Girl with the Woolly Hat

How could someone smile so much? That’s what I was thinking, again, as another meeting got under way. The subject of my puzzlement was a young woman who was one of the facilitators of a spiritual encounter group I was attending. The girl with the woolly hat. Last week she had set an assignment. It was along the lines of – if you could change anything in the world, what would it be? This week we were reporting back. We were split into pairs for the discussion and I was paired with woolly hat girl. She beamed her smile at me, waiting expectantly for me to report on what I’d like to change out there in the world. My first thought had been forests. This fitted well with the style of the meetings, which – as well as their spiritual theme – were also geared toward an environmental ethic. Re-forest as much of the world as we can. But then it occurred to me that to carry out this miracle there would need to be some side issues to clear up – agriculture and human infrastructure and building amongst them. And in order to clear up those side issues, there would be a whole lot of other issues to clear as well. And so on. That, it seemed to me, was the trouble with having a super-power. Once you did one miracle you were kind of obliged to do more and more and more. And then the inevitable question. What if you had unlimited power? What if you were God? If you were an interventionist God and performed one miracle, weren’t you then compelled to do a few other miracles? And once these ones were out of the way, would there not be further miracles needed to tidy up the effects of the previous ones? The problem seemed to be that once you start off on the interventionist track, then with each new intervention there is a little less free choice for those of us who are the creation of this God. And if intervention had to go on and on then eventually the loss of freedom would become absolute. It is the classic dilemma of religion – or at least one of them. It’s not easy being God. I explained all of this carefully to woolly hat girl. She blinked in consternation, but kept smiling. There’s another dilemma for God that is somewhat related to the interventionist problem. Let’s just say, along with many religions, that things started off with The One – the Perfect Being, we could say, complete unto itself. The One is completely inscrutable. Everything and Nothing, Eternal and Infinite yet timeless and dimensionless. And so on and on. There is really no statement about The One that makes any sense. But now, think about the created world. There needs to be two or more things in order for there to be difference in things. There has to be difference before there can be observation – since we can only sense anything because of its difference to other things. There has to be sensing – observing – before there can be choice. There has to be choice before there can be freedom. There has to be freedom before there can be agency. So – putting all these things together – there can only be free agents in the world if there is a Many rather than a One. This, in fact, is what several religious traditions assume. The Bible refers to God as plural in the book of Genesis. The One – the Godhead – first became the Many and then made the many of creation. So far, so good. But then the problem. The One is prefect. The Many, however, is flawed. And it may be that this is inevitable – that the step from the One to the Many will always result in imperfection. God, it seems, in creating, was willing to accept the imperfection that would inevitably result. You, dear reader, may object at this point. Surely – God being God – a perfect world would have been possible. Otherwise God’s power has been limited. But I’d counter by saying that God cannot achieve a logical impossibility. God cannot, for instance, make something both exist and not exist at the same time. So if the step from One to Many NECESSARILY results in imperfection then there is no way around this. It’s not easy being God. The choices with regard to creation lead us back to the interventionist conundrum: Either: God could have created a perfect world, but chose not to, for reasons which – to say the least – are not obvious. (This is sometimes referred to as the ‘theodicy problem’. Note here – according to the Christian faith, God may have made a perfect Heaven and may at some time make a perfect New Earth so this suggests perfection is possible.) Or: God had to create an imperfect world. (Or: Perhaps some other option we’re not aware of.) In which case: Either: God does not intervene, but just leaves things to work out however they will. (Although God knows what will happen, this is not the same as making them happen. Foreknowledge is not predestination.) Or: God chooses to intervene, in order to alleviate some of the consequences of an imperfect world. In which case we are back to the problems of intervention discussed earlier. There are some side issues that arise from these alternatives. One thing that may throw us is the question of whether or not the universe is deterministic in nature. In other words, there is only the illusion of free choice, but in fact the starting conditions of the universe determine everything that will happen throughout time. God, being responsible for the starting conditions, is therefore responsible for all the bad stuff that happens (and therefore there is predestination as well as foreknowledge). In a way this seems to make God even more culpable. It’s not easy… But quantum theory has blown the deterministic argument out of the water. It might seem that it affords God some leeway with regard to intervention and gives us back our freedom of agency. But really it only adds to randomness – it makes causation and agency harder to explain, not easier. It does not especially affect the choices we looked at earlier with regard to creation. Perhaps it could also be argued that God could intervene in such a way as to not compromise our freedom and without causing a cascade of further interventions being needed. But that does not seem to solve the imperfect world issue – in fact it may make it more complicated. Religion, of course, offers various answers to these conundrums – none of which seem especially convincing. It’s tempting, in fact, to regard the questions raised as theological and religious issues – issues that can be safely side-stepped if one is an unbeliever. But, not so. The issues of the One and the Many, of perfection and imperfection and of free will and agency are issues for philosophy and science as much as for religion, I’d suggest. It’s just that, with science for instance, the universe is just a matter-of-fact reality, ‘damaged’ or otherwise – there is no suggestion of blame. With God though, things get very much more complex. That does not mean that the answer does not lie with God, of course. Maybe the universe really is more complex than science allows. Maybe the universe is fundamentally moral, and only God can give the answers to its moral nature, if only we could figure this out. Of course, dear reader, if you are a believer then you’ll probably want to bring in some other factors beyond the purely philosophical views of God I’ve been advancing thus far. What of faith? What of revelation? You may simply accept, as an act of faith that, despite appearances, God has made things so that they work out perfectly, even although we cannot explain exactly how or why. Fair enough. I suppose my preference is to hold the paradox (and many other paradoxes) before us at all times. There’s a lot that we do not know and only a few things that we do know. This is our existential position. Therefore, how should we live? Perhaps religious people – perhaps almost all people – prefer answers of some sort. Perhaps they do not want their beliefs constantly challenged. But actually, if you take religion’s extra paths to truth – scriptures and revelation – then in a way you arrive back at the same place. Here’s what I mean. Say you read a Bible passage. It is obscure, but you feel in your heart that God has a personal message for you within the text. God makes it very clear to you what that message is. Now, I’d argue, you face a similar situation to everyone else on Earth. Given what I know, what should I do? So what are you going to do with the knowledge God has given you? This is not to disparage those of religious faith. It is just to point out that life is not necessarily made any simpler by faith – in fact faith may make things a whole lot more complicated. … There is a flicker in woolly hat girl’s smile, like a cloud briefly passing in front of the sun. ‘Have you always been this way, or did it develop gradually?’ she asks. There does not appear to be any sarcasm in the question. I suppose she means – did I always follow an argument to its logical conclusion, no matter how excruciating the process? ‘I suppose… since I was a child,’ I stammer. We leave it at that and go on to sharing a significant event in our life from the past week. I tell her of going down to a river bank on a sunny day and falling asleep amongst long grass. I awaken to a duck that has stumbled on me by accident, with three chicks in tow. They run off as I awake. Woolly hat girl’s smile becomes even broader, if that were possible. Note to self: If you have talked yourself into an embarrassing situation, get out of it safely by mentioning baby ducks. There is a link here though – a possible way out of the conundrum of God’s creation. Waking up suddenly, we see only what is there, before things crash down into the ego-self, stuck in the contingent world of the Many. The One did not BECOME the Many – the One is still here, no matter how inscrutable. That, I think, gives us reason for hope, even whilst it gives us no answers.