Knowledge

The Enemy Stars.

Profound issues can be passed off as if they were personal idiosyncrasies. Let us start with Roger Bacon, discoverer of scientific method. James Blish's Doctor Mirabilis, a historical novel about Bacon, is like a prologue or prequel to much sf by Blish and others. 

Addressing "Domine, dominus noster," Blish's Bacon thinks:

"I will not let go. I will not let go. Thou hast taken away mine house; so be it. But Thou shalt not take away from me what Thou has given me, which is the lust to know Thy nature.

"I shall never let go.

"The wind made a sudden sucking sound somewhere in the convent and poured itself up the throat of a chimney with a low brief moan."

-James Blish, Doctor Mirabilis IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 1-318 AT I., p. 26.

I have quoted this passage because it expresses Bacon's aspiration to know the Creator by knowing His creation. I extended the quotation because I thought that some blog readers might share my appreciation of the wind sucking and moaning as if to punctuate Bacon's thought or even to warn him of the possible dangers of his quest for knowledge.

Bacon is the precursor of all scientists, including Poul Anderson's David Ryerson:

"'I set out to be a spaceman... But in the last couple of years I got more interested in gravitics, had to concentrate too much in catching up in that field...'" (5, p. 32)

Ryerson's goal, like Bacon's, is knowledge and science is their means. 

Ryerson's father accuses him of:

"'...trying to run from the Lord God Jehovah...'" (2, p. 17)

Ryerson himself reflects that he has erected a "tomb" for:

"...his father's God." (5, p. 34)

Thus, Bacon wants to know "Thy nature" whereas Ryerson wants to know about a particular science, gravitics, and has tried to bury his father's God. Does this pitch Bacon and Ryerson against each other? No way. They are comrades across the ages. Bacon lived in the Age of Faith, therefore expressed himself in those terms. If there is indeed a deity behind natural laws, then that is what scientists want to know about even if they do not realize this yet. Limited concepts of deity should be left behind like discredited scientific theories.

What is God's attitude? Personally, I do not think that the ultimate reality is or can be a person although, like anyone else, I can be wrong, especially on such matters as this. God, assuming His existence of course, must presumably approve of Bacon's and Ryerson's quests for knowledge and accept worship from Ryerson's father while simultaneously and eternally trying to guide all three towards completer understandings.

Jehovah is one tribal deity. Let us also consider:

Indra in the Vedic pantheon;

Vishnu in the Hindu pantheon;

the Brahman of Vedanta;

the unborn, undying, uncompounded, unconditioned of the Buddha Dharma.