Whoever undertakes to set himself up in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
– Albert Einstein
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find its defenders among the ablest men [and women].
– John Dalberg (Lord Acton)
Today we set out to explore how choices always create consequences. In the previous episode, we discussed the greatest, most consequential choice we can ever make – that of our dance partner in the “Great Dance” and our individual part in it. We noted that everyone must dance. When we boil it all down, we will dance with one, or perhaps, over the course of our lives, with a succession or combination of the following partners: (1) the gods/idols of our ancestors, (2) the gods/idols of the present time, (3) ourselves as our own god/idol, or (4) Yahweh the Creator, the One, the Ultimate Partner. As Bob Dylan said “You gotta serve somebody.”
There are no doubt some who will argue that the sort of statement made above is based on the false and thoroughly discredited notion of belief in a Divinity, a Creator, and its corollary that there is such a thing as Absolute Truth. [For the remainder of this discussion we will use “Truth”, capital T, to mean Absolute Truth and “truth” for its opposite – relative truth based on personal conviction.]
To say that there is no such thing as Truth is an inherent contradiction. The declarer is in fact saying there is at least one Truth – that there is no Truth. Simply affirming or denying one’s personal conviction about Truth cannot prove or disprove its actual existence. Just as the denier of Truth will doubtless appeal to science and mathematics to “prove” that there is no “Truth” because there is no scientific way to demonstrate its reality, it is equally accurate to say there is no scientific way to disprove its reality. In each case, the affirmer must weigh the evidence and the probabilities, choose to believe, and accept the ensuing consequences based on the life one lives in accordance with one’s “faith” – for both are faith-based decisions about what is ultimately true.
If I cannot or will not live by the truth/Truth I declare to be reality, I am perhaps an unconscious deceiver of myself and others, or a self-deluded hypocrite, or an outright scoundrel who is deliberately misleading others, or a fool who does not even know what my true convictions are.
Perhaps my delusion is based on my desire to impress others, to be seen as someone I am not. Perhaps I think that, if I profess certain convictions, I may gain recognition, acclaim, position as a road to power and influence, wealth and immunity from consequences – with a secret aim of being able to indulge my baser passions without giving an account. Or perhaps this is what happens as a by-product of the underlying quest disguised by the nobler-sounding aims designed to fool oneself and the others I have used along the way. All too often we see this on vivid display among tycoons, states-people, and high-profile big names in all sectors from religion to entertainment.
The old saw about religion and science not mixing and being completely incompatible was never true and is wearing thinner and thinner. We suffer every day from its Goebbelsian (Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister or Propaganda) Big-Lie repetition from on high in Academia. In public oratory and decreed public policy about all the new values that must be unquestioningly bought into, we are lectured about all kinds of censure and other opprobrium which will be the consequences upon transgressors of the New Enlightenment discoveries about Nature, Human Nature, and the Cosmos itself. [These are spelled with capitals to designate their status as gods/idols of this age.]
The Truth is that faith and science have always been intimately connected. There is in fact now a very large minority of serious “real” scientists who quietly recognize both their own individual spirituality, and that it is not a contradiction for them to believe that there is deep mystery in the Cosmos – both macro and micro. They understand and see up close that life in all its inexplicable, intricate, and mind-blowing complexity, which hangs on a razor’s edge, bears a profound impression of deliberate purpose and design which no amount of infinite evolutionary regress can erase. One micro-deviation at any number of infinitesimal micro-instants would have aborted and still could abort it all.
This brings us to “probabilities”. In brutally brief clarity, the odds are virtually infinitely against anything being here, let along what actually is with all its mind-blowing wonder. And then we add in the even much less probable emergence of a highly sentient, self-aware entity called humanity, complete with innate moral and ethical sensibilities and a capacity to conceive the infinite and the Ultimate Source of all that is or ever could be.
Admittedly, understanding probabilities does not constitute “Truth”; it only points overwhelmingly towards its probability. The choice whether to accept this gigantic probability remains with the perceiver. Regardless of saying “yes” or “no” to the Great Partner in the dance, we humans are certainly, absolutely the most extreme of Outliers in the great Cosmos.
The absurd paradox of it all is that in the most scientifically advanced society in the history of Earth, most of its denizens are desperately choosing to deny who and what we are and what we were made for, and by Whom. The consequences of this flight from reality are akin to a Berchtold Brecht Theatre of the Absurd drama – Waiting for Godot, Reprise to the nth degree. [Apologies to Brecht fans; this “title” is my invention, not a real play.]
By all rights, the most scientific and mathematically honest perspective should be that there is a virtual certainty that, even if we poor humans can’t fully perceive it, absolute Truth exists because a Creator-Designer exists to give True meaning to the Cosmos and to us. Whether the Creator worked this wonder by fiat decree or gradual, guided processes is not the debate at this point.
As to consequences, for 300 or so years the West’s most influential Intelligentsia have striven with grit, determination, and even some rudimentary design, to deconstruct the “old regime” based on the existence of the Creator to give order and meaning to all things. This work has been carried on with great ingenuity in undermining all the extant influences of tradition and meaning founded on the Creator – whether by discrediting the Scriptures or the Church as institution, or the intellectuals who have opposed their work. Humans have been reduced to sophisticated animals. All in all, this long culture war has brought victory to the Enlightenment ideas of relativistic truth, relativistic morality and ethics, and plastic, every-morphing concepts of human nature – even while “Nature” has been idolized and humanity largely vilified.
In the 2020s, we find ourselves swimming in the social, moral, ethical, environmental, industrial, cultural, and economic swamp which is the consequence of this deconstruction. The swamp is filled with the increasingly murky waters of personalized, politicized “truth” seeking to drown and smother Truth in the muck of “everything is OK, as long as you’re not intolerant (oops! how did that new “Truth” slip in there?), except of those we declare to be intolerant because they tell us there really is Truth and right and wrong and good and bad in the world.”
The Big Lie says that there are no consequences for all the lunacy we can indulge in in the name of Freedom (another modern idol) and Self-Expression. There are always consequences. Science tells us with absolute certainty that “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; what goes up, will come down; what goes around, comes around.” Karma tells us, “Every action has an outcome; good actions beget good outcomes; bad/foolish/self-deluding/wicked actions beget bad and even disastrous consequences.” We can deny what nature (both Cosmic and human)/the Creator has designed into everything and us only until we reach the limits of what the design can absorb before it and our own beings will suffer brutal and terrible consequences. We are on the cusp of judgment. Whether it be the Last Judgment remains to be seen and is known only to the Creator.
Saying this is not “judgmental”. It is not a personal attack on any individual or group. Take it to heart as appropriate. Ignore it at your peril – individual and collective. It is the judgment of consequences which we largely inflict on ourselves. It is not accusatory to declare what is patent and ought to be totally obvious Truth. Running away from it hiding our eyes and blocking our ears while screaming “You have no right to tell me this! I don’t have to listen to your holier-than-thou diatribe!” will not stop any of the consequences which are coming as ineluctably down the mountainside as an avalanche. It is as sure as Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming’” told us several decades ago.
Choices! We all have them! We can’t avoid them. Small ones lead to big ones. I can avoid and ignore warnings and signs of what’s coming until I become oblivious and even morally comatose. But I have no one to blame but myself for the consequences.
There is always a choice. Even now, you can choose to be an Outlier willing to give up your other god/gods and turn to the only Dance Partner who can set you free from the ultimate consequences of denying who He/She is and who you are and are really meant to be.
Absolutely!
TO BE CONTINUED
World.V.You 