The Unknown

The unknown frustrates me. I am a curious guy, I want to know! But alas, the unknown does not care about my insignificant irritation. The unknown does not reveal itself on its own, knowledge and understanding must be sought after by curious minds. This principle applies to all unlearned knowledge, but specifically, I would like to focus on Creation—I use a capital “C” to identify this creation as the famous First Cause, the Beginning of Everything, not just the Earth or the Universe but Everything.

Naturally, no human observed Creation. Therefore, empirical knowledge of Creation becomes extremely difficult to acquire. Scientists have their Big Bang Theory, but it is an unsatisfying explanation. The Laws of Physics break down when so much matter and energy is concentrated on so small a point. Therefore, physicists are seeking a better understanding of the Laws of Physics, but a unified Theory of Everything remains out of reach. Perhaps it will always be out of reach. Current explanations raise more questions than they answer. String Theory, arguably the most elegant theory available, cannot be directly proved. The alleged strings are too small to observe. Without going into sundry tangents, it is clear enough that science currently falls short of understanding Creation.

Religion, on the other hand, claims absolute knowledge concerning Creation. The Bible itself starts with the words, “In the beginning.” Every religion has its Creation story, or stories. They tend to be very similar. In monotheistic religions, an all-powerful Supreme Being creates Everything out of Nothing. In polytheistic religions, there tends to be one or two original supernatural beings that create the heavens and the earth and/or give life to more supernatural beings—which, in turn, give rise to more supernatural beings and so on down the line. Both explanations do not satisfy me.

The logic does not make sense to me. Creation needs a Creator, but the Creator can just exist. Is it just me, or is that a double standard? Let me bring the scale down a tad. The chicken cannot exist without being born from an egg. The egg cannot exist without being made by the chicken. So which came first? It is an infinite digression. In this case, evolution solves the digression. However, in the case of Creation, I am not aware of any satisfactory scientific solution to the digression.

I reject the God Hypothesis, to use Richard Dawkins' terminology, because having a Creator create Creation initiates an infinite digression. Who created the Creator? Who created the creator of the Creator? It just gives me a headache. I next turned to science, but science also failed to provide a satisfactory answer—for the aforementioned reasons.

After religion and science failed me, I turned to philosophy and to imaginative thought. Perhaps we are all living in a computer program, designed by some unknown superior intelligence, not God or gods but aliens or machines (like in the Matrix). Of course, this invokes the same infinite digression as the God Hypothesis—who created the beings that created the computer program we inhabit? Maybe there are forces beyond our perception at work, not God or gods but spirits, ghosts, etc. However, I do not like to go beyond the empirical. Since I cannot know if such forces exist—I cannot know if they exist by definition: they are forces beyond human perception—I disregard the option as pure imagination. Maybe there was no Beginning. Maybe we, as humans, want to give Everything a Beginning because we have a beginning ourselves. This is my favorite explanation, although it falls short of satisfying my curiosity.

After carefully considering all the aforementioned possibilities and being no closer to the answer, I fear I must bow down to the power of the question. It seems there currently is no way of finding the answer. I hope the answer will one day be found, but even if it is never found, the fact that I enjoyed searching for the answer made asking the question worthwhile.

Yours truly,
Gabriel Gethin

The Day I Left the Womb

First things first, yes, I like to use song titles as my post titles. The Day I Left the Womb is an Escape the Fate song. Naturally the song's meaning has nothing to do with the post's topic, but I like to be random at such an hour as this.

So, lately I've been reading this awesome book called Sophie's World. It's about the history of philosophy. Consequently, I've fallen in love with wisdom. (fun fact: philosophy means "love of wisdom")

One question in particular has really been haunting my lately. Do you believe in fate? The two obvious responses are yes and no, but what do these answers imply.

If you answer yes, I believe in fate! What does that mean exactly? Does belief in fate mean that you believe your entire future is written in "stone" somewhere? Is your life a series of inevitable causes and effects, actions and reactions, decisions and consequences? I don't like this idea... I have control over my life! right??? I can decide to be nice to people I meet rather than lie and deceive them, doesn't that mean I have control over my future? Or does "Fate" already know how I will act because my conscience is like a computer program, programed to discern between right and wrong in a certain way. I can't believe that either, people learn right and wrong, they aren't born with that knowledge. We are, however, born with the ability to reason. It's what separates us from other animals... (or so believed Aristotle)

So I guess I don't believe in fate... But, what does that mean? I can control my life with the decisions I make, right? This isn't true, and I know it. Things happen. You're own actions aren't the only influences on the course of your life. Things out of our control--nature, the economy, life and death-- can change the course of our life drastically. So what dictates the things out of our control? other people? (perhaps in the economy instance) but what about nature? life and death? those are clearly out of our complete control. So is it fate that governs all? once again, I say no...

What do you say???

p.s. I could go on to what I think "governs all" but, that's another discussion for another time...