Epicurean materialism and Advent 

A grade school boy, walking home from school picked up
a stone and was struck with the question, to which
side of the road should he throw it; to the right or
the left?  Where did God want that stone to be?  If
thrown to the left, would some one trip over it in a
future time and be injured?  If thrown to the right
would it benefit someone who could make use of it
someday?  Would the very act of throwing it somehow
affect the earth's rotation as it travels through
space, slightly displacing magnetic fields and time,
thus having truly universal affects possibly causing
stars to collide?

Each day, for several days, these thoughts came as the
boy walked home and threw rocks.
Did God somehow determine where each stone would be
thrown at just the right spot at just the right time
to keep everything in balance?  What if the thrower of
the stone threw it where it wasn't supposed to go?

The lad had yet to read Greek philosophy and ideas of
First Cause and the Immovable Mover; he did not know
of Darwin, Thales, Aristotle, Karl Marx, Groucho,
Calvin, Einstein, or Al Gore; he had no theory of
everything, no concept of predestination, determinism,
randomness, or ice fishing.  

By the time our boy had entered high school, and
encountered a science textbook and read about the
evolution of the stars, origins of the solar system,
and the expanding universe, he came up with a theory
about the nature of things.  Events are both random
and determined, hence it doesn't matter which way you
throw the stone, it will be in the right place for
every future event.  That idea helps relieve the
feeling of personal moral responsibility. 

That contradictory statement,  "events are both random
and determined" can be resolved in this manner.  The
"Big Bang" theory states that all known worlds came
from compressed matter that would fit inside a
teaspoon. Since the Bang is constantly expanding
creating new space and new universes, if the theory is
correct, then it is obvious that all that exists since
the Primal Bang was enclosed in whatever it was that
exploded and is now unfolding as a flower unfolds. 
Hence, from that viewpoint, all was determined prior
to the Bang.  From that viewpoint, our lad could not
possibly throw a stone to the wrong side of the road.

But, our science scholar was taught that light does
not always travel at a set speed, that time is not
absolute, and that there is indeed randomness in the
universe.  It does not function like a clock.  There
are always uncertainties, which, he later learned to
call "moments of existential angst" after reading from
Sartre and other twentieth century writers. 
Everything is relative.

As our now high school lad ran home from school, still
occasionally pitching a rock across the road, the
thought occurred, if the universe is expanding, it is
on the way to becoming infinite.  Given infinite time,
defined by motion in space that is becoming infinite,
then everything happens.  Every possible trajectory of
the rock happens at the hand of every possible
schoolboy.  

He summarized what he called a theory, into this
sentence.  "Everything happens in an infinite series."
 Of course it is not a scientific theory.  It cannot
be tested, and there is no way of establishing
predictable results.  Hence it is not science. Our
boy's theory was really an idea not unlike much that
passes for philosophy and theology whether done by an
American school boy, a Greek philosopher, a medieval
scholastic, a German theologian, or Dr. Spock.

The idea resolved the question about rolling stones. 
They are all in the right place, if the saying
"Everything happens in an infinite series" is true. 
The principle of randomness and of infinite time and
space to accomplish the outcomes of every random event
makes possible the existence of parallel universes.
Every life turns out all right and all wrong
simultaneously.  Every boy can grow up to be
President, and inevitably will, while he will also
become a homeless, alcoholic vagrant and every step in
between.  

 Our lad did not know of the writings of Isaac Asimov
or the mathematician whose name I can't recall who
promotes "string theory."  But his idea that
everything happens in an infinite series means that
Murphy's Law  (Everything that can go wrong will go
wrong) and St. Paul's statement "All things work
together for Good" are both inevitably true.

In high school, the lad came across Isaac Asimov in
"Amazing Stories" magazine, and began reading some of
his science fiction.  Asimov introduced him to the
concept of parallel universes and travel between them.
  One could wonder, if Asimov's idea were true, what
Atlantis became when, in another universe, it did not
sink into the sea.  What would Nagasaki and Hiroshima
become in the year 3,000 AD had the Bomb not vaporized
them? 

Then Asimov wrote a story about a time traveler who
visited world after world in universe after universe
in search of Jesus Christ.  In every universe, he
arrives just after the Crucifixion.  Our lad did not
think much of that at the time, it was just another
story and did not affect his theory of everything.

If you have read this far, you know from the wackiness
of the story that it is autobiographical.

At age 17, I left my rural home and moved to
Cincinnati. Alone I sought work to support myself
while in college and began in earnest trying to find
out what it is all about in the mid 1950's.  With
access to good libraries, the search began.

Work and contact with the real world revealed the
shallowness of  schoolboy speculations.  The ideas
were entertaining, but had nothing to do with the
world in which we live.  In time after reading shelves
of philosophy, science, and theology, I found that
much of the stuff of philosophy was little more than
idle speculation unrelated to life.

A mid twentieth century philosopher said that the
human race had evolved to the point it was now
responsible for its own evolution.   This of course
was not a new idea, and was not dependent on advances
of science.

When I AM spoke to Moses and told him to lead the
Israelites out of Egypt, that specific man, and indeed
all men, were already responsible for their behavior
and outcomes.  Pauline Christology postulates that the
new man recreated in Christ participates in the
redemption of the kosmos.

If an unknown (and unknowable god) is a blind First
Cause, an Immovable Mover, a Big Bang that sets
randomness in motion, then there is no moral
accountability, and no purpose, and ultimately, no
meaning to the parallel universes and random outcomes.

If I AM is the ground of being, of existence now, then
we have come up against something  for which our
theory of randomness and parallel universes cannot
account.

The God, who calls to us in our tradition, interrupts
the flow of events and calls us to participate with
Him in the creation of a new earth.  I never reflected
on it until today, and I have long since lost the
book, but Asimov (if it was he) may have been on to
something when he wrote of the time traveler who
always arrived just after the Crucifixion.  This is
the central event in human history, the Universal Stop
Sign, that calls every one of  us to account by
forcing a redirection in our lives.  

We either agree to follow the Way of the Cross to live
under the Reign of God or we turn our back on it and
on the horrors existing in this world.  Now, having
been to the Cross, we are accountable.   When we
reflect on the horrors of the bloody twentieth
century, we are no longer children saying this is
random evil. We can no longer make ourselves numb to
the outcomes, or say all will come out right in a
parallel universe. There is no escaping the Stop Sign
of the Cross.

With each challenge thrown at us by the world around,
we are accountable for our response.  The dominant
philosophy of the past 100 years in this country has
been Epicureanism.  The lack of feeling moral
responsibility to address the seemingly random evil
events that come our way is the apparent norm, which
we are called to oppose.

 November 11, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Nagasaki,
Hiroshima, Guernica, the carpet-bombing of Amsterdam,
and the recent bombing of the Wedding Party in
Afghanistan (collateral damage) did not have to
happen.  Muggings and rapes, poverty and oppression in
this country do not have to happen.  Evil is real; and
so are we responsible under the Reign of God as to how
we respond.  There are "brands for the burning" within
our immediate neighborhood, which we are responsible
for pulling from the flames.  I am not a
fundamentalist by any stretch of my imagination, but I
do believe we have been given a mission and a message
of salvation to which we must respond.  

Christians are only a sprinkle of salt on the earth;
only a little leaven in the loaf; only a few plants in
the mixed field; only a little light in a darkening
universe.  The old Gospel songs may not match the
great hymns of the church for elegance of expression,
but they are on target in regard to urgency and pathos
when they sing “Trim your feeble lamps dear brother,
some poor sailor tempest tossed, trying now to reach
the harbor, in the darkness, may be lost.”

Advent reminds us of our responsibility to prepare the
way for the Reign of God and the coming of the Light
into the world.

This bit of meandering was set off by a book review
that you can find at 
http://ChristianityToday.com/ct/2002/145/11.0.html

You can wake up now.  The sermon is over.

Charles