Day 2: I'm in a Wasteland of Ideas

Why do atheists care about figuring out nature? I know why I care, but dang it's hard.

Day 2 alone and writing. It is good to be able to concentrate without distractions, but the isolation forces me to confront what I do and do not know. No hiding. I am scared that I know nothing. And I’m not so sure all the people I’m reading who came before me knew that much either. In philosophy, it seems you pick your world and stay in your lane. Right now, I feel like I’m walking on dry land crossing the Red Sea with walls of water on either side of me. All experience tells me the water walls should not be there, yet the ones I look to as leaders (the Moseses?) assure me to keep going. I am. I am. With assiduity, I keep the faith one step at a time. But what if I’m crazy? What if the walls come spilling down?

Isolation makes me dramatic, but I do ask myself a million times why I care. The reason is that I want to figure out nature. I see nature as creation, as God’s handiwork. There is something indescribably vivacious and beautiful about every new thing I learn about how the natural world works. When it settles in my mind, when I own the new knowledge, something snaps in place, and I am genuinely happy. “Thank you, Lord!” Each little detail changes the way I look out at the world, even if I’m just sipping expresso, listening to birds, and pondering the grass. Catholicism tells me I’m made for this, to seek the truth, so that has always been enough. Madam Truthseeker!

But trying to straighten out these metaphysical concepts? Wasteland. I can stare at a blade of grass and think about photosynthesis. Heck, I can recite the chemical details of the z-scheme electron transport chain happening in the machinery of the thylakoid membrane’s lipid bilayer, down to the atom. The molecules involved act like processors/workers, but their ‘personality’ (so to speak) is caused by their atomic composition. It’s all about the electrons and whether they are ‘willing’ to cooperate with other atoms’ electrons. (I’m using single quote marks so that no one accuses me of anthropomorphizing atoms, though they are kind of like nano-actors to me.) But when I try to go the next step metaphysically (beyond physics) and think of those workers as bodies but not substances in the proper sense, as parts of wholes, as matter-form composites down to the elements, which are prime matter, pure potency, actualized by the form (from God) into the thing that it is, the thing that is supposed to be presenting itself so I can learn truth…well, all I can say is that in my mind, it’s like someone unplugged the electricity. I go blank. My grip on reality vanishes. That’s what I meant yesterday by “Jello.” Philosophy feels like Jello. God help me.

See, I was okay just saying, “Thank you, Lord!” when I look at grass. Then I learned some philosophy, and glimpsed the vastness that is between looking at grass, thanking God, and actually…never mind, I can never use that word this way again, thanks philosophy…and being able to fill in the gap with reason. How does God act in the world? How do we know what’s what? These questions will shed light on why humans ever sought to do scientific research in the first place. In this journey through philosophy the last two years, I have come to realize just how much of a recovering materialist I am. The machinery view made me happy. Oh, God, you made such a great project! Getting my head around how God is in the world, act and potency, matter and form, substance and accident, is all pulling me closer to knowing God, and I have that same overwhelming feeling I had when I first converted. God does not just know how many hairs are on my head; He knows where every electron is in every atom in every keratin protein molecule in every hair and, for that matter, every one of the ~6 x 10²⁷ atoms in my body. I literally prayed, Too close God! Could you give me some space here?

I’m there again. I was comfortable walking around in the atom-world in my mind like it was God’s Museum or something. Now I’m going deeper into the prime matter and form world, and until I can ‘people’ it with ideas I am comfortable with, it is going to feel like a foreign wasteland. Why do I stay? Because I have to. Some people travel the world to accomplish their bucket list items. I don’t want to die without visiting this realm of philosophy. I want to get to know it and be able to go easily back and forth between that land and the land of atoms. Zooming back out to grass now…

So, those are my reasons. But atheists, why do you care? If this is just nature, then isn’t the machinery of nature no different than the machinery in your smart phone? While some people know all the workings of them and can tell you how they work, it isn’t something you need to know to be fulfilled. Right? I use my phone daily, and I kind of know how it works, but I don’t have an insatiable longing to master the knowledge of my phone’s parts in the same way I long to understand nature. Maybe I should, but it seems the only reason for knowing how phones work is to get a job in the industry. If you do not believe there is a God, then why do you search for truth? What is the meaning of knowledge to you? Why not live in every moment, ride the wave of the present, and not worry about what is behind you, beneath you, before you, or above you?

I’m off the tackle terminology today, courageously onward into the wasteland.