Further Meditations

The time has come dear reader, for me to once again tread delicately along the razor’s edge that separates madness from stupidity. Dedicated Cavernites will recall that when I last swam these troubled waters I got a cramp and ended up floundering around in panicked circles, leaving in my frothing wake a hail of words that, for all their ferocity and velocity, amounted to naught but so much hot air. Despite that last thrashing effort, I remain troubled in the face of these thoughts. I fear that their impenetrable murkiness will lead me into strange currents whose destination I cannot predict. Still, I will know no peace until I release these malformed hypotheses into the gasping vacuum of the intertubes. So loyal reader, gather your courage and gird any loin yet ungirded, for we charge once more into the breach.

Those of you plugged into the zeitgeist will know that much has been made recently of conflict between science and religion. Zealots on both sides of the argument accuse the other of being the agents of intolerance or godless nihilist respectively. Many books have been sold and much airtime filled with glorious nonsense from both sides.  The argument is, as far as I know, the most pointless non-sports argument to ever be undertaken by sober and otherwise sane people. It is pointless because neither side can convince the other and more so because neither side has a fully satisfying argument. The argument of a strident creationist is that they believe it because they think it to be true. Fine as far as it goes, but not that useful for a non-believer. The atheist argument is simply that we can understand how some of the systems of the universe work, the world was not created in six days; therefore there is no god. It’s a non sequitur that does little to cover the fact that science can only answer hows, not whys. Tangled in this Gordian Knot are those who attempt to bridge the gap between the scientific fact and religious fervor with crackpot theories that neither serve science nor adhere to any creed and consequently appeal only to those with no understanding of either. I am a card-carrying crackpot.

The first step in finding the reason for our existence lies in understanding that which drives the universe.  For lack of a more satisfying term we can call this most essential of motivators the divine.  To understand the divine we should look to its manifestations. Start first with those most basic rules, the laws of conservation, there is not a thing that can become nothing, and no nothing that can become a thing. Gaze upon the cosmos and see the clockwork of gravity spinning everything in total order and balance. Any set of circumstances left alone will find a balance. Simply put, the divine, with apologies to pagans everywhere, is perfection. It is not until we come to the interactions of life that we find disorder. We are the root of that disorder, for we possess the intelligence to alter the system, pushing the fulcrum point to where ever is most favorable given the conditions. Balance can’t be achieved under these circumstances. Intellect is chaos; it grinds in the gears of perfection. The divine is perfect; therefore it does not think.