The Physical and the Metaphysical; the Natural and the Supernatural

Lent 2020 - Day Two

You may be a rational person, reducing the universe to the equations upon which the laws of physics rest. In your universe there is no mystery. Religion - spirituality - is a mere delusion. You have rationalised away the wonder of life. “It’s all just wishful thinking.”

“Can’t explain something? Then it’s god. The god of the gaps. Lightning - God. Ah, no, electrical discharge. Big Bang? Consciousness? You don’t know? Just ascribe it to God. Or aliens.”

If that's how you think - removing the divine motivation from the Universe, then fine - you don’t need any religion; just an ethical code to ensure win-win relations in a sustainable society living on a sustainable planet. That code can be boiled down to one sentence - “Don’t be a ****”. Don’t be arrogant, don’t harm others, think about your footprint upon the planet. Do that and you’ll be fine - we’ll all be fine. If you are a reductionist-rationalist, then the rest of this post, then, is not for you, neither is the rest of this series of posts. Normal blogging returns after Easter, Sunday 12 April.

However… if you feel a spiritual need that transcends the physical, a greater glory than that which can be merely measured; if your beliefs include concepts that are supernatural - metaphysical – that which cannot be described by any law of physics nor detectable by any scientific instrument, that which lies above, outside, physics... then read on. This is for you.

What could be more supernatural than your own consciousness? You know you have it, you know that you are aware. You feel - but while we can all agree on the path of Venus around the Sun, while we can all agree how fast fingernails grow - we cannot begin to have the slightest clue into what’s going on in the mind of the other person. Facial clues may give away emotions, but a face at rest, a mind gazing placidly into the middle distance may be engaged in a train of thought that no sensor, no instrument, no other human mind, will be able to pin down.

And yet the mystery endures, within the tranquil mood, meditating upon the metaphysical, the eternal and the infinite; moments of fleeting communion with the higher truths, far higher than the mundane strivings of everyday life.

Do you believe in supernatural phenomena? Ghosts in haunted castles? The presence of God within the Communion Wafer? Life after death?

Religious belief is a form of belief in the supernatural. We cannot detect nor measure God's presence in our lives any more than we can know what your cat is thinking. (Incidentally, is your cat conscious of its being aware? We don't know. We can only guess.)

Does  religious belief bring luck - should it indeed bring luck? Are religious people demonstrably luckier than non-believers? Are religious people healthier, happier? More importantly, do they have greater peace of mind?

It is a matter of belief, a matter of faith - but faith should be based upon one's own observations and one's own most profound emotional experiences, rather on something passed down and accepted uncritically.

I do believe in the metaphysical; there are properties present in the universe of which we, mere humans, have as yet no knowledge. The effects of the supernatural are hard to discern, largely because they take effect at a scale of time (eternity) and distance (infinity) that our short lives and geographical groundedness prevent us from observing. It’s like people in the Dark Ages denying the existence of electromagnetic force, having nothing with which to measure it.

On the Way to a Better Place?

In coming posts I shall examine our need (well, the need of some of us) for that which lies above and beyond the visible, the measurable and the day-to-day.

This time last year:
Heathrow Airport now and then

This time four years ago:
Radom line modernisation will change the face of Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
How do we perceive good and evil?

This time six years ago:
Civilisation and a civil society

This time eight years ago:
Strong, late-winter sunshine

This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands freeze over

This time ten years ago
Kensington, a London village

This time 11 years ago:
Lenten recepies

This time 12 years ago:
A walk through Sadyba