We Try Not To Believe, Because We Do Not Understand"

 

  Greetings and welcome back as we continue chapter 26 of Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma!

 

   As we continue, we will find Pike continuing his discourse on the mysteries of deity. 

 

   Pike continues to ask a series of rhetorical questions regarding the forms of nature, of self, and of deity.

 

   Without more delay, LET’S READ PIKE!

 

 

 

   

p. 529

What do we know of Substance? Men even doubt yet whether it exists. Philosophers tell us that our senses make known to us only the attributes of substance, extension, hardness, color, and the like; but not the thing itself that is extended, solid, black or white; as we know the attributes of the Soul, its thoughts and its perceptions, and not the Soul itself which perceives and thinks.

What a wondrous mystery is there in heat and light, existing, we know not how, within certain limits, narrow in comparison with infinity, beyond which on every side stretch out infinite space and the blackness of unimaginable darkness, and the intensity of inconceivable cold! Think only of the mighty Power required to maintain warmth and light in the central point of such an infinity, to whose darkness that of Midnight, to whose cold that of the last Arctic Island is nothing. And yet GOD is everywhere.

 

 Modern science and quantum physics tells us that any ‘thing” that we perceive to exist is nothing more than a series of vibrating molecules which our senses tell us are solid objects. This Macbook Pro I am using vibrates in a way that I can see it and manipulate it to form sentences and to read text. The chair I am sitting on is another set of molecules that vibrate in which my senses tell me i can sit on it and the chair will in turn hold my weight and keep me comfortable.

The body in which my soul has found its home is yet another series of molecular structures vibrating in a way that i perceive the outward me as…well…ME.

My senses allow me to manipulate my body which is made of vibrations within this world I sense to DO a thing, to make progress (hopefully) within my lifetime. If these molecules stop vibrating, then quantum physics says that everything our senses tell us exists would cease to exist.

Pike asks rhetorically, what IS substance? In Pike’s day, there were arguments in scientific circles as there are now regarding exactly what a molecule is, and there are the sects in scientific circles that argue against quantum physics because our human minds have difficulty comprehending the reality that we pretty much exist in a sort of fantasy world that our senses only are able to detect fragments of.

Pike mentions “inconceiveable cold” which science has accepted as a concept a temperature of “absolute zero” where, at this temperature (which is around minus 450F) all moleculer vibrations stop, and the “thing” at that temperature would cease to exist.

 Pike ends this paragraph stating that, even in the midst of all of these mysteries, in the darkest dark and coldest cold, GOD is everywhere! Always existing!

Next:

And what a mystery are the effects of heat and cold upon the wondrous fluid that we call water! What a mystery lies hidden in every flake of snow and in every crystal of ice, and in their final transformation into the invisible vapor that rises from the ocean or the land, and floats above the summits of the mountains!

What a multitude of wonders, indeed, has chemistry unveiled to our eyes! Think only that if some single law enacted by God were at once repealed, that of attraction or affinity or cohesion, for example, the whole material world, with its solid granite and adamant, its veins of gold and silver, its trap and porphyry, its huge beds of coal, our own frames and the very ribs and bones of this apparently indestructible earth, would instantaneously dissolve, with all Suns and Stars and Worlds throughout all the Universe of God, into a thin invisible vapor of infinitely minute particles or atoms, diffused throughout infinite space; and with them light and heat would disappear; unless the Deity Himself be, as the Ancient Persians thought, the Eternal Light and the Immortal Fire.

The mysteries of the Great Universe of God! How can we with our limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each! An infinity of suns, the nearest of which only diminish in size, viewed with the most powerful telescope: each with its retinue of worlds; infinite numbers of such suns, so remote from us that their light would not reach us, journeying during an infinity of time, while the light that has 

p. 530

reached us, from some that we seem to see, has been upon its journey for fifty centuries: our world spinning upon its axis, and rushing ever in its circuit round the sun; and it, the sun, and all our system revolving round some great central point; and that, and suns, stars, and worlds evermore flashing onward with incredible rapidity through illimitable space: and then, in every drop of water that we drink, in every morsel of much of our food, in the air, in the earth, in the sea, incredible multitudes of living creatures, invisible to the naked eye, of a minuteness beyond belief, yet organized, living, feeding, perhaps with consciousness of identity, and memory and instinct.

In these paragraphs, Pike makes the case that if any one law of God, or physics which God wrought, is repealed, then everything we know now to be “true” would cease to exist. 

Pike also reminds us in these paragraphs that the mysteries of the universe are much too great for our human minds to even begin to comprehend.

 

Next

 

Such are some of the mysteries of the great Universe of God. And yet we, whose life and that of the world on which we live form but a point in the centre of infinite Time: we, who nourish animalcule within, and on whom vegetables grow without, would fain learn "how God created this Universe, would understand His Powers, His Attributes, His Emanations, His Mode of Existence and of Action; would fain know the plan according to which all events proceed, that plan profound as God Himself; would know the laws by which He controls His Universe; would fain see and talk to Him face to face, as man talks to man: and we try not to believe, because we do not understand.

 

And in this single paragraph are the words that, in my opinion, are at the center of most of the faults in human kind “…we try not to believe, because we do not understand."

I would add some other aspects of mankinds emotions in that same vein, we refuse to have COMPASSION, because we do not understand.

We refuse to FORGIVE, because we do not understand. 

We refuse to LOVE, because we do not understand.

We refuse to COMPROMISE, because we do not understand.

We refuse to CHANGE OUR RULES, because we do not understand.

 

 In UNDERSTANDING comes acceptance, and as we learn to accept what is, we are able to affect change. 

 

  Understanding is a precursor to enlightenment. For instance, we must understand our own flaws, we must see the rough edges of our own ashlars before we are able to smooth them out. 

We must UNDERSTAND the plight of the poor and the sick before we can have true compassion to offer a helping hand. 

 

Understand and believe. Understand and affect change. Understand and become enlightened!

 

  And this is where we will end our study for today.

 

  As always, many thanks for joining me as we read through Morals and Dogma. 

 

   I will see you here next time!