Obsessed with Time

Thomas Moran, A Miracle of Nature (1913)
A recent press release by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility points out, for me, the problems we run into when we try to use language, and only language, to define the spiritual and scientific reality that embraces us with love and beauty. It seems that some creationists have got to the Park Service Administration for political gain, and got them not only to sell a book in the Grand Canyon bookstore that claims the Canyon is only 6,100 years old, but also to gag the Park Service Rangers and Volunteers when it comes to the Canyon's "real" age, which of couse is subject to the relativistic notions of geological theory and science. We (that is, those of us in the 21st century who use television, cell phones, and rolled tacos) are pretty sure that it's a bit more than 6,000 years: more like a few hundred million.

So here's the deal, at least the way it's presented to us by this "Church/State issue":
--Those who view the Bible as an authoritative source for knowledge about the real world say that their research indicates that god "created" (the word, the verb tense is important here) the world according to a certain order, one promulgated by the text of the Bible. Not all religious people think the Bible is literally true, but even metaphorically, the act of creation, the one that happened in the past, and is described in Genesis, really happened: God created the world.
--Those who view the Bible as a work of literature and those who look at it metaphorically--that is, both non-theist scientists and scientists who are religious--are willing to say only that the world "was created" (they won't specify the subject, but for some it is God) however many billions of years ago current knowledge of physics and cosmology tell us about the nature of reality and stuff such as rolled tacos, cheeseburgers, and ipods.

So this church state issue is presented to us as a conflict between two sets of knowledge: knowledge of Who created, and knowledge of When it was created. And here's where language and its church/state issue comes in: the problem is not when or who, but how did everyone decide to say the past tense, "created"? This decision was made when we chose to use language to describe reality, which we do everytime we pass along some idea we have had. We do it all the time, which means we are still doing it, just like I'm doing it now, writing this thing, which is about creation--which happenns all the time: Now.

God creates, I create, the world is created; the problem is not who or when, but which verb tense to use and I propose we use the present tense. God, who creates the universe, has only given us this piss-poor way to talk about it, a way that has a subject and a verb with tenses to organize it into a before/after timeline which may correspond, at times (!) to reality but not all of it, not god.

Thusly, a National Park Service Ranger may, with complete abandon at the edge of the Grand Canyon--is there anyway else to be at the edge of the Grand Canyon but filled with abandon?--say the Canyon is six thousand years old AND eight-hundred million years old and still be right, and that the canyon has been created by god AND by the universe and still be right.

But really, he or she is wrong. The Canyon is created by the universe and by God always.

How do I know this? Easy: I'm not smoking; for fifty-seven hours, forty-four minutes and thirty seconds I have not been smoking.


Notice that this timeline burns left to its end but right to my death.
I am not smoking, and for now, that is the way it shall always be. The world is always, already with me, a nonsmoker.