“As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.”
- Mr g by Alan Lightman
So begins Alan Lightman’s playful and profound new novel, Mr g, the story of Creation as told by God. Barraged by the constant advisements and bickerings of Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva, who live with their nephew in the shimmering Void, Mr g proceeds to create time, space, and matter. Then come stars, planets, animate matter, consciousness, and, finally, intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. Mr g is all powerful but not all knowing and does much of his invention by trial and error.
Mr g doesn’t hit stores until 1/24/12, but people are already buzzing. Ron Charles of The Washington Post calls it “a scientific vision laced with the mirthful aura of divinity.”
Meanwhile, Alan has penned an essay for Harper’s called “The Accidental Universe: Science’s Crisis of Faith”:
Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
Alan’s essay was picked by David Brooks of The New York Times for a Sidney Award:
Every year, the Sidney Awards, named for the renowned philosopher Sidney Hook, go out to some of the best magazine essays of the year.
Finally, in Salon, Alan asks: Does God Exist?
But if science is the religion of the 21st century, why do we still seriously discuss heaven and hell, life after death, and the manifestations of God? Physicist Alan Guth, another member of our salon, pioneered the Inflation version of the Big Bang theory and has helped extend the scientific understanding of the infant universe back to a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after t = 0. Another member, biologist Nancy Hopkins, manipulates the DNA of organisms to study how genes control the development and growth of living creatures. Hasn’t modern science now pushed God into such a tiny corner that He or She or It no longer has any room to operate — or perhaps has been rendered irrelevant altogether? Not according to surveys showing that more than three-quarters of Americans believe in miracles, eternal souls and God.
Does a unified field law (not theory) exist?
Does coherence between human fields of intellectual disciplines exist?
Does death = life?
In the Wall Street Journal’s review of “Mr. g” a copy of William Blake’s Ancient of Days was printed.
I think this is a pictorial misquote of William Blake. As the book itself has not yet been released, I do not know if this posthumous libel has actually occurred. But in case it has, I object on behalf of William Blake.
Blake too, aspired to reconcile physics and metaphysics.
But although Blake hated Isaac Newton’s mechanistic view of creation, he did have a value system (Values are unscientific. A strictly objective worldview would not be able to prize life over death – on any basis other than the viewers subjective fear of death.)
Consider, The Chimney Sweeper and Blake’s concern for child labor. Consider Fearful Symmetry and Blake’s awe of acting law. Consider Auguries of Innocence and consider Blake’s acknowledgement of a universal field “reality.”
Yes, he did address the dynamism of opposites in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but this was by way of a philosophical antimony: the simulataneous consideration of two competing truths. But Blake’s focus was always life.
What do you think motivated his Songs of Innocence and Experience.
On Blake’s deathbed he heard angels singing.
So I hope that Mr. Lightman did not misquote Blake pictorially.
And I hope he sobers up…he might learn that winsome Mr. g is his personal straw man.
The real Mr. g may be closer to:
“Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
in the forest of the night.
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame Thy fearful symmetry?”
You did not respond to my “William Blake review of ‘Mr. g.” That is appropriate. I was hiding behind Blake to joust with you from a literati standpoint. I am not a member of the literati. I aspire to be a straightforward Christian.
I do ask, however, if God does not exist, why are you so preoccupied with Him? Are you angry at a phantom? Are you afraid if He’s real, He will be an accountable authority figure in your life? Are you contemptuous of the opiated masses?
One thing the atheist and the Christian have in common: they both believe God is unknowable.
A. The atheist believes God is unknowable because they deny His existence;
B. The Christian believes God is unknowable because He is so unimaginably higher than his own lower-life-form senses could perceive.
Isaiah 55: 8-11
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,’
says the LORD.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow
from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from
My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper
in the thing for which I sent it.”
You are an impressive human. You have advanced degrees, a high profile, and two impressive careers: physics and fiction. You wrote a best selling novel about Einstein.
Remembering Einstein’s acceptance speech for a Nobel Prize, he lamented, “We have won the war, but not the peace.” He said, “Politics is harder than science.” I believe this is because he was serious about the Sword of Damocles that is the nuclear bomb.
Perhaps so many simple masses believe in God is because you scientists, having acquired tenured security and fame, have absolutely dropped the ball. What have you scientists done, since Hiroshima and Nagasake, to prevent an encore?
I live in New Mexico. Los Alamos is a death dealing town.
What discipline, exactly, do you think will prevent a nuclear war?
I don’t see you physicists caring much.
Novelists? What does “Mr. g” contribute to the cause?
Medicine? Perhaps. After the fact, for already injured casualties.
The root of war is the root of evil in individual human hearts. It’s hard for a poor child to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. That is why children are so vulnerable in famine, war and pestilence. (How many children died in the recent Sudanese warfare…do you know or care?) Similarly, is nigh impossible for an individual to clean out his own heart of hate, greed, pride, envy, fear. All that rotten stuff.
In your salon, do you worldly wise raconteurs ever return to this global geopolitical powder keg and talk practical preventive measures?
It is nigh impossible for an individual lower life form human to clean his own heart of hate, greed, pride, envy, fear… but it is Christ’s forte.
That is why we supposedly opiated masses love Him. Only from a clean heart can effective peacemaking flow. And I for sure can’t clean my own. Can you?
Yours truly,
Patricia smith