The Perspective of The Himalayas
In nature, rhythm reveals reality to us, on time scales, which humans gladly live within! From a broad perspective, seasons show us reliable annual replenishment, and on a broader scale, our earth has mountains 20,000 feet high created by land masses crashing into each other tens of millions of years-ago. But while this is where the replenishment itself comes from, had we seen it coming, would we perhaps have tried to stop it? Huge masses of land slowly crashing into each other?
No! Not if we could see it all! If ice-age beings, in an imaginative way, knew, 70-million years-ago the plates of the continents were on a collision course, would it have been prudent for them to try and stop it (for the sake of the future)?
Of course not, because we’re sitting here 70-million years-later, and can see the results, the rest of the natural rhythm, mountain ranges that feed us water and provide vast, dynamic ecologies. There was probably a lot of damage done creating the Himalayas, but, philosophically, it feels as if it were done on our behalf, as if nature is demonstrating over time there’s nothing to worry about.
Maybe most interesting, though, is really where the answer comes from, not religion, philosophy or math, but history, stuff we’ve earned through time and is right before our eyes (to the degree geologists can put it there). We can’t see it all, but history can make the future feel quite comfortable, even one we try to blow up! History may also be the best driver for inspiration about what to study, but with the aid of broad, rhythmic perspective!
In the Himalayas example, it’s almost as if we had a time machine, in our imaginations. But we didn’t use the time machine to go back and fix the way-past – instead, once we saw the “whole thing,” we no longer wanted to fix anything; we realized the universe’s violence was for a purpose that at any moment during the events we may never have been able to see, that same purpose to ultimately be to our benefit. Grand scale manipulation might have been a fight against nature’s own purpose. History is our only time machine, and we’re not allowed to steer it into the future, nor condense or change the “size of time.“
God’s Math
There may also need to be a spiritual allowance. Even Einstein talked about “infinity,” the concept of which suggests subjective perspective needs to enter the equation – and, Einstein’s hitting the “infinity button” suggests the everything equation could ultimately reveal nothing but, subjectively, confusion!
We should spend as much time – as we do investigating the universe for the sake of all mankind – investigating why we’re investigating the universe, and all the ways our studies might benefit mankind. And honestly. The story of creation in the Bible may be an enormous fable … the same story, it could be said, that inspires the search for a better explanation, a scientific one … a fable made up years-ago to account for mystery in the universe! Some of the oldest stories may also be genuine, and others sprinkled with elaboration.
It’s easy to see, “creation” and science are not at odds, just two episodes in the same search, the same plight. And no matter if it’s God’s alleged version of everything, or that of a stuffy scientist, the choices seem to still be the same … understand … or believe!
- Mark Urso, from the forthcoming “Nothing,” an honest look at Everything.