billions. Billions of galaxies. According to Simon Driver, our sun is one of about 70 sextillion detectable stars; this is apparently around ten times the number of grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of the earth. And stars are much, much bigger than sand grains, and they are very, very far apart.
Also, as Tully notes in his fascinating (and at times speculative) essay, the majority of the matter in the universe is invisible, the now famous 'dark matter.' Scientists barely know what that is yet, but they know there is a lot of it. And we don't know what is beyond the edge of our universe, if anything, or if there are many other universes, perhaps an infinite number.
All this seems to strengthen the cosmological argument! In a sense, perhaps it does. Where did all this come from and why does it all work the way it does? But what about Judaeo-Christianity and the special creation of man? Why would God intentionally place humans on such a scant, insignificant speck of his universe? Who is the rest of the universe for? Not for us? Really, why not?
If plankton could think (outside of Bikini Bottom) I can imagine a group of them swirling in a bubble of sea foam. And they would reflect on the water around them and believe they had been specially placed on that particular dot of ocean, which was made for them, by their great krill god. But if they knew how big the sea and planet around them was!
Of course, the plankton still might be right. But this is why the church fought poor Galileo: what do you mean the earth isn't the center of the universe! Of course it is! In Genesis God places man in Eden as if that little patch is the pinnacle of creation; for a human body it surely beats what we know of the rest of the cosmos. But if I were going to make sentient beings in my image, I wouldn't make them infintesimal, the size of dust specks, and put them afloat in a remote corner of Lake Tahoe. It's as if God built a universe the size of Disneyland and then put the really significant part, the emotive and self-reflective and even eternal part, that which he would eventually die to redeem, on one of the hairs on the swinging leg of the Caribbean pirate sitting on the bridge. Why?
The fact is I just don't know; this piece of plankton can only speculate. There is something which might be useful here called the anthropic principle. In my mind, this relates closely to what is known as the teleological argument, though the two differ. The anthropic principle notes that if just one of many constants in the universe (macro or micro) was just slightly different than it is, life, or life as we can imagine it, could not exist. In some sense then, the universe seems made for life to evolve. The teleological argument for God's existence, or the argument from design (which I still find powerful) notes the enormous balance, complexity, and inter-connectedness of the universe and argues for an intelligent creator. I won't discuss either of these much here, but in terms of the size problem, could the size of the universe be related to the anthropic principle? Did the universe have to be this big for humans to drive up, get out of the car, and poke around the yard?
That no one can answer, at least now now, but it brings us to another riddle and one the church frets over needlessly. Did humans evolve naturally (but still miraculously) from the environment or did God actively intervene by circumventing, surpassing, extending natural laws to produce our bodies and minds (as appears to be the case in Genesis)? Imagine being a tiny observer inside a woman's womb and watching a child form. Impressive. If you missed the moment of conception, if you were looking back and your entire span of comprehension was one hour of the pregnancy, you could see a fetus slowly growing but not understand how this process began or where it was headed. That is analogous to our position as observers of the universe. And as far as we can tell, babies are made and develop without circumventing natural laws. It's amazing, but it happens. There really is evidence, though I agree not decisive proof, for evolution. What if the evolutionists are right? What if we evolved via natural selection, after the apparently random rise of life from non-life; as if the universe, astoundingly, conceived us? What if biologists get to the point where they can describe, even recreate, the origin of life without having to resort to supernatural force ('and at this point in the process, God spoke, a miracle happened')?
That does not mean God does not exist, that he did not design this improbably enormous universe with us, or the possibility of something like us, in mind. Perhaps the odds against the formation and evolution of life are so long (and many seem to agree on this) the universe had to be this big for life to occur anywhere in it; hence my use of the anthropic principle. But many would say I'm reaching. If one is God, why create natural laws which demand such a vast cosmic womb-nursery? Again, I don't have an answer.
It's also possible we're not the only life forms in space; though it also seems highly unlikely we'd ever make contact of any kind if the universe is at all as Einstein understood it. It is useless to speculate on what those other beings think of God and creation, if they think or exist at all. But perhaps there are other inhabitants in the immense universe besides us! Other sentient/reflective and even worshipful species. Maybe we're just one small, though very troublesome, group.
Additionally, the fact is we live in space-time, and most likely God as creator doesn't. If God exists outside both time and space, the length of the universe's life span would not exist for him, the size of the universe would not be a barrier for him. It would have neither age nor bigness nor smallness in a way we simply can't comprehend. The stars have always looked impressive; we see this ourselves when we look up at night, but also in the Psalms and in Paul and in other literature, even Kant. Perhaps God wanted to leave a testament to himself which only grows in power the more we know of our cosmos. As the unimaginable vastness becomes more apparent, its creator begins to truly appear frightening; the term fear of God begins to make sense. It could be said ancient man had a smaller view of God simply because he had a much smaller view of his universe.
Finally, Jesus said people would stumble over him and his message, and they do. He was born in an out of the way town in a conquered nation; despite miraculous signs and messianic expectations he was ultimately unrecongized and executed. He taught in parables, riddles really, and in Mark especially, he attempts to conceal his power and his role in history from society at large. So what makes us think we'll find a big blinking sign in space saying 'made by Jesus, hecho a Jesus'? I've mentioned Occam's razor before, and I continue to admire its analytic and predictive power. Basically, Occam's razor says the simplest solution is the most probable; or the least complicated cause and effect series is the one most likely. It says a lot more than that, as you can tell from the link, but it's not infallible; it's not a law by any means. While it would be nice to be sitting on a sphere, with a ceiling a few thousand miles over us, with lots of lights shining (like Truman) and imagine God outside the building, the universe is much more complex and staggering in its size.
I admit the size of space might argue against the probability of our special creation and redemption, though to do so implies God thinks like us; it is no proof against it. God could have reasons for this huge universe we know nothing about; maybe he simply enjoys its grandeur and beauty, but I can't think as God thinks. Isaiah surely had this right! As always, and I'll say it again and again, I believe because of the new testament, and especially, the gospel record of the words and actions of Jesus. Other lines of thought can lead me toward belief in something; only in the gospels have I found belief in someone. The concrete, radically individual Example. I really don't know why the universe is so spacious and apparently impersonal (though we have no idea what might live beyond our own solar system); I only know one who claimed he came from beyond it all, even made it all, and who is recorded as bypassing its irrefutable laws on a regular basis. That last part is crucial: if even one of the miracles attributed to Jesus was genuine...ah, then I have to admit I know even less about the cosmos than I'd like to pretend. The phrase 'he walks on water' is used now to describe someone apparently perfect, without flaw; the fact is one who could do that might or might not be perfect, but he surely would have a power and an awareness beyond anything I could envision.
I've had a good week, though my anxiety is creeping in just a bit and I need to get on it. But I've had more freedom this summer from my ocd than maybe ever. Thank God for exposure work.
I had some ideas kicking around in my head over my last vacation: it feels good to sort them out here. Thanks for reading if this grabs you.
Size Matters
Physicist Richard Feynman, in a popular essay on religion and ethics, questions the veracity of human religion due to the size of the universe we find ourselves in. It is a powerful point. Two intelligent complaints can be posed to anyone who believes in the special creation of humans and who claims to have found her creator/God: one, the universe really is very, very big compared to the earth, and two, there is a multiplicity of religious points of view. While there is agreement among major religions on some points, there are great differerences; this is an interesting issue which I'll have to pick up another time. What I want to focus on here is the first problem: does religion, Christianity in particular, make any sense considering the size of our present cosmos?
I find this a perplexing problem, and right away I have to admit I don't know very much about the limited information science itself is able to tell us about our universe. But I do know one thing: it appears to be unimaginably enormous. We inhabit such a tiny plot it is chilling. According to Brent Tully, the visible universe is 28 billion light years across. Compared to the national debt these days that doesn't sound so big, but consider: it takes light eight minutes to get from our sun to Earth and that light is coming a long, long way, many times the size of our own planet. Eight minutes divided into 28 billion years is...I don't want to do the math. But it's damn big. Our solar system inhabits a miniscule portion of our galaxy, which is one of billions. Billions of galaxies. According to Simon Driver, our sun is one of about 70 sextillion detectable stars; this is apparently around ten times the number of grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of the earth. And stars are much, much bigger than sand grains, and they are very, very far apart.
Also, as Tully notes in his fascinating (and at times speculative) essay, the majority of the matter in the universe is invisible, the now famous 'dark matter.' Scientists barely know what that is yet, but they know there is a lot of it. And we don't know what is beyond the edge of our universe, if anything, or if there are many other universes, perhaps an infinite number.
All this seems to strengthen the cosmological argument! In a sense, perhaps it does. Where did all this come from and why does it all work the way it does? But what about Judaeo-Christianity and the special creation of man? Why would God intentionally place humans on such a scant, insignificant speck of his universe? Who is the rest of the universe for? Not for us? Really, why not?
If plankton could think (outside of Bikini Bottom) I can imagine a group of them swirling in a bubble of sea foam. And they would reflect on the water around them and believe they had been specially placed on that particular dot of ocean, which was made for them, by their great krill god. But if they knew how big the sea and planet around them was!
Of course, the plankton still might be right. But this is why the church fought poor Galileo: what do you mean the earth isn't the center of the universe! Of course it is! In Genesis God places man in Eden as if that little patch is the pinnacle of creation; for a human body it surely beats what we know of the rest of the cosmos. But if I were going to make sentient beings in my image, I wouldn't make them infintesimal, the size of dust specks, and put them afloat in a remote corner of Lake Tahoe. It's as if God built a universe the size of Disneyland and then put the really significant part, the emotive and self-reflective and even eternal part, that which he would eventually die to redeem, on one of the hairs on the swinging leg of the Caribbean pirate sitting on the bridge. Why?
The fact is I just don't know; this piece of plankton can only speculate. There is something which might be useful here called the anthropic principle. In my mind, this relates closely to what is known as the teleological argument, though the two differ. The anthropic principle notes that if just one of many constants in the universe (macro or micro) was just slightly different than it is, life, or life as we can imagine it, could not exist. In some sense then, the universe seems made for life to evolve. The teleological argument for God's existence, or the argument from design (which I still find powerful) notes the enormous balance, complexity, and inter-connectedness of the universe and argues for an intelligent creator. I won't discuss either of these much here, but in terms of the size problem, could the size of the universe be related to the anthropic principle? Did the universe have to be this big for humans to drive up, get out of the car, and poke around the yard?
That no one can answer, at least now now, but it brings us to another riddle and one the church frets over needlessly. Did humans evolve naturally (but still miraculously) from the environment or did God actively intervene by circumventing, surpassing, extending natural laws to produce our bodies and minds (as appears to be the case in Genesis)? Imagine being a tiny observer inside a woman's womb and watching a child form. Impressive. If you missed the moment of conception, if you were looking back and your entire span of comprehension was one hour of the pregnancy, you could see a fetus slowly growing but not understand how this process began or where it was headed. That is analogous to our position as observers of the universe. And as far as we can tell, babies are made and develop without circumventing natural laws. It's amazing, but it happens. There really is evidence, though I agree not decisive proof, for evolution. What if the evolutionists are right? What if we evolved via natural selection, after the apparently random rise of life from non-life; as if the universe, astoundingly, conceived us? What if biologists get to the point where they can describe, even recreate, the origin of life without having to resort to supernatural force ('and at this point in the process, God spoke, a miracle happened')?
That does not mean God does not exist, that he did not design this improbably enormous universe with us, or the possibility of something like us, in mind. Perhaps the odds against the formation and evolution of life are so long (and many seem to agree on this) the universe had to be this big for life to occur anywhere in it; hence my use of the anthropic principle. But many would say I'm reaching. If one is God, why create natural laws which demand such a vast cosmic womb-nursery? Again, I don't have an answer.
It's also possible we're not the only life forms in space; though it also seems highly unlikely we'd ever make contact of any kind if the universe is at all as Einstein understood it. It is useless to speculate on what those other beings think of God and creation, if they think or exist at all. But perhaps there are other inhabitants in the immense universe besides us! Other sentient/reflective and even worshipful species. Maybe we're just one small, though very troublesome, group.
Additionally, the fact is we live in space-time, and most likely God as creator doesn't. If God exists outside both time and space, the length of the universe's life span would not exist for him, the size of the universe would not be a barrier for him. It would have neither age nor bigness nor smallness in a way we simply can't comprehend. The stars have always looked impressive; we see this ourselves when we look up at night, but also in the Psalms and in Paul and in other literature, even Kant. Perhaps God wanted to leave a testament to himself which only grows in power the more we know of our cosmos. As the unimaginable vastness becomes more apparent, its creator begins to truly appear frightening; the term fear of God begins to make sense. It could be said ancient man had a smaller view of God simply because he had a much smaller view of his universe.
Finally, Jesus said people would stumble over him and his message, and they do. He was born in an out of the way town in a conquered nation; despite miraculous signs and messianic expectations he was ultimately unrecongized and executed. He taught in parables, riddles really, and in Mark especially, he attempts to conceal his power and his role in history from society at large. So what makes us think we'll find a big blinking sign in space saying 'made by Jesus, hecho a Jesus'? I've mentioned Occam's razor before, and I continue to admire its analytic and predictive power. Basically, Occam's razor says the simplest solution is the most probable; or the least complicated cause and effect series is the one most likely. It says a lot more than that, as you can tell from the link, but it's not infallible; it's not a law by any means. While it would be nice to be sitting on a sphere, with a ceiling a few thousand miles over us, with lots of lights shining (like Truman) and imagine God outside the building, the universe is much more complex and staggering in its size.
I admit the size of space might argue against the probability of our special creation and redemption, though to do so implies God thinks like us; it is no proof against it. God could have reasons for this huge universe we know nothing about; maybe he simply enjoys its grandeur and beauty, but I can't think as God thinks. Isaiah surely had this right! As always, and I'll say it again and again, I believe because of the new testament, and especially, the gospel record of the words and actions of Jesus. Other lines of thought can lead me toward belief in something; only in the gospels have I found belief in someone. The concrete, radically individual Example. I really don't know why the universe is so spacious and apparently impersonal (though we have no idea what might live beyond our own solar system); I only know one who claimed he came from beyond it all, even made it all, and who is recorded as bypassing its irrefutable laws on a regular basis. That last part is crucial: if even one of the miracles attributed to Jesus was genuine...ah, then I have to admit I know even less about the cosmos than I'd like to pretend. The phrase 'he walks on water' is used now to describe someone apparently perfect, without flaw; the fact is one who could do that might or might not be perfect, but he surely would have a power and an awareness beyond anything I could envision.
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