Erudite.
Er-oo-dahyt [characterized by great learning or scholarship]
From Atheism to fundamental Christianity, there is no philosophy of life that is based upon absolutely provable fact. We entrust our lives to a hundred things each day, from the tires on our vehicle to the ground wires on our appliances, we take risks, based on odds. All mindsets and worldviews require certain presuppositions and certain interpretations of evidence. I have tried to find the one that requires the least amount of guesswork, at least in my opinion.
When I used to hunt critters on my Grandpa’s farm I always had to cross a stream to get to the cover where rabbits hid. Now nothing is quite as miserable as walking all day in wet socks and shoes. I wore leather lace up boots smeared with mink oil. Water resistant, but not water proof. The stream changed from time to time with erosion and the cattle liked to walk in it. That changed it too. I would walk all along the edge of it and come to a conclusion about where it was narrowest, with maybe a deadfall I could use as a partial bridge. This is where I crossed. I did have to take a leap, trusting that the laws of inertia, mass, and gravity would land me dry shod on the other side. I did have to exercise some faith, but it was not completely blind.
I have done the same thing in answering the big questions in life: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? You might say it is by process of elimination, then. I have eliminated those positions that would require larger leaps of faith and crossed where there seemed to be the firmest evidence.
I believe there is an intelligence and power greater than human. I believe it by examining the physical world around me, and inside me. They tell me now that there are many universes and many more dimensions than I can experience; perhaps infinite! Even if there is only one universe, it is so vast that I find it quite a long shot that my species should happen to be at the top of the food chain.
Someone said: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made….” We have discerned the laws that govern the existence of matter, and we have realized that if they were not exactly as they are, nothing would exist. We see living organisms that are complex. As we divide them into their components, the components become even more complex. More complex than anything we can manufacture; and yet they must be this way in order to exist. My belief in a higher intelligence is a leap so small as to be perhaps not a leap at all, but an inevitability. There is or was intelligence that made these things, that is greater than anything human. I cannot seriously entertain another scenario.
Of course there are many alternative explanations for all this. Perhaps none requires a blind leap of more Herculean power than the one in vogue at present: “It just all happened as a coincidence of natural processes.” And yet, this is what the most erudite among us endorse with unflinching certainty. I certainly respect scholarship. The problem is that scholarship always seems to become driven by an agenda at some point, and then it becomes a rationale for baser behavior. These people of erudition now expect me to believe that everything just exploded into existence from nothing. Why? They don’t know. It just did. I thought we had done away with the “spontaneous generation” myth since Louis Pasteur. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, then, were primitives; for they believed in higher powers. They may have rejected the “gods” of their day, but they were at least smart enough to know that they were not kings of the mountain. I guess I am just too primitive to understand a “god free” existence. I have been given to understand that effect requires cause. At some point, an uncaused cause has to exist, and it can only be uncaused if it has existed forever. I am sorry for standing in the way of the erudite as they strain to transcend their provincialism. The problem is, after I am gone, there are many more like me who will still be here, because the evidence points to a conclusion that is just too obvious.
I like to read. My first book was “Dr. Dan the Bandage Man.” “Dr. Dan” was the first and the last work of fiction I have ever read. I prefer non fiction. I want to know how things work and why things happen. I feel insecure when I don’t.
I believe there is a book that tells me the truth about this higher intelligence. I have studied it all my life. I know it’s stories by heart. And yet…...I can’t put it away. I keep running into situations in life where I need advice, and I remember that whenever I followed that book’s advice, things turned out O.K. and when I didn’t, they didn’t. Pragmatism, perhaps more than religious devotion, keeps me bound to this book.
Speaking of pragmatism…...Those who are antagonistic toward belief in God often blame much of the unrest in the world on religion. I admit that many great atrocities have and are being perpetrated upon the world in the name of religion. The crucial phrase is, “in the name of”. There has always been true religion, and there have always been those who used true religion as a “front”, when their real goals were territory, power, and gold. Perhaps we should consider what the world would be like if suddenly, there were no more religion. I think I can predict by using an illustration. I was at the “Promise Keepers” rally in Washington D.C. in 1997. There were several hundred thousand Christian men there. A friend and I circumnavigated the group. One thing we were looking for just out of curiosity was the presence of security people. We finally found one woman officer on horseback. We asked her how things were going. She said, and I quote… “I just wish every day was like this.” I only need compare this with one other event to make my point: Woodstock. ’Nuf said.
Back to the book. There are stories in this book that are beyond the pale of what I have experienced. What I have experienced is 64 years of life. That’s only a small sliver of all human history. I think it’s a bit short sighted to proclaim that everything has always been the way it is in my brief experience. This book also talks an awful lot about things that happen to me every day. In every area where I can test it’s veracity it has proven true; so I am slow to doubt it when it talks about things I cannot test. The story it tells me about myself and others makes more sense than other stories. God made man. Man became a sinner. God sacrificed to make him clean. Judgment is coming.
Admittedly, it would be fruitless to try to convince me otherwise. I have experienced things in my life that have made my belief obligatory. These are subjective (things that have happened to me), so I don’t expect them to convince you. I wouldn’t blame you for not trusting my testimony. However, some things about the book should be obvious to you too. It is actually dozens of books by 40 authors written over 1500 years, yet it tells such a harmonious and logically sequential story that it is referred to as 1 “book”. It has far more existing manuscripts that go back further in time than any other work of ancient literature, so it can be scrutinized thoroughly. It’s historical accuracy is impeccable when tested against archaeological finds. It’s author certainly wasn’t concerned with it being accepted by the general public, because He takes a pretty dim view of the general public; nevertheless, it has outsold all other books.
I have also observed a behavior that seems to be so common among men as to call it innate. Men will strive for a situation that causes them the most physical pleasure and the least amount of pain. This means that they will always be striving against the directives of the Higher Intelligence that the book tells us about, for He tells us to deny ourselves. In order to avoid self denial, men must silence the Higher Intelligence. Perhaps that is why they are so apt to accept other explanations which seems to me nonsensical. I am either a primitive or I am way ahead of the curve; but I am certainly out of step.
Maybe this world is just like the boys’ restroom at high school. You had your “cool cats” (man this is going way back). The cool cats smoked Camels and drank a lot of beer. The cool cats continually boasted of their exploits among women. The cool cats wore leather jackets and penny loafers and drove cars until the repo man showed up. The cool cats wore their hair the way your dad never would let you. The cool cats didn’t recognize your existence. I was duly impressed. Why, some of them had even been to Omaha! I was but a paramecium in a soup of pig scours. Surely they were on the cutting edge of human evolution. The problem is that I survived and the cool cat didn’t. Some died of their excess. Those who lived turned into fat old bald headed men like me, and they all made their contributions to the world; but the cool cat in them died. Yea. The moral of the story is: I guess the next time you feel intimidated by the erudite, just go to the boys’ restroom and remember who the erudite used to be.
