Thinking Small

Those of you who know me even a little bit probably understand that I have a bit of a fascination with religion / philosophy / “God” / et cetera. You probably also know that I have a very religious past—so religious, in fact, that I now feel like I belonged to a socially-accepted cult and I have a lot of emotional / social baggage that I still carry around from those days.

Anyway, this note is not to harp on that subject again, except to provide a little context as to why I start writing things like this.

Over the past few weeks I have watched numerous episodes of the various BBC nature series such as Life, The Blue Planet, Frozen Planet and other similar documentaries. I am also frequently thinking about the Cosmos reboot featuring Neil Degrasse Tyson. I go for walks among nature and am continually fascinated by the plants and creatures that I see around me.

Does it make me think that “God” does possibly exist?

I ask this question because I know that many people look at the vastness of nature and space and believe that “God” absolutely has to exist and I must admit that they could be right, but I have started to look at the possibility of “God” existing in a different context.

The Evangelical Christian God is considered to be vast, all-encompassing, all-knowing and practical unknowable except through Jesus Christ. Personally, this concept no longer works for me. I can believe in a real-life Jesus that may have been an enlightened teacher, but I can no longer believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God (and have not believed such for over 9 years now).

In light of all the documentaries I have been watching I am coming to believe that the larger an organism is, the greater ability it has to manipulate its environment, but the less it actually contributes to its environment. Perhaps this generalization mostly applies to humans, but it seems to hold true for most large creatures.

By the this definition, the Evangelical Christian God must be almost entirely useless if he is, indeed, so large as to be nearly incomprehensible. A large, useless God also fits with my belief that perfection can lead to nothing but stagnation.

However, I may not be done with God. The Evangelical Christian God is one narrow viewpoint within a sea of variability, so let us turn our telescope pointed at God around so it becomes a microscope.

Ahhh, see? The microscopic world is where everything happens. Life begins at this stage and life ends and begins anew at this stage and it repeats and it repeats and it repeats. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only change forms.

And how far down does this microscopic world go?

The fact is, we don’t know. The universe may be infinitely expandable, but what if it is also infinitely compressible? Atoms make up the molecules of Earth’s elements, but smaller quarks and particles make up atoms, and even smaller things make up those things, and smaller things make up those things, and...well...how far does the rabbit hole go down, Alice?

And maybe at the bottom of it all—at the smallest of all possible smallness—lies God. Making it very possible that God is, indeed, within every single one of us and within every living thing.