JUNE 21, 2022 – (Cont.) “Yes, what we lack in scientific knowledge—though we’re making big strides in that arena—we compensate with our imaginations and sometimes our hallucinations. To cover all possibilities, religious people tell us that ‘God works in strange ways.’ Indeed he does. Or should I say, indeed he used to. Nowadays, as we realize how incorrigibly patriarchal society was and still is, even some religionists have migrated away from using the masculine pronoun to the neutral ‘It,’ which, now that I think about it, is also less anthropomorphic, and—thinking yet further—more problematic, since in the Christian faith, anyway, God has always been referred to as ‘the Father,’ not ‘the Force,’ and certainly never ‘the Mother,’ though we’ve long been comfortable calling nature, that is Creation, as ‘Mother Nature.’ For centuries, artists, writers, members of the priestly class itself, not to mention adherents of Christianity, at least, depicted God as a guy in a white robe or at least an older guy—50s, at least; more often 80s—with impressive gravitas.
“Might I ask . . . before you landed here on earth, had you encountered the concept of God?”
“Not as you’ve created and constructed it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, intrigued by the alien’s equivocal response.
“On Goldilocks we’re not confined by humanlike imagination or mental disorders. I can assure you that the laws of physics are universal across the entire cosmic expanse of matter and anti-matter in which expanse both earth and Goldilocks reside.” The alien’s slowly blinking filaments, alternating among shades of blue and green, seemed to indicate deep contemplation.
“As an aside,” the alien continued, “you should know that it’s an open question question as to whether the laws of physics exist in the vacancy beyond the cosmic expanse.”
This remark rattled my sense of security. “I have to admit,” I said, that you’ve now reached beyond my imagination.”
“Good to know. I was beginning to worry that human imagination had no limits. In any event—back to the cosmos and the laws of physics, the label assigned to those laws doesn’t alter their character. On Goldilocks we prefer to call the laws of the universe what they are—nothing more, nothing less. I think, however, we’re talking about the same thing here, you and I: God and the laws of the universe.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “I mean, probably so. Make that, I know so.” I realized that inadvertently I’d demonstrated a classic case of human equivocation. “The religionists would say that the God is more than a set of inexorable laws. God gets inside human souls, minds, hearts, and plays an active part in our lives, whether we acknowledge that role or not.”
“How quaint,” said the alien.
“Yes, very. Especially when it’s spoken—as I just have—to a being from some distant galaxy.”
“I detect doubt and tension among your synapses,” the alien said. What? The alien was reading my mind! (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
