Why Are We Not As Perfect as a Falling Apple?

Why were we not made perfect? Ever wonder about that? I mean, if a being had what it takes to make us in the first place, why make us as flawed as we are. It would be as if we, with the ability to make a Maserati, made a Flintstone vehicle of stone and wood instead.

It could be, certainly, that we are not yet as perfect as we might someday be, and that the agonizingly slow process of evolution might someday see us reach some pinnacle of perfection. But even then, why the wait? If we are eventually going to be perfect, why not just start out that way and circumvent all those eons of gradual change.

You really have to suspect that we were not meant to be perfect.

And you have to ask yourself why.

The question to be asked next would be this; is there perfection in our world (humans notwithstanding), in our galaxy, in our known universe? If there is, then it follows that we could have been made perfect, but the decision was made to not do so. If there is not perfection anywhere, then perfection for us was never a possibility anyway and this whole discussion is fairly moot.

I submit that there is perfection in the universe, and that because of that, the fact that we are not perfect was because of a conscious decision not to make us so.

I don’t know if you need to be a theologian or a physicist to determine the possibility of perfection in our environment. Maybe all you really need to be is an astute observer.

Newton may or may not have been sitting under a tree when an apple fell on his head and from which he surmised, via the law of universal gravitation, that what goes up must come down. There will never be a time when the simple act of throwing an object into the air will not result in that object falling back to the earth from which it was launched (unless it is unnaturally acted on; someone snatches it out of the air before it has a chance to land). You don’t even have to know anything about Sir Issac Newton or his laws of motion to know and understand this. You just have to throw something up into the air and watch it come down. Newton’s laws just reinforce what you intuitively already knew; no matter how many times you throw that object into the air, it will always come back.

Or consider this. If you take a hot object, a stone heated in a fireplace, say, and drop it in a bucket of ice, the ice will eventually melt and the stone and resulting water made from the ice will be at the same temperature. There will never be a time when the heated stone, when placed in a bucket of ice, will become as cold as the ice, while the ice becomes as hot as the stone.

Laws of thermodynamics will explain this in as much detail as you might like. Or you could simply measure the temperature of the ice and stone and of the resultant water, or easier still, just put your hand in that water. It will be neither freezing nor hot.

Or observe how, when you attempt to slide one object across another object, the objects are subjected to a force, friction, that opposes the movement of those objects.  No matter the objects you choose, no matter how many times you slide those objects against one another, the result will always be the same, friction will impede the motion of those objects.

You could calculate the coefficient of friction for the objects you have chosen to slide against one other, or spend a fruitless lifetime trying to find two objects that would not produce friction when slid against one another. Or you could accept (since others have done the exhaustive math for you) that this is another example of perfection in the universe.

If a thing that happens, must happen that same way, forever, ad infinitum. Surely that is perfection.

A universe that contains these elements of perfection (there are certainly more that could be mentioned, the viscosity of water, perfect for drinking, perfect for its role as a transporter of nutrients in the vascular system; the squirrel, so perfect a creature for tree climbing, but I think you get the point), could also have contained a perfect human being.

Why didn’t it?

One answer might be that perfection can only be attained over the course of many lifetimes, an infinite number of life times maybe. The problem I have with this option is simply that it would seem unlikely that you would ever know where you are on the path to that perfection. I’m pretty sure none of us are aware of any previous lives we might have lived, and we probably have no idea how much farther along the perfection gradient we are in this life as compared to the one we left last.

If you have no way to contrast and compare lives so you can be certain to continue in the right direction towards perfection, I again ask, what is the point? Why the multitude of lives if there is nothing linking those lives you have already lived with those you have yet to live?

Without that connection, without that knowledge of past and future lives, how can perfection be possible? It would then be nothing but blind luck that keeps you on, or points you toward, that elusive path to perfection.

How can that be accepted as a reasonable means to achieve the perfection that the majestic and orderly universe has known, doubtless since the instant after the Big Bang?

OK, so maybe you play the faith card. You pick up a King and add it to the two you already have. You spread your cards on the table and say “Praise God! Perfection is in the eye of the beholder!”

Since we are the children of God and God made a universe which has perfect things in it, then we must also be perfect (even if we don’t exactly understand how), exactly because we have been molded by the hand of a perfect (and let us not forget merciful) God.

But how can you compare a man to Newton’s laws of motion and not come to the inescapable conclusion that one is perfect and one is not, that we come up severely lacking in that comparison.

An apple when thrown up into the air will always fall back to earth. A man will not always do the right thing. If he did, we would all be immersed in the perpetually warm glow of peace and contentment, instead of dodging the perilous fallout from endless wars, penury, and hate.

Faith may sustain us, it may allow us to endure the endless ailments we mostly foist upon ourselves, but it does not explain why we put ourselves in those untenable positions to begin with. And if we expect a better result the next time around I’m pretty sure we’re going to sadly disappointed.

So, God could have made us as perfect as a falling apple, but didn’t. Why not?

I want to say it’s because we keep him amused; our foibles tickle his funny bone; that we are to him like a puppy chasing its tail. I would like to say that, except, really, how long are we amused by the antics of a puppy? And even if God’s timeline is, like, infinite, there would be an unGodlike element of cruelty to that suspicion.

No harm comes from a puppy chasing its tail. The same cannot be said of men flying planes into skyscrapers. How could God be amused by that wanton act of barbarity?

Then I thought maybe God is bored. Perfection would have its drawbacks would it not? Everything you do would be perfect; every thought you have would be perfect; your dreams would be perfect, and come perfectly true.

What would you have to strive for?

Maybe we remind God of what it’s like to want.

And I think that comes close to the truth. Maybe as close to the truth as an imperfect man can get.

We were not made perfect, because if we were made perfect that would be an ending, not a beginning.

And maybe, just maybe, since God is so good at creating cycles (satellites cycling around planets, planets cycling around stars) the cycle we all are a part of is a cycle in which we do get better after each life we live. Maybe we don’t need to know how to get better, to get closer and closer to perfection with each life we live, we just do. And maybe, after enough of these lives, in which we are getting closer to being perfect and better at not creating war, and poverty, and hate, we do finally become perfect. And it is not just us, here on planet Earth, but beings on all the habitable planets in all the known and unknown universes. We all gradually become perfect. And when we do? when we all, all of us, live enough lives of continually increasing perfection, maybe then we become God, or we become a piece of God, a single, sentient, symbiotic cell in the structure of God.

That’s an appealing thought. Beats the Hell (pun absolutely intended) out of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, and it brings universes of sentient beings into the eventual fold, or embrace, of God. There is no positive proof of this option, obviously. If there were you could just slack off and still end up a little more perfect in the next life. Since you don’t know for sure if my alternative afterlife is correct, you will, presumably, simply continue with your, mostly, good life for as long as you are granted the joy of living and worry about what comes next when you get there.

No, God didn’t make us perfect, but he just might have given us the means to become perfect, eventually. 

What Good is a Tree

What good is a tree? Except to the extent that it pleases me to look at it, of what value is it? Beyond the cool shade it offers me on a hot summer day why does it even exist? Were it not for the fact that I breathe in the oxygen it produces would not the space it takes up be equally suitable to that of a rock?

I might say a similar thing about elephants, gerbils, and robins; about tulips, bumblebees, and alligators, about daylilies, caterpillars, and whales. Indeed I might repeat myself endlessly for all living things (except for flies; flies obviously have no value, they are merely a colossal evolutionary mistake). Of what good are these various living things beyond the fact that I might gaze upon them and judge them as worthy or not of my attention?

It is not difficult for me to accept the premise of some religions that the whole of life on our little blue green planet (and possibly the Universe as well, although they seem less specific the farther out in space the circumference of this topic is allowed to expand) is designed for the pleasure of mankind and that we should have dominion over all of the Earth’s lesser creatures.

There will certainly be those of you who suggest that the planet was around for billions and billions of years before Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet. That is certainly true, but it seems equally true to me that, as in our own pitiful lives, it is mostly the case that the end result of a thing seldom occurs without a certain amount of tweaking from beginning to end to make the thing, whatever it is, what it ultimately becomes.

So too with the creation of life and our place in it; the Powers That Be obviously had a few dozen fitful starts before deciding on the end product. Us.

Evolutionists among us (and who really, is not) will offer the argument that just as Home sapiens ultimately evolved from Homo habilis and he from Australopithecus afarensis  suggests that there will ultimately be a being who will evolve from us and who will put us on the same relative evolutionary scale to him that Homo habilis was to us.

Wouldn’t that then crush this argument to dust and toss it to the furthest reaches of the globe on a strong wind? It might, except for one small thing that I borrow from investment prospectuses you may be familiar with; past performances are no guarantee of future results. We do not know, and will never know, that we are not the best there can ever be in the evolution of a species. In Science fiction it is usually the case that the evolutionary process continues until even our physical bodies become superfluous and we become sentient energy. Any of you who have watched Star Trek know how that scenario ends.

But imagine that evolution is like the United States, a process losing its inventiveness, losing its drive and ambition, coasting on the glory and accomplishments of the past. If that were the case, and Homo sapiens are truly the end result of the long evolutionary process then it follows, does it not, that all of life, from a sightless amoeba at the bottom of the ocean to the majestic eagle, exists for our benefit, and our benefit alone.

Otherwise, I would suggest, why bother.

 All of life, except for mankind, exists solely to procreate and die. How sad is that? How meaningless. At least if we acknowledge them, we give credence to their existence. We give it meaning. We give it a purpose.

And of the millions, if not billions, of species of life we have yet to discover? How are these for our benefit if we are not even aware of their existence? It gives us something to do, to discover them. It gives us a reason to get up in the morning.

And if you take nothing else from this little discourse, certainly you would agree that we all need a reason to get up in the morning.