Ain't no easy thing

 "Science became an obsession, a portal to understanding reality."

As I see it there is science, its methods, and there is Scientism. Science I see as perfectly neutral. But it can slip into the "understanding reality" where, more often than not, our minds can cease being skeptical and honest and simply insist that "when you are dead you are dead", or "there ain't nothing beyond this" or "if I can't see it or feel it it ain't there", and so on. Which more often than not leaves most with the conditioning of the place of their own times. Yes, if born in an Islamic country, most will become Muslims - just so, if born in the 21st century in the West, most will succumb to Scientism, sceptical of all metaphysical claims, congratulating themselves on their "honesty".

Science is concerned with how the world is, but as Ludwig Wittgenstein has said:-

Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

When we know "how" then there is "why?" The search for meaning and significance.

Looking up Wiki, quite a good summary of the whole question of "Why is there something rather than nothing"?

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that everything in the universe must have a cause, culminating in an ultimate uncaused cause. (This obviously of interest to those who believe in God, as the First Cause. Uncaused. Then the slip into "and He - always a He! - is just like it says here, here and here, according to my Churches creedo!")

Bertrand Russell took a "brute fact" position when he said, "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all."

Philosopher Brian Leftow has argued that the question cannot have a causal explanation (as any cause must itself have a cause) or a contingent explanation (as the factors giving the contingency must pre-exist), and that if there is an answer it must be something that exists necessarily (i.e., something that just exists, rather than is caused).

Philosopher William Free argues that the only two options which can explain existence is that things either always existed or spontaneously emerged. In either scenario, existence is a fact for which there isn't a cause.

End of Wiki.

I know how often I have posted this, but here it is again. The zen master Dogen from his Genjokoan:-

Therefore, if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan).

If we find ourselvess with the blessing and grace to actually think on these things - and not be engulfed as so many are with suffering and a simple quest to survive - then we need to find our very own "time and place (and path)" irrespective of "proofs" or "certainties". Our lives are not an "experiment" that can be verified in a laboratory, not a practice. This is IT. We have to give our answer - give it and live it. Honestly. It seems to me a lifetimes work to be truly honest with ourselves; not simply a consequence of "skepticism".

Anyway, I thought I would finish (as I sit in Costas!) with an excerpt from a novel, "Matterhorn." Though a novel it is based upon the authors own experiences in the Vietnam War. Very good.

"Matterhorn" was the name given to this hill in Vietnam that became the battleground for a while, battles depicted as virtually pointless within the storyline, though many died, on both sides. But one passage really got me, where a black Marine, a guy called Cortell, is speaking with a white comrade. Cortell is the "preacher man" in the story and catches a lot of stick from others. Cortell has recently lost a couple of his real good buddies to the war.

Cortell and the white guy, Jermain, are chatting just prior to combat. Jermain asks....."You think we go to heaven when we die?"

"I don't think nothin'. I believe Jesus take care of us when we die." Cortell looked at Jermain. "Believin's not thinkin'."

There is a little more conversation, then Jermain says......"I don't want to go nowhere but back into the world."

"Yeah, I be right there with you," Cortell said. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Ever'one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin' Mammy, and since I be stupid country nigger with the big faith, I don't have no trouble. Well, it just don't work that way." He paused. Jermain said nothing. "I see my friend Williams die," Cortell continued. "I see my friend Boyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What you think I do all night, sit around thankin' Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? I lose my heart." Cortell's throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. "I lose my heart." He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. "I sit there and I don't see any hope. Hope gone." Cortell was seeing his dead friends. "Then the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin'. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway." He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. "It ain't no easy thing."

Well, I'm not trying to sneak God back in through the back-door. I am a non-theist myself. But "it ain't no easy thing".

I did say before somewhere, about the black slaves in the cotton fields. People who said such things as "gonna tell God all my troubles when I get home". As I said before, anyone who says such people were talking nonsense because God would already know those "troubles" has simply missed the whole point. Logic will never have the last word.