Existence or "The God Thing"

Merlin, who knew it all.

Okay, all the talk about quantum existences is beginning to get to me. This blog has long been known to be “off the wall”, and all over the place, but if you notice the header up there on the top, you will see that it has a little bit to do with “The Eel River Valley, and the wisdom of the people that live there.” So Suzy Blah Blah and Spyrock have got me going again. Intelligent people always look beyond the boundaries of the accepted norm. They look for reasons that we are here, where we came from, and where we are likely to head. It is a reasonable thing to do. It is part of assuring ourselves that we can survive if it all turns to the worst.

We always look for the simple quick answers first. For some, the simple quick answer is-- “God, did it, and we are not to question God”.-- For some of us the question of-- “what is it all about”-- goes far beyond what the average mind wants to pursue. Albert Einstein came the closest to understanding the physical world that we live in. He felt that there was a universal formula that would explain everything, time, distance, future, past, mass, matter, and so on. He said that for the most part he could see and understand how it all worked and fit together, but the hard part was explaining it. He agonized over the one-universal-formula that would explain it all. He died before he could do that. Such is life. We are all inevitably bound the physical rules of the universe. Whether we understand them or not.

I was raised in a church, and attended Sunday School regularly. We used to get the little funny-book like things that explained all of the Jesus stories. I always wondered how much of it was true, because funny-books to me always meant make-believe. Most of the stuff that happened in the books seemed a little fantastic, even to my young mind. I hadn't seen any of them happen myself, so I was deeply suspicious that you could walk on water and that kind of stuff. I tried jumping off a six foot high porch, using an umbrella one time after watching a Mr. Magoo cartoon, where he easily floated down four stories without being hurt. So, I knew all about some stories being true and some being false. Don't try this at home kids, jumping off porches with an umbrella hurts!

I've learned the hard way to not believe anything, until I've learned it to be true. I can give you many examples of foolishly believing in something, only to end up wounded, or much smarter. I learned the hard way that in most all cases, things were exactly what they seemed to be, and no amount of hoping, or praying, ever changed anything for me. I was given very little in the way of explanation in matters of a spiritual nature. I discovered that it wasn't cool to ask the minister questions like; “Where did God come from”. being the inquizitive lad that I was, I knew that I was "In God's House" so I started to look around for him. When I got stuck in the piano, the minister suggested that maybe I was a little too young to understand church things. So, I resigned myself to asking myself questions, like; “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a noise?” I knew that I could touch a tree and it was real. I knew that I could touch the ground and it was real. I knew that if I jumped in the air that I always came down, gravity was real to me. I knew from having seen trees fall, that they make a noise when they hit the ground. So, if I leave the forest one day with a tree standing, and come back the next and it had fallen, that it made a noise. These things are all real and tangible to me, because I have faith in things that are real.

If I returned to the tree a year later, the leaves would be gone, and things would be starting rot. So, living in a real world, I knew that time changes the things around us. I knew that the tree had fallen a year ago, and that hadn't changed at all. Therefore, I know that the past never changes, it becomes fixed in place and time, by flowing through the present. The future is infinitely variable and subject to many changes. If I go to work and get hit by a truck on my way, it is what it is. If I had stopped to get my hat, I would have missed the truck and been saved. But, it may have been that if I stopped to get my hat it would have changed things to the point that I may have been hit by the truck anyway.

Some things are unpredictable and unchangeable. Some things we can do, and know. Like; if I stay home all day, I know that I better my chances of not being hit by a truck, but who really knows? Maybe a truck would come careening off the highway and burst through my house. So you have some affect on the probable outcome, but you can never be really sure. I only believe in the real world and I don't think that praying will change a thing. Some people do think that, so that's where I part with most people.

I had a physics teacher one time that said, “Tangibles are those things that you can hit with a hammer.” But science has taught me that on a molecular level, nothing really touches. The molecules come very close together until they are repulsed by the strong forces that surround atomic structures. So nothing really touches. That thought is amazing if you really think about it. Does anything touch in a black hole? Where universes are squeezed into such tiny particles that they become infinitely small? Do they become so small that they come out the other side of the black hole and into another parallel universe, equal and opposite, where the positive becomes the negative?

I had another professor in college explain that nothing really touches, but “just like two lovers making a child, they get close enough together for all practical purposes.” You see that I only believe in tangibles the things that you can hit with a hammer, and the other stuff I know are things that may never have answers. I'm happy living in a world that works for me, even if reality is brutal sometimes.

I deeply envy people like Einstein, who knew, or thought that he knew, how it all worked. Did Einstein believe in God? Or, did he not believe in God, and just felt it was best to say he did, to keep people comfortable? I've often wondered how many things that I'm not allowed to know by my limited grasp of the physical things around us. What did Einstein really see, and how much did he feel uncomfortable with sharing it with us. In our not too distant past, we would kill people like Einstein as a witch, because he couldn't possibly know that much with out having the magical powers.

Anyway, it always makes me wonder what people like Suzy Blah Blah and Spyrock see that I can't. If they were able to figure it all out, would they tell us? Or would they realize that it would scare us too badly for us to know the real truth of the universe. A chill just went up and down my spine, what was that all about?