SHADOWS UPON SHADOWS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  This morning, during my walk I ambled through a night illuminated by what I at first perceived to be a nearly full moon.  

As it turned out later, when my sleepy eyes cleared, I saw the moon was full.  I do not see as well with sleepy eyes showing me the way.

I did see acutely the darker moon-shadow of the wooden rail that prevents pedestrians from falling off the wooden bridge stretching over the creek coursing beneath the island road near my home.

I thought about shadows then, and how outer space seems like a vast shadow bespeckled with countless pearls.  

When earth turns us away from our star’s light, the shadow we call night strikes us as being lovely, infinite, and ineffable. 

The moon reveals shadows upon shadows.  

We would be in utter darkness if there were no light, and we could live in it, for our bodies would have evolved so we might survive. 

We have brains and hands.  We create our own light with the technology that has evolved with our bodies in this world. 

Lately, I have been writing about Nietzsche's view about earth, sky, and outer space being all the reality there is.  I agree with him totally.  

He has an atheist's view, and such a view may very well keep 

Christianity alive and well for the next one thousand years.

We must be monists. Earth, the sky, and outer space are devoid of supernatural beings. 

There may be extra-terrestrial beings.  They would use technology, not magic, to solve their problems too. 

Indeed, we must be materialists, not in the sense of acquiring riches and expensive stuff, but in the philosophical sense of acknowledging that reality is devoid of the supernatural.

Because the supernatural is superstition, Christians should impugn it.  

The supernatural as a requirement for salvation is not the gospel.  We do not require believing in the supernatural in order to love as Jesus loved and live as Jesus lived.

Supernatural events are the stuff of legends for us.  For ancient people, however, the supernatural imbued everything written and imagined by them. 

In ancient times, more people assumed gods came and went on earth, impregnated women, and broke natural laws than people who did not.

From ancient writing, it would seem that everyone believed chariots can fly, snakes can talk, virgins birth baby boys, and monsters swallow ships whole.  No one would question that.

The concept of natural law simply did not exist so only exceptional people would have questioned miracles.

We know better today.  Those of us who cling to the supernatural are sorely misled.  Our faith sounds absurd when we insist that a pre-scientific world view is true and our scientific world view is not.

The way out of this mess is monism.  We can acknowledge that there are no gods, no demiurges, no half-gods, no other kinds of supernatural beings, and no supernatural events.

The supernatural may easily serve the gospel as a vehicle for imparting the wisdom of God in stories and poetry, but no more than that in reality.

And yet, when I write about the supernatural in that way, I seem to demean it.  In reality, I believe they tell the truth in ways scientific data and theories never can. 

It will ever be so until a natural law is broken and verified by a lot of people.  

Part the Atlantic Ocean with the wave of a hand.  Let us all walk to Europe on dry land, and we will have our evidence.

So that is where we are.  But I have been writing of poetry and fiction. 

What we need is our faith to be grounded in philosophy so it will speak to the best hearts and minds of the next millennium. 

God should always be a possibility for anyone who ponders the meaning of life. 

If we insist on the supernatural to make our case, then God becomes less than possible.  God becomes improbable.

I do not believe it is such a great challenge to make this case.   We really do not have to go much farther or further than our Bibles.

Shadows are a good starting place if we want to make sense of God in a world devoid of gods.  Plato started with shadows in his myth of the cave. 

I think I shall start there tomorrow….with shadows, not Plato.

Blessings…