To see a glimpse of the whole of nature is to know wonder and eternal beauty. We dabble our fingers in nature’s water and perceive the richness of forms, the elegant patterns. We feel tiny currents around our hands, playing the game of trying to predict, never holding the future for certain. According to certain Kaballists the greatest attainment of all is to see the hand of the divine in each part of its great work, the cosmos. Should that perhaps be the final end for which to strive?
This noder sometimes believes there is a designer, but feels He/She has not designed in the simple method imagined by the author of Genesis, that is just a metaphor. No, God made the universe to embody scientific principles, He/She designed the atom, the periodic table, yes, He/She allowed carbon to bond 4-valent, He/She ordained that organic carbon chemistry should be the substrate for life. He/She ordained that gravitational accretion should form stars and planets, that planets with the right mix of elements should bear the fruit of life at the right temperatures, that solar Hydrogen fusion should power Earth’s biosphere. He/She ordained the weirder mysteries of space-time – black holes, dark matter all part of the glorious design. Every fact that science has discovered about our universe is valid, and by inference may point us toward the creator who dreamed it all. Thus science and religion are not really incompatible. No fact of science disproves a creator, speculations about God can enrich scientific understanding, by provoking mystery and a sense of beauty.
Here then is an alternative myth of creation which I feel should serve as a rebuttal to the creationists:
- The first day : In the beginning was only pure thought. God played with numbers and relationships between numbers. infinities sat in his/her hand like jewels.
- The second day: God envisaged a free, jubilant energy, a dancing spirit, a desire to exist. Though He/She imagined it, yet in the crucible of his/her imagination it was solid and substantial, more real than any human dream. The energy moved without hindrance and expanded perpetually, expressing its liberty like a clear musical note ringing out.
- The third day :God subjected this lively energy to a constraint, it may not move thus and thus. By limitation He/She allowed rich structures governed by laws to emerge. By moulding the primeval stuff in his hands He/She deepened and enriched his creation .
- The fourth day: The maelstrom of matter/energy is endowed with yet more vast possibilities, time is born and the moving dance of evolution in time, numerous varied potentials explode out of the growing idea.
- The fifth day: God interleaves other dynamic flows with the growing universe, enriching it and allowing it to embody myriad hypermathematical ideas. He/She stands outside time, yet his creation exists in time.
- The sixth day: In the glittering vessel He/She has made, complex molecules start to form, they explore a huge space of possible life-forms, one group of these being human.
- The seventh day: Intelligent life finally forms the crown of evolution and, together with its machine creations it finally attains full grasp of the universe’s functioning. Consciousness views itself and sees that it was the goal towards which all god’s work was aimed, all variables tuned just right for conscious life’s arising. Thus God knows him/herself anew and the purpose of creation is attained.