Fruber’s Theory - How the Multiverse Was Discovered
It was a rather ordinary day; in fact, it was a very ordinary day. Fruber Von Grindstone had returned home after a tedious work day at the Astrological Physics Lab of Purbulberg (APLOP) and he was sorting the load of laundry that he had just pulled out of the dryer. That was the scene when inspiration hit him. Here is how it happened.
After searching through the entire load of clothes and then retracing his path from the dryer to the bedroom, where he was sorting the load, several times, as well as checking the washer and the dryer thoroughly and checking and re-checking the dirty clothes hamper from which the load had come, he still could not find a missing sock.
Fruber’s background in physics made it clear that material things do not just disappear into thin air. The sock must still exist; it must be somewhere. This is when the spark of genius hit Fruber right between the eyes. “It must be in some other dimension of space-time that I cannot perceive.”
The implications had Fruber’s head spinning. Is this a phenomena that only occurs with socks? Is there something special about my home, especially around my laundry room? Could this explain why my watch disappeared from my locker at the gym? Could this explain why Uncle Norbert went missing 15 years ago and has never been found (although aunt Gretl has other theories related to the withdrawal from their bank account).
In any case, Fruber was pretty sure that he was onto something and he could hardly wait until the next day so he could start to build a mathematical construct that could explain this and other mysteries of the universe. That was when the second spark of genius flashed for Fruber. There may not be an explanation in this single universe. Perhaps the answer is as simple and obvious as the fact that there are multiple universes and that some objects, especially socks, have the capacity to move seamlessly between them.
At this point, things started to move very quickly. Fruber spent several days on the mathematical construct but then, even though he was quite proficient at math, he felt the need to get one or two of his colleagues who were theoretical mathematicians involved.
When explaining his theory to them, Fruber decided not to mention that the theory was inspired by a lost stocking. He thought that may sound a bit unscientific so he told them that he had come up with it while watching an episode of Star Trek in which Spock made some oblique reference to other universes. At least that is what it seemed like Spock had said. They listened to Fruber’s theory and they were immediately all in. They even thought that they remembered the episode.
In any case, Fruber was uncertain about what power of Pi (~ imagine two little lines under the squiggle) was appropriate on page twelve of the construct. His colleagues got right to work on it and within days determined that it was the nineteenth power of Pi that made the equation work perfectly.
From there, the next step was to prepare and present the theory to the rest of the scientists at the lab. This took quite a bit of effort but, with the help of his colleagues, they knocked it out in about a week. The other scientists at the lab were originally a bit skeptical but after a few days, when they considered all of the phenomena that this could explain and when they could find no fault with the math, they decided to support Fruber’s theory.
At this point, it was time to present the theory to the entire scientific community. Since they wanted to make sure that no one else beat them to the punch, the entire lab threw its focus on the effort and, by scientific paper standards, it was accomplished at light speed, only taking three months.
The paper took the scientific community by storm. Almost all of them had seen the Star Trek episode and it had been eating at them for years. Now, here was mathematical proof positive that it was true and it also made it clear that the Vulcan was a genius.
Honors and awards followed for Fruber and for his team and for the lab as a whole. Fruber’s life became a whirlwind of activity with scientific conventions and galas regularly taking up his time. It was just as he was getting dressed for one of these events, which was happening right in Purbulberg, that Fruber noticed something under his bed. He bent down and found that it was his missing sock.
It was a rather ordinary day; in fact, it was a very ordinary day. Fruber Von Grindstone had returned home after a tedious work day at the Astrological Physics Lab of Purbulberg (APLOP) and he was sorting the load of laundry that he had just pulled out of the dryer. That was the scene when inspiration hit him. Here is how it happened.
After searching through the entire load of clothes and then retracing his path from the dryer to the bedroom, where he was sorting the load, several times, as well as checking the washer and the dryer thoroughly and checking and re-checking the dirty clothes hamper from which the load had come, he still could not find a missing sock.
Fruber’s background in physics made it clear that material things do not just disappear into thin air. The sock must still exist; it must be somewhere. This is when the spark of genius hit Fruber right between the eyes. “It must be in some other dimension of space-time that I cannot perceive.”
The implications had Fruber’s head spinning. Is this a phenomena that only occurs with socks? Is there something special about my home, especially around my laundry room? Could this explain why my watch disappeared from my locker at the gym? Could this explain why Uncle Norbert went missing 15 years ago and has never been found (although aunt Gretl has other theories related to the withdrawal from their bank account).
In any case, Fruber was pretty sure that he was onto something and he could hardly wait until the next day so he could start to build a mathematical construct that could explain this and other mysteries of the universe. That was when the second spark of genius flashed for Fruber. There may not be an explanation in this single universe. Perhaps the answer is as simple and obvious as the fact that there are multiple universes and that some objects, especially socks, have the capacity to move seamlessly between them.
At this point, things started to move very quickly. Fruber spent several days on the mathematical construct but then, even though he was quite proficient at math, he felt the need to get one or two of his colleagues who were theoretical mathematicians involved.
When explaining his theory to them, Fruber decided not to mention that the theory was inspired by a lost stocking. He thought that may sound a bit unscientific so he told them that he had come up with it while watching an episode of Star Trek in which Spock made some oblique reference to other universes. At least that is what it seemed like Spock had said. They listened to Fruber’s theory and they were immediately all in. They even thought that they remembered the episode.
In any case, Fruber was uncertain about what power of Pi (~ imagine two little lines under the squiggle) was appropriate on page twelve of the construct. His colleagues got right to work on it and within days determined that it was the nineteenth power of Pi that made the equation work perfectly.
From there, the next step was to prepare and present the theory to the rest of the scientists at the lab. This took quite a bit of effort but, with the help of his colleagues, they knocked it out in about a week. The other scientists at the lab were originally a bit skeptical but after a few days, when they considered all of the phenomena that this could explain and when they could find no fault with the math, they decided to support Fruber’s theory.
At this point, it was time to present the theory to the entire scientific community. Since they wanted to make sure that no one else beat them to the punch, the entire lab threw its focus on the effort and, by scientific paper standards, it was accomplished at light speed, only taking three months.
The paper took the scientific community by storm. Almost all of them had seen the Star Trek episode and it had been eating at them for years. Now, here was mathematical proof positive that it was true and it also made it clear that the Vulcan was a genius.
Honors and awards followed for Fruber and for his team and for the lab as a whole. Fruber’s life became a whirlwind of activity with scientific conventions and galas regularly taking up his time. It was just as he was getting dressed for one of these events, which was happening right in Purbulberg, that Fruber noticed something under his bed. He bent down and found that it was his missing sock.
RJM
01/06/24
The Holiday Conversation
It was from a condolences message in the Notre Dame Magazine that I learned of the passing of the wife of a dear friend and fellow alumni. Tom and I had been friends for fifty years but had fallen out of touch. I felt a need to get back in touch and let him know that we were thinking of him and his wonderful wife, Linda.
A lot of things had happened in the interim. We initially exchanged Christmas cards and occasional phone calls. We even got together on the rare occasions when proximity and schedules allowed. But with the passing of years our children and their children had grown up and been replaced by grandchildren; the earth had circled the sun a couple of scores plus. And, tragically, my wife and I had lost a beloved 23-year-old daughter, Sally, in a drunk driving accident over 26 years ago.
Despite the sparse contact, there was still a connection that resonated for me. Some sort of shared bond that may have come from our similar childhood experiences or shared beliefs during the time that we worked together early in our careers. Perhaps we just enjoyed each other’s sense of humor.
We had both attended Notre Dame but at different times and for different programs. Tom got his undergrad degree from ND in 1968 and I got an MBA in 1972. We met while we were both working for a large firm in Chicago (we’ll call it Accenture, although it didn’t acquire that name until several years later). We became close friends from the first moment we met and that friendship made our time at Accenture much more enjoyable.
However, in time we both struck out in different directions. Tom bought a business in the Chicago area and ran it successfully for the rest of his career. He and Linda had a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood and they raised a beautiful family. My career was much less stationary. With my wife and growing family, we bounced from place to place, moving first to Colorado and then to Maryland, Calgary, Singapore, the Silicon Valley, then Connecticut and finally landing in Boston area where we retired.
There had been plans to get together in the Chicago area the prior summer and renew old bonds. But those plans did not work out because my wife was sick, and fever or other signs of possible contagion are not taken lightly in the modern world, especially by people in their mid to late 70’s. So, we had to cut our trip to the Midwest short and go back home.
But here it was, the Christmas Season of 2023. And both of us held the other in a place of highest respect despite the fact that we had not seen each other in years. So, this time the meeting did happen. Unfortunately, it was only in my imagination. But here is how it might have gone.
We may have started out with safe subjects that we felt that we would agree on, like the sad state of college football. We would both be disgusted at the new world of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) which makes some college athletes into paid professionals while they are still in school. Along with other rule changes it made most of the bowl games, which were already pretty meaningless, even more meaningless. But of more importance was the fact that the new rules showed how little loyalty to a team was valued and how much the sport of college football had been taken over by the quest for money at all levels.
Perhaps the NCAA and the various conferences and universities could not come up with a convincing argument that college students should be unpaid amateurs when it was so clear that those same institutions were doing everything in their power to maximize the amount of money that they could bring in from the sport. Throw in the national obsession with gambling and you have a perfect storm of idiotic nonsense that has teams from the West Coast included in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference). Perhaps NIL and the other rule changes assuaged the consciences of the university administrators for the additional burdens they were placing on the athletes to travel further and further to play more and more games each season. Their own greed was so obviously on display that they had no moral ground on which to stand.
Tom and I would be in such agreement on this subject that it would be hard to remember who made which point during the conversation. But now it would be time to move on to something else. Politics was always a dangerous subject and neither Tom nor I would want to go there. The Wars in Gaza and the Ukraine were similarly dangerous.
In a recent email, Tom mentioned that he had just visited The Grotto on the ND campus on the Third Anniversary of Linda’s passing. This involved at least 5 hours of driving to get there and back but it was worth it to Tom. The Grotto was a special place for Tom and he had visited there often over the years, sometimes with Linda.
In our imaginary conversation this could have led me to ask Tom if he ever “heard from” Linda. I could have related how I had “heard from” Sally over the years, like the time at her graveside when the clouds formed a perfect picture of her face. Or the times when I was playing golf and she made shots happen that I could not have been responsible for and I could sense her impish joy at what she had done.
I imagine that Tom would have said that he had often seen and been with Linda in his dreams and that he frequently saw things and noticed things that reminded him of Linda and that made her presence felt. Some of the things he would have seen or felt would have been so profound and special that they could only be explained as coming from Linda herself. No one else could have understood them but Tom and Linda. But each and every time he had the feeling, it was always joyful and he knew that Linda was happy.
Tom has always been a person with a very strong faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church; his faith is the bedrock of his belief system. And Tom’s way of living out his beliefs has made him a wonderful man, kind and honest, devoted to his family, and as trustworthy a friend as you could have.
At this point, I could have decided to go into my own spiritual beliefs, even though they revealed that I was no longer a practicing Catholic. I was now a Unitarian Universalist. This meant that I did not have to follow any particular creed but could feel free to form my own beliefs and make up my own mind.
Throughout most of my early life, I had been a practicing Catholic and had accepted the church teachings at face value. However, as the years passed and I saw more of the world, I realized that there was very little in the Catholic Creed that I still believed. I read various books about the historical Jesus and formed my own views on who Jesus was and what his message was.
So now, since it was the Holiday Season, I could have started with the Christmas story with the trip to Bethlehem and the star and the angels and the Wise Men; they were an easy target. To me the only part that may have been true was that Jesus may have been born in a stable, and, for me, that was the most important part.
Next I could have jumped into what I see as the bigger issue with modern Christianity which goes all the way back to the Judeo-Christian creation story. Clearly the details of the story were allegorical; the seven days of creation, Adam and Eve and the snake and the fruit were just ways to explain something that was unknown. But I found it interesting that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and they lost their perpetual youth and brought on death and suffering because they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I could have plowed on saying that there are many things that come from and are based on this story but the most pernicious is the concept of “Original Sin” (as the Catholic Church calls it). Under this teaching, all humans (except Jesus and Mary) are sinners from birth and all sinners are in need of redemption. The entire premise of Christianity is actually based on this story, or, at least, on this concept. Jesus is referred to as the “second Adam” - the Redeemer who had to die for our sins to make up for the fact that Adam disobeyed God and took a bite of the forbidden fruit. For this reason, redemption was necessary to restore us to the good graces of the creator and to eternal life.
I feel that this simplistic story had unintended consequences. To try to make it hold together it was necessary for the church fathers to invent a whole lot of dogmas and doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and the Virgin Birth and the Holy Trinity and other doctrines that we are told we should not question and must believe because they are “Divine Revelation.” By the time the church fathers were through, they created a God who was so vengeful that He would kill His own son to get retribution for Adam’s (mankind’s) disobedience. Oh, what a tangled web we weave!
I believe that Jesus was a real person who was trying to move away from the Genesis creation story with its belief in sinful mankind trying to deal with a harsh God. I feel that Jesus was telling us that God is like Our Father and that He loves us as we are – the “Good News.” I think that the teachings of Jesus were simple and easy to remember - God loves you and you should love God in return and love your neighbor as you love yourself. But they were also revolutionary; for example, he said the weak and the poor are blessed in the eyes of God and it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. I feel that Jesus pulled no punches.
I could have said that I think that the ideas and the message of Jesus were spun by the religious and political powers over the centuries to make it suit their purposes of controlling ordinary people. Jesus rebelled against the idea of a harsh, judgmental God and I think that Jesus also rebelled against the idea that we need intermediaries between ourselves and God who claim authority over the details of how we should behave and live our lives.
I could have gone on and said that I think that it is ironic that the message of Jesus, which essentially threw the old creation story under the bus, has been spun and twisted over the centuries, especially in the first few centuries after Jesus died, into a religious doctrine that features Jesus as the fulfilment of the very creation story that he trashed. The very teachings and teachers that he rebelled against were able to turn his story upside down and use him to strengthen their hold on power and authority.
I could have said that I didn’t think that we should get too smug about the simplicity of the Genesis creation story. We should consider the fact that our current creation story, the “Big Bang Theory,” is also just an attempt to explain something that our current understanding falls short of explaining.
And I could have added that I think there is a great insight tucked into the part about eating the forbidden fruit taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When humans ate from the tree of knowledge (or evolved into cognitive beings) the timeless world of right now was replaced by the world of limited tomorrows. We became aware of our own mortality. For good or for bad, when humans became aware of time and became capable of thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow and how they (humans) could influence tomorrow by what they did today, the course of creation was up for grabs.
We opened Pandora’s Box and the innocence of living by our instincts under the natural law was replaced by plans and decisions and choices where some could be good and some bad, some selfish and some selfless, some right and some wrong, some effective in the moment but not effective over time. In any case, the ability to drive our thoughts and actions ourselves rather than be driven by instinct changed everything. We were blameless and free from guilt when we were not responsible for making the choices. That was no longer the case once we ate the fruit (once our cognitive brains developed and we became aware of the impact of our actions and choices). Could this have been the message that the Old Testament writers were trying to convey?
As time passed and we made more and more choices and those choices had more and more impact on our own lives and the lives of others (and of the planet), humans came up with notions of good and bad and right and wrong and codified them as laws and systems and religions to guide our behavior. This effort is still a work in progress and the notions of right and wrong are still evolving. And as our impact on each other and the planet becomes more profound, the notions of right and wrong are becoming more complex and, at the same time, more important.
I could have gone on and said that I thought that it is unfortunate that the Judeo-Christian creation story was so human-centric, making it appear that the creation of humans was the main, if not the sole purpose of creation. Some other creation stories were more respectful of the many other creatures and things, both animate and inanimate, which make up our world and reside on or near the earth. We certainly depend on them for our very existence. The words of Chief Noah Sealth (AKA Chief Seattle) reflect this broader view of creation. “The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.”
And I could have added that we should keep in mind that those non-human life forms and those inanimate objects would be able to exist and survive quite nicely without us (humans) in their world but we humans could not survive without them. This includes things like plants and animals but also things like air and water and rocks and soil and ozone layers and atmospheres. Earth and all its inhabitants and properties, the whole ecosystem, can get along fine without humans. But, of course, humans cannot get along without the ecosystem. In a very real sense, the earth is our Garden of Eden but the creative force will not expel us. However, we may expel ourselves by making it uninhabitable.
I could have said that I felt that the creation story is still being written. It is the story of the creation of our world and it is still happening. For good or bad, humanity is playing a significant role in creating what our world will be in the years to come. We are a large force, the wild card of creation. Let’s hope we don’t mess it up.
I could have said that I didn’t think Jesus paid much attention to, or found much value in, creation stories. Jesus flatly rejected the harsh God of Genesis. I do not think that Jesus thought of himself as a new Adam and I don’t feel that Jesus thought his death would redeem mankind.
I could have gone on that I do think that Jesus had wonderful insights into the nature of God. The insights of Jesus were shocking and dangerous and transformative because they were not in line with what was being taught. They were honest and courageous and beautiful and terrifying. And they were memorable! The people he shared them with could not forget them and his teachings and example changed the way they lived their lives. And they also changed the way we live our lives. And, although his teachings were simple, they have never been easy to put into practice; we still struggle in our attempts to practice what he preached.
I could have summed up my beliefs by saying that my notion of God was more in line with Brahman, the mysterious ultimate reality, described in the Bhagavad-Gita. “I am the self which dwells within every mortal creature … In this world, nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.” This resonates with my own notion of God. For me, loving God means living with a sense of wonder and gratitude for all of the blessings that come with just being alive and being able to love and be aware of the goodness and beauty that surround us.
But despite the fact that I had given a lot of thought to my own beliefs, I would have decided to keep them to myself. I would have no reason to assume that Tom had not given just as much, or even more, thought to his own beliefs. By deciding to be silent on the subject, the conversation would be saved from being unpleasantly long and arduous. And perhaps there was not such a huge gap between us.
As is clear from Tom’s love of The Grotto at ND, I think that Tom feels that God and Mary play an active role here on earth with things like miraculous appearances. I actually think that our very existence is miraculous. Tom applies his faith by trying to be a kind and loving person who tries to make the world a better place. I strive for the same objectives.
Tom takes great comfort from his belief that he will be re-united with Linda and that she is still part of his life. I take the same comfort from my belief that Sally is still part of my life. We both feel that there is a purpose to our lives and we both believe that our essence, which can be called our soul, goes on beyond the time that our physical body is alive and animated.
So, Tom is true and honest and comfortable in his beliefs and the same can be said for me. Even though there are differences in our creeds they are both aiming at the same target.
As a matter of fact, the whole exercise made me wonder why I still believed in life after death and a loving God as well as most of the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Clearly, it was not because of the Catholic Creed, which, to me, threw up too many logical barriers to belief. Perhaps it was because I was raised on the moral teachings of the Catholic Church and I was comfortable with them. But I think it is more than that. To me, it is because they seem true. My life experience and my essence tell me they are true.
The conversation could have moved on to details of what the children and grandchildren were doing and then to updates on shared friends and acquaintances. No small number had passed away; parents, friends, sisters, and in the coming years we would all move on to whatever is next. We would agree on our common hope that we would leave it as a better place before we moved on to a better place.
We would part as we had arrived; true friends who respected each other. We would agree to try to keep in closer contact and we would each know that we had a special friend.
01/06/24
The Holiday Conversation
It was from a condolences message in the Notre Dame Magazine that I learned of the passing of the wife of a dear friend and fellow alumni. Tom and I had been friends for fifty years but had fallen out of touch. I felt a need to get back in touch and let him know that we were thinking of him and his wonderful wife, Linda.
A lot of things had happened in the interim. We initially exchanged Christmas cards and occasional phone calls. We even got together on the rare occasions when proximity and schedules allowed. But with the passing of years our children and their children had grown up and been replaced by grandchildren; the earth had circled the sun a couple of scores plus. And, tragically, my wife and I had lost a beloved 23-year-old daughter, Sally, in a drunk driving accident over 26 years ago.
Despite the sparse contact, there was still a connection that resonated for me. Some sort of shared bond that may have come from our similar childhood experiences or shared beliefs during the time that we worked together early in our careers. Perhaps we just enjoyed each other’s sense of humor.
We had both attended Notre Dame but at different times and for different programs. Tom got his undergrad degree from ND in 1968 and I got an MBA in 1972. We met while we were both working for a large firm in Chicago (we’ll call it Accenture, although it didn’t acquire that name until several years later). We became close friends from the first moment we met and that friendship made our time at Accenture much more enjoyable.
However, in time we both struck out in different directions. Tom bought a business in the Chicago area and ran it successfully for the rest of his career. He and Linda had a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood and they raised a beautiful family. My career was much less stationary. With my wife and growing family, we bounced from place to place, moving first to Colorado and then to Maryland, Calgary, Singapore, the Silicon Valley, then Connecticut and finally landing in Boston area where we retired.
There had been plans to get together in the Chicago area the prior summer and renew old bonds. But those plans did not work out because my wife was sick, and fever or other signs of possible contagion are not taken lightly in the modern world, especially by people in their mid to late 70’s. So, we had to cut our trip to the Midwest short and go back home.
But here it was, the Christmas Season of 2023. And both of us held the other in a place of highest respect despite the fact that we had not seen each other in years. So, this time the meeting did happen. Unfortunately, it was only in my imagination. But here is how it might have gone.
We may have started out with safe subjects that we felt that we would agree on, like the sad state of college football. We would both be disgusted at the new world of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) which makes some college athletes into paid professionals while they are still in school. Along with other rule changes it made most of the bowl games, which were already pretty meaningless, even more meaningless. But of more importance was the fact that the new rules showed how little loyalty to a team was valued and how much the sport of college football had been taken over by the quest for money at all levels.
Perhaps the NCAA and the various conferences and universities could not come up with a convincing argument that college students should be unpaid amateurs when it was so clear that those same institutions were doing everything in their power to maximize the amount of money that they could bring in from the sport. Throw in the national obsession with gambling and you have a perfect storm of idiotic nonsense that has teams from the West Coast included in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference). Perhaps NIL and the other rule changes assuaged the consciences of the university administrators for the additional burdens they were placing on the athletes to travel further and further to play more and more games each season. Their own greed was so obviously on display that they had no moral ground on which to stand.
Tom and I would be in such agreement on this subject that it would be hard to remember who made which point during the conversation. But now it would be time to move on to something else. Politics was always a dangerous subject and neither Tom nor I would want to go there. The Wars in Gaza and the Ukraine were similarly dangerous.
In a recent email, Tom mentioned that he had just visited The Grotto on the ND campus on the Third Anniversary of Linda’s passing. This involved at least 5 hours of driving to get there and back but it was worth it to Tom. The Grotto was a special place for Tom and he had visited there often over the years, sometimes with Linda.
In our imaginary conversation this could have led me to ask Tom if he ever “heard from” Linda. I could have related how I had “heard from” Sally over the years, like the time at her graveside when the clouds formed a perfect picture of her face. Or the times when I was playing golf and she made shots happen that I could not have been responsible for and I could sense her impish joy at what she had done.
I imagine that Tom would have said that he had often seen and been with Linda in his dreams and that he frequently saw things and noticed things that reminded him of Linda and that made her presence felt. Some of the things he would have seen or felt would have been so profound and special that they could only be explained as coming from Linda herself. No one else could have understood them but Tom and Linda. But each and every time he had the feeling, it was always joyful and he knew that Linda was happy.
Tom has always been a person with a very strong faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church; his faith is the bedrock of his belief system. And Tom’s way of living out his beliefs has made him a wonderful man, kind and honest, devoted to his family, and as trustworthy a friend as you could have.
At this point, I could have decided to go into my own spiritual beliefs, even though they revealed that I was no longer a practicing Catholic. I was now a Unitarian Universalist. This meant that I did not have to follow any particular creed but could feel free to form my own beliefs and make up my own mind.
Throughout most of my early life, I had been a practicing Catholic and had accepted the church teachings at face value. However, as the years passed and I saw more of the world, I realized that there was very little in the Catholic Creed that I still believed. I read various books about the historical Jesus and formed my own views on who Jesus was and what his message was.
So now, since it was the Holiday Season, I could have started with the Christmas story with the trip to Bethlehem and the star and the angels and the Wise Men; they were an easy target. To me the only part that may have been true was that Jesus may have been born in a stable, and, for me, that was the most important part.
Next I could have jumped into what I see as the bigger issue with modern Christianity which goes all the way back to the Judeo-Christian creation story. Clearly the details of the story were allegorical; the seven days of creation, Adam and Eve and the snake and the fruit were just ways to explain something that was unknown. But I found it interesting that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and they lost their perpetual youth and brought on death and suffering because they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I could have plowed on saying that there are many things that come from and are based on this story but the most pernicious is the concept of “Original Sin” (as the Catholic Church calls it). Under this teaching, all humans (except Jesus and Mary) are sinners from birth and all sinners are in need of redemption. The entire premise of Christianity is actually based on this story, or, at least, on this concept. Jesus is referred to as the “second Adam” - the Redeemer who had to die for our sins to make up for the fact that Adam disobeyed God and took a bite of the forbidden fruit. For this reason, redemption was necessary to restore us to the good graces of the creator and to eternal life.
I feel that this simplistic story had unintended consequences. To try to make it hold together it was necessary for the church fathers to invent a whole lot of dogmas and doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and the Virgin Birth and the Holy Trinity and other doctrines that we are told we should not question and must believe because they are “Divine Revelation.” By the time the church fathers were through, they created a God who was so vengeful that He would kill His own son to get retribution for Adam’s (mankind’s) disobedience. Oh, what a tangled web we weave!
I believe that Jesus was a real person who was trying to move away from the Genesis creation story with its belief in sinful mankind trying to deal with a harsh God. I feel that Jesus was telling us that God is like Our Father and that He loves us as we are – the “Good News.” I think that the teachings of Jesus were simple and easy to remember - God loves you and you should love God in return and love your neighbor as you love yourself. But they were also revolutionary; for example, he said the weak and the poor are blessed in the eyes of God and it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. I feel that Jesus pulled no punches.
I could have said that I think that the ideas and the message of Jesus were spun by the religious and political powers over the centuries to make it suit their purposes of controlling ordinary people. Jesus rebelled against the idea of a harsh, judgmental God and I think that Jesus also rebelled against the idea that we need intermediaries between ourselves and God who claim authority over the details of how we should behave and live our lives.
I could have gone on and said that I think that it is ironic that the message of Jesus, which essentially threw the old creation story under the bus, has been spun and twisted over the centuries, especially in the first few centuries after Jesus died, into a religious doctrine that features Jesus as the fulfilment of the very creation story that he trashed. The very teachings and teachers that he rebelled against were able to turn his story upside down and use him to strengthen their hold on power and authority.
I could have said that I didn’t think that we should get too smug about the simplicity of the Genesis creation story. We should consider the fact that our current creation story, the “Big Bang Theory,” is also just an attempt to explain something that our current understanding falls short of explaining.
And I could have added that I think there is a great insight tucked into the part about eating the forbidden fruit taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When humans ate from the tree of knowledge (or evolved into cognitive beings) the timeless world of right now was replaced by the world of limited tomorrows. We became aware of our own mortality. For good or for bad, when humans became aware of time and became capable of thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow and how they (humans) could influence tomorrow by what they did today, the course of creation was up for grabs.
We opened Pandora’s Box and the innocence of living by our instincts under the natural law was replaced by plans and decisions and choices where some could be good and some bad, some selfish and some selfless, some right and some wrong, some effective in the moment but not effective over time. In any case, the ability to drive our thoughts and actions ourselves rather than be driven by instinct changed everything. We were blameless and free from guilt when we were not responsible for making the choices. That was no longer the case once we ate the fruit (once our cognitive brains developed and we became aware of the impact of our actions and choices). Could this have been the message that the Old Testament writers were trying to convey?
As time passed and we made more and more choices and those choices had more and more impact on our own lives and the lives of others (and of the planet), humans came up with notions of good and bad and right and wrong and codified them as laws and systems and religions to guide our behavior. This effort is still a work in progress and the notions of right and wrong are still evolving. And as our impact on each other and the planet becomes more profound, the notions of right and wrong are becoming more complex and, at the same time, more important.
I could have gone on and said that I thought that it is unfortunate that the Judeo-Christian creation story was so human-centric, making it appear that the creation of humans was the main, if not the sole purpose of creation. Some other creation stories were more respectful of the many other creatures and things, both animate and inanimate, which make up our world and reside on or near the earth. We certainly depend on them for our very existence. The words of Chief Noah Sealth (AKA Chief Seattle) reflect this broader view of creation. “The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.”
And I could have added that we should keep in mind that those non-human life forms and those inanimate objects would be able to exist and survive quite nicely without us (humans) in their world but we humans could not survive without them. This includes things like plants and animals but also things like air and water and rocks and soil and ozone layers and atmospheres. Earth and all its inhabitants and properties, the whole ecosystem, can get along fine without humans. But, of course, humans cannot get along without the ecosystem. In a very real sense, the earth is our Garden of Eden but the creative force will not expel us. However, we may expel ourselves by making it uninhabitable.
I could have said that I felt that the creation story is still being written. It is the story of the creation of our world and it is still happening. For good or bad, humanity is playing a significant role in creating what our world will be in the years to come. We are a large force, the wild card of creation. Let’s hope we don’t mess it up.
I could have said that I didn’t think Jesus paid much attention to, or found much value in, creation stories. Jesus flatly rejected the harsh God of Genesis. I do not think that Jesus thought of himself as a new Adam and I don’t feel that Jesus thought his death would redeem mankind.
I could have gone on that I do think that Jesus had wonderful insights into the nature of God. The insights of Jesus were shocking and dangerous and transformative because they were not in line with what was being taught. They were honest and courageous and beautiful and terrifying. And they were memorable! The people he shared them with could not forget them and his teachings and example changed the way they lived their lives. And they also changed the way we live our lives. And, although his teachings were simple, they have never been easy to put into practice; we still struggle in our attempts to practice what he preached.
I could have summed up my beliefs by saying that my notion of God was more in line with Brahman, the mysterious ultimate reality, described in the Bhagavad-Gita. “I am the self which dwells within every mortal creature … In this world, nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.” This resonates with my own notion of God. For me, loving God means living with a sense of wonder and gratitude for all of the blessings that come with just being alive and being able to love and be aware of the goodness and beauty that surround us.
But despite the fact that I had given a lot of thought to my own beliefs, I would have decided to keep them to myself. I would have no reason to assume that Tom had not given just as much, or even more, thought to his own beliefs. By deciding to be silent on the subject, the conversation would be saved from being unpleasantly long and arduous. And perhaps there was not such a huge gap between us.
As is clear from Tom’s love of The Grotto at ND, I think that Tom feels that God and Mary play an active role here on earth with things like miraculous appearances. I actually think that our very existence is miraculous. Tom applies his faith by trying to be a kind and loving person who tries to make the world a better place. I strive for the same objectives.
Tom takes great comfort from his belief that he will be re-united with Linda and that she is still part of his life. I take the same comfort from my belief that Sally is still part of my life. We both feel that there is a purpose to our lives and we both believe that our essence, which can be called our soul, goes on beyond the time that our physical body is alive and animated.
So, Tom is true and honest and comfortable in his beliefs and the same can be said for me. Even though there are differences in our creeds they are both aiming at the same target.
As a matter of fact, the whole exercise made me wonder why I still believed in life after death and a loving God as well as most of the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Clearly, it was not because of the Catholic Creed, which, to me, threw up too many logical barriers to belief. Perhaps it was because I was raised on the moral teachings of the Catholic Church and I was comfortable with them. But I think it is more than that. To me, it is because they seem true. My life experience and my essence tell me they are true.
The conversation could have moved on to details of what the children and grandchildren were doing and then to updates on shared friends and acquaintances. No small number had passed away; parents, friends, sisters, and in the coming years we would all move on to whatever is next. We would agree on our common hope that we would leave it as a better place before we moved on to a better place.
We would part as we had arrived; true friends who respected each other. We would agree to try to keep in closer contact and we would each know that we had a special friend.