magnitude

Last night I had a conversation with an atheist. I don't actually believe in atheists. I think they are all agnostics waiting for proof. Ha ha. It was not a big conversation about the existence of God, just about the fact that I actually do believe in God and even, um, well, you know, go to church and stuff, and how uncool that seems to be among my peer group. I woke up this morning thinking about it and thinking, am I the idiot for believing in this stuff, I mean, I can't actually prove it's true that there's a God. I guess for me it's as true as anything that you can only know with your heart. Why do you love somebody? It's not a tangible, touchable, seeable thing to love. It just is. It's something you know in your heart, it grabs you, it doesn't go away. You know you are better with that love than without.

So after having all these thoughts, I come downstairs and the first thing I do, before even getting a cup of coffee is to check my email. The first thing I see is from my dad. I am like my Dad in a lot of ways. (If you know my Dad, you know how very hard it is for me to admit that. Our personalities are very different, but our brains work similarly if that makes any sense). My dad loves math and science and he was ecstatic when I decided to study math. He loves sending me little problems to solve. I regularly receive math-related articles clipped from magazines and newspapers. Now we've entered the new millenium so I get links via email. I used to laugh when I got these, but now I know that it's how he shows his love and that it means I'm important to him. While he's reading or online, I am on his mind. I am the only one of his children who shares his love of math and science. I mean, they are all his seed and I think compared to most people, all my siblings have a better than average appreciation for the stuff, but I'm the one who nerdily pursues it. Another thing I share with my dad that none of my other siblings have embraced is religion. My dad is quietly devout. I happen to know that he carries a rosary in his pocket, but I only know this because my mom told me, it's private to him. Since my dad is one of the most logical people I know and also the most religious, I haven't ever had that conflict between science and God that many go through. Certainly I went through my doubting phase and there were a good 10 years when I was not religious at all, but I can tie it together in my mind and every new scientific discovery only affirms my belief.

So, with all of these thoughts going through my mind, this was the video in my email:



Anyway, I realized that there are two conclusions you can come to when faced with the magnitude of our universe. You will either wonder at it's vastness and say "How can there be a God?" or you will marvel at the beauty and complexity and say "How can there NOT be a God?"

I want to add the disclaimer that I am not trying to convince anybody of anything, these are just musings.