Note: This writing comes in three parts. You can sample the poem and skip the rest-- or read a brief scene setting explanation, and skip my diatribe. Or you can read all three. Your choice.
Materialist mistake that which limits life for life itself – Leo Tolstoy
In the beginning
was …..
a wI N K.
a wad of heated ink
a dark dot in the dark
a bullet in the heart
of nada.
In the beginning was a point
An un-appointed point
A point without any
point
A point without any light
For the point was very fast,
and the point was very tight
In the weight of its monolithic allness.
ALLL-NESSSS
But then
that which had ever been
or that that was
just then, suddenly drew in
Thin
Dense
Hence, it exploded.
Bang ....
BIG BANG!
It sang
It rang, it ran
Like light poured through a fan
Zoooooooooooooming into the cosmos, even
As it was, and caused it.
In time, In time
The stars began to shine
Shimmer, shake, and roll;
Mutate and twine,
climb the periodic table.
And now
After billion and billions of boofs
What bounty that starlight has wrought
Andromeda to Madonna
Stellar ash to sequin
Primordial soup to Campbell’s
Molecule to Mandolin.
Oh,
The stars, the stars
Are shining on TV
And they and we and the screen and the sea
Everything is stellar, everything sublime
Everything machine, everything divine.
Oh --
Pirouette, pantomime
Panty hose and silly rhyme …
All stuffed in that one darn speck
HECK!
Hell – Bliss
Dynamite and diapers
Diaphragms and holsters
Dungarees and dingoes
Calvin and Hawking,
Mother T. and Mr.
Genocide and monsters
Karl Marx and stalkers,
Pit bulls, and pythons
Monty and mushrooms
Jesus, and generals
Auschwitz and sneakers, creepers and reapers,
This poem and Jeepers!
HAA Ha ha ha ha
All stuffed in that one darn speck. Oh …
Cars and stars and bars and Mars and toys and boys and
Bills and pills and stores and bores and spores and whores and smores and chores … And wars
All stuffed in that one poor speck
Oh,
Carl, Carl - Can you say again, what it is I really am?
I am star – I am spam, I am chaos come afar (Shouted)
Oh The chaos is all that ever is--or was—or will be!
AND
The cosmos come aware
has taken on a flair
for casting life like fire from itself!
Oh look, the sun –"Hi dad,"Want to hear a sunny song?
Sunshine on our shoulder makes us happy …Sunshine on our shhh
Oh Dear. All full of light, but you can’t hear …
Ohhhh.
I am reason rendered from the non,
I am ticking like a bomb.
All is one and One is all,
I’m beginning to fade into it --
I’m beginning to wash into it,
I’m beginning to lose it
all.
----
Molecule to MANia Explained.
I wrote this poem when I was about 35 and working a night shift (cleaning a hospital) and running a photo studio by day, getting little sleep. The poem is the product of an overactive mind, and the creativity that comes with sleep deprivation.
The poem itself is a distillation of thoughts I entertained over a decade earlier.
I suppose the number of times in any person's life when his (or her) world view is up for grabs are few. That said, I spent some time in my late teens and early twenties, knocked about by the competing claims of both Christianity and Naturalism (sometimes called Materialism.)
I found the case for Christianity bolstered by David the Psalmist, Clive Staples (the author of the Chronicles of Narnia) and my then-favorite apologist, Francis Schaeffer.
I found the case for Naturalism forcefully articulated by Carl Sagan.
Many of you will be familiar with the famous line from Carl Sagan's book and Tv Series “The Cosmos” in which Sagan posits that the “Cosmos is all that ever IS or WAS or WILL BE.”
The first time I heard that line I understood the implications immediately. Carl was offering a clear alternative to Christian theism, anchored in a universe with god-like properties. (The Cosmos is Eternal and Self existing -- the foundation of all that is.) I was swept by the size of the Cosmos, the power of Sagan’s prose, and the quirky idea that we are the stuff of stars, remixed in the cauldron of the universe.
Those of you who know me, know that I have come to reject that notion in full. While I have no strident objections to being made of stardust, I regard a self-creating Cosmas as a full-on absurdity. (Should this be your area of interest, I/ve attached an older essay in which I give voice to some of the reasoning which led me away from naturalism.)
Or you can simply savor the poem.
Oddly some of the folks who have most liked this poem are themselves materialists. I do not know if they did not realize I was expressing incredulity, or if they too feel the shock of being “stellar ash aware”… and just roll with it.
---
Chicken or the Egg (1984)
By now in science class you have learned about the things we call matter and energy. Matter is a pretty big word, and comes close to meaning “stuff” but it also includes a lot of stuff we can’t see. And for the sake of this discussion, it includes energy as well. Truth is matter and energy are somewhat interchangeable. The physics of all this is way beyond me, but I understand that matter can be converted into energy (that happens when we burn a tree and the tree then becomes the stuff of ash and light and heat. Or on the converse, energy can be made in matter. That happens when the energy released by the sun interacts with chlorophyll and creates new matter. In either case we are speaking the language of movement. We speak of source and end, or CAUSE AND EFFECT,
Today, Sun energy is diminishing – even as the matter on earth gets bigger!
But before I go any farther here, I want to entertain a question you may have heard before.
What came first – the chicken or the egg?
--
As is, there are probably several solutions to this problem.
The first (which nobody has ever suggested) is that chickens and eggs arrived on the scene by totally divergent paths. Chickens arrived on the scene, without the benefit of any precedent eggs, while eggs arrived at the same time, without any precedent chickens. The two just got together and formed a symbiotic relationship and have been working together since.
A second solution – rarely advanced – is that chickens and eggs -- As chickens and eggs, are eternal. There has never been a time when the chicken/egg were not.
The third or fourth possible solutions are a little easier.
Either
3) the Chicken came first, or
4) The egg.
Now of course, the solution to this riddle wasn’t meant to be as easy as those answers. Metaphysical questions don’t persist by having easy answers. What is really being asked is a larger question about things with starts.
But first, let's go back to reconsider the basic problem.
Both the chicken and the egg as things, represent a “cause.” -- And a cause is something that gives birth to effect – In fact, a cause without an effect would not be a cause, an so, while cause precedes effect, it can not be divorced from effect. The two notions occur as a unit- spread across time.
Likewise, both the chicken and egg are an effect; That is, by virtue of their existence and activity, we ascertain precedent cause.
Furthermore, it would appear that Chicken and Egg exist in a circular relationship with each other, both being for one another a cause and an effect. BUT THIS ILLUSION, or ERROR – unless we speak of chicken-kind and egg-kind as opposed to individuals. For no chicken has ever laid the egg that gave birth to itself, and no egg has ever become the chicken that should lay it.
So, the thing which appears at first a riddle is less so – what we have here is not an eternal circle with no start – but a slinky.
So now – the real question. Does the slinky that is chicken and egg – have a start!
A true materialist will probably say no (thought he might fudge and talk about the big bang as if it were the start.)
In fact, cosmic-gradualists would have the chicken-egg relationship as just one of the latter and more advanced manifestations of what is at the very core of reality: An ever advancing machine in which the total energy and mass that informs the system has always been in the system. In other words, chickens and eggs ARE eternal – however, they have not always looked like chicken/eggs. At one time they looked more like stars, or a thick place in space. or (if we go back beyond the bang, maybe even chicken/eggs in the universe before the last great condense.)
On a smaller level, before you ever get to chickens or eggs, you must first come up with things like slime and water and calcium and bugs and corn and dinosaurs and dinosaurs that jump off of cliffs (including some that survive the leap for the flaps on their sides) and DNA and such.
And before that, you must first come up with stuff.
Which puts us at the very start of the problem.
Is it possible to have stuff without a start?
Or, To say it another way, which came first … Nothing, or an Eternal Something?
If everything came from something that preceded it, then we would assume that cause (in some form or another) is eternal.
On the other hand, if everything that is, came from absolute nothingness, then we must be prepared to abandon the concept of cause and effect. Make that reason as well.
For the most part, though, when anybody speaks about the moment before the big bang … they always begin with a something. It may –be pre-matter, or pre-energy … it may be anti-matter … it may even be a reversal in time in which the thing which exists one billionth of a second reaches backwards into time to give itself the energy to create itself (something like that) but there is always a something. A movement, a spark, a wink, an infinitesimal bit smaller than an atom on a fleas wing … a deepening within the void, but .. always a something. (or Everything)
And that something as a something, simply takes us back to the start of the problem … either that something had a precedent cause, or it simply IS. Something from something, or something from nothing.
Someone may object, and say that these problems are not owned by naturalistic evolution. In fact, the creation model that I advocate posits something of both difficult ideas. Something is eternal (namely God) AND, nature has “popped into being” out of nothingness … albeit by the will of God.
The difference between a theistic system and a naturalistic system begins with a distinction in the character of the eternal “essence.” We are left with a sub-rational, or a super-rational idea: either, 1) that nature is self-existing and its own cause, or 2) the ever living and infinite God who is above nature in every way, may initiate in nature, an effect without any precedent NATURAL cause.
Some questions for matter-ists who affirm general reason.
Some folks, when they talk of “the big bang” think of it as providing some kind of start. but I can’t see how it would suggest anything (at best) but a temporal-pool, or a point in history. SO …
If things with starts must have something in them that starts (or must be eternally started) what shall we call the stuff that was, some unthinkable fraction before the big bang. I don't know enough about physics or the terms implied in this discussion to know if scientist have given a name to the eternal something that precedes the universe as we know it, so I shall simply refer to it as ESS (Eternal Starter Stuff)
Questions:
Does ESS exist in time? If so, what qualities of or about the ESS would give meaning to time? (In my mind, time appears to be a function of movement)
Does ESS possess, or initiate motion?
If ESS initiates motion, has ESS always possessed the quality of motion?
If ESS possesses the quality of motion, is the motion constant, or does it vary in speed or duration?
If the motion in ESS varies, what qualities would help define that variation?
If the ESS knows variation within itself, is the cause for that variation within itself or without?
(If the cause for the variation is within itself, is all cause that shapes the "cause" within the cause? … ad infinitum.
Or, if the cause for the variation is outside of the system, how shall we explain the origin of this cause?
Does the ESS posses the attribute of size or location?
If the ESS possesses the attribute of dimension, what other quality or variable would the ESS be measured against to define its size or location?
Is ESS Simple, or complex?
If simple, has ESS been eternally simple?
If complex, has ESS been eternally complex?
Does the ESS posses the quality of differentiation?
If so, has ESS always possessed "internal" differentiation?
If ESS has always possessed internal differentiation, has that differentiation been subject to change?
Has ESS ever changed … What would be the impetus behind that change?
If The ESS knows change (on any level, of any kind) what precedent cause would account for the change?
Here of course we have encountered an unending circle.)
Does ESS possess the quality of growth? If so, what scale or item of comparison would allow us to measure it?
Does the ESS in anyway possess a pre-quality of any of these attributes?
Design
Imagination
Purpose
Life
Intelligence
Order
Beauty
Pleasure
Does the ESS contain all (by way of a pooling of cause) that will go into the effects that are ourselves?
Does the ESS contain (in some form) all that will go into our history, our lives, our likes, our passions, our morals, our art, our religion? – etc.
Does the ESS contain the sum total of energy or matter that will be the Cosmos?
*If not, we are back to the problem of effect (the existence of energy) without precedent cause.
Are we to say:
The "stuff" which preceded our universe in eternal. This “something” contains the sum total of energy that will be expressed in the universe. It is differentiated, and knows movement in itself, and has these attributes apart from any cause other than itself. The ESS contains all CAUSE for every thing that ever was, is, or will be.
The ESS is, and was, and WIZ.
There is only ESS!
--
Now at this point – it looks like we have something that is close (but far) from God.
An eternal something, that has in it the potential for all that should be realized in time (given the mechanics chance and necessity) is .. more like God, than nothing.
The only question now is – can this dead but eternal machine, apart from any will or design be made into what it has become? And here my science falls apart. For I understand that the universe as I now know it, is not a single expression of effect … but
Myriad upon myriad of effects – Is it possible to boil the all these (including the rules that should govern development) down into “one” effect –
Namely “Bang”?
--
Some folks have stated that if we can envision that God is eternal, why not matter? And I guess, expressed that way, neither is comprehenisble .. both confound us … but when it comes to being loved, and being in love – or knowing that I am special, or even affirming that I am self aware – the idea that that which is without knowledge, that which is without life, or purpose, or plan, or dream … That which is without the simple act of being self aware – that which is without anything but what it is becoming … is utterly and absolutely unthinkable to me. Even an evolving god-in-all, of which I and my fellow strivers are its most recent incarnation -- dishes out the prospect that I alone am worthy of my praise – for no other being shall hear it and care.
On the other side of this great chasm, is an idea (or a revelation) that the cause behind the universe is not less than --or equal to -- the universe, but greater than the universe in every way.
Greater by virtue of power and knowing and presence and personality and goodness and beauty.
Henceforth,
Personality gives birth to personality.
And
(the
The infinite gives form to multiple effects (or causes).
The core idea behind creation is that God is larger than the system that operates under Him. The system contains power -- God is ALL POWERFUL. The system contains information – God is ALL KNOWING. The system exists in space and time. God is larger than both. Furthermore, God is FREE. He is not conditioned or forced to create. He does so most freely, apart from any cause other than that His own desire. Finally, as the First and Last, He is able to create multiple – almost infinite effects, without any precedent NATURAL cause.
“For in Him we live and move and have our being”.
Yes. Thank you for sharing, sir.
Art like this, art that explores questions with humor and honesty, is so important. Praise God for guiding you as you sought answers!
It’s easy to like this poem because it’s undeniably ART. I would love to hear you recite this one!