As Real as the Cosmos

AS REAL AS THE COSMOS

I left a comment on YouTube this week, something I rarely do. The video described the vastness of the physical universe with breathtaking facts about the infinite void that both creates and surrounds the relationship between the celestial bodies. I had nothing critical to say about the science, but instead about something the narrator said, which seemed intellectually dishonest to me.

He punctuated the video with his belief that scientific discovery supports atheism, proposing that life on earth is “insignificant,” not only in its relationship to the scale of space, but also to the truth about our humanity, which, he claims, fails in its attempts to make sense of the meaning or purpose of our existence. All religions, he said, are simply “the folly of human conceits.”

But I see a contradiction there. The atheist claims that the meaning of life is that it has no meaning, and that the purpose of man is to discover that he has no purpose. But something can not be true and untrue at the same time; that would be illogical, irrational. Were atheism correct, there would be no “reason” to care about science or to make a video about space.

In one sense, the reduction of man to his capacity to study and understand the “how” of things, while ignoring the equally mysterious “why” underneath his motivation, would be the same as talking about the earth apart from its relationship to the cosmos. One could do that, but it wouldn’t do justice to the greater story.

The man who relies only on reason to find the truth of his humanity is like the child who relies only on his emotions.

Without an appreciation for the way human experience unites the two by a seemingly infinite space that both creates and surrounds the relationship between them, man collapses in on himself like a black hole, still existing, but serving only to threaten the existence of everything around him by dragging it into despair, almost resentful of its having been created.

Men like this may be standing too close to the painting to see its beauty. In any case, they seem to take no interest at all in the most fascinating thing happening anywhere in the universe, namely, that man makes YouTube videos about its kinetic causation. Why should we care?!

That’s basically what I wrote in my comment:

“As men who like to tackle tough questions, let us ask the hardest one of all, namely,
‘Why do we care enough about our human life to make a video about it?’”

LET MY RIGHT HAND WITHER

In one of the Psalms we read, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” It’s the psalmist’s way of saying, “I would rather lose my physical powers (symbolized by man’s right hand) than to do anything without you, God.” And nowhere is this kind of humility more urgently needed than in the heart of the scientist.

Pope John Paul II, whose feast we celebrated this week, knew this well, having come of age under the atheistic regimes responsible for the bloodiest century in history.

If we forget you, JPII, let our right hands wither. +