Last year in college, my son was taking classes that allowed him to study the relationship between
religion and some
aspects of reality. One of them was Theology and Science. Being an incurable optimist,
I was hoping that it would open his mind to something different than “empirical
evidence.”
“How do you like
your class?” I asked him.
“I just love it,” he
answered. ”I’ve learned a lot. This class has reinforced my belief that most religious people are
unable to go logically from point A to point B in a discussion. They insist in making
claims about the universe based on nothing.”
“I’ve read your text
book, and you’re right, there are no claims to be made. Nevertheless, there are open
doors, possibilities to consider. For example, our universe started with the Big Bang. Did a
Creator will for this to happen? It’s possible. Did He arrange the perfect constants of the
Fine Tuning? It’s also possible.”
“The Fine Tuning is
simply the result of an observation. It does nothing for both the religious and the
non religious sides of the debate. There is no reason to assume that it was caused by a Creator.”
‘We people of faith
like to make assumptions. We don’t like to stop at the evidence. That’s the
difference between you and me.”
“You are like a
child, mom. You like fairy tales.”
“I call these tales
God’s consciousness.”
“Which means that
you are willing to explain reality with airy notions.”
“Reality is more
than you see, sweetheart. It needs room. It’s beyond our perception.”
“I’m not denying
that. What I’m saying is that there is no way for us to know the beyond.”
“I’m not denying
what you’re saying either, if you mean that to know implies to pin down the Unknown. But you
refuse to open your mind, preventing yourself from having an intuition of what it
could be.”
“I don’t believe
that you are opening your mind, mom. You are not really interested in discovering the
“truth”. I won’t build my life upon an intuition. It would mean wasting it.”
“You are wrong. You
would gain so much.”
I have gained a lot.
I wish I had found Christ earlier in my life. Looking back, I see how much pain I brought
upon myself because of my self-centeredness, how many wrong choices I made out
of egotism. I believed that I was brave, for I refused to compromise. I had the courage to
follow my instincts, to translate my impulses into reality. I was certain that this was the
right way to live.
