Notes From a Reluctant Deist Part II

The jukebox

In my first piece on this subject, I wrote about my lifelong atheism, although the truth is, I was never entirely comfortable with the word “atheist,” smacking as it does of a certainty that I never felt. At the same time, I didn’t care much for the word “agnostic,” because it felt too wishy-washy, almost like a smug little kid. Because nothing can be proven one way or the other, the agnostic straddles the fence going, “I know you are but what am I?” Everybody hates those kids. So, because I leaned more in the direction of the atheist, that’s the word I went with. It felt incomplete, but it was the best I had.

Similarly, “deist” also feels incomplete for where I am today. A deist is somebody who believes in a supreme being that does not directly interfere in the doings of Its creation. I have some problems with that definition, in particular the phrase “supreme being,” but also the part about It not interfering. Now that I think about it, I have a problem with the whole definition but, again, I don’t have a better word so that’s the one I’ll use for the moment.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last time we met, my mother heard a Voice. The Voice predicted an unlikely outcome and the prediction came true. An interesting anecdote, to be sure, but hardly proof positive of, well, anything. Lots of people hear voices, after all, including schizophrenics and saints. Perhaps the difference between the two is slight. That being said, she heard a Voice. Soon after, I began interviewing her for my book, Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine, But Also My Mom’s (Which I Know Sounds Weird). We both knew her body was failing , and I wanted to tell her story to the best of my ability before she died, and also to reflect on my complicated relationship with my own body. It is our bodies, after all, that we are forced to live within for the duration of our time on Earth.

It is our bodies that provide us with all of the information we have about this world. We take in the world in through our senses, process it with our brains, and form some kind of worldview based on that information. So, in a very real sense, we are our bodies. And yet, in a very real sense we are not. Lop off an arm and we are still ourselves. Lop off everything and stick our heads in a jar like in Futurama and we are still ourselves. What if, one day, we figure out how to do away with even our brains by uploading our consciousnesses to some version of the cloud? Without our bodies, are we still ourselves? Intuitively, I think the answer is probably yes. Which means we are not our bodies. So what are we?

The mind/body connection has stumped philosophers and scientists since at least Plato. He was the first one that wrote about the duality between mind and body. I’m not going to quote Plato here because you’ll probably just skip over it, but basically he says that the body “is the chief hindrance of our union with the divine.”

In other words, there is a separation between the body and the spirit because how could the body prevent us from hooking up with the divine if they were one and the same? Plato didn’t come up with that shit, either. He took his inspiration from another Greek philosopher named Parmenides who believed that there was a realm he called “The One,” a reality you couldn’t reach through your senses, but had to be inferred through the study of abstract concepts like Beauty, Unity, and Truth.

As a total aside and a perfect illustration of the opposite of Beauty, Unity, and Truth, there’s an insane 105,000 sq. ft. house/Tower of Babel in Los Angeles also called “The One.” The dude who built it went broke. Here’s a video tour:

It wasn’t just those crafty Greeks thinking about this stuff, either. In the East, Taoists, Buddhists, and Hindus all have some version of the same idea. In Africa, the Yoruba religion holds a similar belief system, as do many Native American tribes. And probably lots of others. So this idea pops up all over the world and I guess my question is: why? Because it’s a weird thought to have, isn’t it? That the body is somehow separate from another part of you? What other part? Where is it? Why would anybody ever think that? And yet, for some reason, everybody does. I think the reason we do is because we “sense” this other, non-physical part of us in the same way that we sense the stuff that we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste.

People talk about a “sixth sense” all the time. Generally, it’s meant to convey the idea of intuition, but I’m talking about something deeper. It’s like the body has some other, internal antenna that is alert to a non-material world. Is that true? Does such an antenna exist? Does such a world? I used to think no, but, c’mon, am I really going to disagree with Plato? I mean, that guy has a whole adjective named after him.

If such an “antenna” exists, what frequencies does it seek? Going back to the Greeks for a second, Pythagoras – the guy who invented that theorem that says something or another – believed that the world itself was made of musical principles. In fact, he’s the guy that figured out the mathematical principles behind the standard eight note octave, and he believed that the nature of music was intimately connected to the nature of the universe. Was he right? Is the nature of the universe, in some way, related to vibrations?

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String theory would have us think so. I’m going to get this at least partly wrong but string theory is a theoretical model of reality which states that our fundamental reality isn’t point-like particles but instead is composed of one-dimensional “strings” which arise from nothing, and whose vibrations create particles, which, in turn create matter. If string theory proves to be correct, then I think we could say, on some level, that the universe itself is musical in nature. Which would be crazy. Of course, a lot of physicists think string theory is a load of hooey since it is, at least for now, untestable and it involves extra dimensions and is generally kind of a pain in the ass. But I don’t know. I think it sounds cool.

Even if the universe does proves to be essentially a juke box, would that get us any closer to a belief in a larger intelligence? Maybe yes, maybe no. What it would do is connect everything on an even more fundamental level than we already know ourselves to be connected. Carl Sagan used to talk about everything being made from star dust, the idea being that every particle apart from helium and hydrogen was made in stars, and that when those stars exploded, they permeated the universe with those heavier particles, out of which we are all made. Cool. But string theory is even more elemental because it posits that everything and nothing are essentially the same; we are all and we are none. And that’s even cooler.

Is that what our “antennae” are seeking out? That commonality? That Oneness?

Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

(Pictured: the universe)

I’ll try to pick it up again tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to make something clear: I don’t think I’ve ever had an original thought in my life. Anything you read here is cobbled together from snatches of other sources, some of which I can place, many of which I cannot. If it isn’t already abundantly clear, I have no training or expertise in theology, philosophy, neurology, psychology, physics, cosmology, or really, anything, beyond certain punk bands of the late 1980’s.

To further illustrate why you shouldn’t listen to anything I say, just know that I dropped out of college to become a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. That’s the level of intellect you’re dealing with here. My thinking on all of this stuff is, by necessity, going to be sloppy, inconsistent, and no doubt incorrect a lot of the time. That’s ok by me because I’m still trying to figure all this shit out.

With that caveat out of the way, I also don’t think I’m any dumber than the average dummy. My brain is probably about as capable as yours, which means my conclusions will be accessible to you, and yours to me. I’m interested in hearing from people with more expertise in these matters than me to tell me where they think I’m correct or mistaken. If you’re one of those people, feel free to leave a comment and maybe all of us can start a little conversation together. I’m not seeking to convince anybody of anything, only to understand myself a little bit better.