If you visit Alex Grey’s Wikipedia page, you will see at the top a cropped portion of the below photo, taken in 2006 when I went to his Visionary Art workshop in New York. I was recently contacted by a guy who was updating the page, and he asked if he could use my photo, which of course I allowed him to do.

Readers of this blog may know that I have criticized Grey’s work, and I still think those criticisms are legitimate. Reflecting on the difference between concept and percept that I’ve touched on recently, it seems that an easy way to sum up my problem with Grey’s work is that I find too much illustrated concept in his work and not enough direct percept. In other words, his paintings have a predetermined thesis or conclusion in them. I find this to be unfortunate because I really do like some of his work, or at least some aspects of his work, and it seems like such a waste for Grey to use his talent merely to illustrate an ideology. Oh well.

However, on a brighter note, judging from the time I spent with him and his wife Allyson at this workshop, I do think both of them are very friendly and warm-hearted people and I wish the best for them both. Apparently, they have recently acquired some property for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, which will be a permanent exhibit for Alex’s Sacred Mirrors series, for which I congratulate them.

I’ve been away from this blog for a while, and for those of you who have eagerly anticipated my next update, I apologize for my absence. I’ve been preoccupied with more pressing matters and have had to sacrifice time normally dedicated to blogging in order to tend to other priorities.

However, I am very pleased to announce that…
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New podcast over at the Woodshed. It’s a discussion between Matthew Dallman and myself about Technology Fatigue. Checka-checka-check it out!

I recently dusted off an ol’ hard drive that I hadn’t used in a while and found a couple videos made around 2003, when I was in high school. The first is a little short film/animation experiment I did, and the second is a Bach duet performed by myself and a fellow student on the marimbas.

Backflip., originally uploaded by Rutherford Rock.

That’s me doing a backflip on The Second City’s mainstage, taken during my SC class’s final performance last Saturday. Why did I do a backflip during a comedy improv show? Well, before the performance, I gave my fellow performers permission to “pimp” me into doing one if they so desired. “Pimp” is improv lingo for making one or more of your fellow performers do something they probably would not have chosen to do themselves, especially things that are challenging or embarrassing. The game we were playing in this particular scene was a game called “Movie Review” in which two of the performers review a “movie” which is then acted out by the other three performers. The reviewers describe what happens in each scene of the movie before the other three act it out, so whatever they say happens in the scene must happen. For example, “This is the scene where the preacher does the backflip in the bathroom!”

To continue with the percept/concept theme of my last post on God, I offer you a Star Wars analogy:

I’m sure you are familiar with Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars movies. Skywalker exists in a very real way, perceptually that is. When you watch a Star Wars film, you see him with your own eyes. You perceive him directly. And that experience resonates with you for the rest of your life through your memory and imagination. However, conceptually, we all know that Luke Skywalker is not an actual flesh-and-blood person. He is an imaginary character. But why are we drawn to someone who doesn’t actually exist? Because he personifies something that can’t really be put into words, but is nonetheless very real. He is the articulation of a certain something that we perceive/experience in our lives in a very real way. (What that something is we could speculate upon, but that is not the point of this blog post.)

It is the same with God, except instead of watching a movie, we’re living the human experience. We perceive God in everything that we can’t understand (which is pretty much everything, when you get down to it). When we fall in love, we feel God pulling us towards our beloved. When we are moved by a great work of art, we feel God stirring within us. When we look at Nature and ask, “How is this possible?” we see God as the creative force behind it. When we look to the future and ask, “What is going to happen?” we see God coming down the pipeline. But, conceptually, we know that God is not an actual deity with human-like desires and intentions. In that sense, God is an imaginary being, a metaphorical being.

I imagine some of you might now be asking something like, “Well, if that’s true, then why make all this fuss about the existence of God? In essence, you seem to be in agreement with atheism.” To which I reply with another Star Wars analogy:

Say you’re sitting in a movie theater watching Star Wars. All of a sudden, someone stands up and proclaims, “No, this isn’t real! None of this ever happened! Luke Skywalker is not a real person! None of them are! You can’t fool me, George Lucas!” and then stomps out of the theater in defiance of this fictional film. Would you not regard this person as a fool? Would you not feel sorry for this person and their inability to suspend disbelief and enjoy the film? Furthermore, let’s say that after the first person leaves the theater, others start to stand up and say, “Yeah, that guy’s right. This is a hoax. Let’s get out of here.” And they all walk out of the theater until there are only a few people left willing to watch the film. Would it not be tragic for such a great film to lose its audience simply because it is fictional?

Granted, it would also be tragic and embarrassing if people did actually believe that Star Wars was a documentary of real events that actually happened. Not for children, perhaps, but certainly for adults. And granted, there are many people who actually believe that God is a real deity who watches over us and controls the universe. Unfortunately, childish beliefs like these can be common among the religious. But, my point is that atheism throws the baby out with the bathwater when it really is not at all necessary to do so. The value of suspending disbelief in order to fully experience Metaphor is lost with atheism.

I’m sure many of the regular readers of this blog are tired of my obsession with Marshall McLuhan, but I found an interesting McLuhan quote while reading The Medium and The Light: Reflections on Religion that I wish to expound upon. Here ’tis,

I am myself quite aware that there is a great contrast between perceptual and conceptual confrontation; and I think that the “death of Christianity” or the “death of God” occurs the moment they become concept. As long as they remain percept, directly involving the perceiver, they are alive.

In other words, if God is offered as a logical explanation for things like how the universe came into existence, then it doesn’t work. If you try to understand God conceptually, you will quickly run into contradictions and paradoxes. God does not make sense. If God made sense, He wouldn’t be much of a God, would He? If God were easily explainable, He wouldn’t really be worth paying much attention to.

(Aside: I’m not thrilled about calling God “He”, but I’m even less thrilled about writing a sentence like “If God made sense, God wouldn’t be much of a God, would God?” So I work with what I got.)

Atheists are quite aware of this, but they mistake God’s inconceivability as proof of His nonexistence. Don’t get me wrong, Reason and Science are great things and deserve to flourish. However, that which is understandable through Reason and Science is quite puny compared to that which is not (essentially, it’s the finite compared to infinity), and the name for that which is not is “God”.

To me, it seems a little bit silly to argue that God does not exist. It’s like arguing that the color blue does not exist. Let me explain:

Suppose you were to point to the sky and state, “The sky is blue,” and someone responds, “No. You are wrong. Blue does not exist. The color of the sky is merely the color that is evoked by light rays with wavelengths between 440 and 490 nanometers. Blue is just a myth. It’s not real.”

How would you respond to this? Would you say, “No. You are the one who is wrong. Blue does exist. I can’t prove it, but I know in my heart that I’m right,” or would you say something more like, “Dude, chill out. ‘Blue’ is just what we call it. It’s just a word, and as a word, it obviously exists because both of us have been saying it. Furthermore, calling the sky blue does not in any way negate the wavelengths/nanometers thing you were talking about. The color of the sky is what it is. Blue is just the name.” ? Probably the latter.

From the Bible, John 1:1,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Word.

Three profound YouTube videos (strung together below) of Marshall McLuhan talking with Fr. Patrick Peyton about Catholicism and media and faith and family values and things of that nature. If you’re interested in McLuhan’s views on religious matters, these videos will please you greatly, as they did me.