Of Angels and Demons

Plaza Across from The Capitol Theatre - Salt Lake City Utah

Where Faith is Required

Why does faith play such an important role in God’s plan for us?  I’ve often speculated how differently I might conduct myself had I the memories of my previous probation still intact.  It certainly would be easier to operate in a state of knowing but that’s not God’s end goal.

He isn’t looking for well trained creations; beings properly schooled in the correct assumptions and behaviors.  We are the inheritors of a multiverse more fantastic and wonderful than our hopes, dreams, and aspirations could ever dare aspire to.   As such heirs, God needs to provide us an environment where we can exercise the profound and lasting changes that true learning and understanding bring... free from the complications of expectation and desire such knowledge would impart.

In such a faith based existence, how do spiritual manifestations play a part?  The moment we see God, an angel, a loved one since departed, wouldn’t that negate faith?  How about feeling or sensing their presence?  Might that be ok?  Well, if faith is a required part of God’s plan, I would have to say, “no.”  That would be knowledge.  Knowing something to be true is not the same as believing.  It’s either faith or knowledge but never both.

In addition to faith, I truly believe in a cyclical process of life and learning.  Just as my presence hasn’t been requested or required in the pre-existence while I’ve been alive, I struggle to comprehend a need for those who have died to return here either to provide comfort or bare witness.  Such things would deny me my free agency by robing me of faith and replacing it with knowledge.  In this context, angels, demons and all manner of spiritual specters, ghosts or what have you, have no place in my paradigm.

The universe is a pretty complicated place.  The more we learn about it, the more ridiculously complex it becomes.  We passed the point where our limited senses could experience all we know a very long time ago.  Additional dimensions, particles of matter, periods of time all outside our perceivable universe are now known to exist.  Our intellect has evolved beyond a “seeing is believing” universe.

I believe some of those who claim to have been witness to the supernatural.  That is to say, I believe they believe it to be true.  However, due to the faith requirement and semblance of cyclical order evident in our existence, I do not believe such things actual happen...  at least not the way those experiencing them think.

We live and operate in a physical world where much of what happens transpires beyond our threshold of perception.  The dimensions of time and space, everything we can experience, are just the mountaintops of what’s really going on.  Every so often the mists clear just enough that we almost become aware of the plains and valleys far below.  In attempting to make sense of the inconceivable, our minds develop constructs influenced by our passions and experience that are more understandable to us by creatively filling in the perception gaps.  As strange as this might seem, we’re all very adept at doing it.  In fact, the brain does it all the time.  

My maternal grandmother suffered from macular degeneration.  Over time she developed blind spots in her vision.  Instead of seeing black blotches everywhere, she reported that she would often see the background of a scene just fine.  It was only when something was moving across it in the foreground did she notice something odd... as an object moved into her blind spot, it would wink out as if invisible and then suddenly appear again when it exited.

And it’s not only vision.  We are capable of this with all our other senses.  Touch, smell, and hearing are equally manipulated.  Even logic is aided in this manner.  Instead of crunching through mountains of data each and every time we are presented with a particular situation, we use past personal experience, our current emotional state, and our immediate desires and expectations to devise short cuts in assessing a circumstance.  It’s a natural and beneficial result of intellectual evolution.

It is my firm belief spiritual manifestations are a result of what I might call assumptive sensory stereotyping where our emotional state and the uneasy near realization of things just beyond our comprehension collide.  In a life where faith is required, angels and demons cannot be allowed access and there is strict separations between realms.

This is not to say there is no value or meaning in such experiences because they are fueled by deep seated needs and desires.  As personal scripture, revelation, dreams, or visions, they are of allegorical importance whose meaning must be explored and understood.

“The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation

is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.” 

~Julie B. Beck

A Pluralist’s View of Science and Religion

New York Museum of Natural History - Manhattan

The General Relativity of Truth

The universe is a very strange place and getting stranger the more we learn about it.  Many of the greatest minds of our day are working diligently to craft a universal theory of everything encompassing the smallest of the small to the largest of the large.

There have been some astounding breakthroughs in the the fields of quantum cosmology and theoretical nuclear physics that have challenged many of the old views.  To this end, our mathematical geniuses are proving many of our established models of how things work to be, well, wrong!

The complexities being uncovered at Fermilab, CERN, and other research institutions around the globe promise unparalleled advancements in all scientific disciplines.  But for every question answered, many more new ones are left unanswered.

In addition to reexamining or, probably better said, “re-imagining” the universal governing forces of gravity, electromagnetism, the “strong” force and the “weak” force, these down in the trenches scientists are also inadvertently challenging some very fundamental philosophies like free will and the linear nature of existence.  So astounding the implications, the human mind struggles to even grasp its significance.

In evolutionary speak, it is an immutable fact our puny primate brain, that evolved in some unknown patch of jungle, on an insignificant rock, orbiting a teeny pale yellow star, spinning out in some blackened void, in a tiny far flung galaxy, in an unassuming corner of an ever expanding universe, will never be up to the task of EVER understanding the true nature and grandeur of the universe on all its infinite levels... no matter how much time or instruction is given.

If you think more in creationist terms, consider this:  The difference between God’s intellect, as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, and our intellect as regular human beings, who can find even an episode of Seinfeld confusing, should be astronomically greater than the difference between our intellect and say the intellect of a typical autotrophic organism like green algae.  Try explaining what we know of the cosmos to that!  What does that say about what God probably got us to understand about what He knows about the universe?

I don’t know about you but it has me thinking that everything we believe we know about the gospel might somehow be a really, really, really, to near infinity really dumbed down version of what actually is going on.  And maybe, “truth” isn’t as exacting and universal as we like to think it is.  Religion must then be considered an allegorical overlay to the incomprehensible universe as seen from a mystical perspective.

By that token, given the very specific and limited environmental conditions under which the human nervous system evolved through which we perceive and experience the universe and the fact all scientific understanding is derived from these same limited senses, it is reasonable to conclude science too is an allegorical overlay to an incomprehensible physical multiverse.

I know that’s a mouthful but consider the platonic allegory of the cave.  By design, we see, feel, smell, taste, and reason from one acutely defined perspective.  We could never hope of experiencing the universe in its proper and complete reference.  Like someone only experiencing shadows on a cave wall, we can never fathom or comprehend the true meaning or context of what we were experiencing.

Now, I know this is an issue of control.  Everyone wants to be right.  There is a lot of comfort in being right.  Atheists seek guidance from science.  The religious seek guidance from philosophy.   Both claim a “higher” truth when in reality, they’re just working different sides of the same street.  Honestly, that’s not a bad situation in be in.  Same problem, different lines of investigation; we should come up with some interesting theories.

It is from the realization that all perspectives are firmly based in the allegorical and not factual that I view life and the universe.  This blog will explore my views using concepts and vocabularies best suited for mystics and theologians only because that is its purpose and focus but I firmly believe spiritual concepts have direct corollaries to scientific ones and vice versa.  To speak to one does not negate the belief in the other.  Both are just a play of conceptual semantics.  It is critically important to remember this when reading my thoughts here.

“The only real wisdom is knowing 

you know nothing.” ~ Socrates