Matters I’ve been mulling over recently, and have touched on here and there on Borderzone, include the sorting of “deliberate” and “chance,” the nature of space-time and whatever might be the environment “over there,” and the notion that if higher realms extend beyond this one, they must be superior.
Deliberate? The world has been deliberately fashioned, never mind when and how. Chance? The same, but the cause is chance. I favor “deliberate” and would do so with enthusiasm were it not for observation which says “chance”—but not pure chance. The very existence of teleology (read “life”) suggests an invasion of this realm by something alien to it. And the highly engineered character of life suggests something like a tour de force—not a feeling that arises when I contemplate the formation of planets or of suns.
The actual patterns strongly contradict the top down theology of Catholicism (which is “deliberate”) in that they suggest a conflict between the existence of randomness and of omniscience, omnipotence, etc.
The emanationist model fits observation but is hard to reconcile with the presence of intelligence; it’s there, after all, in us. Intelligence, combined with omniscience, makes it seem weird that “waste” should be present in Reality or, what amounts to the same thing, that there should be such enormous ranges of purposeless material in existence.
Turning to intelligence, what makes zero sense is an evolving God. Reduced to a hard essence, such a “god” would be a creature. Therefore it does not surprise me how the Gnostics reasoned—imagining a very detached, indeed an indifferent and utterly unknowable God. But I have a primitive sort of intuition. Can’t imagine the Gnostic model even if I understand its logical rootings. Nor can I imagine creation as an emanation. That’s far too physical a description; the sun’s the model there. Can’t rightly credit a “fall” either—although it feels right. Can’t rightly credit it confidently in detail as the disobedience of a genuinely knowing community. The cosmic disaster model (Big Bang, say) fits things nicely—including viewing it as a kind of Fall. But it introduces the random into an equation where it could only mean a god who isn’t really in control. The atheistic solution works until we encounter life and intelligence.
It is a puzzlement.
Yet I also know that life and intelligence, together, absolutely force the conclusion of a living and intelligent Divine or Whole which must have all of the perfections Catholicism ascribes to it. There I stand, as it were, up against all of the observable contradictions. Is this where faith comes into the picture? It’s not difficult to believe because, as I say, I feel it as a force, compellingly. But the external evidence all testifies against in. Intelligence and life are, of course, internal evidence.
As in all good jokes, the punchline is in the last sentence.
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