November 14-15: Aseitas, Religion and Science, Higgs Boson Particle

Merton get a little metaphysical . . .

And the one big concept which I got out of its pages was something that was to revolutionize my whole life. It is all contained in one of those dry, outlandish technical compounds that the scholastic philosophers were so prone to use: the word aseitas. In this one word, which can be applied to God alone, and which expresses His most characteristic attribute, I discovered an entirely new concept of God—a concept which showed me at once that the belief of Catholics was by no means the vague and rather superstitious hangover from an unscientific age that I had believed it to be. On the contrary, here was a notion of God that was at the same time deep, precise, simple, and accurate and, what is more, charged with implications which I could not even begin to appreciate, but which I could at least dimly estimate, even with my own lack of philosophical training. 

Aseitas—the English equivalent is a transliteration: aseity—simply means the power of a being to exist absolutely in virtue of itself, not as caused by itself, but as requiring no cause, no other justification for its existence except that its very nature is to exist. There can be only one such Being: that is God. And to say that God exists a se, of and by and by reason of Himself, is merely to say that God is Being Itself. Ego sum qui sum. And this means that God must enjoy “complete independence not only as regards everything outside but also as regards everything within Himself” 

This notion made such a profound impression on me that I made a pencil note at the top of the page: “Aseity of God—God is being per se.” I observe it now on the page, for I brought the book to the monastery with me, and although I was not sure where it had gone, I found it on the shelves in Father Abbot’s room the other day, and I have it here before me.

Here is Merton at his most philosophical, discussing the existence of God.  It's not an easy passage to wrap your mind around, and humans have been contemplating this subject for a very long time.  Before Merton or Dickens, Shakespeare or Cervantes.  It's about trying to know the unknowable.  That's what religion is all about.  As a matter of fact, that's pretty much what science is about, as well.  It tries to explain things that can't be or haven't been explained.  

Now, I know my scientist friends will have a problem with that equivalency, because most scientists think that religion and science are mutually exclusive.  No commonalities at all.  But I've always thought of science and religion as two sides of the same coin.  To ignore science is to deny the mysteries of God's creation.  And to ignore God's mysteries is to deny the complexities of the universe.  The fact that science keeps evolving, discovering new things about who we are and where we live, only reinforces the possibility of a divine Creative Force.

Think about it.  Writer and essayist David Foster Wallace, in an address to graduates at Kenyon College, said this, "Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship."  Mathematician Amir D. Aczel writes, 

The great British mathematician Roger Penrose has calculated—based on only one of the hundreds of parameters of the physical universe—that the probability of the emergence of a life-giving cosmos was 1 divided by 10, raised to the power 10, and again raised to the power of 123. This is a number as close to zero as anyone has ever imagined. (The probability is much, much smaller than that of winning the Mega Millions jackpot for more days than the universe has been in existence.)

Think about that.  The random chance of this universe in which we live--and the possibility that we came into being--is practically zero.  We should not exist.  This little rock we call home shouldn't exist either.  We are the ultimate jackpot if we accept this randomness.  Or, we need to accept the possibility of some divine creative force.

Which is more plausible?  A being whose very nature is to exist, without cause or justification, as Merton says?  Or a possibility so remote that it makes everything Donald Trump said for four years as President of the United States sound like an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics?  Just because you can't physically measure or see something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The existence of the Higgs boson particle was proposed in 1964.  It's existence wasn't proven until 2012.  For over 48 years, scientists accepted the possibility of the particle without physical proof.  They believed in it because all the math and research pointed toward it.  Its probability was that great.

Hmmmm.  

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind here.  All I'm saying is that science and faith pretty much operate the same way.  They aren't mortal enemies.  Rather, they are both trying to do the same thing:  understand wonder and mystery.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for the faith of science and the science of faith.

March 3: Waiting for Worms, Dreams, Matthew Gavin Frank, "Mirrors"

I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms.  I take a deep breath, I open my eyes.  Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes.  A wind from noplace rises.  A sense of the real exults me; the cords loose; I walk on my way.

Dillard spends an entire chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek talking about snakes and seals and mosquitoes and fleas.  Predators and parasites.  Victims and victimizers.  The world is based on this dynamic:  we are all part of a food chain.  Mosquitoes feed on snakes (at least in Dillard's book).  Spiders feed on mosquitoes.  Birds feed on spiders.  Bigger birds feed on smaller birds.  You get the idea.  We are all bound with cords to the horns of the rock altar, on our way to the worms.

I know that's not a very comforting thought.  But I'm not going to reflect on death or mortality in this post.  I have been in a strange melancholy state for most of this week.  I sat at my desk in the medical office today, and I felt a little trapped.  Not because of the job.  Or my coworkers.  It's the fact that I seem to be facing the same struggles every day of my life.

I wish I could be like Dillard at the end of the above passage.  I want the cords to loose; I want to walk on my way.  Those cords are pretty strong.  I have a lot of people who depend on me.  A wife and kids.  Students.  Family.  I'm not able to simply chuck it all, quit my jobs, and say "I'm going to write the great American novel" or "I'm going to be the next David Foster Wallace" (without the suicidal tendencies).  I can't do that.

I know people who have lived their dreams.  My friend, Matt Gavin Frank, for instance.  He left home at 17, traveled the world, from Alaska to Italy.  Then he went to school and studied writing.  Now, he's a famous writer.  His books are reviewed in Entertainment Weekly and The Paris Review.  This isn't envy I'm expressing.  Matt works his ass off all the time.  But he's doing exactly what he wants to do.  What he's dreamed of doing.

Most days, Saint Marty is just too tired to even think about his dreams.

Mirrors

by:  Matthew Gavin Frank

The mosquito wrinkles against the glass, bites
at its own reflection.  My sister wonders
if it sees itself as the bear trapped in its blue

image, the bite of rusted aluminum at its ankles,
think as quicksand.  My sister begins a story
about handcuffs and brass bedposts, then

remembers I'm her brother.  I glance
at her wrists, looking for scars.  Someone
should tell us not to think so much about

the mosquito, not to clap our hands on its flight,
igniting the small firecracker of God-knows-
whose blood onto our palms, not to close

our fronds over the wrists of another.
Sometimes, someone should tell us, the wrists
will maneuver a harmonica over a bearded

man's lip.  Sometimes the sound of a harmonica
played by one's father is gargantuan, explosive
as a firecracker, especially if one's mother

has locked herself into the bedroom again,
threatening to burn all of the paperbacks.
He wouldn't care, but he needs to know

the endings.  It is only the beginnings that matter
to her.  Soon, they will put down their instruments,
find the time to make love six times before the last

few pages.  A brother will hold his sister's hand
at their closed door, as I may hold my sister's,
wishing it was a book of matches.  The air

will be heavy with trying rain, and we
will ask of it, before it falls:  Tell us our names
will be carried on in the saliva of mosquitoes,

our holes will be mended with simple needle
and thread.  And tell us also, that our parents
will never die.

Sometimes it takes an act of God . . .