I have a theory. What I’m wondering is if I can postulate this theory and have anyone pay attention. Pure science will countenance any theory. However, pure science doesn’t usually rule the day. If science had always restricted itself to theories that the current scientists found plausible, well, we would be a long time coming to where we are today. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what happened. In every generation there seems to be only a handful of scientists who recall that science is about expanding the frontier of human knowledge. The majority seem to self-limit, restricting themselves -- and all they can dominate -- to pursuing whatever is currently the limit to believability. I understand part of this self-limiting behavior: limited resources. Someone has to make those triage decisions because there are, apparently, only so many resources available to pursue the validation of theories. Essentially, it is: Theories = infinite, resources = finite. Short of a miracle, there is never going to be a way for finite to catch infinite.
It’s the other part of the “limiteds” that I don’t understand. Why is it there are some who think they must restrict others? Oh, I understand the need for some to dominate others in the context of controlling available resources. At its base that is a survival instinct; preservation of resources derives from preservation of species. It is those dominators who aren’t stakeholders that puzzle me. These people learn of a theory, subject it immediately to whatever they use as a standard for the acceptable application of research resources, and then reject the vast majority as being outside that small bubble they think of as “worth pursuing.”
My theory is that there is a God. In fact, my theory is that there are many beings that, based on the power they wield, could be called Gods, probably would be called gods by us. It seems to me that any real scientist would grant me the right to formulate such a theory.
There comes a time when we must either embrace our beliefs or, out of nothing more than intellectual honesty, reject them and move on. I must confess that, for quite some time, I had been compartmentalizing my beliefs, picking and choosing where I would allow them to reign and where I had concluded they didn't quite fit the fact set.
This realization came to me in an oblique way. I was reading Philip Yancy's wonderful book, Soul Survivor, when I came across a swatch of philosophy that was new to me, or at least, something I had not truly considered up to that point.
Yancy stated that "Every writer has one main theme, a spoor that he or she keeps sniffing around, tracking, following to its source." When I read it, I was forced to pause and think what mine might be.
I have been writing for many years, going all the way back to Junior High School. Much, if not all, of those earlier efforts would not be publishable for adult markets. Some might not even still be something teens would want to read.
However, in later years, I have been writing a lot of fiction, pretty good fiction. Writing can almost always be improved upon, but I have been quite happy with my efforts. And this is because I have been able to actually write what it is I have been meaning to write. There is a great sense of accomplishment in that, just being able to know that you said what you meant to say, that when people read your work they actually 'get' it.
Another, equally important part of my more recent writing is that I have been doing just what Yancey wrote about. Looking back, I suppose I have almost always done this, but today's works do a better job of making it plain to the reader.
The theme I keep sniffing around is this: science and spirit need not be combatants. They can, in fact, co-exist in the same universe. Better than that actually, they can be perfectly intertwined. My thematic core is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God of Relativity, Superstring Theory, and the multiverse.
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