the Rubin vase

You all know the Rubin vase: it's that black-and-white image that the mind interprets as either two faces looking at each other, or a vase. If you don't know both are there, you will probably immediately see one or the other exclusively. If you stare at it long enough though, or if someone tells you there's an alternate interpretation, you will see the image flip, and suddenly you're looking at a completely different picture. There are a lot of different images that work this way, and it's a fun perception game to play: staring at them, trying to flip your perception between one and the other as quickly as you can. The thing is, you never see both at once. While you're looking at a picture of a vase, it is a picture of a vase. When you're looking at a picture of two faces, the vase disappears. Each interpretation of the image is consistent, and persistent: it usually takes some mental wrenching to switch views.

I feel like I've been staring at a Rubin vase for the last year: particularly, the last three or four months. The image is life, the universe, and everything, and the two interpretations are of course the scientific, specifically materialistic view, and the religious, specifically Christian. One view says that material reality is the only reality, and all those insights and impulses which we call "spiritual" arise out of material events and causes. The universe first, then life, then intelligence, then meaning. The other view says that there is a spiritual reality behind the material, that meaning came before matter, and in some unfathomable way gave birth to matter. ("Before" is of course an inappropriate term: time and space are properties of the universe, and if the spiritual view is true, "before," "after," and "outside" are meaningless with regard to the spiritual reality. But we do what we can with the brains we have.)

Now, to a lot of people it appears self-evident that one of these views is true and one is false. I am tempted to call these people lucky. For me, they are like the two interpretations of the Rubin vase: when I'm looking at one, it seems as if it must be true: it is plausible, internally consistent, and sufficient to explain pretty much everything that I feel and observe. But when for some reason the image flips, as when I read a book or talk to a person holding the opposite view, then the opposite view is equally persuasive. Each view has its weaknesses, and I don't lose awareness of these when I switch between views, but when I'm looking at one the objections to it seem trivial, faulty, or ignoble. Worse yet, each view can give a full account of why the alternative is persuasive, even though it's wrong.

As an example, I've just been reading Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. (Which, by the way, I recommend that all my scholarly Christian friends read. If you ever intend to get into a debate with a thoughtful, well-educated atheist, you had better be exposed to the best arguments they have to offer, and this book contains many of them. He especially says some things on the "religion and science are mutually exclusive" line of thought that are important to consider.) The process of reading it, for me, was a torment of multistable perception. I came to it, let me confess, hoping that it would be so unconvincing that I would be able to embark on the road back to Christianity without further qualms or doubts. My hope was half-fulfilled. When I was reading it with a belief in God at the back of my mind, it was unconvincing (though still very much worth the read.) When I was reading it without that belief, it was convincing. Faces. Vase. Faces. Vase. Back and forth until my poor brain is dizzy and sick.

The essential difference between the Rubin dilemma, and the material/spiritual dilemma, is that they can't both be true. Dawkins is very clear about that, for which I'm glad. Either there is a spiritual reality which is independent of the material, or there isn't. You can have something that looks very like religion and belief in God, even something resembling Christianity, while still claiming that the material universe is the first and ultimate reality, but there are a few things you can't have. You can't have resurrection. You can't have eternal life. You can't have true miracles. It is a fundamentally different kind of thing from the faith my friends have, and that I used to claim. But it only serves to exacerbate my problem. My perception shifts, shifts, shifts between these two views, and one of them must be false. But how can I tell which one? How can I decide between two plausible, eternally consistent, and equally complete ways of looking at the world?

No, really, I'm asking you.

In such a quandary, Pascal's Wager looks better than it ever has before. "If you don't know which one to believe, you'd better believe in God, because if it's true you get eternal life and if it's false it won't matter anyway." I still think this is a despicable and impossible solution, however. Does anyone really think that God would accept worship springing from such a motivation? I can't imagine so; ergo, no one who really believed in God could profess belief on these terms. Another, similar, way of solving it would be: "If you don't know which one to believe, why not choose the one that makes you happiest?" (Or most content, or that you think will cause you to lead the best life.) I've already confessed that I'm longing to go back to Christianity. I said before, and I still hold, that if Christianity is true, the story of the world is a comedy (in the Shakespearean sense.) If not, it's a tragedy. And I'm partial to happy endings. Moreover, as long as I cannot call myself a Christian, I will feel divided from the people I love best. It is so, so tempting to simply walk back into church, to smile, to say "I believe, because I can no longer bear not to believe." But again, do I really think that God wants my belief or worship on those terms? No, not for a minute. So I am caught in something very like the liar's paradox: if I don't really believe in God, then I can profess belief, for any of the above reasons. If I do believe in God, then I can't, because I don't have grounds for belief that are worthy of the God I believe in. But does that mean my refusal to profess belief demonstrates my belief?

That's where I am right now. Further bulletins as events warrant, and please for the love of God, or of material grandeur and beauty, if you have any light to shed on my dilemma, cast it my way.

some words, by one of those "men whom one cannot hope to emulate"

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.

***

The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

***

"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me.
I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law--
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.


-In Memoriam, vv 54-56
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson