The Big Picture Eludes Us

Recently I got into an argument with a militant atheist on Twitter, who insisted that any belief in a deity was obviously and irrefutably stupid and asinine.  He wouldn’t even admit to the possibility of a higher power underlying all creation.

Militant atheists, like him, seem to believe that man’s five senses and intellect are capable of observing, sensing and detecting all of reality that exists.  If we can’t see it, touch it, smell it, taste it or hear it, it doesn’t exist.  Those who believe otherwise are simply spinning fairy tales because, as Stephen Hawking put it, they “are afraid of the dark.”

However, I believe that man’s perception is incapable and inadequate to sense all that is behind the cosmos, or determine its cause, its existence or its purpose, if there is one.  Man is like a bacterium (one with a brain and good eyesight) living on the surface of a postage stamp.  He can detect some of the physical features of his environment — ink, for instance.  However, he cannot see the whole picture, or determine that the postage stamp has a picture of George Washington on it.  He is physically incapable of rising to such a height to view the big picture.  His view is limited to the tiny section that he inhabits.

Another analogy I like to use is that of the boll weevil.  Boll weevils are incapable of understanding higher math.  No boll weevil has ever worked a calculus problem.  They just don’t have the mental capacity.  In like manner, man does not have the intelligence or the sensory perception to fully understand the big picture:  why is there a universe, who or what created it, what’s its purpose, and how do human beings fit into the scheme of things?  Logic doesn’t work here, as it is a construct of human experience.  Logically, there should be no universe, no life, nothing at all, because logically we know that something cannot come from nothing.

Yet here we are.