Letter to a Scientist

I hope that you will forgive the length of this reply, as well as the time that has elapsed since your simple question of a few days ago; it's just that I have been lying on the floor amazed since I saw your quick note. A more profound and even plaintive question, I can't imagine.

"Who said G/god?"

I was immediately reminded of the Sufi dervish who happened upon a nest of Qalanders, deep into their sensual and ecstatic rituals, a series of sensual orgies they undertake in the hopes of shucking off the final vestiges of cloying humanity (for them, "cloying humanity" is represented by the social and cultural mores that define actions as "good" or "bad," and even their sense of "self"). The Qalanders undertake the most obscene, hedonistic "rituals" to unfetter themselves from any vestige of human morality and conditioning.

Shyly, our dervish stood at the door and peered in at the Bacchanalian scene, so foreign to his humble eyes. "Come in," said one of the Qalanders, more of a demand than a question, and before he knew it, the quiet dervish had been relieved of his goods, his clothes, his sobriety and perhaps other appurtenances; hours later, he was thrown out of the den like a rag doll, completely drunk as the day was dawning.

Having been touched in some profound manner, and now perplexed beyond understanding, he spent the rest of his life wandering in awe of every moment, oscillating between utter confusion and an ecstatic, mystical realization that lies somewhere beyond the sense of self, muttering: "Come in," and shaking his head in amazement.

You see, Doctor, that we can even ask such a question ("Who said G/god?") perplexes me. Who, indeed, "says" G/god? Though I might aver, who doesn't? We are, after all, but a message from God to God, and as such, each of us "individuals" is but a subtle eructation in the fabric of the universe, bubbling momentarily on the surface before easing back into our natural quantum (or "G/godly") state. Think "David Bohm."

Just what kind of era do we live in, that a person might say this: "I do not think that there are any other sorts of messages... hidden or otherwise. Why do I say this? Because we can explain what we see based on scientific measurements, experiments, and theory.
Widmanstatten texture is pretty well understood without any recourse to metaphysics or religion."

This statement immediately reminds me of a story about the great 18th century Jewish mystic, Baal Shem Tov, entitled, "The Famous Miracle:"

"A naturalist came from a great distance to see the Baal Shem Tov and said: "My investigations show that in the course of nature the Red Sea had to divide at the very hour that the children of Israel passed through it. Now what about that famous miracle!"
The Baal Shem answered: "Don't you know that God created nature? And he created it so, that at the hour the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, it had to divide. That is the great and famous miracle!""

No doubt you might disagree with me, but proposing that we humans can get to the "bottom" of anything represents our own particular hubris, that which ultimately dooms humanity to being a failed evolutionary experiment. Our brains and prehensile hands will prove to be about as helpful to us as body mass was to the Dinosaurs, if we don't expand our spiritual maturity, and our sense of humility before the universe.

You know the Tower of Babel story, right? The silly Lilliputs of the Jewish Bible building their structure so that they might get a glimpse of God? The smashing of that tower and ensuing chaos represents the beginnings of perceived human variances, and of our current tribal structure of "different" ethnicities, religions, cultures etc.

Well now, through our technology, Internet, scientific know-how and other narrow but prideful intellectual pursuits, doesn't it seem that perhaps we are building another Tower of Babel, yet an even more insidious one, that allows us not to "peek" at God, but to supplant It? We no longer have need of anything; give us but a few scientific instruments and a pair of stiletto heels, and we're good to go . . .

Well, Albert Einstein, who knew more about both Physics and God than I ever will, said he didn't know what munitions might be "de rigeur" for World War III, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. After the fall of the latest Tower of Babel!

See? What I'm getting at? As long as we think that we can operate outside of the forces of the universe (on the grand scale) or the forces of history, even, on the micro-scale (as believed our current political leaders when they trundled us into Iraq), then we are indeed ruled by blind hubris. When we believe that we, humans, define an "end" -- in any manner -- we have lost sight of what is truly important, and have narrowed our perspective to that of an ant.

I'm no scientist, but I believe that Chaos theory posits that there is a similar way in which systems connect and move, be it population distribution across geography and time, the stock market, weather patterns, dancers on a dance floor -- what have you. The whole system is completely interlinked, predictably unpredictable and perfect. It is a controlled, vast, chaotic contingency that underpins the movements of all systems, from the way that a family moves around the house on a Saturday morning to the manner in which elements ebb and collect throughout the universe.

Systems, not specific aspects therein, cannot be boxed and tied up, "understood" and explained without taking into account all other parts of the whole -- both known and unknown. And underpinning the whole thing, the Great Law Giver, that which searches for Itself through the unfolding of all of these systems in time (instead of outside of it),
the blind, unconscious mover desperately in search of "self" – a "force" defined by the whole, while everything else within the system can fool itself into believing that he/she/it is discrete somehow in itself (as we humans certainly do) -- this vast, encompassing force underpins all, even the Widmanstatten texture forming on the cooling cores of all planets. And only that force, that which defines the "whole," can have any true "perspective" on what is going on here, in this universe.

As such, I do contend that the Widmanstatten texture have far more to tell us than that they are created by a slow cooling core of nickel and iron, and their marks are entirely comprehensible within what we currently think of as "science." In my opinion, to box Widmanstatten texture into this small explanation represents a belief not unlike that naturalist who came to the Baal Shem, convinced that his calculations had ruled out the necessity of God.

I am, as ever, sorry for the length of this reply, as well as my own lack of humility, all while claiming that human hubris will ultimately do us all in.

If you find a certain offensive, pedantic and even patronizing tone to my reply -- you are certainly not alone. For some reason, people sometimes take me this way?

With perplexion,

Tom