How I've spent part of my morning…

The thought, idea, concept, belief in God can only be derived through who and what we are—though revelation may be "true", it still must be processed through the filter of our brains and consequent consciousness that is biologically based—as remarkable as our brains (or minds) may be, they are still biological. Our thoughts and our “souls” or “spirits” may be something we would set apart from our biology, but they are still known or conceived only through the biology of our brains. At least as far as we know, when someone dies and their biology ceases functioning as a living system, then we have no “proof” of anything beyond. Near death or after death experiences have been communicated, but they are all put through the filter of the living, biological system of those who have “experienced” them. Here we admit that our concept of “proof” is limited because it is bound to the scientific definition of what is observable through our senses and therefore measurable in scientific ways. It’s like saying that chocolate doesn't exist because it doesn't fit the category of cinnamon. Or better yet, blue isn't real because we can't hear it. These are rather amusing and simple examples, but even they miss the mark since they use aspects of what we know to illustrate something we do not know. We can take it a little further and say that ultra-violet or infrared light does not exist since we cannot see them, or radio waves since we cannot hear them. There are countless examples in nature and the cosmos of incredible things that are beyond the human capacity to do or experience or know without some embellishment of our own senses. Still there are other mysteries that do not fit conventional logic, yet we accept them because they show up through tests—e.g. light that is both wave and particle, all depending on how we’re observing it.

The point of these examples is that “proof” is only and always biologically perceived and verified. As this is the case, how can we ever prove anything that does not fit the categories we understand as concrete—made of atoms doing something? We cannot. It is beyond the limitations of proving. Does this mean that there is nothing that does not fit the limits of our ability to experience it, even through methodologies that explain that something is taking place without us experiencing it either directly or through some instrument. For example, through mathematics we have theories of how atoms interact and much more—without the math, we couldn’t begin to surmise some of the things we say we now know. But even math or the super collider or the most powerful microscope cannot look beyond the cosmic system in which they exist. Does this mean there is nothing across that threshold? Amusingly, even our language does not allow expression of anything outside of our system. I used the word “outside” of our system, but that relies on the system of which we are a part that has insides and outsides and upsides and downsides. We speak of whether God “exists” and yet existence is something that is defined only within the system of which we are a part—there I go again using “within” the system as if for something else to be (ha! exist) it must be “outside.” I cannot speak or even conceive of something that doesn’t have dimension and doesn’t swim within time.

The particularly fascinating aspect to this is having the capacity to think of and even believe in something that isn’t contained within the jar of what we know and from which we arise. I suppose we are only able to do so in very limited ways that are metaphorically expressed through the system of which we are a part. In other words, we can’t imagine the unimaginable even though we can imagine it and know that we can’t.

With the ability to imagine the unimaginable, is it possible to imagine that the unimaginable is capable of things we cannot begin to fathom, including understanding things that are beyond our ability to conceive? To say no or to put limitations on the unimaginable has to be either absolute arrogance or phenomenal idiocy. If we can speak of God as creator of the cosmos, of the observable, of ourselves and we are able to recognize that the instrument of perception and conception (human beings) that has been created is used to be conscious of itself and the rest of what has been created, but by something beyond the created, is it conceivable that we are not able to see or reach beyond some edge, some boundary of this cosmos? And if we come to an edge, a boundary are we wise to say that nothing lies beyond—speaking metaphorically using the created dimension of space.

Now that I have that out of my system, I'm going to clean the bathrooms.

© Stephen Carl, 2016