The importance of insignificance

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
--Mahatma Gandhi

(Thank you Bro. Larry for the quote)

Collected quotes on the inside front cover of the journal

"If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
--Paul of Tarsus (1 Corinthians 13:2)

“The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness”
-- Andre Malraux

“Mystery is another name for our ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain”
-- Tryon Edwards

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
-- Albert Einstein

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.”
--Neil Armstrong

"Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable."
--Bruce Lee

Desert Journal 1 -- Tower of Knowledge

ToB = Tower of Babel

Returning to the ToB story I note a few things, that humans when acting and thinking in concert have unlimited potential, so much so that God saw the ultimate implications, humans could "become like gods", yet without being God. They were reaching beyond their pale. Of interest is the word pale, in former usage it was a "stake or pointed piece of wood" as used in fencing, a paled fence. So beyond the pale is to venture outside the fence. As I read in ToB God had not set the fencing as yet, but now could see the need for fencing, for humans were indeed created in the image of God, so too could "become like gods." The "thinking in concert" of the ToB story is a common language. With a common language the single human mind can work in parallel with countless human minds, and like multiple computer CPUs working in parallel, former problems of infinite complexity are reduced to countable problems of manageable solvability. Now what does the ToB story have to do with computers and science? The commonality of the language of science. Science is not dependent on language. Science is dependent on a method, the scientific method -- the accepted techniques of observation, description, prediction (hypothesis), testing hypothesis by experimentation, adjusting hypothesis to fit results of experimentation and observation, and repetition of experimenting and adjustment of hypothesis until experiment and hypothesis match, at which time hypothesis becomes a theory. Theory equals observations explained and predictions made. So what does all this mean? It mean that we humans are constructing our ToB with bricks of theory. Each new theory a new brick increasing our Tower of Knowledge, this new tower too reaching for heaven, reaching to unlock the secrets that have until now forever been beyond the pale. We have broken through the fence, thinking the fence an offense, keeping us human, keeping us forever in mystery, but now, outside the fence, how long will it take for us to shed this humanness, this humanness that has kept us since the dawn of ages in mystery. And what will this new world without mystery reveal?

Matt 13:13-15  “Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. “And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’

The evolution of love

I find the seemingly random differences in humans interesting when compared to the breeding of dogs. Using AKC standards, one can imagine the look and behavior and most details of a particular dog without ever seeing that dog, if one were told the dog is pure breed and of a sanctioned AKC breed. Not so with humans. So in a relatively short time wild dogs have gone from canines with random differences to many breeds that are near clones of one another. Which makes me wonder why do some humans feel and experience more a mystery of love while other feel more a utility of love? We see very clearly that in a relatively short time wild canines have evolved (with human direction) into tiny furry cute lapdogs (or pitbulls). So it seems it doesn't take much time to change a creature from this to that. So I ask, could a purely "utility love" of ancient humans, through tens of thousands of years, been shaped and transformed through religion, myth, superstition, to this present day "mysterious love"? And if you think that possible, then how do we now view all that "religion/myth/superstition" of the past that shaped what today most would consider good and what makes us human -- love? (I am not speaking of group or institutional changes that the religions and mythologies of peoples have created, but the individual genetic changes that transformed a pre-homo sapiens with a sort of utilitarian kind of love into a present-day musing fellow that is filled with love and compassion.) And why am I thinking this at all? I think to better think through some of the current challenges to religion by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and others. Apart from the challenges are the statistics, a recent survey of over 1,600 science faculty at elite research universities came up with 38% of those in the natural sciences did not believe in God, and 31% in the social sciences did not believe in God. I mention these numbers because some well meaning Christians attempt to construct biblical arguments to counter challenges from atheists, yet as I've said before, when someone can't get past the first sentence of the Bible, and the atheist cannot, then how do you expect a dialogue when you pepper rebuttals with scripture? Maybe the choice is to have no dialogue? I think not.

Humans vs God - Round 1

I'm still hobbling about, my trek into the desert was soon halted when the mistake of wearing the yucca leaf fiber sandals woven by Bro. Clarence proved not to be up to the rigors of desert hiking. My mistake. But the blisters didn't appear until it was too late, too late to return for my hiking boots, too late to continue to the even more remote parts that I had marked on my map, so with much whining (to myself) I was able to make it to the town of Mojave and ended up in a Motel 6 to nurse my wounds. Yes, the first winch of distress and I seek not the medicinal plants that the indigenous desert people's used, no, I sought a Motel 6. Humbler now I am. But I might add that it wasn't all blisters, for during the second night sleeping under the stars "something" bit the heel of my left foot. I can't claim it was a snake or scorpion or some other fierce creature, most likely a fire ant. And the good news? I did carry my journal and will in the coming days transcribe a bit to show that the trek wasn't a complete failure, for the mental and spiritual trek continued despite the inconvenience of the distressed physical.

I departed with thoughts of the ongoing science/faith debate and was thinking of how it relates to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel story. You may want to grab your Bible and reread Genesis 11, for here I have the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus' account of the story as he recorded it in "Antiquities of the Jews" (c 94 AD):

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power…

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion…

Time to Set Sail! ... again

I have been contemplating a hike of sorts, perhaps a few days, or a few weeks, and with a near full moon and the desert somewhat between the hot of summer and the freeze of winter nights, I think I should set sail. A time in the wilderness sounds almost ... cozy.

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."

--Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Potential revisited

The difference between a 3-month old human and ‘little apes’ is ‘potential’—what baby humans possess and what the little apes don’t. Leaving university vocabulary behind, I would say baby humans have a very advanced CPU, not simply ‘hardwired’ —- for the human brain isn’t hardwired, it is ‘fluid-wired’ with the potential to grow evermore complex, not only from generation to generation, but within the lifespan of each human brain. But that very advanced CPU has little potential without the software to drive it. As research on feral children have shown, the potential of the human brain is wasted, the ‘wild child’ advances very little beyond a very clever ‘little ape’ … alas, given a mother, that baby immediately begins to ‘download’ software to drive that CPU/brain. And a father and immediate family adds more software for the tiny brain to process and adapt to, and the neighborhood provides even more variety of ‘programming’ to the CPU to work with, yet the fledgling CPU in a baby's skull haven’t even begun to reach its potential. Ever more circles of community input more software into the tiny brain, software that becomes ‘fluidware’ that interacts with itself. Slowly from potential springs forth a mind, and even yet more potential is ever present and awaits that which will feed it. And what became of our dear ‘little apes’? I would say that they have not the ‘image of God’ as we humans have. The image of God? For those who view everything in evolutionary terms, perhaps you can think of this as that point in human evolution when humans first became self aware, when they first could think of themselves as apart from their surroundings, and therefore could make decisions for themselves, that first dawning of freewill. The Biblical genesis story paints this picture as Adam and Eve and a fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Or perhaps you could call it the tree of loss of innocence? Evolution or Biblical story, humans crossed over from being unaware of selfness to self awareness, from union with nature to apartness from nature. So, it is we humans who are created in God’s image and thereby have the potential to act like God, in that potential brings the gift of creativity, and with creativity we can experience on a minuscule scale the joy of creation.

A beautiful sunset

After the sun set and the blaze of colors disappeared, we could make out the glow above the mountains far to the southwest. The mountains are ablaze. I feel ashamed that I saw beauty in that sunset. Fire. It knows no pity. It knows only hunger. And right now it is eating an entire landscape, and wants more. From afar we watch. What else can we do?

The survival of grandmas

Bro. Clarence was musing about how evolutionists have trouble with grandmothers. As he explained, in a strict evolutionary sense, females past menopause would seem to be less valuable to the group, and with increasing age, would become a negative for group survival. So what is so valuable, in a group survival sense, about grandmothers? I came up with the idea that it is the grandmother's eyes and tongue and memory that ensures the survival of the group, in that they are the survivors of countless food gathering expeditions, they the ones that identify the good mushroom from the bad mushroom, to illustrate the obvious benefit of having a good grandma. Of course the younger females with less sharp eyes and taste and memory fall by the wayside early in life, sampling way too many bad plants. Of course the men are always suspect with some mistaking greens for reds, so they are send off hunting where such mistakes are less harmful to the group. And like a good encyclopedia of plants and herbs, grandmas are well protected and kept ever handy, for without them the next meal you eat may be your last. Bro. Juniper thought that a bit too complicated and offered that grandmothers provided grandchildren with warm love (and treats) that created a bond between the two generations that the parent's generation would surely not break.

Autumn leaves of green

In summer when we seek comfort under those trees that work mightily to deflect and reject the cool greens and stand tall with leaves shimmering with the absorbed reds and golds, yet it takes autumn for us to realize what summer held when in turn those trees of grandeur finally accept that tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum that we call green, hidden to our eyes dazzled by the now rejected waves of reds and golds.

How's the weather?

Could the environment shape the language shape the thoughts and I think they did, until the age of great migrations stirred things up a bit, but Kierkegaard was a product of how many gray-sky generations? And Thoreau was a newcomer to a more sunny and varied clime than that his ancestors were shaped by. And I wonder if Bro. Paul will notice that too in the folks that he meets that have been shaped by forever generations in that sunny clime of West Africa?

Does not the sun peel away the clothes and produce an extroverted people? While the forever gray skies cover one with layer upon layer and deep within this wrapping the body and the mind becomes introverted?

And we, a generation of choice, with our controlled environments, and freedom to move from clime to clime, yet hidden deep inside of each of us is that clime that shaped the countless generations of our greatest of great grandparents.

Faith and Reason. Friends or Foes?

Reason. Is it reasonable to place such great value on it? I think so. But why should I think so? Is it not but an evolutionary formed pattern of brain cells that the human mind found more desirable in order that puny long-limbed and clumsy creatures could organize in groups for protection from the more wily beasts that could and still do make easy meals of solitary humans? Sounds reasonable to me. And me, spending many hours each day talking to the Creator of the universe, is that reasonable? I dare say I know how most will answer. But for me, it is as reasonable as the tiger catching sight of you and quickly making a meal of you. You might think of it as an innate drive in me, one that some would sooner wish to quell with reason than allow to have its way. For me, I let it have its way. And freer I feel I am, when reason reluctantly yields, to the One that gave it will.

Meditations on a Korean celadon vase

The formless lump of clay that finds itself atop a spinning world, a spinning world that does give it symmetry, but from the bottom up, the guiding pressure of the potter's hands lifts this lump of primal ooze up and into a celadon vase of a thousand cranes, a thousand cranes awaiting to burst free from their earthen home to fly away in a thousand different ways.

Muddled?

This morning at break fast Bro. Sedwick said that my writing in recent days seems rather muddled. Bro. Juniper interjected a hasty "yes indeed" while Bro. Clarence simply smiled as he passed me some fried tofu. Muddled? You think so?

Riding the arrowhead of time

As far as I'm concerned, we God-created evolving humans are riding this arrow of time, we at the arrowhead with the future rushing toward us like a desert zephyr, yet still the most tinniest speck of time is all that we know, but behind are sands and rocks and mountains of time past. Still, we are the culmination of the past, all the past that evolution attempts to describe the building of, and what is it that we must carry on? Carry on to a distant future? A future that will find the children of ten thousand generations of our great grandchildren -- they -- they then will be riding that arrowhead, and they will carry that riddle that must never be lost. The riddle of the ultimate why. Why life? Why are we here? For what purpose and point? For if this quest for answers is tossed aside as being pointless, then will all those past evolutionary forces that produced within us a questing will to seek the unknown be all for naught?

Today's meditation

"When we seek goodness and sanctity, we defy nature."
--David Gelernter

Just a thought

Perhaps what we call free will is how intelligence attempts to deal with chance. In all other life forms chance is an intruder that has its own way, whereas in humans, we have the potential to direct chance with free will.

When one can't get past the first sentence

In discussions with atheists, or those who believe that God or Creator or Designer does not and never existed, I don't think I've ever "preached" beyond Genesis 1:1, but I have spoken about humankind and their organizational skills, of which Paul of Tarsus was skilled indeed. But all beyond Genesis 1:1 is for another post, so for me the genesis question, or the prior Big Bang question is what needs to be answered before one can say life has ultimate value (even if that value is unknown to us) or not. I say that if God/Creator/Designer exists then some ultimate value "is there" for us to seek, whereas if "Nothing" is what made all this happen, and "Nothing" is exactly that, nothing, and cosmos evolution came about by various interactions of "laws" that simply were, and further along the evolution that Darwin discovered continued the process of interactions, and that nothing ever caused it to begin, that nothing interacts with the laws and the matter besides the laws and the matter, then I see no ultimate value in life, safe for what we with minds to observe it can create. If we are the only minds (that we know of), then we are the gods, we are the ones that create values, create purpose, or not. And as I imagine it, then we spend our time alive in the way we think works for us, but when we die, then we are no more. And every thought and memory will disappear into nothingness, save for the very simplistic memories of the still living of that person who is now nothingness. I say simplistic memories because I think no two persons can ever know the depths of the mind of the other except for short moments of "ah ha! I know exactly how you feel" But saying all that, I believe that if one cannot get beyond Genesis 1:1, then the rest of the story holds not much meaning, for the foundation is missing. And finally, I have no doubt that many who don't get beyond Genesis 1:1 celebrate life in various manners (and have fun doing it), for life can be so interesting, if one comes to it with a questing mind. But if we find ourselves here "just because", and in spite of that, we go ahead and marvel in wonder of it all, then my mind cannot help but recoil, for purpose too would be as dead a word that humans' ever came up with.

Imagining gone awry?

Oh, I imagine that if I believed that God did not exist, and that this ALL is just just, and is is, and beyond that is nothing and once one takes one's last breath, then for that being all is nothing, if I believed in no Creator, and I found myself here, now, and infinite nothingness for my being once I die a physical death, then I suppose I would either busy myself with "whatever" that would keep me distracted and comfortable, or I would attempt to prolong life as long as possible, and if life was created by chance and happenstance, then I suppose my mind would think that if we could only break life down to the most common denominators, and then reconstruct life without evolution-defined limits, so that a human mind could live on indefinitely, with of course all sorts of cell manipulation and creation of not only limb and organ space parts, but space parts in the micro realm of the human body. Yes, that would be the only quest, and it seems to be the current unspoken quest of science, to make what evolution created and transform and make it "better." But of course I don't believe in life as chance and happenstance. But then that's another story.

The religion of science

And will we celebrate that day, that day when science has made fact each and ever material bit and piece of the human brain to expose the mind for what they announce it is? When the computer that they unveil can replicate any and every though, impulse, wonder of the evolution created computer? When scientist can tweak the program this way or that way and dazzle the audience with oh so human feelings spoken with a very perfected simulation of a warm and caring human voice -- when it is all exposed, when it is all accounted for, when it is all a matter of matter, then will we be happy?