Chasing Eden: Why We Long for a World That Never Was - or Was It?

Part 1: God in the Espresso: How Coffee Helped Me Understand the Ontological Argument here

Part 2: Chasing Eden: Why We Long for a World That Never Was - or Was It? here

Part 4: A Person Than Which None Greater Can Be Conceived here

Giving God glory

A delicious Americano is a small example of our insatiable desire for perfection because we carry this expectation into every area of our lives. We try to play a flawless tennis match, secure an ideal job, and find the perfect mate, which is surprising given that we have never experienced such perfection. It’s intriguing - and perhaps a bit disheartening - that despite never having experienced true perfection, we continue to hold ourselves to an unrealistic standard. Why do we chase after an ideal that seems perpetually out of reach? Why do we believe a perfect standard exists when our lives are consistently substandard? 

We not only have lofty expectations for our work but enthusiastically attach God’s name to it. While some scientists may openly question God’s existence, there is still a compelling urge to give Him all the glory by linking Him to their groundbreaking research. Take, for instance, the physicists who seek the elusive “God particle” or the biologists attempting to identify a “God gene.” By doing so, they implicitly acknowledge the existence of something, or dare I say Someone, than which nothing greater can be conceived. 

Plato Revisited

The idea that perfect forms exist in the heavenly realms is found in the writings of Plato, who believed that the real world contains imperfect copies of perfect transcendent forms. Plato already sensed that everything finds its origin in forms than which none greater can be conceived.

We can trace this idea even further back in time to the thoughts of ancient humans who encountered a world they didn’t understand and attributed it to the work of divine beings. The atheist narrative regarding the origins of these early deistic musings suggests that scientific ignorance drove them to fill these knowledge gaps with gods. But why didn’t they fill those gaps with physical forces instead of mindful beings with superhuman powers? If we are matter in motion, why would we instinctively attribute natural phenomena to beings than which none greater can be conceived? Why on Earth would early humans even consider the heavens when confronted with things they didn’t understand?

Reminiscence

Humans are not satisfied with merely contemplating heavenly perfection; they also desire to bring it to Earth. These utopian projects suggest that humans recognize that the world isn’t as it should be because it fails to match a perfect template. But where did this template come from? Why, in a world red-in-tooth-and-claw, would we think the world should be free of tears, pain, and death? Why, in a world of survival of the fittest, would we believe a leopard should lie down with a goat and a bear should share a meal with a cow? It seems strange that after winning the evolutionary sweepstakes, we would think the price we paid for the lottery ticket was too high. 

Religions other than the Abrahamic faiths propose blissful afterlife scenarios for which they have no evidence, such as the dissolution of the self in Nirvana, the absorption of atman into Brahman, or incorporation of the soul into the All. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, however, teach that humans have already experienced the good life but were exiled and now long to return. It makes more sense that our primal intuition for perfection would be rooted in the memory of a paradise lost rather than in anticipation of a place we know nothing about. Contrary to our critics, Christian hope isn’t based on wishful thinking but on fond reminiscence of a place than which none greater can be conceived.

Coming up in Part 3: In the next piece, we climb a little higher - literally and figuratively - as we follow humanity’s sacred ascent toward meaning. From Greek temples to Maslow’s pyramid, what are we really reaching for?

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com