Last week, I attended a meetup event held at a Panera Bread with my friend Ram. The meeting titled “Questions of Faith: Does God Control Everything?” seemed like it might help quench my undying thirst for (pseudo)philosophical conversations. I invited Ram, a meetup veteran and tactful socializer, to accompany me on this adventure. His partnership would ensure an additional interesting conversation - an opinionated review of the original - as well as help thwart away the pesky social anxiety demons which emerge from the shadows whenever I anticipate uttering words to a horde of potential critics.
I ended up the only questioner during “Questions of Faith.” Rather than curiously dissecting any of the numerous conundrums created by the juxtaposition of divine omnipotence and human agency, group members contented themselves with repetitive scriptural interpretations and, at times, blatantly paradoxical proclamations (“God controls everything, but we still have to choose God!”). The event was, after all, a bible study conducted by Texan Christians drawn by the promise of psychological reinforcement rather than philosophical disruption. Sometimes I forget most people aren’t obnoxious contrarians stimulated by the type of intense cerebral conflict likely to produce interpersonal friction.
It gives me great pleasure to inform you that I resisted the distinct urge to commit conversational arson during the meeting and maintained a quite socially appropriate reticence. However, my respectable demeanor quickly faded once I began chatting with some of attendees following the event’s official conclusion. Turns out, the leaders as well as several of the participants embrace young earth creationism - the view the earth is only 6,000 years old - and fervently deny evolution. Upon noticing my surprise and exasperation, the oldest of the bunch, a fiery fundamentalist, started interrogating me about the nature of reality.
He wanted to confirm his suspicion I held scientistic and relativistic sentiments. These skepticisms likely arose when I uncomfortably replied “Well...I don’t really think these kinds of questions have answers” when the discussion leader asked me whether or not another attendee’s almost comically over-simplistic response to a classic theological dilemma “answered my question.” Welcoming ambiguity is, of course, precisely the opposite of fundamentalism.
The man pressed me about whether I believed in the existence of any “absolutes.” I confessed my extreme hesitance to make claims either way about such matters. He thought for a second, clearly agitated and unimpressed by my ambivalence. While the older man fumed, the leader gestured to a nearby table and inquired whether I agreed with the statement “It is absolutely true this table exists.”
And, if could go back, here’s what I wish I had said.
A better version of the table question pertains to something even more fundamental to human experience. Something like my favorite color, blue.
Is it absolutely true blue exists?
Most people recognize blue when they see it. We interpret blue similarly because we possess largely the same number of cones and rods in our eyes; human anatomy and physiology make blue a reliable phenomenon. You and me both recognize a-blue-something as “blue” because we are both human beings. The eyes of many other creatures, however, filter colors differently due to their diverging anatomical constructions. What a bird sees while looking at what is to us a-blue-something is not just an object it doesn’t describe as “blue” (because it’s a bird), it’s also an object that’s literally not blue. The color of the object depends on who - or what - is admiring it.
Again, the question presents itself: Is blue real? Does the color blue “absolutely” exist?
As far as we know, blue’s existence begins and ends with human experience. Blue is a “real” feature of the world humans perceive, the world created when that which we perceive filters through our visual structures. Our eyes interpret a phenomenon “out there” as blue, but this does not mean it is blue. It just means we see/understand/interpret it as blue.
Blue is both real and not real depending on which reality you crown true. There’s the human perceived reality and the inhuman reality being perceived. There’s the reality with the human perception of blue, Blue Reality, and the reality with that which is perceived as blue by humans, External Reality. Which is more real, Blue Reality or External Reality?
Awareness of the choice matters far more than intellectually privileging one or the other when attempting to honestly investigate The Nature of Things. As long as the mysterious cleft between the two versions of reality retains its salience, the hubristic desire to consider perceived reality the only potential reality remains in check.
The (non)reality of blue unveils the existential duality.
“Is the table real?”
It depends, is blue real?