The Big Three Get Tested

Researchers love problems. Even more, they love solutions. Recently they've taken on three problems most of us never even thought were problems. Reality, morality and God. If you took it for granted you understood these matters, the researchers are saying, "Not so fast!"

In the first, we're being told that this reality we think we see, touch and smell is real not just because our senses tell us so, but mostly because our mathematics tells us so. As for morality, we're now being advised it mostly applies only to what we decide it applies. As for God, some of today's skeptics have decided they prefer to find out what man thinks of God rather than the other way around.

If these researchers are on to something, then maybe a lot of laws, novels, paintings, symphonies and holy books are in for some big-time editing. But then again, why not? Seems like everything else in our world is changing too.

Start with reality. Ever since physicists like Niels Bohr came up with quantum mechanics in the 1920s, scientists have suggested it's actually impossible to know if the world really exists except when we are observing it. (Remember the old :Does the falling tree make a sound if no one's there to hear it?). Well, we can relax now, because some scientists at the University of Japan used some polarised photons to mathematically prove that what you saw and smelled this morning really was real.

You have to applaud such fine research efforts, but all that time and work just to learn there's really something worthwhile outside your front door....?

On the morality matter, a scholar by the name of Mary Eberstadt recently wrote in the "Policy Review" that food and sex have lately traded places on America's morality scale. Two generations ago we maintained very strict moral codes about sex, but ate like pigs. Today, she says, we're strict about how we eat, but not about how we have sex.

You have to give Mary credit for noticing this trade-off, only when did morality once emblazoned on fixed stone tablets get reduced to a handy slide rule....?

Finally, this matter of God. Ever since Nietzsche proclaimed he was dead, God has become something like the pistol-packing cop on the beat who little kids can feel big whenever they stick their tongues out behind his back. You have to wonder what happens if he ever turns around. However, that hasn't stopped two Northwestern University scholars, Dan McAdams and Michelle Albaugh, from statistically measuring God by polling how liberals and conservatives "need God in their lives."

Their survey results were interesting, only if they conclude God is either on the Left or the Right, I'd remind them that more likely he's everywhere....!

But enough research for one day. Some days are simply meant for living, not examining. Which, in the final measure, may be the very best way to take this course.