Somewhere
in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas is the suggestion that when one
follows reason as far as it can go, that is a finger pointing to God.
Over the past several years, I have been considering what the
existence of consciousness, modern
cosmology, quantum
physics and relativity
can say about the origin of consciousness,
life
and the
universe. This
has led me to some conclusions, including that consciousness may be
primordial, that there may indeed be a “ghost
in the machine,” and that the creation of the universe seems to
have happened according
to laws written into the act. My way of summing all this up has
been to accept the notion that the universe is a product of conscious
intent and that we all share in that same consciousness. I have come
to think of the “creator” as a kind of Shakespeare who wrote a
cosmic script setting the stage full of interesting processes,
happenings and beings and dumped itself into it in order to
experience its creation first hand. (Each “I” is part of that
consciousness.) Another way to think about this might be to imagine
an all-powerful being who designed the most amazing multi-level,
multi-player computer game to play – to alleviate a really cosmic
case of boredom? – by downloading itself into it to play every role.
As
a former Catholic, however, I had trouble with the concept and notion
of “God.” Cleary the God of all three religions of the Book –
the Hebrew, Christian and Muslem
– was too anthropomorphized. The concept of God comes with baggage
I could not accept. A transcendent
being
like some sort of super human that loves us as a parent and deserves
worship is
simply a reflection of our own collective
lack of psychic maturity. There is also no evidence for such a
being
that judges us and will hold us accountable for our actions, right
and wrong. Given the fantastic and unlikely beauty of a universe
that seems just right for us, there is no reason to suppose that
there must be a heaven beyond it. Given our experience of the
various forms of evil, historical and current, there is also no
reason to suppose the need for some other hell. It seems clear to me
that the universe as it exists is ungoverned by any morality beyond
what we humans bring into it.
But
recently, sitting in the Bishops Garden at Washington’s National
Cathedral on a sunny, early spring morn, I made my peace with the
word God. Listening to the gentle sound of a burbling spring
and basking in the warmth of the sun, I considered the process by
which the millions of photons showering down reached me. The sun’s
energy comes from a myriad of fusions of two hydrogen atoms into one
helium in the sun’s core. It takes thousands of years for the
energy produced by each single fusion event to reach the surface of
the sun. Then it takes just eight minutes to travel the 93 million
miles to earth. The physical laws governing our universe are just
right to allow this font of endless free energy sitting in the middle
of an expanse of nothingness to bring to life our planet and all the
creatures on it.
Some
might say that that conditions may seem just right because else
wise
we wouldn’t be here. Just a happy accident out of an infinity of
possible combinations that don’t work for conscious life forms.
But that seems to violate Occam's Razor. Why suppose an infinite
number of random fluctuations just to come up with one that has us?
Much more direct to suppose that the one that contains us
was
meant to do so. And besides, the fundamental questions
remain
why is there anything at
all rather
than nothing and how could something arise out of nothing. Much
more logical to recognize the likelihood of a First Cause. And
one
might
as well call that God. Not one to worship, follow
or depend upon for any kind of salvation but one to wonder about.
Accepting the existence of St.
Thomas’ God
opens, at
the
most basic level, the door of wonder.
