A friend I don’t see often came to visit yesterday. We sat in the kitchen, drank coffee, smoked, and talked about our kids, about religion, and about art. I don’t really like to talk about my kids. If they’re doing well, it sounds like you’re bragging, and if they’re not doing well, that’s their business, isn’t it? I like my children, and I think I have good relationships with them, but their lives are theirs, and I feel only they have the right to describe their lives.
Everyone seems to be talking about religion these days. The newspapers were full of it this morning, with Charles Krauthammer ranting about radical judges who refuse to cram Christianity down our throats and Cal Thomas claiming that the evil secular humanists are trying to oppress those poor Bible believing thumpers by denying them the right to foist their views on everyone in the schools and courts. Last night, Bill Maher made a feeble attempt to prove that the religious right is running the Republican Party. And the papers have full of speculation about what kind of Pope Benedict Ratzinger will be and what direction he will lead the Catholic Church.
Most of my friends are liberal New-Agers, which isn’t much better. They decorate their homes with dream catchers and ionically charged crystals, pay $200 to get their chakras aligned and their karma cleansed. Why are people such suckers? And why do they feel the need to seek validation from some kind of moral authority. There is no moral authority. Morality is whatever reasonable people agree it is. God, if such a being exists, is not human, has no body, fills the entire universe, and is largely indifferent to our petitions. God is too busy keeping the planets spinning to care what people are doing to earn an enjoyable afterlife.
Art is my religion, if I had to name one at all. And nature. Anything that’s beautiful, that elevates me above my routine existence, that opens my eyes, that makes me think and wonder. That’s the best that can be expected.
I think – hopefully you won’t mind the comment, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about myself…
But it’s not that one should ’seek validation’ from a higher moral authority. The way I’ve come to understand it: You’re right – God is not human, nor even comprehensible, but what He has done, whether in Heavenly genius or divine indifference is create the Laws of Nature.
I think these laws of nature, ie math, from which derives physics and all others, also apply in the moral and spiritual realm. Before we understood science, the workings of natural phenomena were explained through superstition and appeals to gods. Similarly, because we are ignorant of ‘laws’ beyond our understanding, people seek to explain and find them through the same methods. What was once superstition eventually becomes science and knowledge.
It still doesn’t mean that, regardless of our understanding, there are ’spiritual and moral’ laws that we can either be in or out of accordance with, set by God, who has no obligation to interact or validate at all – beyond cause and effect of course.
John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Since God’s word is law – to know the sum of natural law is to know… and be God.
I think that we as humans have a natural inclination to figure out how things work – I’d say someone who is truly interested in anything, will find Beauty in that thing when it is done well. Whether it’s Art, a novel piece of mathematics, a well-tuned engine, or nature itself.
Personally – I think there is an absolute morality, just as there are laws of physics – but we can NEVER hope to fully understand it, and can certainly never claim to DEFINE it, because of course… we are not God.
ps: not saying this to be critical of your post – it’s just that these are the questions that make me think and wonder – so I thought I’d take the opportunity to reply. Thanks for your post.
Comment by zoran0th — November 27, 2006 @ 5:04 am