CHINESE BOXES
Aleron Zemplin
Consider the fundamental essence of religion from the dawn of human consciousness to the present day: God, or the gods, always represent that which is beyond our knowing and our understanding.
For the earliest humans, the gods lived on the top of the mountain, because the people had never been to the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain was unknown to them. Later, after people had scaled the mountain top, they knew that the gods were not there. The gods were, in fact, in the sky and in the heavens. The sky and the heavens were unknown to them. Later, after people had observed the sky and heavens—and even flown in them—and had come to better understand their workings, they knew that the gods were not there either. Perhaps if we build larger telescopes and look far out into the universe and far back in time toward the ultimate moment of creation, the Big Bang, we can know the plan of God. Perhaps if we continue to sub divide the matter of the universe into atoms, and from there into protons, electrons, and neutrons, and from there into quarks, we can discover God’s ultimate building blocks, God’s ultimate structure for His creation. But, my guess is that we cannot discover these ultimate truths.
No matter how big a telescope we build and no matter how far out in space or back in time we look, we will never find the face of God staring back at us. Like the ancients building the Tower of Babel to reach the heavens; an attempt to gain ultimate truth in the vast reaches of space is doomed. We will always find just more unexplored real-estate and more unanswered questions. And, no matter how big a particle accelerator or atom smasher we build, we will always find finer and finer subdivisions of matter. Quarks will be made of smaller particles, and these will be made of yet smaller particles, and so on and on. We will never be able to discover the ultimate building block or the ultimate structure.
We are suspended in a seemingly infinite set of nested Chinese boxes. No matter how far out we look on the scale of the very large or how far down we look on the scale of the very small we cannot see the end. There is always just another box. No matter how far back in time we look or how far out into the future we project, we can never find the alpha or the omega. These are the true mysteries, and consistent with our human instinct to deify the unknown, it is here that we should look to find our God. We must of course also bear in mind, that if God is the keeper of the infinite Chinese boxes of space and time then God is completely unfathomable by the likes of us. Trying to fathom such a God will only lead us back into the age old trap of letting our imaginations create beliefs and images of the deity that are without basis. I have just done this myself by calling God the “keeper” of the infinite Chinese boxes. Being a “keeper” is a human activity and Chinese boxes are objects devised and constructed by people. Instead we should meditate upon the beauty of the undiscoverable nature of ultimate truth, not simply unknown, but actually unknowable.
For the earliest humans, the gods lived on the top of the mountain, because the people had never been to the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain was unknown to them. Later, after people had scaled the mountain top, they knew that the gods were not there. The gods were, in fact, in the sky and in the heavens. The sky and the heavens were unknown to them. Later, after people had observed the sky and heavens—and even flown in them—and had come to better understand their workings, they knew that the gods were not there either. Perhaps if we build larger telescopes and look far out into the universe and far back in time toward the ultimate moment of creation, the Big Bang, we can know the plan of God. Perhaps if we continue to sub divide the matter of the universe into atoms, and from there into protons, electrons, and neutrons, and from there into quarks, we can discover God’s ultimate building blocks, God’s ultimate structure for His creation. But, my guess is that we cannot discover these ultimate truths.
No matter how big a telescope we build and no matter how far out in space or back in time we look, we will never find the face of God staring back at us. Like the ancients building the Tower of Babel to reach the heavens; an attempt to gain ultimate truth in the vast reaches of space is doomed. We will always find just more unexplored real-estate and more unanswered questions. And, no matter how big a particle accelerator or atom smasher we build, we will always find finer and finer subdivisions of matter. Quarks will be made of smaller particles, and these will be made of yet smaller particles, and so on and on. We will never be able to discover the ultimate building block or the ultimate structure.
We are suspended in a seemingly infinite set of nested Chinese boxes. No matter how far out we look on the scale of the very large or how far down we look on the scale of the very small we cannot see the end. There is always just another box. No matter how far back in time we look or how far out into the future we project, we can never find the alpha or the omega. These are the true mysteries, and consistent with our human instinct to deify the unknown, it is here that we should look to find our God. We must of course also bear in mind, that if God is the keeper of the infinite Chinese boxes of space and time then God is completely unfathomable by the likes of us. Trying to fathom such a God will only lead us back into the age old trap of letting our imaginations create beliefs and images of the deity that are without basis. I have just done this myself by calling God the “keeper” of the infinite Chinese boxes. Being a “keeper” is a human activity and Chinese boxes are objects devised and constructed by people. Instead we should meditate upon the beauty of the undiscoverable nature of ultimate truth, not simply unknown, but actually unknowable.