Sunday, October 3, 2010

A Reletive Lepton

Quick background: I came to Berkeley in 1990 to earn an MA in Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. During my first week of classes I met a man, "T" who continues to be a close friend. Over the years we've studied together, encouraged each other's work, celebrated accomplishments.... He was at my wedding, heard Joe's first breath, supported me (without alienating EX) during the separation and divorce... my children have grown up with him. He's family.

Last night T and I went to dinner (as we often do) and I made a snide remark about the existence of God. "You don't believe in God?" he asked? My answer - "no" - had never flowed so effortlessly from my lips. It surprised us both.

We quickly fell into a familiar and friendly academic discourse about life, death, the "soul" and God. "Humans," he began, "are made up of all these little tiny molecules... we're just one giant mass of living organisms.... So, what if we are really just one tiny little molecule of a larger being. Just like we can be broken down to protons and neutrons, quarks and leptons, suppose we are that tiny of a reality.... Along with everyone else in the whole universe - itself only a molecule - we are one reletive lepton of God."

I kinda loved it. And like a child, I imagined a "god" of huge proportions - a giant - in which we are all swimming, floating, moving towards something blurry and abstract. Granted, we - collectively - may be only a cell in the digestive track, our existence is (still) necessary for its survival.

And *BAM*
We come back to that again.
God can't exist without us.

The answer is still no.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting!

    Himself and I were actually discussing theology and its place in our lives (or lack thereof), but as he grew up in a very Jewish community in NY, his approach to this discussion is very different from mine (agnostic/atheist since birth).

    I'm going to tell him about the leptons.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe *we* are God. In which case perhaps our devotion is slightly misplaced? LOL

    ReplyDelete
  3. What I find amazing is that people some how have this misconception that there must be a god in order to be truly happy or for life to have meaning. I have a very good friend that said, but if there is no god - then its all about me. I think the opposite is true. If the world could just get passed the thought of a deity, we'd all be in better shape. Someone once said that God is the biggest hoax every played on humanity - I couldn't agree more!

    ReplyDelete

I love getting comments on my posts! Yours will be approved within a couple of hours. Thanks so much for taking the time to read my words.