It seems as if we humans have learned little over the course of our existence. In fact, I can’t think of much on which we agree. Today, truth itself is under attack, or at least the idea that such a thing even exists, and I am stunned to see how willing we are to embrace this perspective.
Kevin’s Spacey’s character, Keyser Søze in the movie Usual Suspects, says that “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist”. In the interests of accuracy, I’ll note here that the source appears to have been Baudelaire but similar expressions pre-date him by at least thirty years. Regardless of who first said it, the sentiment is especially relevant at a time when both faith and science are widely in dispute and our sense of what is right and wrong is questioned by facile individuals guided solely by self-interest.
Let’s examine this idea for a moment. It follows that if there is no case for the Devil the case for his opposite, let’s call him God, is equally in trouble. We have no difficulty at all in rejecting God, whether by denying his existence as mere wishful thinking, or dismissing him as a witless watchmaker who set life in motion and promptly left us to our own devices. I am no match for the great Christian Apologetics, nor those who take up the case for atheism. Instead I find myself pondering the math. You heard me right, the mathematics of life.
You may find it curious that I turn to a scientific, well perhaps a logical argument, as the case for God but I am not alone in harboring this view. Even Einstein who is often held up as the quintessential agnostic had difficulty rejecting God’s existence, although he did not accept the idea of a personal deity. He wrote, “The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”
Many of our greatest mathematicians were profoundly moved by a similar revelation. They saw what I do in the relationships of numbers; patterns which cannot be explained by logic alone. In fractals and Fibonacci there is a math so elegant and beyond reason as to raise questions for which we have no reasonable answer. Nature is efficient and we believe merciless in rejecting attributes which serve no useful purpose. Why then preserve these artifacts of mathematical precision if they do not serve to advance the interests of preserving life?
I suggest to you that these clues reveal a dimension --a self-evident truth if you will. To deny is easy, the burden of proof always rests with those who must make the case. The Devil needs no advocates, humanity is all too ready to accept the arguments against his existence along with God’s. We package them up as caricatures so that we can dismiss them both. But undeniably we do possess an innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil even if we chose not to personify it.
So, to those who make the case against the existence of God or the Devil I say, abandon those childish and naïve images you harbor. Look for God in the world around you, in the very structure of life, in the math. Make your case on what is real and apparent for all to see and let your faith flow from reason. The power which made this world is beyond our comprehension, perhaps beyond human understanding but not hidden from our view.