Pondering the Infinite, Part 3

During my annual Fiction Fast, I am reading Secrets of Infinity: 150 Answers to an Enigma, edited by Antonio Lamua. There are different sections, such as mathematics, science, and art. This series of posts will focus on the section regarding philosophy. It never ceases to amaze me that men of the world, men of science and deep thought, can come so close to the bull’s-eye but miss the truth by a mile.

Blaise Pascal is an interesting character. He began his career as a mathematician and inventor. He was Roman Catholic, and in 1654, around age 30 or 31, he had a conversion experience. From then on, he wrote as a Christian philosopher. One of his famous works includes the logical argument for Christianity: If you think there is no God and live like it, if you’re right you gain nothing. If you think there is no God and you’re wrong, you lose everything. If you think there is a God and you’re right, you gain only peace in this world. If you think there is a God and you’re wrong, you lose nothing. Therefore, if you want to gamble, gamble on the fact that there is a God.

That is a poor explanation of his argument. When he wrote and spoke to his mathematician friends, he did a much better job and some believed!

In Secrets of Infinity, the editors talk about Pascal’s concept of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Both concepts are hard for human beings to comprehend. How can we comprehend a number bigger than anything we can imagine? What purpose would such contemplation serve? (If you want to contemplate the truly huge, read an article about Graham's number that was recently posted on plus magazine.)

As far as Pascal was concerned, contemplating the immensity of the universe would serve to underscore our own limited condition. How do I compare to such incomprehensible space? I am but a speck of dust on a speck of dust in a vast universe of dust.

And so contemplate the infinitely small. We know the body is made up of cells. We know that even within microscopic cells are smaller pieces, organelles and structures, and that these are made of proteins and amino acids and other components that are no less vital for their smallness. I am a speck of dust on a speck of dust.

Psalm 8: 3-4: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?

And yet He does think of us. The God and Creator holds the universe in His hands, and our galaxy is a speck of dust within that universe, and our earth smaller still, and I am but a speck of dust standing on that speck of dust. Yet God loves me – us – so much that He sent His Son to become a tiny zygote, and then an embryo, and then a baby in His mother’s womb, and then to be born, and to die for our sins. The infinitely immense became the infinitely small for the sake of the tiny specks He had created.

God made the universe uncomprehendingly immense so that when we think how wide and wondrous is the sky, and holding so many mysteries even yet, that He could say, “My grace and love for you are larger still.”

Psalm 19:1: The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.