Topic: Is spirituality just another decision?

Date originally posted: November 26, 2002

Source of this posting: Moderator response to emailed question

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:   Here is an excellent quote that cannot be denied unless one is totally illogical and ignorant of thinking...'Reality only exists because it is measured'  So therefore, no reality exists at all, we only perceive it because our senses measure light, sound, etc. and further more we assign values to this perception like distance, numbers, etc.  Doesn't that just scream out that we only choose our reality based on our inputs as an organism and elaboration of that into descriptions given by language and thought. So really nothing we think is true exists at all, it is simply a delusion of our brain's activity.  I just wonder what someone from such an extremely limited background in perception and openness to ideas has to think about that. Would you admit that either spirituality is just another delusion and then that you are either living in a lie by choice to have a framework of reality that is comforting, or you just don't believe thousands of years of logic and understanding that just puts the whole truth out there. namaste' daniel (a biological organism carrying out his preprogrammed fate due to the forces governing our universe, which can be only truly represented my mathematical expression)

Answer: 

Dear Daniel, "biological organism...",

Thanks for writing to www.CatholicQandA.org. I looked at your user's profile and found what you had written there: "No faith in higher beings or 'supernatural' connections of anykind. Everything, although possibly inconceivable to human beings, can be explained by math."

Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind -- which is certainly your prerogative to do. I am obliged by my faith to respect your conscience. One of the axioms by which I try to lead my life is the following, "Nobody has ever been 'argued' into truth, but lots of people have been 'loved' into truth." So, I won't try to argue with you.

Of course, you -- as all human beings -- are a "biological organism." I'd like my own personal biological organism to lose some weight, but then, that's my problem.

But, Daniel, I think you -- and all human beings -- are a lot more than just the sum total of our "biological" parts.

For example, have you ever been in love? Have you ever felt an over-riding passion for another human person, so strong that you thought of that person almost all the time? What exactly is the mathematical expression that represents such love, such passion?

Have you ever watched a mother or a father with a newborn? The love and the compassion, the hope and the apprehension which are caught up in the way the new father or new mother holds and cares for the tiny infant are realities which seem -- to me, 'extremely limited' as I am -- difficult to represent by mathematical expression.

Has anybody you've loved, deeply loved, died? Have you stood by the bed of a spouse who dies painfully and slowly and watched the agony of the remaining spouse? Have you been with a family when their precious and beloved son dies unexpectedly, at the height of his prowess and promise? Have you seen the grief of one who cares for somebody whose body withers as the result of AIDS or cancer or lupus? Mathematical expression seems a bit sterile to represent the agony and the grief, the sadness and the devastation of those people.

A truly great thinker, David Tracy, calls these "limit experiences." He says that those experiences which push us to the limit -- whether of joy or sadness -- of the range of our humanity are where we really find "the Other" whom I chose to call God.

Something within each and all of us, Daniel, allows "the Other" to reach down and into our limit experience, redeeming it, bringing us hope, offering community.

I certainly admit that I am extremely limited in perception. But even my limited background rails against the notion that the grandeur, the artistry, the horror, and the magnificence of human existence can be truly and completely represented by mathematical expression.

Life is not so simplistic. Life is not so black and white. Life is filled with ranges of colors and grays. Perhaps you will find in mathematics the means to express all of that lovely complexity and diversity; if you do, I will be very happy for you...and for the world. But in the off chance that you don't find that fullness in mathematics, I will pray for you; how's that?

You might be interested in reading a couple of books by Chaim Potok. His "Book of Lights" and "My Name is Asher Lev" address, in oblique ways, the kinds of issues that your question/comment raises.

Be well and have a great Thanksgiving!

Father Phillip