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The Miraculous and Mechanical
Apr. 14th, 2010 04:58 am It all starts when we're children, which we all can't remember too well. Infants, toddlers especially, our memories nonexistent in the former science claims, although maybe a glimmer of hope in the late toddler years.
It all starts when we first experience any given thing in the absolute breadth of our possible experience. This is a miracle to us - it would have been a miracle for the first of our kind as well, and has been a miracle to everyone of our kind, and will forever be a miracle to everyone of our kind. This is the first event, and in our minds it is the first to affect and color our perceptions of the following events.
Imagine that you are a child, and for the first time your fingers are brought to touch water. Never before have you touched water, never again will you touch it the same way. It is a unique experience - it can never be replicated. Your size will never be the same, your cells will never be the same age, your sense of touch will never be precisely the same. You touch the water and for the first time you apprehend what it feels like. You perceive the unique sensations it gives rise to. This is a miracle, because we do not understand at all what has just happened. Sadly, this miracle does not last.
Soon after we realize, even given that each and every time is a unique experience that can never be replicated due to the nature of chaos, we are feeling similar things. Water reacts in certain ways. It boils when we heat it up to a specific temperature determined by the atmospheric pressure we are currently experiencing. It fills every crevice in containers, and if the container isn't shaped and designed properly, it won't contain the water at all. We get bored of water.
Eventually, water just isn't the same as that first event at all. It's just a part of a system we've constructed to explain and control the world around us, for the benefit of all range of things from life expectancy to transportation, to the curing of ailments - miracles in and of themselves, or so some would say.
However, by then we've forgotten all about the first event. We probably don't remember it at all in most cases - but you see, that's not precisely the end of the experience of first events.
The fundamental problem with atheism and furthermore some proponents of science is that, even though those who subscribe to it and every single individual on the planet itself knows that first experience must have been a miracle to them, their a posteriori knowledge of the rules of the universe is enough for them to rule out the possibility that both that first event and all ones subsequent to it are miracles, and rather suggest that precise events as determined by a system they and countless others have observed, recorded and proceeded to disseminate amongst the population via a variety of means is the sufficient explanation. It has, therefore, become a paradigm. It is called the scientific or mechanical paradigm. In their minds, it completely replaces its predecessor, the miraculous paradigm that has already been discussed. It does nothing of the sort; however. It is as if the religion of science and its followers has decided that, because of the feats they have accomplished, they and they alone deserve the praise and adoration, and that there is no room for another. But there is.
Whether one understands a miracle or not, whether one can produce miracles or not, they are not any less or more miraculous. We all experience them, when we consume water and food to grant us life, through the complex processes of our bodies; when we embrace a person we are attracted to; when we kiss, when we lay in one another's arms in union; when we awaken from a refreshing sleep; when we breathe fresh morning air; when we see sun rays fall through a lush forest canopy...and conceivably infinite more things. And though I understand these events to the best of my ability, and benefit in my understanding through the virtues of science, I am not less impressed with them, not any less amazed by them, by the fact that I do. And I see no reason to believe that these miracles do not arise ultimately from the most intense, all-encompassing miracle of all, that is of the Creation we can never know, at the beginning of all time and the manifestation of the fabric of existence, and if time is infinite, then at the beginning of infinity.
Work in progress I guess. Feel pretty confident about it so far.
It all starts when we first experience any given thing in the absolute breadth of our possible experience. This is a miracle to us - it would have been a miracle for the first of our kind as well, and has been a miracle to everyone of our kind, and will forever be a miracle to everyone of our kind. This is the first event, and in our minds it is the first to affect and color our perceptions of the following events.
Imagine that you are a child, and for the first time your fingers are brought to touch water. Never before have you touched water, never again will you touch it the same way. It is a unique experience - it can never be replicated. Your size will never be the same, your cells will never be the same age, your sense of touch will never be precisely the same. You touch the water and for the first time you apprehend what it feels like. You perceive the unique sensations it gives rise to. This is a miracle, because we do not understand at all what has just happened. Sadly, this miracle does not last.
Soon after we realize, even given that each and every time is a unique experience that can never be replicated due to the nature of chaos, we are feeling similar things. Water reacts in certain ways. It boils when we heat it up to a specific temperature determined by the atmospheric pressure we are currently experiencing. It fills every crevice in containers, and if the container isn't shaped and designed properly, it won't contain the water at all. We get bored of water.
Eventually, water just isn't the same as that first event at all. It's just a part of a system we've constructed to explain and control the world around us, for the benefit of all range of things from life expectancy to transportation, to the curing of ailments - miracles in and of themselves, or so some would say.
However, by then we've forgotten all about the first event. We probably don't remember it at all in most cases - but you see, that's not precisely the end of the experience of first events.
The fundamental problem with atheism and furthermore some proponents of science is that, even though those who subscribe to it and every single individual on the planet itself knows that first experience must have been a miracle to them, their a posteriori knowledge of the rules of the universe is enough for them to rule out the possibility that both that first event and all ones subsequent to it are miracles, and rather suggest that precise events as determined by a system they and countless others have observed, recorded and proceeded to disseminate amongst the population via a variety of means is the sufficient explanation. It has, therefore, become a paradigm. It is called the scientific or mechanical paradigm. In their minds, it completely replaces its predecessor, the miraculous paradigm that has already been discussed. It does nothing of the sort; however. It is as if the religion of science and its followers has decided that, because of the feats they have accomplished, they and they alone deserve the praise and adoration, and that there is no room for another. But there is.
Whether one understands a miracle or not, whether one can produce miracles or not, they are not any less or more miraculous. We all experience them, when we consume water and food to grant us life, through the complex processes of our bodies; when we embrace a person we are attracted to; when we kiss, when we lay in one another's arms in union; when we awaken from a refreshing sleep; when we breathe fresh morning air; when we see sun rays fall through a lush forest canopy...and conceivably infinite more things. And though I understand these events to the best of my ability, and benefit in my understanding through the virtues of science, I am not less impressed with them, not any less amazed by them, by the fact that I do. And I see no reason to believe that these miracles do not arise ultimately from the most intense, all-encompassing miracle of all, that is of the Creation we can never know, at the beginning of all time and the manifestation of the fabric of existence, and if time is infinite, then at the beginning of infinity.
Work in progress I guess. Feel pretty confident about it so far.
