ONCE UPON A BIG BANG
Here’s a story that begins with ONCE UPON A BANG. Some billions of
years ago there was a hot spot sitting no one can say where. In that
hotspot, tiny beyond human imagination, was all the material out of
which this universe is made. It became so dense and hot that it exploded
with a Big Bang (“explosion” is still used but think more of a balloon
expanding due to some sort of “ferment” inside) though no one knows why
or how it could have since no one knows anything about the physics that
governed it (assuming that physics governed it since there was
no knowable physics prior to “the bang” ). Still, the material spread
out, so the story goes, and during the unthinkable, unknowable process
physics was created along with space and everything in space, quasars,
galaxies and all else. That material is still flying away from that
explosive center. It cooled and settled and became suns and planets and
such and on one of them, no one knows how it could have happened and
much less why, what we call “life” came into being.
But because the universe is furiously expanding (it’s said) at something like the speed of light the stars (suns) are growing farther apart, it’s getting darker and colder and its heading for the Great Freeze when the universe itself will “die”. Another version of the story says that gravitation will become so strong that the universe will shrink in a Great Crunch. One way or another: OBLITERATION! Obliteration that is just as mindless and as pointless as the pointless, mindless beginning.
Bertrand Russell (Stratonician atheist) said that that story is clearly true so what humans must do is to build their future on “unyielding despair.”
H.J. Blackham (atheist) said the most powerful objection to that story is this: “Its pointlessness! It’s too bad to be true.”
This is the story Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking (more recently), Stephen Weinberg all urge us to believe.
If it’s true, it’s true.
Just so you know what it is.
Imagine this: Tomorrow morning the entire human family wakens to discover that that story is true. It’s not a rumor, it has been proven to the point where no one can deny it, everyone without exception knows that it’s true.
What does the human family now know?
It knows the grave is the final end; the universe is a massive “dead” thing, freezing and dark beyond human imagination and buried in this eternally silent mausoleum is all the gallantry, all the noble struggles, all the marvelous achievements of people we called glorious; all that was daring and gentle and self-giving is gone. All those we now adore no longer exist. Nowhere in time or eternity was anyone or could there be anyone better for all the loveliness or all the dreams or all the costly achievements. All the truths uncovered, all the heights of goodness won by the patient, long, glorious endeavor—all gone! They never meant anything.
Each human always was the product of mindless matter and a bag of reacting chemicals (“humans are nothing but bags of bio-chemical” one man told me). The chemicals came up with words like justice, love, compassion, hatred, cruelty, oppression, guilt, blame, praise but the words themselves were chemical reactions spawned by reacting chemicals and “electricity”. It might be different if there had been beings that made choices, purposed kindness and such—but there was no such thing.
Neuroscientist, Wolf Singer (atheist) assures us that matter is all that exists and since it is governed by physics there is no such thing as choice—we are matter acted on by and in keeping with physical laws which are nothing more than a description of how matter behaves and that description is itself reacting chemicals. Reacting chemicals and electrical circuitry are describing themselves. There never was nor is there now anyone in the bag of chemicals “choosing” or “intending”—there is no “ghost in the machine” (Gilbert Ryle), there is only the “machine” working, there is/are only chemicals reacting. One of these days these bags of chemicals will react and robots will come on the scene, centers of “artificial” intelligence, that will feel and be and think all that the humans now are and then surpass them. It’s simply a question of configuring the structure of atoms. There will be no “ghost in the machine” (no spirit or soul, the kind of words religious bags of reacting chemicals use of themselves)—there’s nothing more than material stuff put together in a certain way that it “works”. It’s all very simple.
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Weinberg (atheist) assures us that even our highest thoughts are chemical reactions. (Obviously Weinberg forgot that his own thoughts, high or low, are chemical reactions. It is this kind of thing that made it almost amusing to hear Mr. Hitchens (atheist) tell university students they did not have to agree with him, that the “choice” was theirs.)
Bertrand Russell confessed that there were things going on in the world that horrified him but, he said, he had no rational grounds on which to condemn them. In light of the above story the human family knows that there never was “justice” nor will there ever be. Multiplied millions of bags of reacting chemical were and are acted on by other reacting chemicals and that’s the entire story.
So from that morning when the human family wakened to discover the truth, that the above story was true, Jesus Christ was exposed as just another bag of reacting chemicals that “thought” it was God incarnate. (We would pity that particular bag but that would require us to be more than reacting chemicals. Reacting chemicals don’t and can’t really “pity”.) All prayer would cease, all hope would die, unyielding despair would set in, there’d be no comforting last words for anyone, Bibles and religious books would be trashed and burned, crosses in cemeteries become witnesses of the bizarre form some chemical reactions took. Hymn books are trashed, all hymn singing is hushed, all sacred music is hushed, all church buildings are monuments to false reactions of these reacting chemicals. (But how can chemical reactions be false or true? Neuro secretions and transmissions makes no claims; they simply are. The interpretation of those transmissions and secretions are also secretions and transmissions. There is no truth or error in such a world.) All talk of justice or injustice would be hushed, “love” would become a sound, nothing but chemicals; loyalty and devotion and faithfulness would be chemical sounds generated by groups of reacting chemicals. Joy in the presence of a new born baby or picnicking with the family, sadness when a beloved one went off into oblivion, affection that fills up our senses, hunger for “truth” and the desire to help the homeless or sick would go on for a brief while out of habit and then it would sink into the gloom with the realization that nothing is what it seems—God alone knows what else would arrive.
Atheism can only be preached in a world where atheists are empowered by the beauty and truth and hope and freedom that’s in it; things they say are only words by and about reacting chemicals and electrical circuity. If they really believed their story they couldn’t live in a world like this. They would have to be speechless. Dawkins is said to have recently admitted that he uses speech that makes no sense. He said if he didn’t use it he’d go crazy. You can’t rationally praise your car for running well, you can’t rationally blame the refrigerator for breaking down or a light bulb for burning out so how can you rationally praise bags of reacting chemicals? And why worry about rationality if it is nothing but chemical fireworks in a bag?
Finally there’s this, Many years ago in Denton, Texas, I watched (the then) atheist Antony Flew repeatedly refuse to answer the question: On what grounds would you condemn what the Nazis did? Like Bertrand Russell, Flew hated it but had no rational or moral grounds on which to condemn it. That’s where the story that begins with the BIG BANG ends.
There’s another Story that might well begin with, “ONCE UPON A TREE…”
(Holy Father, teach us your Story and fill us with the joy and wonder of it. Forbid us to let unbelievers set the agenda so that we spend our time following them around. Tell our teachers and preachers and help them to become rich and enthralled with it so that they will speak it to us that we will be empowered and with joy and assurance abd tell it to a world that desperately needs it. This request in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
But because the universe is furiously expanding (it’s said) at something like the speed of light the stars (suns) are growing farther apart, it’s getting darker and colder and its heading for the Great Freeze when the universe itself will “die”. Another version of the story says that gravitation will become so strong that the universe will shrink in a Great Crunch. One way or another: OBLITERATION! Obliteration that is just as mindless and as pointless as the pointless, mindless beginning.
Bertrand Russell (Stratonician atheist) said that that story is clearly true so what humans must do is to build their future on “unyielding despair.”
H.J. Blackham (atheist) said the most powerful objection to that story is this: “Its pointlessness! It’s too bad to be true.”
This is the story Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking (more recently), Stephen Weinberg all urge us to believe.
If it’s true, it’s true.
Just so you know what it is.
Imagine this: Tomorrow morning the entire human family wakens to discover that that story is true. It’s not a rumor, it has been proven to the point where no one can deny it, everyone without exception knows that it’s true.
What does the human family now know?
It knows the grave is the final end; the universe is a massive “dead” thing, freezing and dark beyond human imagination and buried in this eternally silent mausoleum is all the gallantry, all the noble struggles, all the marvelous achievements of people we called glorious; all that was daring and gentle and self-giving is gone. All those we now adore no longer exist. Nowhere in time or eternity was anyone or could there be anyone better for all the loveliness or all the dreams or all the costly achievements. All the truths uncovered, all the heights of goodness won by the patient, long, glorious endeavor—all gone! They never meant anything.
Each human always was the product of mindless matter and a bag of reacting chemicals (“humans are nothing but bags of bio-chemical” one man told me). The chemicals came up with words like justice, love, compassion, hatred, cruelty, oppression, guilt, blame, praise but the words themselves were chemical reactions spawned by reacting chemicals and “electricity”. It might be different if there had been beings that made choices, purposed kindness and such—but there was no such thing.
Neuroscientist, Wolf Singer (atheist) assures us that matter is all that exists and since it is governed by physics there is no such thing as choice—we are matter acted on by and in keeping with physical laws which are nothing more than a description of how matter behaves and that description is itself reacting chemicals. Reacting chemicals and electrical circuitry are describing themselves. There never was nor is there now anyone in the bag of chemicals “choosing” or “intending”—there is no “ghost in the machine” (Gilbert Ryle), there is only the “machine” working, there is/are only chemicals reacting. One of these days these bags of chemicals will react and robots will come on the scene, centers of “artificial” intelligence, that will feel and be and think all that the humans now are and then surpass them. It’s simply a question of configuring the structure of atoms. There will be no “ghost in the machine” (no spirit or soul, the kind of words religious bags of reacting chemicals use of themselves)—there’s nothing more than material stuff put together in a certain way that it “works”. It’s all very simple.
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Weinberg (atheist) assures us that even our highest thoughts are chemical reactions. (Obviously Weinberg forgot that his own thoughts, high or low, are chemical reactions. It is this kind of thing that made it almost amusing to hear Mr. Hitchens (atheist) tell university students they did not have to agree with him, that the “choice” was theirs.)
Bertrand Russell confessed that there were things going on in the world that horrified him but, he said, he had no rational grounds on which to condemn them. In light of the above story the human family knows that there never was “justice” nor will there ever be. Multiplied millions of bags of reacting chemical were and are acted on by other reacting chemicals and that’s the entire story.
So from that morning when the human family wakened to discover the truth, that the above story was true, Jesus Christ was exposed as just another bag of reacting chemicals that “thought” it was God incarnate. (We would pity that particular bag but that would require us to be more than reacting chemicals. Reacting chemicals don’t and can’t really “pity”.) All prayer would cease, all hope would die, unyielding despair would set in, there’d be no comforting last words for anyone, Bibles and religious books would be trashed and burned, crosses in cemeteries become witnesses of the bizarre form some chemical reactions took. Hymn books are trashed, all hymn singing is hushed, all sacred music is hushed, all church buildings are monuments to false reactions of these reacting chemicals. (But how can chemical reactions be false or true? Neuro secretions and transmissions makes no claims; they simply are. The interpretation of those transmissions and secretions are also secretions and transmissions. There is no truth or error in such a world.) All talk of justice or injustice would be hushed, “love” would become a sound, nothing but chemicals; loyalty and devotion and faithfulness would be chemical sounds generated by groups of reacting chemicals. Joy in the presence of a new born baby or picnicking with the family, sadness when a beloved one went off into oblivion, affection that fills up our senses, hunger for “truth” and the desire to help the homeless or sick would go on for a brief while out of habit and then it would sink into the gloom with the realization that nothing is what it seems—God alone knows what else would arrive.
Atheism can only be preached in a world where atheists are empowered by the beauty and truth and hope and freedom that’s in it; things they say are only words by and about reacting chemicals and electrical circuity. If they really believed their story they couldn’t live in a world like this. They would have to be speechless. Dawkins is said to have recently admitted that he uses speech that makes no sense. He said if he didn’t use it he’d go crazy. You can’t rationally praise your car for running well, you can’t rationally blame the refrigerator for breaking down or a light bulb for burning out so how can you rationally praise bags of reacting chemicals? And why worry about rationality if it is nothing but chemical fireworks in a bag?
Finally there’s this, Many years ago in Denton, Texas, I watched (the then) atheist Antony Flew repeatedly refuse to answer the question: On what grounds would you condemn what the Nazis did? Like Bertrand Russell, Flew hated it but had no rational or moral grounds on which to condemn it. That’s where the story that begins with the BIG BANG ends.
There’s another Story that might well begin with, “ONCE UPON A TREE…”
(Holy Father, teach us your Story and fill us with the joy and wonder of it. Forbid us to let unbelievers set the agenda so that we spend our time following them around. Tell our teachers and preachers and help them to become rich and enthralled with it so that they will speak it to us that we will be empowered and with joy and assurance abd tell it to a world that desperately needs it. This request in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
