attitude of pure unknowing

Dr. C. Johns

Ottawa, Ontario

To:

Amy Cameron

Author "An Utterly Hopeless Muddle"

 Presbyterian Record May 2006

David Harris

Editor Presbyterian Record

Dear Amy and David,

A debate over intelligent design is one of the more fun ways to pass a lazy afternoon and certainly one of the more fun topics of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries.  But I think it is even more fun when one moves the discussion out of the 20^th Century and into... ? the post modern world?

I apologize in advance for the length of this response to your recent article.  The length of this letter is simply a reflection of my own joy in the topic.  Do you remember as kids, lying with a friend on a grassy hillside, looking up at the clouds and asking all versions of, "Why are we here?".    I have listened to my own children ask versions of this since they were 3 years old:  "I think we are god's toys".  "No, no.  We are his sheep!".

Most of us continue to have joy in the childhood meananderings into "why are we here".  We add predictable tangents:  If the universe is only mechanistic and material, why are few happy to live solely for self-interest? Why have human cultures repetitively stressed some version of the Golden Rule as a foundation for choice and action?  Why do our heroes personify compassion and sacrifice? (Ghandi, Jesus of Nazareth, Mother Theresa, Terry Fox, Tommy Douglas)  What is there in the structure of the universe itself that leads us to the most compelling challenge of adulthood being the gradual relinquishing of ego, to the point of acceptance of individual death? 

Any debate on ‘origins' and ‘meaning' is best if we remind ourselves that humans were spat into the 20^th Century with a limited paradigm of time and space which temporarily led us to focus of the linear nature of both.  I do not think the Old Testament is best read from this 19^th/20^th Century perspective.  Luckily, Einstein and his legacy, freed us to re-embrace a more simultaneous understanding of all creation.  I will not go into this here, except to say, Google:  The Hafele-Keating experiment; The Muon Experiment;  The Kaivole Atomic Beam.  Linear space and time are clearly only a model to help us cope with the limited environment existing on the surface of this planet.  Like Newtonian physics, very useful if one is stuck on this planet, but not at all useful in the wider universe.  Downright dangerous and misleading in fact, if one is out in the wider universe, or even trying to think about the wider universe.

I think, the ‘debate' over intelligent design is better engaged as an exploration of origins and meaning, as the most basic of leisure pastimes once the days bread is earned.  And so, this week two ER MD's, after spending the morning drilling the donning and doffing of HazMat suits in case of Saran Gas attack, went to sit by the Ottawa River with their chicken schwarmas.

The agnostically raised 31 year old said he had finished with his year of exploring Christianity and was content to just not know for the time being.  The 48 year old preacher's kid said, "That is good.  Myself, I am a committed Christian. I believe firmly as Jesus said ‘no man comes to the father but by me'.  At the very same time, I am an atheist who considers all I perceive as illusion."

He said, "But you cannot believe two contradictory things simultaneously". 

I said, "Not only can one believe contradictory things simultaneously, one MUST.  Otherwise, there is no hope of understanding anything, no hope of coming to truly ‘know' a thing."   An oft cited example of such thinking is:  Water is clear, blue, green, brown, choppy, glassy, turbulent stagnant.

Here is another analogy of holding seemingly contradictory beliefs simultaneously.  Let's consider a quarter.  Imagine seeing a coin for the first time:  The caribou side, heads down, perhaps in the palm of a source we trust.  Examine the antlers; study the slope of the neck.  We ask and are told, "This is a quarter".  We have concrete facts.  Though we still have no idea what a coin ‘means' as a way to formalize an exchange between people.

Another day, in the palm of another trusted sage:  a crowned queen.  This too, we are told with a sincere will to impart knowledge on the part of our informant, is a quarter.

Cultivate an attitude of pure unknowing.  Simultaneously believe seemingly contradictory things.

A caribou and a queen may fully describe the two sides of a quarter, sure.  Though another time, just because it is an exceptional year on the planet, it could be a queen and an Olympic insignia.  Imagine now that we have grasped that a quarter is both simultaneously a caribou and a queen, but have not yet understood the use and meaning of a quarter as a coin.  So, having progressed enough to simultaneously believe contradictory things, this is still not progressed enough.  We might still dig our heels in and scoff at anyone who tried to offer a queen and an Inuit sculpture as a quarter.

Simultaneously believe seemingly contradictory things.  And know that even this is not enough.  To hope to know anything at all, one has to cultivate an attitude of pure unknowing.  Doubt everything.  Believe that the more one begins to ‘get it', the exciting news is that there is exponentially more to get, that one is missing.

Some days, (usually roller blading by the Ottawa River because at 48 I am more preoccupied about the shape of my aging backside than about origins or meaning) I get confused about which great thinker thought what.  I know I have been spat out into a post modern world by a matrix of other's thought that I am barely conscious has influenced me.  The rhythm of skating gets me to thinking, but these are not really my own unique thoughts are they?  I am about to share with you last weeks skating thoughts, a entirely ‘made-up' Creation Myth, in the great tradition of a child lying on a grassy hillside, staring at the clouds and asking "why am I here?"  And now, I am back at the point of this letter, and the point of your recent contributions to the Presbyterian Record:  Is evolution vs. intelligent design really a ‘debate' we can continue to have in the 21^st century?  I don't think so.  I think human thought has outgrown this as ‘debate'.

 I am not sure here whether to attribute the three-step process of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" to Hegel or Kant (1), but what I do believe is that in the evolution/intelligent-design arena, many humans have progressed past debate into a much more enjoyable stance of exploration. 

Again, as I go through this Creation Myth, keep in mind I do not really believe in linear time.  The following myth is simply made up, to unite the concepts of evolution and god, which have been artificially put into opposition on this planet, over the past few of centuries.

Creation Myth: 

It starts out particles, random, entropy.

It keeps bumping into itself and accidentally forms a crystal, which then becomes nonrandom.  It can now bump into other particles and ‘crystallize',  build on itself.  It forms a rock.  It, and Its rocks and crystals keep bumping into Itself, and now, bumping into not just Itself, but into It's recent creation.

It keeps bumping into Itself, random and now, recently created nonrandom.

It keeps giving rise to random, and now, to nonrandom formations.

A long time passes.

A long time passes.

Accidentally created, is now a primitive ‘life' form, (maybe first a prion, then a virus).  Now ‘It' has self-perpetuating nonliving (crystal), and living (prion), Creation on It's hands and so It becomes partially an Observer. Yes, once there is self-perpetuating ‘creation', ‘It' becomes partially an Observer.

Now there is It:  1.   the original stuff itself that bumped into itself randomly, 2.  the stuff that found it could bump into itself nonrandomly (like crystals), and 3.  also, It can sit back and be the Observer, allowing recent Creation to recreate itself.

It has all these possibilities now: random, nonrandom, Observer.  It moves freely among all of these possibilities. Moving freely among these possibilities, choice is born for It/Observer.

Choice is a pivotal step.  Yikes.  Choice gives rise to awareness or Mind within It.

As It/ObservingMind/Choice partially bumps around entropically without agenda, partially with structure/crystal/agenda, and partially allows Creation to recreate itself, It, (now Observing Mind), finds some things gratifying and some things not gratifying.  i.e. Some things "good" and some things just leading back into entropy, which it finds regressive and not gratifying.

 (And God saw that it was "good".  Good=the gratification of creativity, beauty, structure.  Evil=moving back toward entropy, destroying)

It begins to have agenda because It finds some things leading to expanding creation (gratifying) and some things leading back into entropy (regressive, boring)

It's agenda begins to be choice toward creativity in every moment.  The stunningly varied natural world is an expression of this.

Time passes and It finds the most gratifying aspects of Creation are now those that can respond back to It: Those elements of Creation that also have awareness and choice.  For example, this complex thing that eventually arose from that simple life form long ago, this thing called the human being. 

Man, is pretty far along the chain of It having sat back and let Creation recreate Itself.  But not entirely separate as It, from early on, was both active and passive in the process.  From the time It was aware of It's choice, it was both passive and active through the time of the formation of Man.  So, man has a lot of the attributes of It:  choice, observing mind, creativity, finding some things leading to ever expanding creative energy and some things leading to regressive empty entropy.

Now ‘good' has evolved and is not just creativity/beauty/structure, but also interaction/choice toward creativity.  Now ‘evil' is not just regression toward entropy but also interactions which ‘choose' destruction.  The two choices are in constant tension.  So that later the highest ‘good' synthesizes the two choices whenever an aware chooser must allow something to be destroyed in order to contribute to greater creativity:  sacrifice.  (The tension between the two choices is already expressed in the less-aware-mind aspects of creation, the natural world.  Sacrifice here is less aware but exists in the form of the ‘food chain' for instance)  And the greater good still is when the sacrifice is so conscious that it can orchestrate choice to produce the greatest creative gratification with the least destruction, which is when it most fully sacrifices something of itself for the good of the rest of creation: compassion.

OK , that is enough for today.

I could get more fully into how sacrifice and compassion arise, as they are basic steps on the ‘time line'.  Basic steps that allow creative energy to not simply perpetuate itself, but actually to expand.

Sacrifice as we find it in the natural world... life energy into life energy... unconscious sacrifice in the food chain....

Sacrifice as most fully expressed by Jesus as compassion for all creation.

But for me, it does not really matter whether I start with God or start with random material particles bouncing off one another.

Both starting points lead to there being:  1.  Creative energy that can interconnect with and inform itself (and sacrifice in the interest of ongoing eternal creativity).  This interconnected creative energy ends up gratifying, whether it arose accidentally or purposefully.   2.   Regression and nonsacrificial death is:  The universe going backward to Entropy, and destructive waste, which is also boring. The greatest evil is when awareness chooses destruction for no compassionate purpose.

Thanks for allowing me to share with you.

Chris Johns  MD  CCFP

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine

University of Ottawa