A friend of mine posted this article in the “Good Faith” news section of The Christchurch Press recently, and because i love coffee and i love God, almost equally, i thought i’d paste it here for you all to mull over during that caffeine break of yours….
Great coffee! The barista acknowledges my compliment with a hurried wave and smile. It’s all about the coffee bean she calls as I return to my seat. The coffee bean? Perhaps we should acknowledge the Creator of the coffee bean too? My coffee companion snorts from behind his newspaper partition. You mean God, sitting on a cloud wearing a white robe? No, sorry. There’s another version? I believe there is. You have my attention. How do you know there is a God, a Creator? Let’s start there.
How about we start with coffee? Deal!
So, we know our coffee exists because of our interaction with it. We see, smell, touch and taste it. Regularly! We can rationally conclude that a person with intelligence and skill to make this great coffee must also exist. This coffee informs us of the existence of a creator, in this case, the barista behind the coffee machine. A creation requires a creator.
Go on.
Let’s expand that idea to include the natural world and the world of humanity. Try and conceive of the intelligence required to create a coffee bean. Also consider the intelligence in the evolutionary processes that surround us, which have assisted two coffee addicts to collide at this moment in time with the plant world, and its coffee. What a glorious accident! How can our existence and the phenomenal world we live in be accidental, without design, intelligence and a Creator?
I like this idea!
It’s starting to sound like God could be partially to blame for my ballooning coffee expenses. I’ll let you explain this again to my wife.
Seriously, you’re suggesting a God-intelligence, a Creator, is responsible for my existence, my coffee, and evolutionary processes, which I doubt many of us are conscious of? That requires a leap of faith doesn’t it? I think it requires some small logical steps. Letting go of inherited beliefs and dogma, and an open mind helps too. I struggle with the idea that I can’t see this Creator, this Divine Intelligence you call God. Surely the creation, me in this case, should be able to see my Creator, or at least have some sense of Him? I get the dilemma.
Bahá’ísacred texts explain it in this way: “God in His Essence and in His own Self hath ever been unseen, inaccessible, and unknowable.” God‘s hiding? That’s convenient. I’d hide too! We can see DNA, atomic particles, but not God? Look at this rationally. We, humanity, coexist and interact in the phenomenal world with the animal, the plant and the mineral realms. We coexist and interact, but the lower realms of existence cannot comprehend the higher ones. The barista can understand the qualities and composition of the coffee bean. The coffee bean though has no perception of the realm of humanity. It doesn’t have the capacity. How does that relate to us knowing God?
Bahá’í writings suggest the difference in degree between man and the Creator is “thousands upon thousands of times greater than the difference between vegetable and animal.” Humanity doesn’t have the capacity to see or know the realm of God, which is a Divine Realm of existence far advanced and higher than our own. We can rationally accept a Creator exists because we exist, but it’s not possible for us to comprehend this Divine Intelligence. There’s more to this story I think? Yes, there is which we’ll save for another day. In the meantime we’d better head back to that other unknowable realm. Ah, the office! Takeaway? Better make mine a double shot.
Mark Henderson is a registered counsellor and member of the Christchurch Baha’i community.
