Quantum Christianity

Fancying (perhaps fantasizing) myself a "man of science," I have struggled with the disturbing realization that most men of science (and of letters), MUCH smarter than me, are atheists. Stephen Hawking, Christopher Hitchens, Bertrand Russell, Salmon Rushdie, Richard Dawkins...I could go on and on.

I was raised Catholic, but I was finally educated by Jesuits, who taught me to question everything except the love of God. Yet, science put a wedge in me no less polarizing than the Renaissance, a time when science was finally able to mature as a separate fork in the road from religion.

You can't practice kindergarten religion your whole life

Jesus died for our sins, whatever that meant. However, being there is sin in the world--even all over it--it's good that He did. I guess. I still can't get a straight answer on this. And the Catholics were the only religion with a direct ancestry going back to Him. How could anyone be anything else?

I still have trouble with Transubstantiation. And the Trinity--no one has ever clearly explained that to me. But it gets worse.

Our catechisms and other Imprimatur sources said you'd get 3 years' indulgence for every sign of the cross you made. That means 3 less years in Purgatory. But get this--it'd be 7 years if you did it with holy water. So in the second grade, I'd steal away at recess to the church and make the sign of the cross in the holy water, over and over and over. I must have racked up a thousand years a day. But then the Nuns told me that even the smallest sin--the tiniest venial sin--would get you hundreds of millions of years in Purgtatory.

Are you fuckin' kidding me! I thought. (Well, not the fuckin' part, 'cause even thinking that word was a mortal sin. You wouldn't pass GO but go straight to Hell.) I wouldn't even notice 3 years off here or even 7 years off there during the million millennia I'd be in Purgatory. And don't think it's easier in Purgatory than in Hell. Hell, no. Purgatory is Hell, but you can get out. The tradeoff of recess for such negligible relief from the fires of Purgatory was too dear; I resumed enjoying recess outside with my classmates.

The trick? Just get Extreme Unction right before you die and confess everything. True, you were taking a chance you might die getting hit by a bus instead, but I had to have some time off. Single-digit indulgences weren't worth giving up recess.

We heard all those stories. God commanding Abraham to kill his son to prove his devotion. Really? If you eat less than 3 hours before receiving Communion, that was a mortal sin. "What about ice? Can you eat ice?" "Better to not take a chance," was the answer. Then they changed the 3-hour rule. Changed it? What about those poor bastards who did it before the memo was issued? Kind of like those in prison for marijuana now that it's legal in the very states they're incarcerated.

That there was a place called Limbo, where all the unbaptized babies went but where there was no room for the unbaptized adults; they had their chance and blew it--forwarding address: Hell. And then, in 2007, Pope Benedict published his “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised.” The Pope closed Limbo. (He could do that because he was infallible.)

Infallible? Well, can he say that 2 + 2 = 5? Well, he could, but as was explained to us, he's very careful what he says in his infallibility. Kind of like saying something in the Weirding Way. (To the rescue...science. Using different bases and superdimensionality, you really can come up with a way for 2 + 2 = 5.)

I grew up. It was all so silly, I realized. The more I grew up, the more I distanced myself from the Old Testament.

There was the whole foreskin thing. Check out 1 Samuel 18:27. David, to butter up Saul so he could marry his daughter, went out and killed 200 Philistines. Imagine their surprise. Then--then!--he whacked off all of their foreskins. Imagine their bigger surprise. David put 'em in a bag and delivered them to King Saul. He counted them out for the king, who was so touched he immediately gave his consent for David to marry his daughter.

My spirituality matured as my mind did. My frontal executive lobes started to participate. That was when I was able to answer certain questions. Yet the hardliners said don't think about the questions--just obey the answers. That is, there were no answers to questions--just the answers. I realized these people still believe in the same God they met as children. An angry, punishing God.

Religion just isn't that simple. (After all, you can even get a PhD in Theology. But no one would succeed with a thesis that explored the years' indulgence from sticking your fingers in magic water. Or smelling magic incense.)

My questions

1. If God is all-powerful, can He make a rock so heavy He can't lift it?

A: That's a contradiction. It's linguistics, not theology.

2. What's the deal on miracles?

A. Religion is not magic. God is not magic. He may be magical in the Old Testament, but can you take seriously the ones who started that whole foreskin thing? What kind of life would it be if you could pray for a Mercedes from God and then have one in your driveway the next day (assuming you did the right amount of fasting or was Janis Joplin)? A staff turning into a serpent?

Is that much different from praying for our team to beat the visitors Friday night? What about praying for our enemies to drop dead? Or suffer horribly? If magic were really to replace the laws of physics, would we be qualified to handle it? I don't think so. (Remember Anthony on that Twilight Zone? "That's a good thing you did, Anthony. A real good thing!")

No, life couldn't work if we swam in a wishing well and had rainbows up our asses all the time. The Matrix is not all it's cracked up to be. We live life by taking the red pill, not the blue one. Besides, there's that whole laws-of-physics thing. That really gets in the way of religion, because the universe can't work without it. God set it in motion--brilliantly, too--and the rest of us have to tap dance around it. Miracles? No. Just like there's no magic.

3. If God is all good, why does He allow such horrible things to happen?

Could it be that this life, limited as it is, is both important and unimportant at the same time? Are the horrible things of life unimportant compared to really important things in life? Or life itself? Now I know that would be hard to explain to someone in Game of Thrones being skinned alive. But what about after he dies from it? Is it over? Does the pain not exist anymore? Or is everything a part of everything in eternity? We are: consider that. We are what we are.

3. What about Jesus? He performed miracles.

A. That's what I was taught, but I wasn't there. What He did do was say that what he was teaching "the" way. Many call it "His" way, but it's really the best of the human way. Not the 10 Commandments, but the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule. Look at other religions. If they don't follow such humanism, then they're not much of a religion. (IMHO.) And speaking of the 10 Commandments, there were some really good ideas there: don't kill; don't steal; don't cheat; etc. Yet, when you think about it, only an 11th Commandment could say it all:

XI. THOU SHALT NOT BE A DICK.

Killers? Yep. All dicks. Espcially the ones who kill for God after he had told them not to.

Back to Jesus. How much of that was true? I don't know. I do know this...He was born and raised during some very uncool times. Times where life had no value. Where people got stoned to death for "getting out of line" according to some trend du jour. Blasphemy was big as one of them. And Jesus pushed the limits. But, when you think about it, what was in it for Him? I mean, during such uncool times. You just can't spout out that kind of stuff and expect it to end any way but badly. And he knew it. But someone had to say it. No one really had before. Not in Palestine, anyway. Not in the Roman Empire. And it was such enlightenment that many went on saying it. Up to today. In many ways, languages, and religions. Trouble is, the ones who say it the loudest keep some fist-sized stones ready as they say it, just in case.

4. Do the brilliant atheists have a point?

A. I heard a lecture by Stephen Hawkins on why there can't be a God--a Creator--of the Universe. Never mind that it was a miracle Hawking was even still alive back then, but he simply said everything that is began with the Big Bang. And that meant time. Time is eternal, but this only applies from the Big Bang on. And there was nothing before that except probability fields waiting to collapse into that initial conflagration.

Time is a big deal!

We are 3-dimensional creatures. Since we're not 4-D, we can't grasp time in its entirety, as if it were certain measures of length, width, and depth. Just like a 2-dimensional creature encounters a multi-colored spoked wheel turning through his plane at a right angle--all that can be seen are multicolored lines (spokes) appearing and disappearing as the 3-D wheel spins. Stupid 2-D creatures!

Thus, we're really caught in cross sections of time--slivers of frames playing serially in that big projector. But unlike a projectionist picking up the projector and going home, we cannot step outside of the reels of our lives. Outside of time.

So thinking of eternity as beginning is, like the rock so heavy it cannot be lifted, a contradiction. Eternity is OUTSIDE of time. The Big Bang, Stephen, does not apply. But what does?

Everything matters

If there is existence outside of time, then anything that exists has ALWAYS existed, WILL ALWAYS exist, and HAS ALWAYS existed. We just can see that while we're distracted by multicolored spokes displaying with one dimension less than what we can know. Stupid 3-D creatures!

If we are, then we are, too, outside of time. When we die, do we rejoin our timeless--our eternal--selves outside of time with the full actuation of what we've matured through during this brief (important + unimportant) life we live here on this mere number line? And do you think Stephen Hawking knows that now? (Now? That's pretty funny when you think about it.)

The spiritual experiences that changed my life

Finally, to answer the challenge.

--It was C.S. Lewis who said the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. That is, those who choose not to be with God may do so. No problemo. Good luck, but come back when you're ready, prodigally. And it was C.S. Lewis, again, who said that everyone we meet--the priests and imans, the store clerks, the lawyers, the drug addicts, our ex's, that guy who cut you off in traffic--everyone--they're all immortals. They're all important. Not because they live in a life that is both important and unimportant simultaneously, but because they exist outside of time, whose importance is eternal.

--And it was my father. He taught me that goodness is its own reward. Ask any child. (Jesus probably dug children for this very reason.) It isn't until we're seduced by pride, one-upmanship, fear, and possessions that we become less childlike.

Children are hardwired for goodness. Unfortunately, it's that very vulnerable naïvité that allows them to be rewired to fear God (fear our Father?), Hell, or Purgatory, or drive some of them to make a hundred signs of the cross in holy water during recess.

Goodness. Our neurotransmitters are at peak efficiency in their humanness when the biochemicals all add up to goodness.

Who thought of that arrangement? That was just brilliant! It was probably someone smarter than me, even smarter than those smarter-than-me atheists. Someone who exists outside of time. Someone who was definitely not a dick. Like your Father.

--Finally, it was science. God and science get along. Science is a construct as surely as the way electrons have just the right amount of charge to orbit their protons. Just as surely as the weak and strong nuclear forces just work to keep it all together. Just as surely as electromagnetism combines with them in some Grand Unification, although that remains one of God's Easter eggs waiting to be found.

Quantum Christianity [Substitute, as needed, e.g., Quantum Islam, Quantum Judaism, etc.]

The rules in science are reliable. Except when you get down to the quantum level and start playing around with Planck lengths. We've only just scratched the surface. There are things we simply do not understand. Perhaps we never will. What other realities lie in wait for us? I look for the spirituality in such phenomena. Imagine such happiness when it all makes sense! But as long as we're stupid 3-D creatures, we may not be able to see it now. But we really can grasp some infinites, indeed, viz., love and goodness.

The rules of religion are unreliable. And the more unreliable they become, the more self-appointed people insist on their validity. But these people are too hung up on these rules to see the forest for the trees. Not eating meat on a Friday is a tree. Purgatory and Hell are trees. Love is the forest.

And while it might be handy to know how mRNA delivers instructions to viruses, love and goodness don't have to be completely understood to bask in their humanistic importance. Especially in a life where importance + unimportance coexist. Religious rules change, but goodness and love do not. If you follow your way one tree at a time, you'll never get it. If you follow your original hard-wiring you will; you'll see the forest. It's called pareidolia and it's quite automatic in our brains.

I have concluded that the beauty of science is divine. And the more I learn of science, the more divine it seems to me. I believe in evolution and think it is beautiful. Is this Intelligent Design I offer? No. It's just the science of spirituality, both of which I cannot separate--but in a good way.

I'm not as smart as the Hawkins' in life. But before we start comparing ACT scores, know that I don't need to be. The Wonder that comes with love and goodness is enough for me.

I worship at Planck lengths. I am a Quantum Christian.