| Cougar Press PO Box 894 Meadview AZ 86444 |
| Priest of the Real God |
My father was an electrician. There were times, in the ancient past, when anyone who wielded
such power would have been stoned to death or burned at the stake. For thousands of years,
humanity found it easy to believe in various tall tales about giants in the sky hurling bolts of
lightning like spears, creating people from ribs or mud, carving moral codes into slabs of stone,
visiting our benighted race with plagues, floods and hails of burning sulfur, assuming the shape of
man so as to breed with our wives and daughters... the list of miracles and divine interventions
was endless. Much of it was true.
Huh?
What I mean is that these stories were often true in the sense that something had happened, and
then the prophets, priests, shamans or philosophers tried to make sense of it. There really were
floods and epidemics. Sometimes fire did fall from the sky. Men were born whose strength and
charisma caused them to stand out from the rest of mankind, like gods. Like gods.
Deceit and cunning were very often intrinsic to these inspirations. "Lo, the Lord has spoken
unto me, and He doth command that ye shall give me your wealth and your daughters." The
political beast has always lurked within our species, the conniver who is forever on the lookout
for opportunities to dominate through treachery and falsehood. Not just in spiritual matters, but
also among the ranks of warriors, merchants and workers are those who look for the edge of
dominance. Even among the ditch diggers you will find the ones who prefer to wield a pencil and
a clipboard instead of a pick or a shovel.
The ones who are actually doing the work may recognize this one as a slacker, a lazy
opportunist, a kiss-up who prefers to spend his energy scheming to get the approval of the boss,
while dominating his co-workers, but it does them no good. They are left wondering why the
shirker ends up being designated lead man of the crew. The lead men themselves are mystified as
to why the one among them who talked the most and worked the least gets named foreman of the
project. The foremen mutter among themselves when the guy that they saw as least effective and
most ignorant is the one who is promoted to field rep.
They all hide this from themselves so that, while it remains easy to see that the person who
outranks them is far from superior, the rank and file below them still appear to deserve their fates
as plodding workers who need to be ordered about in order to be of any value at all to the group.
The group itself may be a team of workers, a sales force, a military squad, a crew, a corporation,
an army, a government, a hospital, a bureaucracy or a religion. It doesn't matter. Every walk of
life has its true believers and its hypocrites.
In his book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, Laurence J. Peter suggests that
people who do well in their jobs tend to get promoted. Eventually the employee gets to a job in
which he or she cannot perform so well. The new job is beyond his ability, and so this is where
the promotions stop. The long-term result, according to Peter, is that the majority of positions
are filled by people who have reached what he calls their "level of incompetence." This is
supposed to explain the vast profusion of incompetence in every level of business and
bureaucracy.
It is a charming theory. It makes a lot of sense. The book is a good read. However, it isn't
true. For one thing, astute employers have been aware since the dawn of time that an effective
worker who is continually promoted will sooner or later find himself in a job that he cannot do.
This is not good for the business, although it might be great for the employee himself.
Peter is correct in his assertion that "things always go wrong." However, that is not the "Peter
Principle;" it is Murphy's Law. Books of every flavor have been written on that subject. They
generally provide more interesting reading for the pessimist.
I feel that the truly awesome feature of human enterprise is not its failure but its success. When
I drive along a busy freeway, for instance, I am not so much impressed by how poorly it functions
as I am by how well it works. Here are thousands of drivers, each with a specific destination, and
all of them are using the same pathways to arrive. On-ramps and off-ramps flow smoothly like
water in pipes and drains. The system has improved in our lifetime, and it will get even better in
the future.
Manufacturing, agriculture, mining, transportation... the list of industries that flourish goes on
and on. Although the majority of the population lives in the city while most of the food is grown
on distant farms and ranches, most people eat regularly. Famines, epidemics and shortages are
the exception.
Perhaps it is not too much of an analogy to consider all of this to be consistent with Darwin's
theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest unequivocally implies that the unfit must perish. This
reality doesn't mean that life is not working; this is how it does work.
Back to the subject of employment, it is a foolish boss who promotes a skillful and experienced
machine operator to a junior executive position. The company has a product. Let's say it is
making furniture. It needs more than anything to keep its crafts people busy doing exactly that.
There is no sense in taking a man who is good with a lathe or a band saw and putting him at a
desk shuffling papers.
My father was an electrician, and a good one. He regularly turned down offers of promotion.
He knew what his skills were, and he had a pretty good idea what they were not. He knew that, as
a lead man, a foreman or any other position up the chain of command, he would not have been
as effective. He would not have been as productive. He would not have been as valuable to the
employer, and he would not have been as satisfied with his job.
He didn't even care for it when he was assigned an assistant. He believed that, when it came to
getting things done, he could accomplish more on his own. With a helper, so he reasoned, he
would have to set the fellow to work on a particular phase of the job, make sure that he
understood what was expected, make sure that he knew how to do it, teach and show him how if
he didn't already know, and then come back and inspect his work which he was quite certain
would have been performed more slowly and to a lower standard of quality. In addition, he
would need to check on the guy now and then to make sure that he was really working and not
just goofing off, doing the wrong thing, damaging materials or hurting himself. All of these
chores would take time away from my father's own function which he saw as installing boxes and
conduits, running wire, making splices and keeping track of all of the circuits.
Physics tells us that there are four forces in nature. These are gravity, electro-magnetism and
the strong and weak nuclear interactions. The theoretical suspicion is that in some way these four
are merely different manifestations of one underlying force. Bite your tongue before you suggest
that this deep force might be God. Physicists don't think that way.
Neither do electricians. An electrician knows that any ordinary person can control the flow of
electrons that we call electricity merely by flicking a switch. An electrician made this possible by
properly connecting the switch to the power source and to the device, for example a light bulb,
that is to be activated when the switch is flicked. He was not the light, but with his simple tools he
made the light available to any child who can reach the switch.
Holy men, shamans, priests and gurus are said to offer similar enlightenment. For a person
living a couple of centuries ago, turning on a light by throwing a switch would have seemed like
magic. Well, there are three kinds of magic:
...we really do have dreams. The events portrayed within a dream may not correspond with
waking reality, but the dream is a genuine event with physical brain waves and neural memories.
People do have visions; whether these are categorized as optical illusions or hallucinations doesn't
matter. It especially does not make much difference to the one having the vision.
As for miracles, as I mentioned at the beginning of this page, there were times when a
phenomenon so bland as light arriving with the flip of a switch would have been touted as a
miracle or witchcraft. I find it to be something of a puzzle that, as science and technology have
advanced, the scope of words like "divine" or "magic" has receded. It is as if, in the mind of the
theologian, the bible thumper, the preacher in his pulpit or the holy man of any stripe, as soon as
any bit of knowledge or technical ability passes from the realm of mystery into the daylight of
science, observation, experiment, measurement and understanding, it no longer qualifies. It is as
though the work, or indeed the very existence, of God has to be beyond the grasp of human
intelligence and wisdom. This intellectual reluctance reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, hiding
behind his curtain in the fear that exposure of his power will reveal it to be a sham.
In "The Wizard," it turns out that in spite of Toto's pulling open the curtain, there really was
true power at work. There was the wisdom in his words that convinced the lion, the tin woodman
and the scarecrow that they did have courage, emotions and intelligence. Plus, the wizard had his
balloon.
When it came to intellectual reluctance, astronomers, theologians and superstitious bible
thumpers resisted the theory of the big bang, for different reasons. The religious side maintained
that because the event was not described in scripture, and because it was scheduled too far in the
past, i.e. more than 6,000 years, it couldn't possibly be true.
The scientists, on the other hand, resisted the idea because, details aside, it smacked of biblical
creation. Their opposition to the concept of a finite origin led them to believe instead that the
universe has always existed. This irrational position was maintained by physicists and
astronomers from Newton to Einstein. The double irony of the big bang theory is that it was first
proposed by Georges Lemaître, who was a Catholic priest, and that is was named by Fred Hoyle,
an astronomer who opposed the idea and made up the term "Big Bang" in sarcastic derision.
This opposition persisted until the observations of the astronomer Edwin Hubble. It was further
confirmed by more recent studies of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, as well as the
abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe.
Humility is a virtue. I myself freely admit that I can not fully understand anything, not science,
not philosophy, not theology and certainly not the theories about the origin of the universe. In
the field of quantum physics, Niels Bohr is quoted as saying, back in 1927, "Anyone who is not
shocked by quantum theory does not understand it." Forty years later, Richard Feynman said
"Nobody understands quantum theory."
One of my father's gifts was the ability to take something that was not working, take it apart,
clean it up, put it back together and, lo! It worked. He could do this without ever claiming to
understand how the machine worked, or why. When it came to his own trade, the role of
electrician, it was the same. He didn't have the education in physics and mathematics that would
be required to truly understand the technology. But he knew what worked, and he knew what did
not work.
Our gift, believe it or not, is that we know how to run the universe. We know how to operate
the mechanism that we call life. We know how to do the work of God, whoever or whatever that
word means. We do not understand how or why it works. We cannot predict what will happen.
Even in the very short term we can be fooled. Yet, reality rolls along, and we, all of the creatures
of the universe, all of the birds and mammals, the wind and the rain, the planets and the galaxies,
the quarks and muons, cells and mitochondria... we are the ones who are getting it done. We
make it happen. In spite of our ignorance and our private ambitions, we are cogs in the cosmic
gear box.
Some of the quantum theoreticians, in efforts to explain the observations and measurements of
science, have suggested that in all of existence there is only one electron. It travels at the speed of
light. It is not bound by concepts of velocity and distance, for all of the dimensions are
themselves part of the creation. It courses through each of us, this lone particle, defining our
atoms, enabling our chemistry, carrying our thoughts and the will of God.
I wonder if it doesn't go even farther than that. Why stop at one electron? Maybe there is
only one particle, one simple instant of reality that plays the role of all the electrons, positrons,
neutrinos, quarks and all of the others. Sometimes it seems like there will be no end to the
panoply of particles that the quantum physicists discover, measure, hypothesize or imagine.
With our mortal eyes, all that we really see are photons. These particles of light have no mass
or electric charge, but they do possess energy and momentum. They bounce off everything, and
the ones that pass through the gateway in our beautiful irises, our dark pupils, strike the retina
and bring us all of the clues that we are going to get in order to visually interpret the universe.
Do we even get to see the bundles of quarks, the protons and neutrons that compose the elements
of our nuclei? Who knows? These particles hide within the shell of electrons, shepherded by the
strong force. They must have some influence on visual perception, for gold looks different from
silver, or carbon, or sulphur.
Light passes right through a lot of the elements, leaving them invisible to our naked eyes. We
can't see hydrogen. Nor can we see oxygen. However, if we combine two hydrogen atoms with
one oxygen, we get water. Water is weird. We can see it, but we can also see through it.
It's easy to make water. Take a cloud of hydrogen, mix it with a cloud of oxygen, and strike a
spark. What you will see (and feel) is called an explosion. When the two hydrogen atoms unite
with the one oxygen atom, they give off a lot of energy in the form of light and heat. This is what
happened in the Hindenburg calamity, back in 1937. Over seven million cubic feet of hydrogen
burning produced a lot of heat and water.
Water is a wonderful thing. Ten little electrons zipping around a nucleus of ten protons and
eight neutrons provide the qualities of the compound that makes life on Earth, life as we know it,
possible. Before scientists knew anything about the nuclear structure of elements and
compounds, water was considered to be one of the four basic elements of reality. Earth, water, air
and fire were the building blocks of physical reality. Although the word "element" now applies to
things like hydrogen, helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron, gold, silver, all the
way up to the rare earths like nobelium and lawrencium, the basic four concept still has meaning.
Rather than earth, water, air and fire, we can think of matter as solid, liquid, gas and energy.
Water is not even an element. It is a compound. It is made up of two gases: hydrogen and
oxygen. With enough pressure, either of these gases can be compressed into a liquid or solid
state. Even in outer space, however, conditions are not cold enough for them to be anything but
gas. Hydrogen has the distinction of being one of the primordial elements of creation. Following
the big bang, once things had settled down enough to allow matter to congeal into atoms,
hydrogen and helium were pretty much it. Except for a tiny bit of lithium, there was nothing
else. It wasn't until the first generation of stars had formed and exploded into super novae that
the heavier elements, like oxygen, were formed.
Now, instead of four elements, we have a hundred and seventeen. However, most of the
universe is still composed of hydrogen and helium, dark matter and energy. Energy has gone
from being considered as one element, fire, to the modern concept of the four forces, gravity,
electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear reactions.
Of the four, gravity is the weakest, yet because there is so much of it, it is the strongest force in
the universe. As humans, we have two words that express the concept of gravity very well: up and
down. We feel the pull of Mother Earth because she is so close and so big, yet every other particle
in the universe is also pulling on us, and we in turn are exerting our own pull on the universe.
There it is, the greatest power, and we don't even have to try to make it happen. We fall. That's
all.
I don't have much to say about the nuclear reactions, strong or weak, because I don't know
much about them. In various ways I can sense the variety of the elements. Oxygen comes to
mind. Our breath and our metabolism is so intensely involved with oxygen that we can tell when
it's there or when it's not, but that's about it. Sodium is a volatile metal and chlorine is a
poisonous gas, but when they are together as sodium chloride, salt, they taste pretty good.
Iron has a flavor. We can see carbon as black soot or charcoal, or highly compressed as
diamonds, but when mixed with a couple of atoms of oxygen, as carbon dioxide, it becomes the
invisible gas that supports plant life. If instead of two there is only one oxygen atom, it becomes
carbon monoxide, a deadly gas.
These days the popular press treats carbon dioxide as if it were as dangerous as its lighter
cousin. Global warming is on everyone's lips, and CO2 gets the blame. Perhaps we are forgetting
that carbon dioxide was here on Earth before there was any free oxygen. Green plants depend on
CO2. Back in the Jurassic era, carbon dioxide levels were twenty times as high as they are today,
and the world was a green paradise. By then there had already been hundreds of millions of years
of photosynthesis, the process wherein green plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,
and, using energy received directly from the sun, separate the carbon from the oxygen. The
carbon is used to build the structure of the plant, and the oxygen is released as a waste product.
If the availability of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had continued to shrink, eventually there
wouldn't have been enough to support plant life on earth. No plants would lead very quickly to
no animals.
Fortunately, physical reality moves in waves. What goes down must come up. The level of CO2
on our planet is climbing again. How curious it is that the human response to this natural cycle
is hysteria. Once again the merchants of fear are baffling the masses with stories of global
warming and rising oceans. Rather than making provisions that would go with the flow, so to
speak, our rulers are suggesting that we make efforts to hold back the tide.
Many of life's events move in waves. As we approach an extreme in any dimension, the real
warning that should be heeded is the coming reversal. When the salt water suddenly retreats from
the shore, it is not an indication that the ocean is disappearing. On the contrary, it is a signal that
foreshadows the coming tsunami.
When the population of any species becomes astronomical, it doesn't mean that it will continue
to grow until the world becomes wall-to-wall dinosaurs, bison or people. It means that tragic
decline or possible extinction is just over the horizon.
High prices on the stock market regularly presage financial downturns. Trade deficits can go
only so far before the trend reverses. No nation can subsist on pure export (mercantilism) or pure
import (imperialism) forever.
The long hot days of summer do not lead to infinite warm weather. They lead to winter. The
buds of spring lead to leaves and flowers, but that doesn't go on forever. Leaves that change
color, flowers that fall, the dead leaves of autumn and the bare branches of winter follow in due
course. Everything moves in cycles.
In spite of this, the universe continues to evolve. Creation and destruction are in constant
play. Music would only be noise without the short silence between the notes that allows for
rhythm. It would be a constant drone without the changes that offer harmony and resolution.
When a wheel turns, a point on the rim rises and falls. Without friction nothing happens as a
result. It is like a prayer wheel, freely spinning in vain appeal to gods who do not exist.
Friction is resistance. With friction, a wheel's revolution leads to progress, The cart moves
down the road. Water is pumped from the ground. Governments evolve. Electricity is
generated. High in the clouds of a storm, particles rub against one another. The energy of the
wind accumulates in the vapor until it reaches the level where it is easier to go somewhere else,
perhaps to another cloud, perhaps to the earth or the sea, or perhaps to a lonesome pine tree
standing alone on a hill. Then lightning flashes and the voice of creation rumbles through the air.
We use electricity for trivial purposes: to watch t.v., to open cans, to blow air, to keep porch
lights burning while we slumber or to babble endlessly on the Internet about the wonder of it all.
But we also use it to enlighten. We use it to transfer power to the machines that produce the
goods that we need to survive.
If there is a problem with any of this, we call an electrician...
such power would have been stoned to death or burned at the stake. For thousands of years,
humanity found it easy to believe in various tall tales about giants in the sky hurling bolts of
lightning like spears, creating people from ribs or mud, carving moral codes into slabs of stone,
visiting our benighted race with plagues, floods and hails of burning sulfur, assuming the shape of
man so as to breed with our wives and daughters... the list of miracles and divine interventions
was endless. Much of it was true.
Huh?
What I mean is that these stories were often true in the sense that something had happened, and
then the prophets, priests, shamans or philosophers tried to make sense of it. There really were
floods and epidemics. Sometimes fire did fall from the sky. Men were born whose strength and
charisma caused them to stand out from the rest of mankind, like gods. Like gods.
Deceit and cunning were very often intrinsic to these inspirations. "Lo, the Lord has spoken
unto me, and He doth command that ye shall give me your wealth and your daughters." The
political beast has always lurked within our species, the conniver who is forever on the lookout
for opportunities to dominate through treachery and falsehood. Not just in spiritual matters, but
also among the ranks of warriors, merchants and workers are those who look for the edge of
dominance. Even among the ditch diggers you will find the ones who prefer to wield a pencil and
a clipboard instead of a pick or a shovel.
The ones who are actually doing the work may recognize this one as a slacker, a lazy
opportunist, a kiss-up who prefers to spend his energy scheming to get the approval of the boss,
while dominating his co-workers, but it does them no good. They are left wondering why the
shirker ends up being designated lead man of the crew. The lead men themselves are mystified as
to why the one among them who talked the most and worked the least gets named foreman of the
project. The foremen mutter among themselves when the guy that they saw as least effective and
most ignorant is the one who is promoted to field rep.
They all hide this from themselves so that, while it remains easy to see that the person who
outranks them is far from superior, the rank and file below them still appear to deserve their fates
as plodding workers who need to be ordered about in order to be of any value at all to the group.
The group itself may be a team of workers, a sales force, a military squad, a crew, a corporation,
an army, a government, a hospital, a bureaucracy or a religion. It doesn't matter. Every walk of
life has its true believers and its hypocrites.
In his book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, Laurence J. Peter suggests that
people who do well in their jobs tend to get promoted. Eventually the employee gets to a job in
which he or she cannot perform so well. The new job is beyond his ability, and so this is where
the promotions stop. The long-term result, according to Peter, is that the majority of positions
are filled by people who have reached what he calls their "level of incompetence." This is
supposed to explain the vast profusion of incompetence in every level of business and
bureaucracy.
It is a charming theory. It makes a lot of sense. The book is a good read. However, it isn't
true. For one thing, astute employers have been aware since the dawn of time that an effective
worker who is continually promoted will sooner or later find himself in a job that he cannot do.
This is not good for the business, although it might be great for the employee himself.
Peter is correct in his assertion that "things always go wrong." However, that is not the "Peter
Principle;" it is Murphy's Law. Books of every flavor have been written on that subject. They
generally provide more interesting reading for the pessimist.
I feel that the truly awesome feature of human enterprise is not its failure but its success. When
I drive along a busy freeway, for instance, I am not so much impressed by how poorly it functions
as I am by how well it works. Here are thousands of drivers, each with a specific destination, and
all of them are using the same pathways to arrive. On-ramps and off-ramps flow smoothly like
water in pipes and drains. The system has improved in our lifetime, and it will get even better in
the future.
Manufacturing, agriculture, mining, transportation... the list of industries that flourish goes on
and on. Although the majority of the population lives in the city while most of the food is grown
on distant farms and ranches, most people eat regularly. Famines, epidemics and shortages are
the exception.
Perhaps it is not too much of an analogy to consider all of this to be consistent with Darwin's
theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest unequivocally implies that the unfit must perish. This
reality doesn't mean that life is not working; this is how it does work.
Back to the subject of employment, it is a foolish boss who promotes a skillful and experienced
machine operator to a junior executive position. The company has a product. Let's say it is
making furniture. It needs more than anything to keep its crafts people busy doing exactly that.
There is no sense in taking a man who is good with a lathe or a band saw and putting him at a
desk shuffling papers.
My father was an electrician, and a good one. He regularly turned down offers of promotion.
He knew what his skills were, and he had a pretty good idea what they were not. He knew that, as
a lead man, a foreman or any other position up the chain of command, he would not have been
as effective. He would not have been as productive. He would not have been as valuable to the
employer, and he would not have been as satisfied with his job.
He didn't even care for it when he was assigned an assistant. He believed that, when it came to
getting things done, he could accomplish more on his own. With a helper, so he reasoned, he
would have to set the fellow to work on a particular phase of the job, make sure that he
understood what was expected, make sure that he knew how to do it, teach and show him how if
he didn't already know, and then come back and inspect his work which he was quite certain
would have been performed more slowly and to a lower standard of quality. In addition, he
would need to check on the guy now and then to make sure that he was really working and not
just goofing off, doing the wrong thing, damaging materials or hurting himself. All of these
chores would take time away from my father's own function which he saw as installing boxes and
conduits, running wire, making splices and keeping track of all of the circuits.
Physics tells us that there are four forces in nature. These are gravity, electro-magnetism and
the strong and weak nuclear interactions. The theoretical suspicion is that in some way these four
are merely different manifestations of one underlying force. Bite your tongue before you suggest
that this deep force might be God. Physicists don't think that way.
Neither do electricians. An electrician knows that any ordinary person can control the flow of
electrons that we call electricity merely by flicking a switch. An electrician made this possible by
properly connecting the switch to the power source and to the device, for example a light bulb,
that is to be activated when the switch is flicked. He was not the light, but with his simple tools he
made the light available to any child who can reach the switch.
Holy men, shamans, priests and gurus are said to offer similar enlightenment. For a person
living a couple of centuries ago, turning on a light by throwing a switch would have seemed like
magic. Well, there are three kinds of magic:
- The kind that doesn't work. This is probably the most common of the three. It includes all
manner of healing and prognostication. Charlatans of every stripe practice this brand of
magic. They may be predicting for their clients (suckers) the future behavior of stocks,
bonds, race horses, sporting events or real estate. They might be claiming to heal any and
all ailments by means of herbs, lotions, chants or elixirs. Because they want to, people
believe that these fakes can control the outcome of wars, elections and harvests. Curses and
hexes are available for the cowards who wish to inflict justice or revenge from a distance.
Love potions, benedictions and good luck charms all appear to work for those who believe
in this kind of beguilement. - The kind that works through trickery. This is the stuff of entertainment. Honest magicians
insist that all of their magic is due to sleight of hand and carefully crafted illusions. No
scrupulous performer of the conjuring arts will ever make claims that his is anything but
tricks. Leave the claims of real miracles to the healers and preachers in their tents and
temples, on their radio and television shows, and in their full page advertising. Houdini
spent a great amount of time and energy searching for real magic, and he never found it. He
promised to send messages, if he could, from beyond the pale of death, but, if such
communication was ever sent, it was never received. Houdini did debunk a number of
famous spiritualists. - Real magic. Many would say that this is an example of "the empty set." ({}) Another
criticism of the term is that it is an oxymoron. If magic is defined as unreal, then how can
there be real unreality? This objection holds if the word "magic" is replaced by alternatives
like "miracle," "vision," or "dream." All of these are fraught with unreality, but...
...we really do have dreams. The events portrayed within a dream may not correspond with
waking reality, but the dream is a genuine event with physical brain waves and neural memories.
People do have visions; whether these are categorized as optical illusions or hallucinations doesn't
matter. It especially does not make much difference to the one having the vision.
As for miracles, as I mentioned at the beginning of this page, there were times when a
phenomenon so bland as light arriving with the flip of a switch would have been touted as a
miracle or witchcraft. I find it to be something of a puzzle that, as science and technology have
advanced, the scope of words like "divine" or "magic" has receded. It is as if, in the mind of the
theologian, the bible thumper, the preacher in his pulpit or the holy man of any stripe, as soon as
any bit of knowledge or technical ability passes from the realm of mystery into the daylight of
science, observation, experiment, measurement and understanding, it no longer qualifies. It is as
though the work, or indeed the very existence, of God has to be beyond the grasp of human
intelligence and wisdom. This intellectual reluctance reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, hiding
behind his curtain in the fear that exposure of his power will reveal it to be a sham.
In "The Wizard," it turns out that in spite of Toto's pulling open the curtain, there really was
true power at work. There was the wisdom in his words that convinced the lion, the tin woodman
and the scarecrow that they did have courage, emotions and intelligence. Plus, the wizard had his
balloon.
When it came to intellectual reluctance, astronomers, theologians and superstitious bible
thumpers resisted the theory of the big bang, for different reasons. The religious side maintained
that because the event was not described in scripture, and because it was scheduled too far in the
past, i.e. more than 6,000 years, it couldn't possibly be true.
The scientists, on the other hand, resisted the idea because, details aside, it smacked of biblical
creation. Their opposition to the concept of a finite origin led them to believe instead that the
universe has always existed. This irrational position was maintained by physicists and
astronomers from Newton to Einstein. The double irony of the big bang theory is that it was first
proposed by Georges Lemaître, who was a Catholic priest, and that is was named by Fred Hoyle,
an astronomer who opposed the idea and made up the term "Big Bang" in sarcastic derision.
This opposition persisted until the observations of the astronomer Edwin Hubble. It was further
confirmed by more recent studies of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, as well as the
abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe.
Humility is a virtue. I myself freely admit that I can not fully understand anything, not science,
not philosophy, not theology and certainly not the theories about the origin of the universe. In
the field of quantum physics, Niels Bohr is quoted as saying, back in 1927, "Anyone who is not
shocked by quantum theory does not understand it." Forty years later, Richard Feynman said
"Nobody understands quantum theory."
One of my father's gifts was the ability to take something that was not working, take it apart,
clean it up, put it back together and, lo! It worked. He could do this without ever claiming to
understand how the machine worked, or why. When it came to his own trade, the role of
electrician, it was the same. He didn't have the education in physics and mathematics that would
be required to truly understand the technology. But he knew what worked, and he knew what did
not work.
Our gift, believe it or not, is that we know how to run the universe. We know how to operate
the mechanism that we call life. We know how to do the work of God, whoever or whatever that
word means. We do not understand how or why it works. We cannot predict what will happen.
Even in the very short term we can be fooled. Yet, reality rolls along, and we, all of the creatures
of the universe, all of the birds and mammals, the wind and the rain, the planets and the galaxies,
the quarks and muons, cells and mitochondria... we are the ones who are getting it done. We
make it happen. In spite of our ignorance and our private ambitions, we are cogs in the cosmic
gear box.
Some of the quantum theoreticians, in efforts to explain the observations and measurements of
science, have suggested that in all of existence there is only one electron. It travels at the speed of
light. It is not bound by concepts of velocity and distance, for all of the dimensions are
themselves part of the creation. It courses through each of us, this lone particle, defining our
atoms, enabling our chemistry, carrying our thoughts and the will of God.
I wonder if it doesn't go even farther than that. Why stop at one electron? Maybe there is
only one particle, one simple instant of reality that plays the role of all the electrons, positrons,
neutrinos, quarks and all of the others. Sometimes it seems like there will be no end to the
panoply of particles that the quantum physicists discover, measure, hypothesize or imagine.
With our mortal eyes, all that we really see are photons. These particles of light have no mass
or electric charge, but they do possess energy and momentum. They bounce off everything, and
the ones that pass through the gateway in our beautiful irises, our dark pupils, strike the retina
and bring us all of the clues that we are going to get in order to visually interpret the universe.
Do we even get to see the bundles of quarks, the protons and neutrons that compose the elements
of our nuclei? Who knows? These particles hide within the shell of electrons, shepherded by the
strong force. They must have some influence on visual perception, for gold looks different from
silver, or carbon, or sulphur.
Light passes right through a lot of the elements, leaving them invisible to our naked eyes. We
can't see hydrogen. Nor can we see oxygen. However, if we combine two hydrogen atoms with
one oxygen, we get water. Water is weird. We can see it, but we can also see through it.
It's easy to make water. Take a cloud of hydrogen, mix it with a cloud of oxygen, and strike a
spark. What you will see (and feel) is called an explosion. When the two hydrogen atoms unite
with the one oxygen atom, they give off a lot of energy in the form of light and heat. This is what
happened in the Hindenburg calamity, back in 1937. Over seven million cubic feet of hydrogen
burning produced a lot of heat and water.
Water is a wonderful thing. Ten little electrons zipping around a nucleus of ten protons and
eight neutrons provide the qualities of the compound that makes life on Earth, life as we know it,
possible. Before scientists knew anything about the nuclear structure of elements and
compounds, water was considered to be one of the four basic elements of reality. Earth, water, air
and fire were the building blocks of physical reality. Although the word "element" now applies to
things like hydrogen, helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron, gold, silver, all the
way up to the rare earths like nobelium and lawrencium, the basic four concept still has meaning.
Rather than earth, water, air and fire, we can think of matter as solid, liquid, gas and energy.
Water is not even an element. It is a compound. It is made up of two gases: hydrogen and
oxygen. With enough pressure, either of these gases can be compressed into a liquid or solid
state. Even in outer space, however, conditions are not cold enough for them to be anything but
gas. Hydrogen has the distinction of being one of the primordial elements of creation. Following
the big bang, once things had settled down enough to allow matter to congeal into atoms,
hydrogen and helium were pretty much it. Except for a tiny bit of lithium, there was nothing
else. It wasn't until the first generation of stars had formed and exploded into super novae that
the heavier elements, like oxygen, were formed.
Now, instead of four elements, we have a hundred and seventeen. However, most of the
universe is still composed of hydrogen and helium, dark matter and energy. Energy has gone
from being considered as one element, fire, to the modern concept of the four forces, gravity,
electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear reactions.
Of the four, gravity is the weakest, yet because there is so much of it, it is the strongest force in
the universe. As humans, we have two words that express the concept of gravity very well: up and
down. We feel the pull of Mother Earth because she is so close and so big, yet every other particle
in the universe is also pulling on us, and we in turn are exerting our own pull on the universe.
There it is, the greatest power, and we don't even have to try to make it happen. We fall. That's
all.
I don't have much to say about the nuclear reactions, strong or weak, because I don't know
much about them. In various ways I can sense the variety of the elements. Oxygen comes to
mind. Our breath and our metabolism is so intensely involved with oxygen that we can tell when
it's there or when it's not, but that's about it. Sodium is a volatile metal and chlorine is a
poisonous gas, but when they are together as sodium chloride, salt, they taste pretty good.
Iron has a flavor. We can see carbon as black soot or charcoal, or highly compressed as
diamonds, but when mixed with a couple of atoms of oxygen, as carbon dioxide, it becomes the
invisible gas that supports plant life. If instead of two there is only one oxygen atom, it becomes
carbon monoxide, a deadly gas.
These days the popular press treats carbon dioxide as if it were as dangerous as its lighter
cousin. Global warming is on everyone's lips, and CO2 gets the blame. Perhaps we are forgetting
that carbon dioxide was here on Earth before there was any free oxygen. Green plants depend on
CO2. Back in the Jurassic era, carbon dioxide levels were twenty times as high as they are today,
and the world was a green paradise. By then there had already been hundreds of millions of years
of photosynthesis, the process wherein green plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,
and, using energy received directly from the sun, separate the carbon from the oxygen. The
carbon is used to build the structure of the plant, and the oxygen is released as a waste product.
If the availability of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had continued to shrink, eventually there
wouldn't have been enough to support plant life on earth. No plants would lead very quickly to
no animals.
Fortunately, physical reality moves in waves. What goes down must come up. The level of CO2
on our planet is climbing again. How curious it is that the human response to this natural cycle
is hysteria. Once again the merchants of fear are baffling the masses with stories of global
warming and rising oceans. Rather than making provisions that would go with the flow, so to
speak, our rulers are suggesting that we make efforts to hold back the tide.
Many of life's events move in waves. As we approach an extreme in any dimension, the real
warning that should be heeded is the coming reversal. When the salt water suddenly retreats from
the shore, it is not an indication that the ocean is disappearing. On the contrary, it is a signal that
foreshadows the coming tsunami.
When the population of any species becomes astronomical, it doesn't mean that it will continue
to grow until the world becomes wall-to-wall dinosaurs, bison or people. It means that tragic
decline or possible extinction is just over the horizon.
High prices on the stock market regularly presage financial downturns. Trade deficits can go
only so far before the trend reverses. No nation can subsist on pure export (mercantilism) or pure
import (imperialism) forever.
The long hot days of summer do not lead to infinite warm weather. They lead to winter. The
buds of spring lead to leaves and flowers, but that doesn't go on forever. Leaves that change
color, flowers that fall, the dead leaves of autumn and the bare branches of winter follow in due
course. Everything moves in cycles.
In spite of this, the universe continues to evolve. Creation and destruction are in constant
play. Music would only be noise without the short silence between the notes that allows for
rhythm. It would be a constant drone without the changes that offer harmony and resolution.
When a wheel turns, a point on the rim rises and falls. Without friction nothing happens as a
result. It is like a prayer wheel, freely spinning in vain appeal to gods who do not exist.
Friction is resistance. With friction, a wheel's revolution leads to progress, The cart moves
down the road. Water is pumped from the ground. Governments evolve. Electricity is
generated. High in the clouds of a storm, particles rub against one another. The energy of the
wind accumulates in the vapor until it reaches the level where it is easier to go somewhere else,
perhaps to another cloud, perhaps to the earth or the sea, or perhaps to a lonesome pine tree
standing alone on a hill. Then lightning flashes and the voice of creation rumbles through the air.
We use electricity for trivial purposes: to watch t.v., to open cans, to blow air, to keep porch
lights burning while we slumber or to babble endlessly on the Internet about the wonder of it all.
But we also use it to enlighten. We use it to transfer power to the machines that produce the
goods that we need to survive.
If there is a problem with any of this, we call an electrician...
| Yoga for Carnivores by Jay Dyck |