A Question Of Intelligent Design

[Kingfisher]

According to science... Many aeons ago, two separate yet distinct portions of a vast (perhaps infinite) energy field collided. In this contact all the rules of physics, as we know them, were established. According to these laws, energy condensed into matter and began to interact. Fourteen billion years later a group of these semi-coherent agglutinations of quivering energy packets gathers around and debates the meaning of their own existence.

Some will say that the concept of a directed, loving consciousness acting as Creator is too bizarre to be real. I don't have the answers, but stranger things have happened around here.

[RevRainbow]

My reasoning is that something had to be always be, because nothing can only come from absolute nothing, so somethig had to always exist in some form whether it be energy or consciousness.

RevRainbow I do have to question your assumption that no other life form on this planet has God-consciousness? I don't think that is something that can be verified one way or the other, unless you obtained that information from one of your squirrel chats

I should have been more specific, my little Alpaca friend. In this I use the term God as Creator. I differentiate between God consciousness and God awareness. Animals and plants would have God awareness otherwise why would birds sing and flowers bloom? We have God consciousness and can debate the existence thereof.

Edited January 8, 2011 by RevRainbow

[reverend irma]

No more irrational that the universe was created in some kind of unconscious organized chaos that "just" happened, IMO. Interesting about choice. if God chose to create, then man had no choice to exist, but was later allowed a choice between God or Self. Or, if it were all happenstance with no choices and merely complex randomness, how did man wind up with an ability to comprehend the possible existence of a Creator? How did humankind obtain what no other life form on this planet with a brain has - God-consciousness?

I believe God-consciousness comes from man's imagination. human kind is the only species to exhibit imagination, thus the reason for God consciousness.

If you please, I know faith has a lot to do with God's existence, but I am interested to learn, if you believe God came first, what made God?

When this concept comes up, I think of a wizard waving a wand to make things appear which is why I find the God first concept so unlikely.

Do you believe conscious energy created life?

How would consciousness form without evolution? Awareness may be present but wouldn't it have to be limited to awareness of opposite frequencies?

Intelligence comes from knowledge and knowledge requires experience, without the physical formation of life, where would "God" get his experience?

[RevRainbow]

Rev. Irma, as I answer, be aware that those who know me around here have come to know that my responses have some biblical basis. I do not always refer to chapter and verse comparisons, but have done so if asked to support my POV. It does not make my responses correct any more than the next persons. But following a path which is familiar to me has produced a more stable thinking and life style, so...it works for me.

I believe God-consciousness comes from man's imagination. human kind is the only species to exhibit imagination, thus the reason for God consciousness.

But where did we get imagination and how is it defined? Imagination many times results in reality, or better, the invention of something that did not exist before, eg: cell phones came about through the imaginings of science fiction. Methinks it is the other way around however, whereby God "imagined us and thought became reality.

A step further is that in the New Testament we are told that at one time all men knew God, but chose not to worship Him as God ( as He is) and instead turned to their vain IMAGINATIONS (Romans 1:21).

If you please, I know faith has a lot to do with God's existence, but I am interested to learn, if you believe God came first, what made God?

Faith has to do with a lot of things other than just God. Everyone has a degree of faith in one thing or another. We need faith to fly in a plane, we need faith to sit in a chair and we need faith in each other for various circumstances.

From a human standpoint we consider that something always has to come first. That would indicate that at one point there was absolutely nothing and, to me, I can't see it. Energy, as we know it in science, can be altered but it scientifically always was and always will be. But I ask, just WHAT is energy? Can it be sentient? You have talked about Source as a focal point, but just what is Source? Divine?

If we "imagine" God as Sentient Energy, it can help in understanding that He always was and always will be and that He is active, constantly creating, as the Source for all that is. God helps us understand Himself through imagining Him in human terms as being on a throne, as having emotions and abilities. However, this also can lead us in the wrong direction as to Whom God really is. He is Thought, for one thing, Logos, as it says, the Word (John 1:1). And it appears that God, in order to help us understand, became flesh and dwelt among us.

Nothing or no one made God. God always was, from the beginning. So the question really is: What is The Beginning? My answer to that, currently, is that there never was a beginning and there will never be and end, it is a constant NOW; it is we who have defined, or imagined, a cosmic beginning in relationship to the illusion of Time.

When this concept comes up, I think of a wizard waving a wand to make things appear which is why I find the God first concept so unlikely.

Well, when we stop seeing God as having a magic wand, and see it more as active manipulation of energy to a degree beyond our ken, we can change our mind in regards to a human concept of God and, by faith, believe God is "far above our poor means to add or detract." -Lincoln.

Do you believe conscious energy created life?

Yep. But the definition of sentient energy, as applied to God, is but a meager one at best.

How would consciousness form without evolution? Awareness may be present but wouldn't it have to be limited to awareness of opposite frequencies?

Intelligence comes from knowledge and knowledge requires experience, without the physical formation of life, where would "God" get his experience?

Does God need experience? How about God IS experience. According to Christian belief, God is all-knowing. Let us think for a moment that NOW is only, for us in time, an instantaneous-fraction of existence, for that split second we are in the Now, but all else is either past or future. It is we who stretch Now into a length of past and future (Now, to us can be a day, week, month, but that is not so). Therefore, our experience is always past and continues into the future. God, being in the Now, IMO, already has had past and future experience. We, in effect, are the experience of God. He does not learn from us, we learn from Him. This, IMO, is how, if we ask, the Spirit of God can lead us in a path beneficial to our spiritual (and physical) growth...if we ask. We pray (ask) to "lead us not into temptation," but do we ask to "lead us in the path according to Thy will?"

These are not ultimate answers to your question, nor are they complete, but merely a glimpse into the realm of possibility that exists not in our imagination, but in our spirit consciousness.

Edited January 8, 2011 by RevRainbow

[Fawzo]

How would consciousness form without evolution? Awareness may be present but wouldn't it have to be limited to awareness of opposite frequencies?

Intelligence comes from knowledge and knowledge requires experience, without the physical formation of life, where would "God" get his experience?

How would consciousness arise from non-consciousness?

Awareness is a sure sign of consciousness !?!?!

[reverend irma]

How would consciousness arise from non-consciousness?

Awareness is a sure sign of consciousness !?!?!

The way I suppose it to be, consciousness arose from an increased vibrational frequency.

Looking at energy and assuming that each frequency is resposible for the creation of something, then it could also be responsible for the creation of awareness which would indicate that consciousness evolved just as life did.

I consider energy God. I call it source energy because it is the source of all things, and the name God, represents a human concept in my mind, which I haven't yet committed to.

I have been visiting a site, space and motion.com which deals with Free Will and Determinism, metaphysics and such and they quote famous scientists and philosophers.

Today I was reading a theory that space existed before anything else. I am looking forward to finish the article to find out more on this. I believe the person quoted for this was Spinoza.

[Fawzo]

The way I suppose it to be, consciousness arose from an increased vibrational frequency.

Looking at energy and assuming that each frequency is resposible for the creation of something, then it could also be responsible for the creation of awareness which would indicate that consciousness evolved just as life did.

For energy to vibrate there must first be something to act upon it to make it vibrate. What makes it vibrate?

[reverend irma]

For energy to vibrate there must first be something to act upon it to make it vibrate. What makes it vibrate?

Vibration would have to be the natural state of energy much like an ungrounded wire would spark. Energy as a force and not an object wouldn't need anything to act upon it if it were naturally active itself.

The sparks that would be created from the vibrational effect would be life creating.

It is said in metaphysics that everything is vibrating, we can't see this because the frequency is pitched beyond our visual perception, but we know that vibrational waves create life because we know our heart is beating. This heartbeat is also a vibration. When this vibration ceases, the body expires.

The brain also emits frequency waves, and though we can live without full function of these waves, we are reduced to a vegetative state.

[Fawzo]

Vibration would have to be the natural state of energy much like an ungrounded wire would spark. Energy as a force and not an object wouldn't need anything to act upon it if it were naturally active itself.

The sparks that would be created from the vibrational effect would be life creating.

It is said in metaphysics that everything is vibrating, we can't see this because the frequency is pitched beyond our visual perception, but we know that vibrational waves create life because we know our heart is beating. This heartbeat is also a vibration. When this vibration ceases, the body expires.

The brain also emits frequency waves, and though we can live without full function of these waves, we are reduced to a vegetative state.

Energy is defined as I understand it, to be "the ability a physical system has to produce changes on another physical system" light, magnetism, heat and gravity are all composed of particles such as gravitons, electrons, magnetrons, and in the quantum realm leptons, quarks etc etc etc.

gravitation works because of the attraction between particles with mass, electromagneticism works between particles with charge/magnetism, the strong nuclear force works between quarks, and the weak nuclear force operates between neutrinos and electrons.

Your underground wire comparison is invalid, because you would have to have a wire and electricty with a whole bunch of electrons and something else nearby which is going to atrract the electrons and cause the spark. You would need three eternal separate items to start your primordial spark.

All your analogies are based on more than one causal item being in existence at the beginning.

Electricity can keep a heart beating. One can merely hook it up to a battery to get it to pump. that is not evidence of any kind of "vibrational waves creating life"

I still would like for you to show me how anything physical or energetic can vibrate without another force acting upon it by attraction or repelling

Metaphysics says a lot of stuff and a lot of it is sheer rubbish, however one doesn't need a soothsayer to tell you that everythiing in the universe is vibrating on elementary particle levels, this is called Modern Science.

So unless there were more than one primordial entity that was eternal, my assumption is that it would not be vibrating. It would merely be "being" "beingness" In my model of reality vibration or frictions didn't start until the concept or thought form of "I am" arose. For there to be an "I" then there must be an "other"

Then it seems natural to me that the the "I" and the "other" began to be attracted or repelled by one another and then maybe your secnario stands a chance after the fact.

The primordial "beingness" aspect probably would be the attrractive property since it recognized or had awareness of "its own" while the rebel "I am" property was trying to repel and get away as fast as it could trying to retain its independence.

My model seems quite reasonable to me and some form of consciousness would have to be the primordial basis for that to hold true.

The 4 basic forces of nature would then be based on this conscious game of hide and seek and then "your vibrations" might come into play after the fact

Edited January 9, 2011 by Fawzo

[reverend irma]

Energy is defined as I understand it, to be "the ability a physical system has to produce changes on another physical system" light, magnetism, heat and gravity are all composed of particles such as gravitons, electrons, magnetrons, and in the quantum realm leptons, quarks etc etc etc.

gravitation works because of the attraction between particles with mass, electromagneticism works between particles with charge/magnetism, the strong nuclear force works between quarks, and the weak nuclear force operates between neutrinos and electrons.

Your underground wire comparison is invalid, because you would have to have a wire and electricty with a whole bunch of electrons and something else nearby which is going to atrract the electrons and cause the spark. You would need three eternal separate items to start your primordial spark.

All your analogies are based on more than one causal item being in existence at the beginning.

Electricity can keep a heart beating. One can merely hook it up to a battery to get it to pump. that is not evidence of any kind of "vibrational waves creating life"

I still would like for you to show me how anything physical or energetic can vibrate without another force acting upon it by attraction or repelling

Metaphysics says a lot of stuff and a lot of it is sheer rubbish, however one doesn't need a soothsayer to tell you that everythiing in the universe is vibrating on elementary particle levels, this is called Modern Science.

So unless there were more than one primordial entity that was eternal, my assumption is that it would not be vibrating. It would merely be "being" "beingness" In my model of reality vibration or frictions didn't start until the concept or thought form of "I am" arose. For there to be an "I" then there must be an "other"

Then it seems natural to me that the the "I" and the "other" began to be attracted or repelled by one another and then maybe your secnario stands a chance after the fact.

The primordial "beingness" aspect probably would be the attrractive property since it recognized or had awareness of "its own" while the rebel "I am" property was trying to repel and get away as fast as it could trying to retain its independence.

My model seems quite reasonable to me and some form of consciousness would have to be the primordial basis for that to hold true.

The 4 basic forces of nature would then be based on this conscious game of hide and seek and then "your vibrations" might come into play after the fact

Okay, Genius. So I don't know physics. I'd have to actually take your answer down and study it to understand what you just told me.

Then again, perhaps even physics doesn't tell the whole story. It is still a limited science conceived by limited consciousness.

Which brings me to another point about the consciousness coming first theory-If something consciously created everything, its consciousness would be more vast than any living mortals. Why can't we access this supreme knowledge? We should have access to the answers of life. The fact that we don't, and that we can't even begin to understand it, suggests there is no information to access, because there was conscious remembrance of creation.

So where does that leave us? With an absent minded God? In my mind the creating source is still unconscious. The fact that other elements are needed to create life beyond energy just points to the fact that

1. There is no singular God

2. There are many Gods (each particle involved in creating life is God.)

This would also account for so many different species of life and the duality of male/female. The Creative sources would also have the dual characteristics

that are revealed in life on this planet.

[Kingfisher]

Why can't we access this supreme knowledge? We should have access to the answers of life. The fact that we don't, and that we can't even begin to understand it, suggests there is no information to access

I don't fully remember the answers, and wouldn't know how to express them if I did. When we exist as the flesh we are bound by the laws of the flesh, and there's a reason why can't see through the Veil. I really wish I could share the experience... it's turtles all the way down.

[Dan56]

Which brings me to another point about the consciousness coming first theory-If something consciously created everything, its consciousness would be more vast than any living mortals. Why can't we access this supreme knowledge? We should have access to the answers of life. The fact that we don't, and that we can't even begin to understand it, suggests there is no information to access, because there was conscious remembrance of creation.

We do have access to the answers of life, but the problem is, no one believes the answers. People seldom accept what they can't intellectualize for themselves. God explaining the intricacies of creation to us is tantamount to us explaining algebra to a cat.

We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Dan54

[Fawzo]

We do have access to the answers of life, but the problem is, no one believes the answers. People seldom accept what they can't intellectualize for themselves. God explaining the intricacies of creation to us is tantamount to us explaining algebra to a cat.

We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

I just hurt myself falling out of my chair because I find myself agreeing 99.9% with Dan.

[reverend irma]

Okay, I did some research and this is what I found.

What I proposed is that only one thing was in existence, Energy. The one casual item in my theory is the fact that energy works alone and happens by chance. Energy has the ability to act on its own without the help or accompaniment of another force or aide.

Vibration is the natural state of energy for vibration is a wave of shaking, quivering, fluctuation, pulsing, reverberating motion caused by a force of power.

Electrical phenomena does not need another primordial force to exist. When I speak of energy I speak of the electric currents in the universe. Electricity is made up of subatomic particles composed of nucleons and atoms. These are what determines the electromagnetic interactions in energy.

The movement or flow of these electrically charged particles is what is vibrating. This vibrating energy influences all other particles that come in contact with it.

I don't believe that Electrical phenomena could recognize what is was, nor do I feel that it could have any awareness of "its own" or the ability to rebel; "I am."

Energy is power, it cannot comprehend, therefore it cannot be aware of its own existence, sensations, thoughts, or surroundings. In order to comprehend there must be a mind. To have a mind, there must be a brain so it can process, formulate, think, perceive, judge, grasp and understand.

Energy does not have a brain. There is no center of thought or central nervous system displayed in energy.

To explain my theory I will start by saying many of the particles that are found in all living things came from the energy of the stars. A star is a massive, self luminous ball of plasma held together by gravity.

The sun is considered a star. The sun is also the Earths largest energy source. When thinking of energy and how life came into being, we can use Einstein's famous equation mass in to energy: E=mc².

In the beginning of creation subatomic particles assembled into atoms creating Hydrogen atoms which then vibrated into clumps under the force of gravity.

Once these clumps attached to each other and grew in size, the rapid speed of their vibration started a nuclear fusion which heated to such an extent that helium formed and began releasing large amounts of light into the sky; this light is now called a star.

A star glows because the fusing atoms are releasing energy and creating iron. As a star gets hotter in temperature, the heavier elements like carbon and oxygen are formed. As a star ages, it then fuses the helium with hydrogen to form lithium.

Once a star has created enough iron it will burst inward with enough energy to immediately fuse some of the atoms into higher elements like Nickel, Krypton, Gold, Uranium. This quick and violent implosion releases an enormous amount of energy called a supernova.

The exploded remains from a supernova travel throughout the universe only to someday clump together with other stardust and give birth to a new star. This is the life of our universe: one energy source vibrates into another energy source until new life is formed.

It is said that besides water, about 93% of the mass in a human body is stardust. water, H20, whose molecule structure contains one part oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, is the most abundant compound on Earth's surface, covering about 70% of the planet's surface.

This info came from the book, Cosmos: By Author Carl Sagan.

Physics of the Human Body (Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering) By Author Irving P. Herman

Made from Stardust: Exploring the Place of Human Beings within Creation. By Author Denis Edwards.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=27757, http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/question/?id=1477

P.S. This energy is what I refer to as Source Energy, IMO this is God, The unconscious creator of life.

Edited January 10, 2011 by reverend irma

[RevRainbow]

Okay, Genius. So I don't know physics. I'd have to actually take your answer down and study it to understand what you just told me.

Will you? Perhaps Fawzo is a genius.

Then again, perhaps even physics doesn't tell the whole story. It is still a limited science conceived by limited consciousness.

A dual statement which first says you dont understand physics, then you define it as limited. This is the same response one gets on spiritual matters when not or mis understood. "Sour grapes!" We all are limited to some degree, therefore all our understanding is limited. But some know more than others, much more.

Which brings me to another point about the consciousness coming first theory-If something consciously created everything, its consciousness would be more vast than any living mortals. Why can't we access this supreme knowledge? We should have access to the answers of life. The fact that we don't, and that we can't even begin to understand it, suggests there is no information to access, because there was conscious remembrance of creation.

Rev Irma, The above statement comes from your personal experience, as does comments we all make. It should be evident, to us, from these statements that others have had different or more in-depth experiences than our own. I also agree with Dan that we do have access to the answers of life, and that some have discerned them better through observation and contemplation of sacred writings.Notice that all our life experiences remain in our mind's memory banks. They cannot always be accessed and, sometimes, out of the blue, we remember something long forgotten. There always was the information in our brain, but we could not access it.

So where does that leave us? With an absent minded God? In my mind the creating source is still unconscious.

It leaves me no different than before your posting. Perhaps it is not God who is absent-minded nor unconscious, rather we are the ones who fumble for access with the wrong set of keys and are not conscious of the fact it is a combination lock.

The fact that other elements are needed to create life beyond energy just points to the fact that

This is your summary incorrectly assessed from the info some of us have provided. If God is the Ultimate Energy, then He alone sets things in motion by creating the other aspects which follow through with the process. No other elements were needed to begin creation other than the initial "God said..."

1. There is no singular God

I disagree.

2. There are many Gods (each particle involved in creating life is God.)

God is all permeating, so therefore, in view of the One God, then all the particles you mention are not separate entities, but One. This makes your parenthetical statement true, IMO.

This would also account for so many different species of life and the duality of male/female.

Why would it?

The Creative sources would also have the dual characteristics

that are revealed in life on this planet.

Sort of. God is neither male or female, neither is our spirit. Simply put, in human terms, God, as well as our spirit, is androgynous. It is our chromosomes which determine whether our flesh will be male or female (sometimes a combination?!). It is my belief it is our soul, our life-force, that early on tries to access the male/female attributes of our spirit based on our pre-determined gender. Sometimes we wind up with a female soul in a male body and vice-versa. Get my drift?

This is why scientists have failed to locate the "Gay" gene. There is no X, Y and ?. It is a matter of the soul and spirit, not the flesh. My opinion, of course.

Edited January 10, 2011 by RevRainbow

[Kingfisher]

The Biography channel has a new sub-series called I Survived... Beyond and Back that I've really been enjoying. I find myself identifying with every single one of these people, even though their stories vary dramatically. Everyone has a different experience and yet there's an undercurrent of commonality that binds them all together. Kinda like religion. Ever awake in the middle of the night and pick something up in that half-dreaming/half-waking state, where there's a familiarity to the object but it doesn't really make sense? That's the feeling I get when we're discussing things like the meaning and origin of life. It doesn't matter if we're talking about physics or G-d, if we adhere to a particular faith or none at all, when we stop saying "I'm right and you're wrong" and compare notes we find that we're all holding the same Truth. When I look into y'alls eyes (metaphorically speaking) as you share your particular points of view, I see the same Light shining...

{physics stuff}

This info came from the book, Cosmos: By Author Carl Sagan.

Physics of the Human Body (Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering) By Author Irving P. Herman

Made from Stardust: Exploring the Place of Human Beings within Creation. By Author Denis Edwards.

You might also find some of Hawking's research to be illuminating... the transformation of Energy to Mass probably isn't uniform across the multiverse. When I can't wrap my brain around how an infinite Energy field could have existed forever, I try to remember that Time and Space are localized phenomena. A 14 billion light-year radius isn't really all that big, it just looks like a lot from way down here. Similarly, I suspect that what we define as "conscious creation" (and the existence or lack thereof) might not matter to G-d at all. But that's just my opinion. ;o)

[RabbiO]

Which brings me to another point about the consciousness coming first theory-If something consciously created everything, its consciousness would be more vast than any living mortals. Why can't we access this supreme knowledge? We should have access to the answers of life. The fact that we don't, and that we can't even begin to understand it, suggests there is no information to access, because there was conscious remembrance of creation.

Not meaning to appear dense, but have you ever tried to teach, let alone discuss, the finer points of theology, philosophy, art, music, psychology, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, history etc. with the family dog. I suspect that if you have you probably lost Rover somewhere before you finished the first sentence.

Yes, we are far more intelligent than the family dog. Yes, we know more, understand more and we learn and understand more each and every day. But the truth remains, assuming that the G-d I serve exists, that we remain in the same position vis-a-vis G-d in trying to understand, as Rover stands with us.

As I have noted before, a quintisential statement regarding G-d is the quote from Isaiah -

כִּי לֹא מַחְשְׁבוֹתַי מַחְשְׁבוֹתֵיכֶם, וְלֹא דַרְכֵיכֶם דְּרָכָי--נְאֻם, יְהוָה

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways," says Adonai.

[reverend irma]

The Biography channel has a new sub-series called I Survived... Beyond and Back that I've really been enjoying. I find myself identifying with every single one of these people, even though their stories vary dramatically. Everyone has a different experience and yet there's an undercurrent of commonality that binds them all together. Kinda like religion. Ever awake in the middle of the night and pick something up in that half-dreaming/half-waking state, where there's a familiarity to the object but it doesn't really make sense? That's the feeling I get when we're discussing things like the meaning and origin of life. It doesn't matter if we're talking about physics or G-d, if we adhere to a particular faith or none at all, when we stop saying "I'm right and you're wrong" and compare notes we find that we're all holding the same Truth. When I look into y'alls eyes (metaphorically speaking) as you share your particular points of view, I see the same Light shining...

You might also find some of Hawking's research to be illuminating... the transformation of Energy to Mass probably isn't uniform across the multiverse. When I can't wrap my brain around how an infinite Energy field could have existed forever, I try to remember that Time and Space are localized phenomena. A 14 billion light-year radius isn't really all that big, it just looks like a lot from way down here. Similarly, I suspect that what we define as "conscious creation" (and the existence or lack thereof) might not matter to G-d at all. But that's just my opinion. ;o)

Sounds good, I will check it out

[reverend irma]

It's not that I don't understand physics, Rev Rainbow, as much as I didn't bother to research before posting I didn't understand.

The dual statement is perceived because

1. I didn't research and

2. Scientists can only prove things to the best of their understanding.

Science is always making new discoveries which point to new directions, often changing original assumptions.

I am happy agreeing to disagree with those whose beliefs differ than my own.

In the end, I believe we all wind up where we spent our whole lives imagining we would, by virtue of the creative thought process.

i.e if we believe in something, we create this belief as an imprint and it takes form and shape in the etheral plane where we will go to once we leave our vessel.

[Kingfisher]

Not meaning to appear dense, but have you ever tried to teach, let alone discuss, the finer points of theology, philosophy, art, music, psychology, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, history etc. with the family dog.

When I take my dog out for a walk she literally throws herself into the grass or snow to roll around in ecstasy. She doesn't attempt to define the experience, she simply wraps herself up in the moment. Her enthusiasm in the way she hurls herself to the ground makes me laugh every time. Her joy is contagious in its simplicity. When I come home she's all a-wiggle with love. Not because of what I provide for her, but just because I'm there. Despite all my intelligence and learning I think my dog understands G-d and the universe much better than I. I'm not trying to teach her, I'm trying to learn from her.