A friend asked me, "Do you wonder why we are here?"
I experience a sensation of awareness of structure in the universe.
Part of the structure appears to be sentience at deeper levels of
reality than the every day. The experience includes a sense that
physical reality is part of a plan which we both helped design and which
preordains our actions and experiences. The experience informs my sense
that reality is a manifestion of a protrusion of energy from deeper
levels of reality. It may be correct to call this energy light, or love.
My sense is that when we have moments of awareness of these matters, we
experience beauty. The experience includes a sense of absolute truth;
it seems to explain everything and not subject to argument. I believe
that similar experiences informed the foundations of most of the world's
major religions and much of modern physics.
However,
this experience, when it feels most profound, also includes a sensation
that the plan and deeper levels of reality are so far removed from
normal reality as to be almost irrelevant. There is no way you, I, or
anyone else, can make use of knowledge of the experience in normal
physical reality. Great prophets, like Jesus, may have been able to use
the knowledge directly.
When
I try to engage my rational faculties to try to determine whether this
experience actually corresponds to reality, I am struck by a several
thoughts:
The
experience's sense of complete explanation tells me that our brains
have evolved to be able to detect beauty and the structure of reality of
which it is an echo.
The
sense of the numinous is merely an effect of brain chemistry and is a
construct of our minds, like green, or hot, or emotions. It does not
necessarily correspond to any feature of physical reality.
The
vast scale and age of the universe, from the Planck length, the
smallest meaningful distance, to the tendrils we see in the arrangement
of superclusters of galaxies, the behavior of which is described so
accurately by the standard model of physics that it seems completely
absurd to posit any divine being that cares about a species of primates
that has existed for less than a tiny faction of the age of the planet,
much less the universe.
So,
to answer your question, I do happen to believe there is a plan behind
reality. But, I refuse to use my belief as a basis as any argument about
how we should organize our society and interact with each other.
I do believe in Love. And Beauty. And Truth. And Good.