The God of the Gaps

Today, with all our technological and scientific knowledge, have we finally managed to lay the myth of God in the ground? Many aeons ago when man finally emerged as a fully developed conscious being called Homo Sapiens, at some point he developed or found religion. In fact some studies show that the Neanderthals, a separate species (some say subspecies) to Homo Sapiens also developed religion as evidenced by their burial rituals. The Neanderthals died out leaving mankind to shape the future. Whatever the case may actually be, religion developed incredibly early in the evolution of Homo Sapiens.

Everything was religious to him. There were gods everywhere. Gods of the wind, the trees, the sun, the moon. You name it, there was a god for it. As man emerged, he understand practically nothing of his environment. So somehow the idea of gods who controlled the elements came about. And this was thousands of years before the bible was even written. Modern humans evolved around fifty thousand years ago while the bible was probably written only about three and a half thousand years ago.

And even when the earliest books of the bible were being composed we can see that man still attributed everything to God. As the shift from polytheism to monotheism took a lot of time, even early biblical tales include more than one god. The first commandant, which talks about God being the Lord and God of all and you must not put other gods before him, implies that people believed in other gods which were inferior to their God. Even today the belief in angels and saints implies lesser gods.

It wasn’t till the 16th century that modern experimental science began to develop. Before then many philosophers like Aristotle, Plato or Socrates made logical assumptions with no basis in fact. For example Aristotle said that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, a statement repudiated when Galileo performed his famous experiments. Aristotle and company did not use empirical evidence. Science changed all that by demanding that experiments be done and only on the outcome of the experiment could theories be developed. Even then it took some considerable time for the scientific method we know today to develop. Astrology was believed in by many scientists and much science was really a mixture of magic and experiment. Giordano Bruno, one of the men credited with the realisation that the Sun rather than the Earth was at the centre of our solar system, was basically a black magician.

However, by the time of the 18th century and the “Age of Enlightenment” science was well on the way to hard-nosed experiment which had been spear headed by such luminaries as Newton, Descartes, Pascal and Leibnitz during the 17th century. The majority of these scientists, it should be pointed out, were deeply religious people and they considered their science only confirmed their beliefs. It was only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where more and more scientists began questioning these religious ideas that religion began to take second place to science and belief in a deity began to decrease.

It could be argued that Charles Darwin was the main instigator in the withdrawal of science from religion. He began to question the historicity of the bible, especially after his return from the famous voyage of the Beagle where he had studied the natural history of the places he visited and collected many specimens. However, his theory of evolution for the first time seriously questioned the whole idea of man being created directly by God. Instead he had evolved from lower mammals. A great mainstay in the whole theology of God had been shown to rest on shifting sand.

Now things changed and as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced that “God was Dead”, those who would not let God die were being forced back into a smaller corner. Of course they didn’t just lie down and give up. In Tennessee a law was enacted making it illegal to teach the theory of evolution. This was in 1925. John Scopes, a teacher, was brought to trial for disobeying this law and was found guilty but got off on a technicality.

And even further back, in 1860, a debate took place at the Oxford University Museum on the theory of evolution. While a number of prominent scientists and philosophers took part it is best remembered for some remarks which in all probability were never uttered, but it’s a good story and sums up the mood. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce spoke against evolution and asked Thomas Huxley who argued in defense of evolution whether it was through his grandmother or his grandfather that he considered himself descended from a monkey. Huxley retorted that he was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth.

Even today, the argument rumbles on with Creationism and Intelligent Design as two theories purporting to prove that God created man exactly as it says in the bible. I actually heard to my astonishment a Creationist scientist on a television program some time ago stating while science can prove or disprove certain things, once it disagreed with the bible, then the bible won hands down. At this point the mind boggles.

However, many theists today are happy to accept that evolution is the way God progressed his creation. Also most people no longer believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, so now we can go back to the beginning of the universe itself. In the first half of the last century two theories held sway, the Big Bang which said that the universe exploded into existence about 13 or so billion years ago while the Steady State said that the universe had always existed. Unfortunately for the latter theory, in 1964 the faint echo of the Big Bang was detected. Even Pope Pius XII celebrated this fact as it gave credence to the possibility that God perhaps lit the touch paper.

Is this the last gap that God can inhabit today? Unfortunately not. He has been squeezed out of that position as well. It used to be thought that for every effect there had to be a cause. What caused the Big Bang? Well, obviously it had to be God, hadn’t it? Well, not really because you can go on to ask what caused God. So what is more logical, the big bang somehow caused itself, or God caused himself. Or slightly differently, the big bang came out of a previous universe which had its own big bang with these cosmic events going back infinitely in time. So again with a hint of the steady state theory raising its head, the universe was always there. Or God was always there. Why take that extra step? We don’t need God to explain it.

But if that’s the case why do we find that the constants in the universe like the ratio of an electron to a proton, the strength of gravity, the strength of the other forces like electromagnetism, are so finely tuned. If any of these constants or forces were slightly different we could not exist. The universe would be empty. In fact, the universe as we know it could not exist. Doesn’t this look like some sort of designer at work?

No, because what we like to call the multiverse today, that is, universe following universe infinitely back in time will each have had their forces set up in different ways totally at random. It just happens that finally we get an universe which has just the right ingredients to allow the existence of us. The laws of probability; it just had to happen at some point.

So at last God has nowhere left to hide. There are no more gaps left to fill which He might squeeze into. He’s gone. We’ve dealt him a mortal blow. Well, actually He was never there in the first place. Science has triumphed and can explain everything and goes marching off into the sunset.

Yet some will still ask why, if God does not exist, do we have this hunger for Him. This need. And, of course, what about the soul?

Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist from Ontario has the answer to that question. And he thinks he can prove it too. When early man first realised that he was doomed to die it must have come as a bit of a shock. In order for him to be able to accept this, evolution contrived a neat little trick which caused our brains to sometimes have hallucinations and make us believe we were privy to an apparition from the heavens. Yes, God came down to us and told us it was all right, because when we died, we would not cease to exist, but continue on in an afterlife. We had a soul. This eased the apprehension of death, not only in early humans, but in mankind today as well. In order to demonstrate this, he uses what is called a God Helmet. A volunteer dons this helmet and is isolated in a completely dark room. His eyes are covered and there is absolutely no sound. After a while a magnetic field is applied to the helmet which activates a part of the brain called the temporal lobe. When volunteers are questioned afterward, they report that they entered a mystical state, felt a presence or had visions of one or more figures. Persinger claims these can explain all the reported instances involving the appearance of God, angels and saints down through the ages.

I think, just because volunteers using the God Helmet may experience these visions or whatever you want to call them, doesn’t necessarily prove that somebody who went through a religious experience or theophany simply had exactly the same experience. Schizophrenics can hear voices in their heads, but this doesn’t mean that the voices you and I hear every day are coming from our minds. They are, in the sense that the mind interprets the vibrations from our ear caused by another human voice, but the source is another person speaking to us. Similarly a mystic may have a vision of God which could be a real vision. Because the God Helmet may produce a similar sensation doesn’t negate the possibility of the other.

There are those who also suggest that we are living in a computer simulation and once again they have proof! Well, a reasonable suggestion as to why we might be in such a simulation. Science has found that everything in this universe is digital. We are made of atoms, so there is either an atom at this position or there isn’t. Digital. Even space itself is made up of virtual particles. So in essence a virtual particle can appear here or not. Digital. But as space is really combined with time in a space-time continuum, then time itself is made up of discrete bits. Once again digital. In theory it is possible for a very powerful computer to simulate a complex universe with life in it. So perhaps we are exactly that.

Once again a very interesting idea, but personally I don’t buy it. Why? Because it means that if this is true, then there is someone or something running the simulation – our creator. Or maybe even a human from our future. The speculations can be endless, but it still leaves that damnable question. Maybe we are a computer simulation, but what about our simulation operator. Is he also a simulation in an even bigger simulation? And if so, what about his operator. This sounds very familiar territory. Just like who made God.

The bottom line is, why is there something rather than nothing? Of course that still doesn’t mean there is a God! So we’re simply going around the mulberry bush again.

One thing which has always struck me is the fact that today we think we know so much. Actually, we thought we knew everything about a hundred years ago. In fact, going even further back, Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French mathematician and astronomer, had famously replied when questioned as to what God’s place was in the universe that he had no need of such a hypothesis. And in the early 20th century some scientists were of the opinion that all that remained for science to do was to calculate out to the next few places of decimals and everything would be sown up. Then relativity and quantum mechanics arrived to blow that idea right out of the water.

Today we still struggle with our theories and have the audacity, some might say, to theorise about the beginning of our known universe and even what went before. Whatever our theories heading into the future will be, one thing is for sure. Our past theories were wrong. Our present theories are wrong. And no doubt our future ones will be wrong too. Maybe we will hit on the right ones in time. Maybe we won’t.

So, to sum up, I guess science has answers, rightly or wrongly, which have now squeezed God out of existence. There are other explanations which may or may not be true. Maybe the universe just popped into existence or was always there. Maybe God was always there.

Whatever the truth of the matter, I think if there is a God and another existence in a spiritual world, I don’t think we will ever find proof of it in this life. Physical matter and spirit are two very different things. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is only physical matter and no such thing as spirit. Perhaps science is our only hope.

But I don’t believe it is quite so simple. I have a niggling feeling that there has to be something more than a universe which was always there, something more than a computer simulation, something more than our minds making us think there is something else there rather than have us face the bleakness of death. Do not go gentle into that good night. Then again, maybe I’m engaging in wishful thinking. I guess that is why I’m an agnostic and proud to be such.

Ardglass – A Reminiscence

When I was a kid in the 1950’s my parents took my brother and myself to Ardglass, a little fishing village in County Down, every year for our holidays. This lasted a month and was something we looked forward to throughout the year. School over, summer holidays begun and Ardglass. Excitement mounted as the great day dawned when we packed our bags and took the bus into Amiens Street station in Dublin to board the Belfast train. I grabbed the seat nearest the window while my brother grabbed the seat opposite. Our smiling mother happily sat in the aisle seat. Now we could settle back, watch the black smoke from the steam engine pulling our carriages drift through the air as we hurtled by fields and hedges on our way.

At Dundalk the customs men boarded and we had to open our suitcases for these agents of the Queen. After a brief rummage, the customs officer gave us a smile as he closed over the case, marked it with chalk and moved on. This was just a part of the journey, I didn’t question it and I didn’t care about it.

Our Uncle Billy usually collected us from the Belfast station. My mother insisted we called him Uncle Noel but we called him what he wanted us to call him and that was Uncle Billy. He was always a cheerful man and talked in his thick Northern accent all the way to Rosetta Park where he lived with his parents, Granddad and Grandma, his sister Auntie Eithne and our two cousins Michael and Gerald.

Here we would stay for a night before being whisked off to Ardglass the next day. We always travelled in one of those big black cabs typical of London and in later years I often wondered if my mother really paid for such a mode of transport as Ardglass was about 30 miles from Belfast. I only found out in later life that my grandfather was a director of O'Kanes Funerals and we got those trips for free travelling in one of their limousines. You learn something every day, I guess.

At last we entered familiar territory and pulled up outside the house my grandfather owned. I leapt out of the taxi and hurried along the crazy type paving from the old iron gate to the front door. Naturally I then had to wait for my mother to catch up with the key. Once inside the house I had to do a full inspection as if to remind myself of its layout and to make sure everything was as it should be. Off the little narrow hallway the first door on the right led into the main living room which stretched the length of the house right to its magnificent bay window at the back which overlooked the bay, the harbour, the lighthouse and the large grassy knoll on the far side of the waters called Ardtole.

Then across the hall to the door on the left which led into the dining area and kitchen. Upstairs there was a small landing with bedrooms on either side. Two large front bedrooms and a smaller one at the back opposite the bathroom. This smaller room was the scene of my ghostly experiences as related in my article of November 2010 “Ghosts”.

Halfway up the stairs was a little window where on a sunny morning I would come down in my pyjamas and bare feet, to sit and feel the heat of the sun pouring through the window as it danced its way across the sparkling waters of the bay. At the bottom of the stairway was an imposing door with a large key. Turning the key and entering forbidden territory with creepy steps leading down into a cellar, against one wall of which lay a massive wooden beam. This was the beginning of an adventure when I was a little older where my Ardglass friend George, my cousin Peter and myself hauled this piece of wood out of the cellar into our backyard and down to the back wall over which the sea lapped at high tide. We turfed the wood into the water in hopes of making some kind of boat which proved impossible as the damn thing kept turning over. So we let it go and forgot about it. Until some days later while walking along the harbour we noticed a group of men staring down at something in the water. It was our massive log which some other men were dragging out of the sea. We said nothing but surreptitiously walked on.

I must mention the little backyard over which the great bay window stood. It was sort of crazy paved like the front and led down to a little wall. Over this wall were the rocks which I often ran over, swift as a mountain goat as my mother used to say. At high tide the water covered these rocks. And even better, on a wild windy day, waves would crash into our yard spreading their foam every which way to our great amusement watching from our vantage point safe inside the bay window.

But first things first. After the house inspection and my mother’s attempt to get me to eat something, I quickly donned my swimming gear and ran out the front gate, past the house next to us and straight down to the beach. Into the water where I happily jumped up and down, splashing furiously and trying to dog paddle. I hadn’t any idea of how to swim properly, but I didn’t care. This was the life.

Then it was time for my first visit to the local shops to spend some of my holiday money. Wallace’s, the newsagent, was my first port of call. Here I could purchase some comics from Mrs Wallace, the kindly old lady behind the counter. Then a door or two down I could buy a cool ice cream from Charlie Mulhall, who appeared to sell everything from fishing tackle to bubble gum. Mulhall’s also had a little place where teenagers could congregate and listen to the latest pop tunes on the jukebox. Here, one year, was where I convinced my cousin to spend half of his holiday money on Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, a record I loved. My aunt gave out hell to me for getting Tim to spend his money, but as far as I was concerned, he had spent it. I might have urged him on, but I didn’t make him do it. Honest!

Moving around the end of the town by Jordan’s Castle, brought you up to the High Street. Here was a nice little shop, called Rooney’s. Mrs Rooney had farthing, halfpenny, penny, threepenny and sixpenny boxes. Every sweet in these delightful containers cost exactly what its name suggested. I remember once finding a farthing on the beach and running up to Rooney’s and asking for the farthing box. I choose a single item and proceeded to pay for it with my new found farthing. But Mrs Rooney wasn’t having any of it. I had to choose at least two items from this box and pay a halfpenny for them or get nothing. I therefore came away with naught. I hadn’t heard of such a thing as legal tender and the apparent fact that farthings were no longer members of this financial milieu. My father explained it to me, muttering something to my mother about the mean old biddy. I flung the farthing over our back wall into the sea.

The first day almost over, it was time to retire to one of the chairs set in the bay window and read some comics before bed.

The month went slowly by, day after glorious day, no school, swimming and playing on the beach, making new friends and doing what young boys do on holiday. I tried fishing from the harbour once, but found I wasn’t very good at it and a fishing career came to a grinding halt. My mother was better as she caught two herring. Sometimes my father would give me some money and an empty bucket and haul me out of bed at the crack of dawn (something you don’t mind when on holidays) to go down to the harbour as the fishing fleet returned from a busy night and ask the fishermen for some of the catch. They’d fill the pail with mackerel and herring and I’d hand over the money. Probably enough for a few pints. Somehow I don’t think you’d find that happening today. Once one of them called me over and showed me what looked like a baby octopus.

“Watch,” he said as he dropped it into the water.

I watched, fascinated, as it vanished with incredible speed darting into the murky depths.

Every Sunday we went to mass in the little church on the High Street. One memorable Sunday in July 1961 the parish priest Father McKee said the mass. Earlier that week, the American astronauts had returned from a space mission and landed in the Atlantic Ocean. However, the capsule hatch blew off prematurely, but luckily nobody was injured or drowned as could have been the case. Anyway, Father McKee during his sermon mentioned the incident using words to the effect that the top popped off his egg. This, for some reason, sent me into uncontrollable fits of laughter which I couldn’t control, despite the stern finger of my father digging me in the ribs. Coming out of mass I overheard one old guy saying to another, “Sure, did ye hear the young lad from Dublin laughing?” That was the funniest mass I have ever been at.

One incident I’ll never forget happened one summer evening when we went to the pictures. Milligan’s, a family who according to my mother owned half of Ardglass (unlikely I suspect) and also ran a shop on the High Street, sometimes used a hall they had to show films. My friends were all going and it was a cowboy film which was always something to look forward to. In those days, the main film was never shown on its own, there was also a B movie beforehand. So, settling down in my seat with a bag of sweets in my hand, the lights went down and the B movie began. “The Mummy” with Boris Karloff. I had never seen a horror film before and sat with fear mounting slowly at first as one of the characters found himself walking through this creepy cave, dark and very eerie. With the music getting louder and scarier, he came across a tomb containing a mummy. This horror suddenly moved and began crawling out of its sarcophagus. Bag of sweets went flying, I leapt up bursting into tears with the terror and literally ran out of the cinema. I tore down the High Street, down by the steps which led to the lower street, looking neither left nor right till I arrived home and was able, between gasps of breath, to relate the sheer abomination I had just witnessed. It took me years before I could watch another horror film.

Another day, my friend George, my cousin Peter and myself headed up to the Ardglass golf club. We had decided to do a bit of caddying to try and bolster up our summer finances. Unsure of how to go about it, we hung around outside the clubhouse for a while. It wasn’t long before a number of cars pulled up and out stepped four men who looked like golfers. This was confirmed as they opened the car boot and took out two sets of golf bags. This was our cue and up we ran and asked them if they needed any caddies.

“I suppose we do,” smiled one of the men, “how much do you charge?”

“Whatever you can afford,” I replied.

The golfers laughed, “Well, there are only two of us playing and therefore we’ll only need two of you.”

“But maybe one of us could just hold the flag pole,” I suggested hopefully, “We won’t charge for that.”

They laughed again, “Well, okay then.”

So George and myself grabbed a golf bag each, while Peter became the honorary flag pole man. It was an easy job, the sun was shining and the wind was minimal. The golfers would call out the number of the golf stick they wanted and we would hand it to them. And when we reached the point on the green where the flag pole would need removing while they took their shot, Peter duly performed his duty.

One strange incident occurred. Around the ninth or tenth hole, the two guys quickly ushered us into a small copse of trees while the other two mystery men accompanying them started running around in an odd fashion.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We just need to take a rest here for a few minutes,” I was told, “So let’s do that, and be very quiet.”

“Is this part of the game?”

“Yes,” came the whispered reply.

A few minutes later everything resumed as if nothing had happened.

When I got home that evening I proudly told my mother that George and I had earned a half crown each caddying and they even gave Peter one and six even though he didn’t do very much. My mother smiled and asked me who it was I caddied for. I told her I didn’t know, just some nice men. One of those men, she told me, was Mr Brian Faulkner, a very important man in the government. I shrugged my shoulders as the name meant nothing to a twelve year old boy. Of course, today I wonder about that. How did my mother know? And was that the reason for the strange goings on among the trees? Had there been a security incident? Unfortunately, I’ll never know.

So Ardglass afforded me great holidays mixed with a little espionage! And suddenly I was sixteen years of age and no longer wanted to be seen dead with my parents in a little sleepy village in Northern Ireland. So that was the end of my idyllic holidays in Ardglass. Looking back, teenagers appreciate nothing but girls and music, but that I suppose is how it should be.

Last year I went back to Ardglass for a long weekend. It was strange to think, as I walked its familiar streets and stood outside the old house, long sold, that it was nearly fifty years ago that I spent my last holiday here.

So I walked the length and breadth of the place. Milligan’s hall, the scene of “The Mummy” is falling down now. Rooney’s shop, with its farthing boxes, is also gone. But Charlie Mulhall’s shop is still going strong, run by Charlie’s two sons. One of them, Willie, paints a lot and is very well known, especially for his portraits of music stars. You should check out his website. We had a long conversation with him, and I purchased a painting of Ardglass which is now proudly displayed in my house.

The rest of the place looks remarkably as it did, except with a few new shops and other bits and pieces. The biggest change for me was at the back of the old house. The bay window is gone and there is a new marina, so running over the rocks is no longer an option.

But the harbour and bay look much the same with Ardtole still nestling across the water. Jordan’s castle keeps its ancient watch and the golf links attracts its patrons as it did in my day. The graveyard at the back of the church has filled up some more, including some of my relations, sad to tell. But for all the time lost between then and now, it still retains its strong attraction for me. I feel strangely at home in this little village. But maybe as a man gets old, he starts to think on his youth, and no more happier times were spent but right here, in Ardglass, County Down.