Cosmic Vistas

Speaking of faith (last post), my own persuades me that humans are something more than energy- and matter-consuming and waste-producing machines. The part of us that transcends this structure appears to be superior, not the product of the machine but, most likely, the reason why the machine is there in the first place. Our minds tell us that we’re here for a purpose—and that purpose is not merely to help others or to leave behind fine memories, in other people’s minds. Therefore our purpose points beyond the machine. The machine is a tool. But why would we need such tools? Here is an instance where knowledge thins out and only speculation remains.

The traditional speculations are largely descriptive: matter, life, intelligence. Life is subdivided into vegetative, animal, and human. The first two have souls that die, the third one does not. We can go beyond this and include angels—that have no bodies. And considering that bodily differentiation make us individually recognizable units but sharing one species, the speculation (Thomas Aquinas’, for example) has it that each angel is also its own species. With angels we leave the created order. Under this schema, humans are always embodied—and death is the consequence of the Fall. After resurrection we shall have bodies again; as for what kind (will they sweat, defecate, have to eat, etc.) on that the speculation rather thins out. Here faith, which I hold must be supported by intuition, fails me. I don’t detect a resonance.

Let me unpack it a little more. I resist the notion that only humans have immortal souls. The biosphere beyond us must have a meaning too—and what if it is the same meaning as in our own case? At the same time, I have no problem thinking that there was a “fall” of some sort and that it has necessitated “bodies.” Further, the notion that death is the consequence of the Fall makes good sense. These tools, being material, cannot last forever. It may also be highly desirable that they drop away at regular intervals. When the job is done, we lay the tools aside.

The Fall, of course, complicates matters. If we take the Judeo-Christian transmission, before it came was Paradise—presumably a place where bodies existed and, indeed, had to ingest food. Why else those forbidden apples that caused the fall? And if ingestion, then also defecation. Or should we accept that depiction of Paradise in symbolical terms—described so that fallen humanity would understand it? In that case Paradise is a previous condition; the eating of the apple is a symbolical depiction of some sort of failure. And all that followed, not least being here, and bodies, and apples, and all the rest—came later. As a consequence.

That we are in a fallen state is rather obvious. That we are personally responsible for being here makes sense; therefore the cause of the Fall was not merely Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience. Let’s view that, too, as symbolical short-hand. Thinking ourselves as stranded here by some cosmic disaster—don’t you dare go near that Big Bang, child, I don’t know what I’ll do if you disobey—introduces an irrational arrangement into reality—and if I wanted that, Materialism has a much better explanation. Occam’s razor, and so forth, would make me choose that.

That, finally, leaves me but one other speculative option. Call it some heavenly Outward Bound program intended to put the newly created soul-beings into a very rough environment in which to learn how to become genuinely human. That model suggests that life here was created by a superior heavenly community, carefully engineered to develop slowly until students could be sent down here to learn and to develop. That one, I’m afraid, produces even less resonance than any of the other models. That this realm, functionally, is a developmental realm is certainly true. But as for its creation, I think the Fall from a paradisaical realm is a better explanation. Whether to develop or not to is left to those who’re here. And failure to develop probably means one thing: Staying here—whether in a body or not. And it is better to be in a body rather than not. We can at least handle, rearrange, and play with matter—rather than simply contemplating our fallen state.