NOTHING
There is a rusty old saw which says that the difference between a scientist and a philosopher is that the scientist keeps learning more and more about less and less until he knows all there is to know about absolutely nothing; however the philosopher keeps learning less and less about more and more until he finally knows nothing at all about absolutely everything. Appropriately enough, the topic for this sermon was chosen by Mark Wheeler, who I believe is our only Summitarian with a PhD in philosophy. So, Mark and the rest of you, here goes—nothing!
In his dialogue Sophist, the Greek philosopher Plato discussed nothing, which he called “not-being,” for a couple of pages during which he proves—undoubtedly with tongue in cheek—that it isn’t even possible to discuss not-being . The mouthpiece of the dialogue, called only “the Stranger,” says, “Do you see, then, that not-being in itself can neither be spoken, uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable, unutterable, unspeakable, indescribable?”
Well, since Plato managed, nearly two and a half millenia ago, to go ahead and think about the unthinkable, speak of the unspeakable, and at least partially to describe the indescribable, let’s look briefly at what has been learned, or at least suspected, about nothing in the time since.
Up well into medieval times in Europe, mathematics was quite limited. There was Euclidian geometry, and there was arithmetic, with the functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. And there was a set of numerical characters to read and write the numbers. Most of you will remember the Roman numerals, with its I’s, V’s, X’s and a bunch of other letters which are not easily called to memory. These are still in use for cornerstones and other items which no one is in a rush to decipher anyhow. They certainly were not used to do mathematics. Imagine trying to multiply XII times XII to get CXLIV! No, arithmeticians used a handy little gadget called an abacus, an ancestor to the computer, to perform the math and then merely used the Roman numerals to record the answer.
Meanwhile the Arabs were developing a new decimal system of numbering, an early form of which is shown on the little sheet inserted into your Order of Service. The red marks are not parts of the numerals: they are just added to emphasize the angles. You will note that each digit contains the number of angles corresponding to its value: one, two, three, etc. Then they added the all-important symbol on the back of the sheet, which is round and has no angles at all: ZERO—another word for NOTHING. The Arabic system allowed one to write down digits in columns like those on the abacus. Furthermore, it enabled mathematicians to create algebra and all the other advanced techniques. Also the multiplication tables and other forms of memory torture inflicted on school children.
The zero is very useful as a part of a larger number, such one hundred or a thousand and eighty and makes computations easier. However, used alone as if it were an ordinary number, one gets into complications. Addition and subtraction are easy enough:
Ten plus zero is ten, five minus zero is five. Multiplication is harder: anything times zero is zero. Dividing by zero gets you so many astonishing and illogical results that it has had to be completely prohibited.
The creation of the zero also made possible the development of numbers infinitely large, such as the number of light-years to the most distant galaxies, or infinitesimally small, like the nano-second. They have even given a name, googol, to the number one followed by 100 zeroes. If you think that many zeroes would be hard to count, let alone keep track of, you are certainly right. Thankfully, mathematicians have also invented the exponent—the slightly elevated little number to the right of the number ten to indicate the number of zeroes you don’t want to bother to write down. Googol can be written as “ten to the hundredth power.” [10100]
So much for math. Let’s take a look at the role of nothing in politics. Probably most of you know that our nation has had four Unitarian presidents: John and John Quincy Adams, both well remembered; William Howard Taft, a less-known statesman who later served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and Millard Fillmore, whose name generally evokes a “Who he?” response.
Well, Fillmore was elected vice-president on the Whig ticket and became president when President Taylor died after 16 months in office. He was opposed to slavery, which annoyed the South, but signed the Fugitive Slave Act, which lost him the support of the abolitionist North. The Whigs, who were waning anyhow, never re-nominated him. However, he ran again in 1856, heading the ticket of the Know-Nothing [That word Know is spelled k-n-o-w.] Party, who got its nickname because its platform was secret, and a member, when asked about it, responded, “I know Nothing.” Actually, the party was ambivalent about slavery, but opposed to immigration of Shanty Irish and German peasants who couldn’t even speak English! Sound Familiar?
I wish I could make some kind of connection between the Know-Nothings and the Unitarian-Universalist merger which took as part of its logo the two interlocking circles which might be taken as two zeroes, or double-nothing. However, I can’t.
So much for politics. Let’s take a look at religious matters. Many—perhaps most— human beings believe in a god of some kind. However, ask anyone what he knows about god, and she/he will have to admit positively knowing nothing. Nothing, that is, which can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt. Or otherwise proved physically. A fundamentalist Christian will say that he knows certain truths because they are contained in an infallible book called the Holy Bible. How does he know that it is infallible? Well, it seems that a Roman Catholic pope, around a thousand years ago, declared its infallibility. It is hard to believe that anyone who has read all of it and seen its many self-contradictions can believe that is 100% literally true, let alone infallible, and that may be why, at least up to the past century, Catholic lay persons were discouraged from reading the Book, especially the Old Testament, for which was substituted the Lives of the Saints.
So far as absolute scientific “proof” of the existence of God is concerned, we have nothing. And if you ask persons who believe in a God to give you a description, you will get an amazing panoply of answers. On the other hand, of course, if you ask an atheist for proof that there isn’t a god, you will still end up with nothing.
The Buddha, when a disciple asked him a question about Brahma, the chief god of Hinduism, inquired, “Have you ever seen Brahma? Or heard him?”
“No.”
“Then let us not discuss things about which we can know nothing.”
Nonetheless, unlike Buddhism, most religions still demand belief in a God or gods, even though there is nothing in the way of sensory evidence.
Why?
Probably because there have been so many happenings in history that defy all the laws of nature that the science of that particular era could explain, so had to be attributed to some unseen cause. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, unexpected weather changes, epidemics of diseases, crop failures, all must have resulted from the actions of gods dissatisfied with human worship and conduct. Priests, prophets, medicine men, shamans, of various religions made their livings by predictions and cures.
Meanwhile scientists were moving in on the same problems. Earthquakes are now understood to come from shifts in tectonic plates created billions of years ago. Volcanic eruptions resulted from flaws in the earth’s crust which allowed hot magna to reach the surface. Granted that scientists still know nothing about how to prevent or even to accurately predict when these disasters will happen, they have raised definite questions about the ability of prayer to prevent them.
Science is still working on causes and possible cures of other natural disasters such as hurricanes, blizzards, and other unexpected weather conditions. Also disease epidemics—world-wide influenza in 1918, or AIDS currently in Africa for example—and crop failures due to weather or disease. Meanwhile many devout followers of various religions still hold that these are manifestations of divine displeasure.
Meanwhile, cosmologists and astronomers have been searching the heavens for answers. They have found no evidence of the seven layers of heaven postulated by scripture [I believe that the paradise where virtuous souls are supposed to go is in Third Heaven], but instead have found or claim to have found the even more incredible numerous galaxies, each with billions of stars and perhaps trillions of earth-like planets. And everything has started from the Big Bang, the explosion of an enormously concentrated bit of matter the size of a baseball—or maybe a soft-ball. A soccer ball? A basketball? Maybe a medicine ball?
Nothing is going to make me believe, or even understand, that. Tell me all about the structure of the atom, with its protons, neutrons, electrons, not to mention mesons, quarks etc. Explain to me that each of these particles is surrounded by a cushion of space so empty that it takes up infinitely more room than the particles themselves. And that there is more space between the atoms in a molecule—explain all you want, I still am able to believe nothing about the Big Bang.
Well! If I can’t believe that, can I believe what the Bible says about creation of the Earth in six days? Well, hardly. On the first day, we are told, God created light and dark, so one day could be separated from the next, but He didn’t get around to creating any source of light: sun, moon, stars, until two days later!
Anyhow, if I had to choose between the two teachings, I would lean toward the scientific approach. Scientists are quite willing to admit that they may possibly be wrong, and that further study may find other theories that fit other facts as yet undiscovered. Creationists, on the other hand, feel that there is no reason to look further, for a couple of thousand years ago all the true facts were set out in the Holy Bible, in the books of Genesis, Revelations, and a few in between, and nothing has been added since.
What do we know about life after death? Nothing, really. No one has seen enough of it and then returned to life to describe it in detail. First, I suppose we must define death. Medically speaking, death occurs when the brain stops functioning, a short time after the heart stops pumping blood through it and the lungs have stopped putting oxygen into the blood. Quick medical procedures sometimes make recovery possible even after the brain shutdown, and by definition the patient has died.
Some of these patients have been able to remember what they experienced just before they were resuscitated. In most cases, it has consisted of traveling down a long tunnel with a light visible at the far end—which they never reach. However, Laura Preble’s father, who experienced temporary death on an operating table as a young man, recalled arriving at heaven and there meeting Jesus in person and promising Him to devote his life to helping others if he were allowed to live. [He kept that promise.]
Are these experiences truly ones which occurred after death, or are they merely part of a dream in the coma that immediately preceded death? A good question, but one with no definitive answer.
But do we need a definitive proof in order to believe? If so, there are still a lot of things we believe with very little clear evidence. I was born on March 2, 1914, according to my mother, who was present at the time; however I don’t have any memory of the occasion myself and have had to take her word for it.
Still less is known about what happens to that mysterious entity called the soul, or spirit, or ego, when someone’s body dies. According to Wendell Rawlins, our resident atheist, everything dies at once, and he expects to experience nothing after death. He will be greatly surprised if he gets to the end of that tunnel and is handed a halo—or a set of horns.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of people world-wide who are looking forward to a time and a place in heaven or some equivalent paradise, and they would take strong exception to my statement that nothing about it can be proved. They say all the proof that is needed is laid out in the infallible Holy Bible. Furthermore, they are looking forward to meeting old friends and beloved relatives in that hereafter.
Since I am a semi-professional wonderer, I wonder about what those souls will be like. My mother, for instance, died nearly three decades ago. At the time, she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for some years. If we meet in the hereafter, will she have been cured, her memory restored?
Meanwhile, I have undergone a lot of changes and experiences myself since her death. Will she recognize the aged me? Even more importantly, what changes and experiences will she have undergone herself? Or will she have been frozen in time—and expect the same thing to have happened to me?
I was visiting her in the nursing home a few years before her death when she asked me, “Have you heard from Chet lately?” Now Chet, her brother Chester, had died in 1924, when I was still a little boy, and I had to admit that I had not. However, it does bring up the same interesting question. Would she and Chet and Chet’s widow, Grace, be having a get-together in paradise? And what would they talk about—if souls talk?
No, I understand absolutely nothing about the hereafter: certainly not enough to affirm or deny its existence. However, I feel obligated to respect the opinions of those who believe in it and get comfort from their belief.
And even if they are wrong, and there really is no hereafter for the soul, they will not suffer disappointment, for everything—life, mind, consciousness, soul—will disappear at once, and there will be nothing left to be disappointed!
Then we have the nihilists—the name comes from the Latin word for nothing—who feel that all our traditional beliefs are founded on nothing, that existence is completely senseless. They feel, unlike the true believers, that there are no objective grounds of truth, particularly of moral truth.
The Russian nihilists of the 19th Century were convinced that all current opinions, and the social and political structures they backed, were so flawed that they should be destroyed, without even waiting until something was available to replace them. In short, having nothing in the way of a social structure would have been better than what we had.
Cartoonists of the time pictured them as carrying bombs in their hip pockets, and they actually committed assassinations and other violent acts of terrorism. However, there were never enough nihilists to change the moral or political scene materially, and certainly nowhere nearly as many as there are Christian, Moslem, or Jewish true believers.
I suppose we should glad of that: I would feel uncomfortable if there was nothing in the way of social and religious structure. However, I do wish the true believers would quit trying to convert me, so that I could join them in Heaven. Instead I will try to be satisfied with nothing in the way of an afterlife.
And if I’m wrong, and there is an afterlife, I hope all you fellow Summitarians will join me there when your time comes. Nothing would please me more.
Bob Moore
4/22/07
