Serpents And Scorpions

Strange World(s) of Possibilities

The Holy Bible mentions a promise made by the god of the Jews that mankind will not be destroyed via a deluge ever again. Man believed for centuries in this promise just as man first believed in the existence of an all-powerful monotheistic god 3,400 ago in Ancient Egypt. The need to believe in a supreme deity seemed as natural as the biological need to eat, procreate or survive.

Yet, it seems that regardless of religion or culture, the concept of humanity's end hung far and wide above the minds of people everywhere. The multitude of Great Flood Myths and apocalyptic prophecies are about as many as the named deities that "revealed" themselves to man, invented by man and worshiped by man.

Just as there are people who believed in these deities, there are those who are firm in their conviction that no such beings exist, and that a rational, orderly and scientific world has no room for such 'fairy stories for people afraid of the dark' as the great late Stephen Hawking put it. However, Stephen Hawking and many other prominent scientists also believed in the existence of multiple parallel universes or 'multi-verse' at least, in the realm of Quantum Mechanics.

Just as the huge multitude of planets and galaxies offer an infinite number of possibility of life, the infinite number of universes in the multiverse multiplies the possibility of everything ever existing or happening within the four known dimensions and the countless more dimensions awaiting discovery. This is clearly a scientific paradox as the laws of physics clearly stipulates what is possible and impossible yet the same scientific establishment allows for 'other' possibilities to co-exist no matter how far flung or remote they are.

The sum of all there is cannot be constrained thus by any laws of nature known to man or god. And not only can we NOT surmise that no god exists. There is in fact an infinite possibility that there are several gods in existence in different realms and times parallel or contradictory to one another. It is not a stretch of conjecture to assume that.

Scientific paradigms thus are no different from religious belief. It's just that scientific theories can be readily proven using systematic methods in the lab while Faith seeks affirmation in the miraculous events big and small that defy the wisdom of man and transcend human experience to be deemed as divine. Faith is also preoccupied with the question of right and wrong, while Science simply seeks to know the truth and does not seek to answer the same moral question.

Good and Bad is Faith. Possibility vs. Impossibility is Science. There seems to be precious little that can make the two intersect or agree but their differences aren't as clear as light and day like most of us are wont to believe. One exists because of the other. Faith believes in the divine and the impossible because the world of infinite possibilities known to science allows a sliver of the impossible to exist and manifest. Science believes in the world of observable and provable facts but this insistence in a system of inquiry known as the scientific method is a dogma upon itself, no different from Faith in that it demands unconditional adherence provided the right conditions are met. Without the human tendency to put faith in anything, even the the most rigid, clinical and precise methods of science wouldn't carry any weight or meaning.

What if science, in its quest for the truth begin to discover that our religious beliefs and myths are actually incontrovertible facts? What if one day Faith also unravels indisputable scientific truths previously unknown to man? What if the dividing line between the two becomes blurred beyond recognition?

What if all that we've been taught about gods and angels and demons, of right and wrong and good and bad is turned on its head in our quest to find the truth?  What if one day, God as we know Him, again decided it's time for a reboot? What if one day He and his divine forces break their silence and reveal themselves to be more than just ancient inscriptions on stone and parchment and literature? What if there are really in fact many gods, and the gods of another universe decided to cross into our own to render their understanding of divine justice?  What if they reveal themselves to be a force that cannot be constrained by the governing laws of the cosmos? What if revealing themselves comes with a price so great that one is forced to think: is this the end of everything as we know it?

What will become of us then?