This miraculous life!

The anti-vaccination, climate-change-denying, anti-evolution nutcases in the Republican Party teamed up with white supremacists and misogynists and collectively delivered tRump as the President.  And now, we--yes, including all of them who cheered "alternative facts"--are compelled to deal with the reality of the science behind a global pandemic.

If only the candidate who spoke about science, facts, and policies had won in November 2016!

Instead, we have a President who forces upon us a reality horror show in which he is the ultimate villain.  “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear," he declared just over three weeks ago, on February 27th.

There is a world of a difference between the sociopath who masquerades as the President when he talks about "a miracle" versus the truly and sincerely faithful when they refer to divine interventions.

Like my father, who truly believes in miracles, and who often quotes Tennyson's "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."  

I remember all too well how as a faithful young boy everyday I waited for miracles to happen.  The older I got, and the more I understood science, I figured that there are plenty of things wrong in interpreting the happenings via miracles. 

As the polymath physicist Alan Lightman writes in this essay,

Miracles, by definition, lie outside science. Miracles are incompatible with a rational picture of the physical world. Nevertheless, even in our highly scientific and technological society, with most of us profiting enormously from cell phones and automobiles and other products of science—indeed depending on the consistent workings of science—a large fraction of the public believes in miracles. Most of us do not ponder that contradiction. One of my aunts was certain that her dead father visited her house and spoke to her every few months, and she got a tape recorder—a device of science—to document his voice. (Thereupon, the ghostly visits ceased.)
Miracles come from the world of imagination, of dreams, of desire; science from the world of practicality, of logic, of orderly control. I’ve always been fascinated by our ability to live simultaneously in these two apparently opposing worlds. Each in its own way, they reflect something deep and essential inside of us.

That excerpt gives away why I was drawn to that essay.  Through a number of posts in this blog, I have been trying to understand the simultaneous existence of people, like my father, in "two apparently opposing worlds."  For a number of years now, I have asked quite a few science-educated people, including one who has a doctorate in astronomy--about their "faith" and how they reconcile the two. 

I have also come to understand via this maniacal inquiry that people believe in their gods because it gives them that concise narrative of why we are here.  Without that clear narrative, we will be forced to think about questions like: who am I? What does life mean? What happens to this "life" after death?  Why is there death?  How did all these come about?  Those are all troubling questions.  Religious narratives, whether it is Buddhism or Catholicism or Scientology, provide answers to those questions. 

And that is exactly what Alan Lightman also says:

Belief in a spiritual universe, I would suggest, arises to a large extent from a human desire for meaning, meaning both in our individual lives and in the cosmos as a whole. While science provides the psychological comfort of order, rationality, and control, it does not provide meaning. Such deep philosophical questions as “Why am I here?” “What is the purpose of my life?” “What is the meaning of this strange cosmos I find myself in?”, and such moral questions as “Is it right to kill an enemy soldier in time of war?” “Is it right to steal in order to feed my family?”, cannot be answered by science. Yet these questions are vital to our mental and emotional lives. We turn for answers to the spiritual universe, the realm that contains eternal truths and guidance, the realm that has some kind of permanent existence, in contrast to the fleeting moment of our mortal lives. In such a realm, logic, rationality, and regularity are not even part of the vocabulary.

I believe that father has also understood my profound appreciation for this universe that is awesome, beautiful, and mysterious. Which is why sometimes he even says things like "you refer to that as the cosmos."  To me, a wonderfully sunny day in fall is a miracle. So is the sparkling river, a rainbow, the blue waters of Sahalie Falls, the loving lick of a playful puppy, the unadulterated joyous laughter of a three-year old,  ... Which is why I so easily agree with Lightman's concluding comments:

My wife and I spend summers on a small island in Maine, far from any town. At night, the skies are quite dark. Sometimes, when there is no wind blowing and the tidal flow is small and the ocean is very still, I can see the reflection of the stars in the water near our dock. At such moments, the water looks like a dark carpet with a million tiny sparkles of light, which gently bob and ripple with each passing wave. Even though I know all the science, I am totally mesmerized and awed. For me, that is miracle enough.

Have yourself a miraculous week, especially during these extraordinarily challenging times!

Yes, this atheist believes in miracles

"It's a beautiful afternoon" the friend noted in the email that popped up as I was getting into grading papers.

All the writing that I assign means that I am on a grading treadmill throughout the term.  It becomes an huge pile if I look away for even a couple of days.  Whenever I remark about this to students, they, of course, have a simple Occam's Razor-style solution.  As you can guess, the solution is that I can stop assigning them the work.  Oh well, if only I knew how to do that!

The email had a recommendation as well: that I go for my favorite five-mile walk by the river.

I weighed the alternatives--I could continue grading, or I could enjoy the sun and the river and the geese and ... I was off.

I am a huge fan of Richard Feynman's acute observation that the Big Bang and Darwin's insights and every inquiry into how things came to be do not make life dull and boring.  Not by any means.  Instead, "the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more."  That wonder of it all was what my later afternoon experience turned out to be.

The late afternoon sun into downward journey across the horizon, with nothing but a blue sky and puffy white clouds.
The river sparkling diamonds as it reflects the sunlight.
The trees and the bushes and the grass gleaming in various shades of green.  
Mothers jogging with their tiny ones carefully tucked into the stroller's bed.
Young lovers lying next to each other, soaking up the rays while whispering sweet nothings.

Miracles.
Every one of them.
The miracles are there for me to enjoy.
For them to enjoy.
For all of us to enjoy.

What a miracle that we are here. That I am blogging this. And you are reading this.

And to think that all of these came from the cosmic dust!   It is simply amazing a life.

I returned home. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.

It was my neighbor. Delivering a slice of rich chocolate cake.

One miraculous afternoon.  Thanks to the miracle email.

Miracles
Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
   the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
   with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
   forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
   quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
   the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
   the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

It's a miracle! It's a miracle!

My father is not unusual among the faithful, whatever their religion might be, with a selective bias in tagging some fortunate developments as miracles while referring to the unfortunate ones--from deaths of children to natural disasters--as simply a variation of "god's will hath no why."

But, more than once in my younger years, father has commented about how even everyday happenings can be miracles.  Like when a friendly face swings by when we feel down. A neighbor knocking on the door only to share some sweets. A good Samaritan's act.

Father's logic was that if a god--imagine Kali, for instance--were to appear in front of people, well, most would run in fear and that, therefore, god sends these human messengers instead.

As an agnostic, and then as an atheist who came out of the religious closet, I never cared for the godly explanations.  But, I do agree with him that miracles happen every single day.

They happen all the time.

As she started her medical schooling, my daughter remarked more than once that given how delicate and complex the human anatomy and biochemistry are, it is a miracle that more of us are not dying all the time.

When I saw those bright stars up in the sky on a dark Tanzanian night, those sparkling lights above seemed like miracles.

A pretty young woman smiling at me is always a miracle.  Heck, any woman smiling at me is a miracle!

The Willamette River and the blackberries are miracles.

In my interpretations, that is what Walt Whitman wrote about:

Miracles
by Walt Whitman 

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of  the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night  with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer  forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.  

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with  the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves— the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?                                  source