The Unexplainable

Given the universe, even a universe devoide of matter as such but provided with the actual laws of nature, everything that exists could, and I firmly believe did, develop from and in this without outside, divine, supernatural interference. But that universe, with its laws! For one thing there is nothing inevitable about the laws. It is a fact that masses attract each other, that gravity exists, but a universe in which masses repelled each other is also conceivable, and in it nothing could possibly be like what does exist, and so with all the laws of nature. They are necessary to the existence of things as they are, but from the abstract point of view there seems no real reason for them. The primoridal reality of the universe, the great Why of everything, is a great unified natural Law, of which hte various laws discovered by scientists are small interrelated parts. Science does not explain where that law came from, or why. A real explanation is (to me at least) inconceivable. It will never, never be explained. It is the one great and true goal in the search for knowledge, and it can never be reached.

Call that great Unknowable by any name you wish, call it X, or Yahweh, or God, or say that God created it. Applying the letters "g", "o", and "d" to it or what created it is no explanation and no consolation. It is a common failing, even more among scientists than among laymen, to think that naming a thing explains it, or that we know a thing because we can put a name to it. But to say that God created the universe means nothing whatever.

George Gaylord Simpson, Simple curiosity ; letters from George Gaylord Simpson to his family, 1921-1970 (1987-12-01)

• god
• natural law
• philosophy
• religion