Science has shown that we are not even a puff of air, our physical selves are mostly space and particles made of nothing but energy. Our physical existence is a tenuous structure with little foundation. It would seem that our body has little more basis than our soul.
We easily accept the body and other natural and human structure because we sense them. Due to need we have developed senses to interact with the other bits of matter around us. Our soul is not sensed by our external sensing structures, but is it sensed by our physical body?
When you feel the touch of your baby child’s breathe on your cheek your external sense structure is in play but something else happens as well, you get this feeling, this rush, an internal wellbeing. During the course of time lots of people and things touch you, lots of air brushes your cheek why do you not change internally every time a warm breeze blows? What mechanism is in play when you change in the presence of certain people or in certain place or in certain actions? Is it a system set up to sense the connection of souls, love?
Science can again explain the phenomenon of internal emotions through chemical release in the brain and elsewhere in the body, the expert can further expand to tell us why these feelings are needed so that procreation will take place and we will care for our young and self-protection. We can then build a total picture of human existence explained by science as a system and this system is inside the system we know as the universe.
So shall we accept the scientific view? Let’s say we do, what does that mean? If love is but a chemical reaction does that invalidate it? If the soul is just changes in the brain is it unreal? Our bodies are little more than nothing, neither is a rock, we sense a rock, or our arm, or our nose, but we also sense love in the touch of our child, or when we do something really nice for others, or someone does something for us. If our body is just next to nothing and our soul is next to nothing, what is the difference?
So here we are in the universe and we are on this little planet earth with nothing but air to protect us from the vacuum of space and certain death. We revolve around the sun that provides energy to all processes that we count on to exist. Our sun and our galaxy and our universe are all made of the same matter we are and that structure is nothing but fluff. It is big fluff and when we regard it with our external senses it is amazing fluff, but it is nevertheless no more real than we are.
If you think about this lack of substance of our bodies and our world then it can seem darn meaningless. So the other things we sense such as love, wonder, hate, surprise, lust, become really necessary to complete the picture so we don’t despair in our lack of physical substance. Our sense of self is then centred in the need of the things that are not experienced by the external senses.
So here is Christmas, the acknowledgement of a child who was born into a world of sparse existence to parents with little wealth among a conquered and heavily taxed people. In ancient text this child is claimed to be the son of God. Now the external senses tell us that a virgin birth is not possible, and God as a concept does not fit into our external sensation of existence. We have also established with science that we and our world are made of very little, and it is quite incredible that any of it exists at all, so let’s just place that context on the ancient story without other judgement. This child grew to a man and the man went around telling everyone that we had a responsibility to love and care for others and that material things are of little real value. He gathered some people and fleshed out the thoughts and they went forward in their lives and worked to realize his vision and wrote it all down and formed a structure to teach the ideas.
So now here we are a long time later and we have science and science says that our physical world is energy and space and little more and this is interesting, but it does not provide answers to why we are here. Then we have the touch of our baby, or our husband, our Wife, our Mom, our Dad or the good feeling of providing help or a gift to someone and how that make us feel, and that then provides some context to our existence.
So science and Jesus both say matter and the material world are fleeting and little more than fluff. Science describes the need for the chemical reactions to make us procreate and care for our offspring, or create art to feel good when times are bleak. Jesus says you must love and care for others as you would want to be cared for, and if you don’t then your life is without value.
So Christmas roles around and we gather to honour the baby and the ideas spawned from the stories. We share food and spend time together talking, hugging, and giving and the chemicals are released in our brain and we move forward in good cheer.
The immortality of the baby is not in question. Even if one might argue he might not be a deity then his life and ideas are immortal and important in each of us who celebrate this day regardless.
