The Big Blue Castle

Stephen Hawking made some big waves last month upon the release of his latest book: The Grand Design. You've probably heard about it already, but indulge me. For the record, I haven't read the book yet and have only browsed the internet for quotes from it.

In The Grand Design Professor Hawking syllogizes (his hypothesis is based on both M-Theory and the Big Bang Theory) an argument for a self-creating universe. You may have heard lately that Hawking has stated that the universe was not made by God. Well he hasn't actually said this. He does, however, come very close to it. This seems to stem from an article in last month's Wall Street Journal where they printed an excerpt from the book. The excerpt was titled: "Why God Did Not Create the Universe (There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required)." Then below this it says: "By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW." This makes it appear as though Hawking and his physicist writing partner had written the excerpt and the title of it. Obviously a guy like Hawking does not send in articles to publications like the WSJ. Of course the excerpt title was given by a staff member there.

But Hawking does say something very disturbing: "As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."

That sure sounds like an atheist talking to me. This genius professor has never professed a belief in any kind of God, but in his past books he always seemed open to the possibility of a mind in the mix of things. What happened? Hawking is now 68 years old. With Lou Gehrig Disease, it's amazing he's lived this long. He's made some amazing discoveries throughout his career. It seems to me, however, that he's losing his perspective on what science is actually capable of achieving.

For instance, he says, "According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing."

Really? Out of nothing? Undoubtedly he's knowledgeable about primordial matter—that small bit of stuff which has always existed and from which our universe sprang. The only thing that comes from nothing is nothing. Something had to have always been here. According to Big Bang Theory, in the beginning the universe was a very tiny place indeed. There was not in it the four forces of energy we know so well today, but instead one super-force. Was there matter? We have to remember that all energy has matter, and all matter has energy. It's very much like the way a particle can also be a wave. Therefore we have to think of this super-energy as being matter also, but not yet in a material state so to speak. The super-energy would remain in an energy state for a an unknown period of time before it changed into matter, so we should probably think of it more as potential matter. At the very least we can say that the energy has always been here. Energy is not "nothing." But I am certainly not telling you anything Mr. Hawking does not know himself and know better than I, so why he states that universes were created out of nothing is curious. He even mentions primordial elements (what that energy turned into) at one point in the book and goes on to list many of the things that had to have taken place to the nth degree for a place like Earth to exist where life can thrive.

The tale of how the primordial universe of hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium evolved to a universe harboring at least one world with intelligent life like us is a tale of many chapters. The forces of nature had to be such that heavier elements—especially carbon—could be produced from the primordial elements, and remain stable for at least billions of years. Those heavy elements were formed in the furnaces we call stars, so the forces first had to allow stars and galaxies to form. Those in turn grew from the seeds of tiny inhomogeneities in the early universe.

Even all that is not enough: The dynamics of the stars had to be such that some would eventually explode, precisely in a way that could disperse the heavier elements through space. In addition, the laws of nature had to dictate that those remnants could recondense into a new generation of stars, these surrounded by planets incorporating the newly formed heavy elements.

By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5% in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4% in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if protons were 0.2% heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms.

If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit is necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible. In any but three dimensions even a small disturbance, such as that produced by the pull of the other planets, would send a planet off its circular orbit, and cause it to spiral either into or away from the sun.

The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way.

Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God.

In reality he hasn't even begun to list all the things that had to happen for us to be here. That life exists anywhere is a miracle beyond any proportion the mind can conceive. There are billions of biological evolutionary steps that had to happen and happen in just the right way at just the right time, all while the cosmological setting of our planet maintained a near perfect orbit for billions of years in just the right conditions. Professor Andrew Watson from the University of East Anglia, a mathematician, says:

If we learned the planet would be habitable for a set period and that we had evolved early in this period, then even with a sample of one, we’d suspect that evolution from simple to complex and intelligent life was quite likely to occur. By contrast, we now believe that we evolved late in the habitable period, and this suggests that our evolution is rather unlikely. In fact, the timing of events is consistent with it being very rare indeed. ... Complex life is separated from the simplest life forms by several very unlikely steps and therefore will be much less common. Intelligence is one step further, so it is much less common still....

He goes on to say that the probability of each step occurring at all is less than 10% and that the probability of intelligent life occurring is less than .01% over 4-billion years. Also, each step must happen in a precise order, and this is even less likely.

Professor Hawking invokes the atheist magic dust of infinity to account for all this. M-theory predicts nearly an infinite number of universes to have coincided with the Big Bang. He believes that with an infinite number of universes anything and everything will eventually happen—possibly more than once. Some people actually believe that infinity could eventually produce an exact duplicate of Earth somewhere in some world—perhaps many copies with doppelgangers of each one of us.

Now I ask you, if you were to roll one die, what are the chances of that die coming up on a number you predict? One in six of course. And the chances of two dice coming up on the same number is much greater than that. If you had a trillion dice, what do you think the chances are of every one of them coming up on the same number? It will likely never happen did you say? Every time you add more dice your odds get worse—not better. The number of particles that had to be aligned just so in such a way to get an Earth and intelligent life on it is immeasurable. It might as well be an infinite number. To think this would ever happen again is the stuff of such madness that only a conspiracy theorist of the highest order would entertain such a notion. I've heard similar imaginative ramblings from professors who claimed that if you tossed a box of sand in the air enough times, the grains would eventually land on the floor in a perfect outline of the Mona Lisa along with every other piece of art ever created. The fact is that this has been attempted several times with computer generated random graphics, and not once has it ever exactly duplicated any recognizable artwork.

Here's something else to consider. I mentioned before a trillion dice all coming up on the same number as probably being impossible even given an infinite length of time. Let's say they all had to come up with the number-3. That atheist magic dust of infinity also works the other way. If you want to say that anything is possible given an infinite amount of time, then it's just as possible that a trillion dice could all land on the number-4 every time you threw them till the end of time... (Wonderful how a tiny ellipsis can represent something as large as infinity isn't it)?

I'll tell you how I view this world of ours. Suppose you had a bush pilot fly you to a remote part of Alaska that wasn't on any map. Someplace where there exist mountains, valleys, and lakes that no man has ever seen or set foot on. And after hiking through this barren landscape for several weeks you climb to the top of a mountain and find there a large blue castle luxuriously furnished with all the requisites for life—a refrigerator full of food, running water, a bed and chair that seemed tailor-made for you, a furnace to keep you warm, a thermostat set at the exact temperature your body desires, electric lights along with a hydro powered generator outside perfectly placed by a waterfall to keep them on, and every other modern convenience you could ever desire. If it's a matter of odds, which would seem more likely to you: that this big blue castle and everything in it "just happened" to be produced by mere chance? or that someone created it?

My Life as a Quitter

I don't know what's wrong with me. I really don't. I've passed up so many opportunities to really do something with my life. My parents discouraged me from going to college, and it'd hard to blame them. They really couldn't afford to send me, and my grades sure weren't good enough for a scholarship. I never brought home a book during high school. Actually, I hated school and hated studying, but I somehow had it in my head that I would do well in college despite my track record for being lazy with the books and not sticking with things. I didn't recognize it for what it was then. I just knew I had a kind of restlessness in me that wouldn't allow me to focus on anything long enough to get good at it or take it seriously. I also had a prideful streak. I was a darn good basketball player for instance, but when we moved to a new town and I had to transfer schools after my sophomore year, I decided I didn't like the new coach and would just be a walk-on in college. Of course college never happened really. (I did eventually get a year in). I went into the Army instead and was basically a washout there too. That is, I didn't even finish my first hitch once I was offered an early out. Also, my second day at boot-camp, myself and one other recruit, were pulled out of the lineup and taken to a room where we were both offered the chance to go to West Point because our entrance scores were pretty good. Here I finally had my chance to go to college, and I promptly turned it down!, saying I had already had enough of the Army. All I did was complain the whole time I was in too. And there were other missed opportunities. Lots of them.

My sister and I were going through some old books our parents had after they died. In one of two big family bibles I found the following pictures. I drew them when I was only about five or six years old, and I think anyone would admit these are pretty accurate drawings for someone so young. And no, I didn't trace them either. Most of these cartoons were on a lunchbox and thermos I had. I just sat in front of them and drew what I saw. The Popeye drawing comes from a punching bag I had. Part of the reason it looks a little out of kilter compared to the others is because I had to try to follow around the curve of the bag,

and also because I wasn't very good yet at up-sizing and down-sizing pictures, so trying to make this big print on the punching bag fit onto a small piece of drawing paper was quite challenging for me as a child. However, I soon managed to draw this Popeye picture from memory. I recall all the kids in my 1st grade class hovering around my desk waiting for me to finish a drawing of Popeye for each of them.

Many people, especially teachers and an artist from our church, constantly told my parents to get me into an art school. I'll tell you what happened though. When I was in the 5th grade I met a kid who was better then me. He already knew all about shading and other things no one had taught me.

I didn't realize at the time that someone had taught him these things. I just figured he was naturally a lot better or smarter than me, and I didn't want to do something unless I could be the best at it, so I basically quit drawing after that. That was my life in nutshell until I was in my late thirties. I seldom finished things, and would quit anything art related if I thought someone was better than me. I guess the latter was a pride thing. I wanted to make my mark in the world. It's hard to do that when other people's marks are so much bigger than yours.

What turned me around? God and Christianity did. CS Lewis once said that Christianity was an education in itself, and that it's what permitted a guy like John Bunyan to change the world with just one book despite his lack of formal education. I think this must be true. I had read the bible all my life, but had never really studied the thoughts of other people about God and the world. I had plenty of my own thoughts about the cosmos, because I had been a slacker and had little else to do but daydream and think about life. I figured no one else thought like I did about things. Then I read Mere Christianity and found someone who had all my thoughts. More than that, Lewis knew of lots of other people who had had those same thoughts long before either of us did. He had studied the philosophy of mankind through the ages and the mythology that inspired so much of it. Before long, reading philosophy became a passion for me too, especially theology and thoughts in general from Christian thinkers. I learned things from them, but it was mostly this confirmation of my own thoughts I was after, and I found it in spades. There was something about studying spirituality on a deeper lever that turned my whole life around although I couldn't tell you how it happened. All I knew was that when I emerged a few years later on the other side, I was suddenly a better man. I could stick to projects and get things done. I've recorded several CDs, written a book, made a movie etc. None of these are great art by anyone's measure, but just the fact that I was able to get them done seems a minor miracle considering how useless I was before. I guess that's the bottom line in a Christian self-education. It takes useless people and makes them useful. They used to call Christian hippies Jesus Freaks, but those same people would reply, "God doesn't make freaks out of people; he makes people out of freaks."

I always knew I would have to be an autodidact if I was going to learn anything in life. I don't like formal education. I enjoy learning what I want to learn on my own. But it took Christianity to give me the tools to do it right. I'm fifty-one now, but I'd like to think I'm actually gaining steam, and the best is yet to come.

Fray José de Guadalupe Mojica

When I was about five years old I was playing in the woods near my house when I found some old broken records sticking out of the dirt. They looked like they had been there for years. They were also about a quarter of an inch thick--much thicker than other records, and I had never seen anything like them before. I eventually discovered that these were Edison diamond discs and could only be played back on a diamond disc player.

Ever since then I've wanted an old Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph. When I saw one on Craigslist this week for only $150, I jumped on it, figuring I'd never see one that cheap again.

The guy I bought it from also gave me one diamond disc record to go with it. Now I'm not one of those people who believes there are no coincidences and that every single event in my life is orchestrated by God. For one thing, a life that's nothing more than a written script would be very little fun for God or me either one. When someone ties their dog to the back of a bumper and accidentally drives off later, dragging the dog to his death, I don't think God's behind that. That person simply made a mistake. Accidents happen. Tornadoes kill people. Old folks fall and break their hips. There's plenty of happenstance in the world. But there are also times when God intervenes and puts you on a particular path for a particular reason, and it's important to be able to discern between the two. And now, as I listened to the voice coming through the speaker I began to feel that God put this recording in front of me for a reason. The recording was made by someone I had never heard of. His name was Jose Mojica. I began to research him, and was very glad I did.

Jose was born in Mexico in 1896. As a young teenager he was already tall and strong. He ran with a tough crowd and eventually joined Francesco Madera's group of revolutionaries that ousted Porfirio Diaz from power during the Mexican Revolution. It was also about this time that Jose discovered he had a real talent for singing opera. Overnight he was able to bring his family out of poverty and became a sensation both in Mexico and abroad. But this was just the beginning. While on a trip to Mexico, Enrico Caruso took in an opera in which Jose was appearing. He was so taken with the young singer that he had him brought over to his table. They quickly became friends for what was left of Caruso's short life, and Caruso, unbeknownst to Mojica, recommended him to the producer of the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in 1919. Jose would remain there for the next nine years singing with the Chicago Opera. It was during this time that Thomas Edison signed him to sing for Edison Records after having no luck finding any good Italian tenors.

Before long Mojica's talents and good looks also came to the attention of movie producers, and in 1930 he made his only American movie called "One Last Kiss" in which he played a sort of Zorro-like singing cowboy. He made several other films in America aimed primarily at a Mexican audience, and afterwards he would go back to Mexico and become a regular big screen attraction there where he was known as the Mexican version of Valentino.

But he also, for some unexplainable reason, would very often find himself playing religious roles in films even though he was not a particularly religious person like his mother. In fact, Jose was always in search of a good time, and more often than not he found it. He always had an eye for the ladies, and the ladies sure had an eye for him.

He had several friends in both the opera and movie industries. People like John Wayne, John Ford, and Gary Cooper often would visit at his sprawling Mexican estate. He would later give this estate to his mother as a gift.

He never knew his father, and like a lot of young boys in that situation, he grew-up being very close to his mother. After her death in 1942 his life would take a staggering turn. Before she died, she asked him to give his life to the church. This was the one woman in his life he found hard to refuse. But another would soon enter. He was working in America at the time, all the while deep in grief and depression, when he suddenly had a vision of St. Theresa of Avila who outright commanded him to follow the path of Christ. Now he was certain of what he had to do.

At the age of 46, he gave away all his possessions, most of it to the church, and started a new career. He boarded a plane for Peru with nothing but $35 in his pocket, and joined the Franciscan order as a monk and was given the name of Fray José de Guadalupe Mojica. Within five years he would attain priesthood.

After becoming a full-fledged priest, the church decided they would use his talents rather than put them to waste, and he began singing at many fundraiser events while also doing missionary work. He eventually worked in three more films over the next twenty years, always playing himself as a priest, with the proceeds going to the church.

He wrote two of these films including one which was based on his big selling 1958 autobiography I, a Sinner which he wrote to earn funds for the rebuilding of a school which had fallen from an earthquake. During the mid 1950s he counseled another great Mexican movie star, Humberto Almazan, advising him to also follow the gospels, turn his back on the bright lights, and give away all his possessions, which he did, and today Father Almazan's story is equally inspiring.

In 1969, Jose was given a tribute by the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City. He was beginning to go deaf, and it was one of the last events at which anyone would ever hear him sing. Soon after he returned to Peru where he spent his final years in retirement among fellow monks.

He died in 1974 of heart problems, and oddly, like Thomas Edison who had given him his start in recording, he was nearly completely deaf but as content as a man can be in this world. It's been said that Edison liked Mojica's voice so much that he played his records every night before going to bed even though he was so deaf that he had to actually bite down on the record console so the vibrations from the record would travel through his teeth and make their way to his inner ear.

For a hundred and fifty bucks I got more than a record machine; I got an education.

Closer To Truth

This is probably the most thought provoking video website on the internet. They have all the episodes that the "Closer To Truth" TV Show has ever done. I don't think there are many stations in America that carry the show, so it's good to see it on the web. It features interviews with scientists and philosophers talking about God and the universe. Some of you may be surprised how many scientists are either believers or are at least open-minded about the God question. Actually according to most poles the majority of scientists in the world believe in a higher power.

Closer To Truth

The Other History Of The Jews

I've only read bits and parts of the works of Josephus until now. I already knew there were several things in his Jewish Antiquities which were slightly different from the history of the Jews as given in the biblical books, and that there were some details which were exceedingly different. Historians, however, probably turn to Josephus more often than not for the stories he gives that are nowhere to be found in any bible or any other piece of writing. Now there are other Jewish writings such as the Talmud which also give a somewhat different version of biblical writings here and there, but those works generally deal with a very different kind of information centered almost exclusively on religious rituals and the spiritual life rather than a historical outline of a nation.

At any rate, I've finally decided to read all, or most of Josephus' Antiquities although I'll probably skim less interesting parts, and I'll not read much of his other volume on the Jewish War with Rome. I thought I would share some observations that might wet your appetite to read Josephus yourself.

He begins much as the bible does, with the creation, followed by stories about Adam, Eve, and their children. He then moves on to Babel, the flood, and the patriarchs etc. The Gospel of Luke starts out with the author sounding as though he intends to write a more accurate history of Christ than some of the other writings about him which had already surfaced (whether he is referring to Mathew, Mark or apocryphal gospels is unknown, and of course John's Gospel hadn't been written yet). Luke states this in quite diplomatic tones however. But Josephus is not nearly so subtle. He starts by saying, "...I intend to refute those whose writings were falsifying the truth...."

In his retelling of the tempter in the Garden he mentions a tree of wisdom (knowledge?) which Adam and Eve were not to touch, but he says nothing about a tree of life. One of the more astounding claims he makes here is, "At that time, all living creatures spoke a common language, and a serpent maliciously lured the woman into tasting of the tree of wisdom..." So he believes that every animal, bird, fish etc. spoke and communicated. How fish were able to speak underwater is difficult to comprehend. And how larger creatures such as men or horses were able to hear the tiny voices of lice, dust mites, and fleas is beyond understanding.

His take on the story of Cain and Abel is that Cain was "depraved and greedy". He goes on to say that God preferred Abel's offering because it was "produced by nature, not human ingenuity." This is interesting because the bible doesn't tell us why God preferred Abel's offering. There's also the fact that God does in many instances seem to have little use for the human capacity in using our intellects while building things. Many times the Jews were told to build objects like altars without the use of tools, as though a tool would defile the rocks or wood. I realize the tree of knowledge was symbolic of something by which mankind tapped into imagination, but I've often wondered if our use of imagination in order to make tools, smelt metals, and build things was something God was angry about. In fact, the book of Enoch says that it was some of the fallen angels who taught men the use of the first tools, medicines, sorcery, astrology and so on. Later God appears to have relented and even gave specific instructions on building-projects. Josephus also says this about Cain: "Indulging in every form of vice and violence, he grew rich and ended the simple life by inventing weights and measures." We can come up with all kinds of scenarios concerning Cain having inventing weights and measures (something not mentioned in Genesis) and how he might have cheated people (think of the butcher's thumb on the scale) to get rich by them; however, it's Josephus' line about how Cain "ended the simple life" that's more interesting to me. I think Josephus believed that eating from the tree of wisdom/knowledge was the beginning of the end of a more simple kind of existence mankind was originally meant for--probably not so different from the Neanderthal who ate what he could find and lived wherever he found shelter in his natural surroundings. If Josephus was right, it must make us wonder why God would bother to make man such an uninteresting creature in the beginning?

Josephus says of Seth's descendants, that they, "...discovered the science of astronomy. To prevent their findings from perishing in the destruction by fire and deluge predicted by Adam, they inscribed them on two pillars, one of brick and the other of stone. The latter exists to this day in the land of Seiris."

If those two pillars ever actually existed, no one else seems to have written about them or knew where they were. We have no ancient records of Adam having predicted the flood or another kind of destruction by fire. Josephus often mentions and quotes historians from other nations and equates them with certain old testament writings. It may be that he believed something another historian wrote about a man predicting a deluge and a fire was actually about Adam and incorporated that into his own Antiquities. He also quotes from questionable sources from time to time. For instance, he makes mention of some writings by the Chaldean historian, Berosus, where the famous historian supposedly talks about the location of the ark, but many of the works attributed to Berosus are thought to be later forgeries. Josephus also says (as do other ancient historians in regards to the flood) that there were other people besides Noah's family that survived by fleeing to the mountains.

I've barely scratched the surface concerning Josephus' work. Even though his writing isn't always trustworthy, he'll give you things to think about, and in the process, you may find yourself with a whole new perspective on biblical figures such as Abraham and Moses, both of whom he makes out to be very smart and brave military men rather than just the humble prophets most of us generally think of them as being. (He confirms, or perhaps just borrows, what the earlier Jewish historian, Artapanus, said about Moses leading an Egyptian military campaign well before the Exodus in which the Ethiopians were defeated). If you can read his works with an open mind, neither believing too much nor too little, (and how rare those individuals are) you may find yourself making connections within ancient legends that will change your outlook on the history of both the Jews and the peoples of the Mesopotamia Valley.

My Dad

The nursing home my dad has been recuperating in temporarily just called saying they couldn't wake him up this morning and that they're sending him to the hospital. He's been sleeping almost constantly for two days and has lots of things wrong with him. Maybe it's just his time to go. But if he's going to live I want him to live well and not be sick. Prayers are appreciated.

Update: Dad died about an hour or two after I left this post. Thanks for your concern and your prayers. This is one of the last photos taken of him. He was teaching at his little Assembly of God Church, the same one I grew-up in.

Initiations of Myth

It's often been said that real mythology died out with the Norse sagas. The people who say this assume that science now provides us with the answers to our origins and the origins of all things, and that if science can't yet answer all our questions, just give science time. Statements like these make me think that real wisdom died with the ancient Greeks because Plato would have been very amused at such assumptions. And it wasn't as though science didn't exist in Plato's time. They were already working with very advanced concepts in geometry. Eratosthenes had actually managed to calculate the Earth's circumference by the 3rd century BC to within 15% accuracy. Aristotle probably knew more about zoology (a science he practically invented) than any man who ever lived. Earth science, biology, and botany all had their start in ancient Greece. But those Greeks were smart enough to know that science always introduces more questions than it answers. Plato would have told us that the world would always be in need of fresh myths.

Myths vaguely explain the unexplainable in wispy, shadowy terms like dream symbolism. God sends us these myths through various means. They can come by way of imagination, meditational states, dreaming, real life strings of coincidences where it seems the world is trying to tell you something, or through the observance of animals and nature.

A few years ago I was watching the 70s sci-fi movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, certainly one of the very best films ever made about alien encounters with man. As I was watching, I came to two realizations. One is that our generation's stories about space aliens are a new kind of mythology. There are a few tales here and there about visitors from space found among ancient legends but certainly not anywhere near the level our age has produced. Whether there really are intelligent non-spiritual life forms (beings composed of matter like us rather than ghostly types of beings) outside of Earth I wouldn't venture to guess. But there have been so many tales of encounters with space aliens that even if these tales come only by way of trance states, dreams, or imagination we still have to wonder what these stories are trying to tell us. Even if people are just tapping into the world of imagination, that world is ruled by God too. We have to consider that he may be sending us a new myth. We should ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this new myth? While I do believe the many, many stories of space aliens and UFO encounters are a kind of new mythology for our age, I have yet to discover its deepest meanings.

The other realization I came to while watching the movie was the way myths come to us in this hazy sort of state. In the story, certain people around the world were having visionary experiences that were very undefined. They would see an object shaped a certain way, kind of like a small mound, and it would remind them of something, but they couldn't quite figure out what that something was. A man would be shaving and look down at the mound shape of cream in his hand before putting it on his face and realize it meant something. A person might be eating mashed potatoes and instinctively push them together to form a mound shape without knowing why. Another person might be driving by a haystack and have that same vague recollection of something. People started trying to better define what this something was. They would try to draw it over and over or make clay models etc. Some of them eventually managed to get a form that satisfied them. They all created the exact same shape that looked just like Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, which ended up being the place where the space aliens landed.

I think this is very much the way God introduces myths to mankind. These symbols may come through dreams, real-life experiences, or any number of other ways. We should be on our guard when we notice many individuals all encountering the same manifestations of what may or may not be imagination, but which seem more symbolic than anything. They will generally be something that gives you a vague sense of having come from another world. As fortune would have it, I just finished rereading Arthur C Clarke's 2001 A Space Odyssey last week and started on CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew a few days ago. They both contain passages that to me convey the same mythical message even though the two storylines are quite different.

From Clarke's story:

David Bowman, an astronaut, is flying in a space pod toward a mysterious object. It's a giant monolith nearly a mile high resting on Saturn's moon--Japetus. He tries to land on it and instead feels himself sinking into it. As he does so he can see that inside this slab of darkness there are innumerable stars. Time begins to slow down as well. It says, "The seconds themselves were passing with incredible slowness, as if time itself were coming to a stop. At last, the tenth-of-a-second counter froze between 5 and 6." Eventually he comes out into another world. Whether it's merely another part of our universe or another universe altogether he can't say for sure:

He was emerging from the tunnel. ... At the same time, he felt that he was moving upward.... But even before the space pod soared out into the open he knew that this place had nothing to do with Japetus, or with any world within the experience of man. ... He must be above a world of enormous size--perhaps one much larger than Earth. Yet despite its extent, all the surface that Bowman could see was tessellated into obviously artificial patterns that must have been miles on a side. It was like the jigsaw puzzle of a giant that played with planets; and at the centers of many of those squares and triangles and polygons were gaping black shafts--twins of the chasm from which he had just emerged. ...in a flash of insight that might have been wholly spurious, he knew what this thing must surely be. It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy.

So imagine an artificial planet that has upon its surface thousands of giant domino-shaped monoliths, each of them routing you to a different world or a different part of our world. We're never really made clear on that. At the book's end we certainly find David Bowman living in a totally different kind of existence, yet he can still find his way back to Earth anytime he desires. He's living in a very strange form of non-material existence now.

From CS Lewis story:

Two children, Digory and Polly, have found that all the houses on their street are connected together with no space between them. There's a passageway in the attics, a small space close to the roofline that will allow you to crawl from house to house. Climbing through it, they accidentally come out into Digory's house but in the upper room where his uncle lives. The uncle is a typical freemason magician wannabe who thinks he knows things that he doesn't. He does, however, have in his possession a set of rings that will bring you to and from another world. Both children put on the yellow rings and end up in something like a small pool, but you can breath in this pool and you don't get wet. It comes up into a wooded area that appears to be another kind of reality that's very dreamlike and is described as a place where nothing ever happens:

The pool he [Digory] had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others--a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. ... This wood was very much alive.
...

"What's the matter?" said Polly.

"I've just had a really wonderful idea," said Digory. " What
are all the other pools?"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn't we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool."
...

"You mean, this wood might be only one of them?"

"No, I don't believe this wood is a world at all. I think it's just a sort of in-between place." ... Think of our tunnel under the slates at home. It isn't a room in any of the houses. In a way, it isn't really part of any of the houses. But once you're in the tunnel you can go along it and come out into any of the houses in the row. Mightn't this wood be the same?--a place that isn't in any of the worlds, but once you've found that place you can get into them all." ... "And of course that explains everything," he said. "That's why it is so quiet and sleepy here. Nothing ever happens here. like at home. It's in the houses that people talk, and do things, and have meals. Nothing goes on in the in-between places....

"The wood between the worlds," said Polly dreamily. "It sounds rather nice."

Lewis says a little later: "It seems to be always the same time in the Wood between the Worlds." So, like in Clarke's story, this sort of switching station is a place of no-time.

Now in the case of the Lewis story it seems rather obvious that he's giving a short lecture on the out-of-body experience taking you to another world and the trancelike sleep state you need to attain that kind of journey. However, he also makes it clear throughout the Narnia tales that you should never try to enter these worlds on your own, but rather, you should wait to be drawn in by Aslan if you're to go at all. He's obviously read his MacDonald.

The Clarke story is of course a little different, yet at the same time we have here two tales expressing doorways into new worlds and the unknown. We also find in both Clarke's novel and the Narnia tales a new world that's coming into view which will change our current world. A new heavens and earth so to speak. And it is in these other worlds that we find the beings (either God or godlike) who truly run our own world and bring it into being.

How did these two authors end up writing stories about trips to other worlds through holes in reality in much the same way? I really don't think Clarke borrowed from Lewis on this (although they did correspond from time to time). And they aren't the only ones. For instance, there is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel" which is about a cosmic library that represents the universe, which in turn represents not only multidimensional space and time, but the building blocks of reality on every level:

The universe (which others call the library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below--one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides.... One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first--identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. ... Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. ... (Mystics claim that their secret ecstasies reveal to them a circular chamber containing an enormous circular book with a continuous spine that goes completely around the walls. But their testimony is suspect, their words obscure. That cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice for the moment that I repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circumference is unattainable.

Men for ages have searched through the library trying to find the meaning of life etc. It contains all the mysteries of the world. Now you may look at the passage from Borges and not see any connection to either of the other stories. But I think most of you will feel there is a certain something being conveyed that is somehow related, and yet you can't say why. Well that is precisely how the symbols of myth come into the world. What does it all mean, these infinite spaces, infinite worlds, and travel between them? Does it relate at all to the space alien myth our age has produced as well? I really don't have an answer. But I feel there's one coming. We are experiencing a myth in the making, and that myth has to do with a remaking of the world. Perhaps God is merely trying to give us a sense of destiny. Mankind cannot go on existing without one.