The Wonder of Creation
So Why Does Formalized Religious Worship Tend to be Dull and Repressive?
I have often thought that religious worship should be vibrant, joyful, intense, mysterious, and thrilling. Because creation itself, the wonder of existence, inspires those reactions in me. And surely the mystery of creation must similarly inspire others.
Religious worship shouldn’t be dull, somber, and staid, engendering a vague flinching fear of punishment. Nor, conversely, should religious worship focus on personal happiness, on the individual doing whatever she desires in order to achieve some transitory sense of fulfillment. Both of these approaches completely miss the point.
Can’t you feel it? The joyful wonder. Set aside screens, distractions, and temporal concerns. Just for a moment. Set aside possessions, machinations, and that endless static head chatter. Set it all aside for a minute. Go outside. Look, really look, at the world around you. At the trees and grasses and small scampering animals. Sniff the scent of the breezes, feel them drifting past your person. And look up. Look up at the vast sky, so far beyond petty concerns. And imagine the infinitude that exists beyond.
I am a highly rational person, long steeped in science. How, I’m sometimes asked, can I believe that a higher power exists, and yet also fully embrace science? As if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. There are many reasons that I believe a higher power does indeed exist, combining together to create the conclusion. Most are privately personal, but science is one of the more significant and obvious, as follows.
Bear with me here as I slightly geek out. About 13.8 billion years ago, immediately before the Big Bang, what became our universe was a nearly infinitely small, nearly infinitely dense core of matter and energy. And then… bang! The universe has been expanding ever since, its matter and energy consisting solely of the matter and energy that existed in that tiny core. (If that doesn’t cause you some wonder, then I don’t know what will.) So says science. I agree completely.
But ask yourself this. What created that infinitesimal core? (Science unequivocally states that matter and energy don’t just spontaneously appear.) And what existed around that core? Because, scientifically speaking, there simply can’t be a pure absence, pure non-existence. (There can indeed be a void, but a void is something. A void exists somewhere amidst matter and energy.) So that core certainly existed within something. And, thirdly, into what is our universe expanding? Think about that. Our universe is a finite entity that is continually expanding, so what surrounds that finite entity? (Again, there is, scientifically speaking, no pure absence/non-existence.)
To be clear, I don’t know the answers to these questions. In fact nobody, not one single person ever, has known or knows the answers to these questions. These questions are great, unanswered mysteries. (They thrill my little being.) I will be the first to say that perhaps solely scientific explanations exist. That perhaps we simply don’t yet know what those scientific explanations are. However. Something must have created our universe, and something must have created whatever exists beyond it. Matter and energy don’t, scientifically, just appear from nothing.
Here is another key point, which I hope you consider. In no way does science disprove the existence of a higher power. Not one bit of science even suggests, much less proves, that a higher power is impossible. (Again, in no way are science and religion contradictory or mutually exclusive, as some people assume.)
Science is just one factor contributing to my conclusion that a higher power exists. The other factors are directly and personally experiential, factors that I would share with someone in person, during an interesting conversation shared over a glass of wine.
I’m reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. He is an atheist who openly ridicules the idea of a higher power, and anyone who believes in such a thing. He mentions the Big Bang, but steers far clear of the questions I’ve asked. If you follow his logic, that infinitesimal core just happened, like a unicorn spontaneously manifesting itself on your front lawn. Both things are scientifically impossible.
As an aside, I’m not a Buddhist, but one of my favorite quotations of all time comes from the Dalai Lama. He said, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” I would say the same thing about Christianity (or any other religion). About claims, for instance, that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, when science proves unequivocally that it is about 4.5 billion years old.
Anyway, coming around full circle, all of these thoughts, ideas, possibilities, and unknowns engender a joyous wonder. One that should reflect in the worship of our creator. So why does so little of religious worship express thrilling mystery? That visceral sense of true, bone-deep amazement? Wouldn’t the overt expression of ecstatic amazement be far more appropriate than boring, staid going-through-the-motions?