In a Grain of Sand

What is not understood that needs to be? Not regarding the possibility of God but the means by which such questions are addressed and the honest and dishonest ways these questions are addressed or avoided.

The problems with Gervais: 1) his faith in science and the scientific method. First that science posits as evidence what it posits, not all that may count: Romanticism v. Classicism. Second that in fact science is overwhelming driven by market and cultural forces and not the pure inquiry or the desire for knowledge itself that could be its only self-consistent means of justification.

The problem with Dawkins: He says 1) we’re all bound to be wrong, as in we may choose Christ but Islam is in fact true. So we’re all willing to make choices that will prove for most of us failures. The choice of atheism isn’t different in kind. 2) The God of Love doesn’t manifest in history, ergo there is no such God (the Glouster complaint). 3) He asks “Why do I have to believe in God to be a good person?” All mere bluster. No substance. Like so many atheist, he chooses the least advanced, sophisticated, clever, philosophically considered version of theism to attack. It’s a straw man. It’s an empty suit of clothing. Yes, we’re all bound to be wrong. All valid theology admits this and always has. Having faith and being right in the details of one’s faith, which is to say, raising faith to a catechism, these are two different things. My brain needs me to give verbal substance to my ideas of God just as most cultures have been led to create images of God in wood or metal or plaster. The words are no more God than the wooden picture is. It has always been possible to confuse the image with the thing. Even Plato knew this made know sense. Secondly, the claim that the God of love isn’t manifest in history (because of all the manifest horrors of history) it a claim to know the mind of God. It comes down to “if I were God, I wouldn’t do or allow these things: the death of children, the suffering of the bereaved—the whole of Hamlet’s soliloquy. If I were all powerful and all loving, I’d create Heaven and skip Earth. But we don’t know the mind of God. And we do know that we cannot be our best selves in any other universe than the one we exist in. If God loves you and wants you to exist, then this is where and how you must exist. There is no beauty without death. There is no love without death. I don’t know what Heaven is, whether it exists, what it will be like if it does. I know it depends on Earth. As Billy Collins said, the cloth flower isn’t pretty because it isn’t dying. No, you don’t have to believe to be a good person, insofar as it’s possible to be a good person. A lot of good people are atheists; a lot of evil people profess theism. Would you be a better person if you were also a believer? I suspect so. But Jesus said he came to heal the sick, not the healthy. The question is worth exploring. Lewis did a good job with this one. It’s not relevant to faith in God. The answer will neither make you or prevent you from being a believer.

The problem with Brian Cox. In the effectively infinite universe earth is insignificant. Life is insignificant. The word however is without meaning in that statement. Or if it means anything, it just means physically small. That’s true, but “insignificant” suggests, “not a sign of anything,” ergo “without meaning.” Small can’t have that meaning (and not the paradox that arises already: it’s meaning is that it is without meaning)—small can’t have the meaning unless you qualify it as “insignificant for.” One drop of poison is 100 gallons of pure water is insignificant if what you want to do is drink the water. It’s fundamentally significant if you want to test the sensitivity of a poison detector. Brian Cox therefore must mean that earth/us/life is insignificant if you want to say that there is a God, that the universe is meaningfully meaningful. Size, even relative size, doesn’t tell us that. Even on earth rarity is almost always the very basis of value. Paintings are more valuable than novels because they are one of a kind. Rubies are more valuable than granite because there are far fewer of them.

Let’s not stop there. Two people are sitting in beach chairs on the beach. Sand stretches for miles in both directions—as far as eyes can see. Every retreating wave multiplies the amount of visible sand. One person says to the other, “no one grain of sand is significant.” Person two says, “are you sure.” “Yes,” says one, ”I’m sure. There are billions of them an they’re all alike.” “If no one grain of sand is significant, then you’ll have no trouble showing me an insignificant grain of sand. Are you up for the challenge? Find one.”

               Up for the challenge, easiest thing he’s ever done, person one reaches down, scoops up a handful, lets most of it fall back, brushes away the sand clinging to the sweat of his palm until he has just one grain of sand nestled in the valley in the center of his hand. He points, “one insignificant grain of sand.” Person two takes the grain of sand the holds it up. “Out of all the billions of grains of sand on this beach, you picked this one. You used it to explain to me the profound and paradoxical meaning of the insignificance of a grain of sand. This grain of sand at this moment is the most significant grain of sand on this beach. This grain of sand holds the meaning of the whole beach, the meaning, in fact of meaning itself.”

               “Anyone of the could do that,” says person one.

               “There is therefore not one an insignificant grain of sand anywhere on this beach.”

Nietzsche: the harder case. Nietzsche’s case against theism involves him turning Christianity against itself. Ressentiment is sin. It’s not an effect of adopting Christian values. It’s what those values, when they are truly manifest, oppose and defeat. Faith is the tool that prevents power from creating ressentiment in the actual powerful and prevents the powerless from reacting to power in this self-destructive way. It’s not a product or a side-effect of faith. It’s why faith is needed.

And that may be enough. How would it be dramatized—and can we substitute something else for God or Faith? What is like God?

A designer—of a computer world.

An artist or other craftsman.

Anyone who chooses to make or not make in a way that people won’t understand.

A parent.

Anyone who won’t do x in the way you’d want him to do X.

Shakespeare.

What qualities of God matter:

Maker (artist), lover, omniscient, parent.

We want to get out of the maze that we are on. We make certain assumptions. First that it is a maze. Second that it has an outside. If it’s a maze it has a maker. If it only accidentally looks mazelike from where we stand, though not in all features, then none of our assumptions hold. If it has a maker then that maker made the maze in such a way that we can get out. Being a maze, it is something we’re supposed to try to get out of. Getting out of it is, in at least one important sense, the point. It may not be the hole point.