>
>Frank Masingill wrote to Mark Bloss about Creationism [2/2]
 MB> If it rains, do you say the sky is deceitful because it must be sunny
 MB> instead? If gravity keeps the heaviest elements below us, and the
 MB> lighter ones above us, do you say gravity is lying?  No, gravity tells
 MB> the truth, it is honest, and its purpose is understood.  God made it
 MB> that way.
 
 MB> I cannot accept an ordered universe without God.
 FM> Mark, I'm not here to refute or argue with most of what you have
 FM> said but it does occur to me that some of this may miss the point for
 FM> the reality of lived life.  I could not help thinking that perhaps the
 FM> difference between the scientists "accepting" an ordered universe
 FM> (presumably one by which we can set our clocks) and those who
 FM> scientists or not wonder if the existence or non-existence of God meets
 FM> them anywhere in life on the edge of freedom and necessity or in its
 FM> moments of deepest tragedy.  Berdiaev, who was quite well informed on
 FM> philosophy could not help but symbolize the universe (world) as
 FM> "fallen" and in need of redemption and Pascal, as is well known
 FM> uttered in his Pensees the cry, "not the God of the philosophers but
 FM> the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."  
 
 Their symbols are most valid in the purview of personal experience.  The
 meaning of God differs on such a scale for each individual - even if they
 do not accept God as a _process_ of nature - or a _precursor_ of nature -
 or accept the symbol "God" as a convenient metaphor at most -  all are
 valid in their respective personal scope.  I cannot say Who God Is,
 because my words are not sufficient to the task, nor my mind so big that
 it can comprehend - but I do know I understand what I understand, and
 am commensurate to the tasks for which I am experienced thus far.  How
 much further I might _learn_ of the meaning of "God" is still unknown,
 as, I think, it must be for everyone.  I know we are not, as man,
 capable of comprehending God on our own - because we are not Him, as it
 were.  We are left to our own devices.  And how myriad they are indeed.
 FM> On one thing, I sense that we ARE in pretty good agreement.  I'm
 FM> pretty certain in the sunset years of MY life that despite the evidence
 FM> and revelation that God SURELY does not exist to fulfill any dream *I*
 FM> might have, however noble it might appear to be to me, there are not
 FM> several or even two distinct realities.  The reliability of the
 FM> universe is difficult to deny and for man it often shows a high degree
 FM> of tragedy.  In order to conceive the world of the present as having
 FM> meaning for "man" (a symbol itself) one might well have to ground it,
 FM> as did St. Paul, in myth.  In his myth, there was the "First Adam" and
 FM> then the Christ as a "Second Adam."  Subsequent thinkers have developed
 FM> "ages of the Father, Son, and Spirt" as concrete epochs with dates
 FM> while a Hegel could conceive that the "death of God" meant that in the
 FM> early 19th century that which had only been symbolized as spirit had
 FM> now become real as incarnate in man.  Through all of this, mystics like
 FM> Eckhardt and Chardin whether cleric or scientist have insisted that
 FM> "God" could, indeed, not be separate from that which is often
 FM> symbolized as "creation."  I think they also realized that man must be
 FM> satisfied with only a partial "knowing" in this realm of consideration
 FM> of the whole.  The ineluctable condition of man, I think is to realize
 FM> that Faith really can only be "seeing through a darkened glass."  The
 FM> "order" of the universe may be easy to talk about but the inevitability
 FM> of nature "red in tooth and claw" is, sometimes inscrutably, also a
 FM> vital part of that order and that reality.  Faith must ALSO deal with
 FM> that.   
 
 I agree in whole.  Nature (also a symbol) is apparently indifferent
 to the desires and aspirations of man, or beast, or planets and stars
 for that matter.  All come and go, turn to gas and dust as the ages
 roll.  No matter that my faith leads me to a precipice of doubt where
 I must leap to either one of my death or to life.  It is a consternated
 task to which I set upon myself, so full of my limitations and my 
 misconceptions,  but I still set myself to it, as though nature itself
 was urging me on.  And it is only in the _urging_ of nature that I find
 not indifference, but purpose.
 
 FM> Sincerely, 
 FM> Frank
 
 Regards,
 Mark
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