When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

–Walt Whitman

A certain kind of thinker reads this poem, and grows angry. I’ve heard people protest that Whitman is anti-intellectual; that Whitman has no business, as a poet, to come waltzing into the lecture-room and tell scientists how the world is—both reactions smack of both insecurity and irony.

Whitman is in no sense anti-intellectual. The man loves words, language, and the contest of ideas. Nor does Whitman devalue science, as some scientifically-minded intellectuals are wont to say. Rather, Whitman’s romantic rebellion against scientism amounts to an opening of the mind, to a recognition that, though science has brought us unimaginably far, we ought not sacrifice our imagination for petrified sentences.

In the lecture-room, closed off from the open night sky, some men fancy that they have captured, or are well on their way to capturing, the right set of sentences to represent reality. They fancy that our language is sufficient to capture reality. Especially, they fancy that so-called scientific sentences are the best for capturing the universe, and cramming it into a lecture-room.

But this is all to make the universe small, stale and stiff. Romantics would have us love the lecture-room, but to love more the door; and did a lecturer lock that door, romantics would have us revolt, and bust the door down. The universe cannot fit into a classroom; tomorrow cannot fit into yesterday’s ideas. There remains ever the silent unknown, which would dazzle us.

When I teach this poem, and especially when I teach this poem to science students, I love to use a particular scientist’s experience and analysis to lend support to Whitman’s poem. But before I get to her, let me draw your attention to the structure of the poem.

The poem is contains eight lines, the first four of which begin with the word when. This poetic device—repeating several lines with a single word or phrase—is called anaphora. Significantly, the word when connotes time. In the lecture-room, all who are present belong to a time. This poem was written in 1900, just before the revolutions of physics and astronomy which were to come. The people in this lecture-room are learning nothing timeless and eternal, but are learning the charts and diagrams which belong to a historically conditioned paradigm. Yet they persist in the illusion that they have it.

Whitman knew better. Not only did these scientists not have it in any ultimate sense, but simply in a historical and contingent sense, they did not have a privileged monopoly on all we could call knowledge. Having knowledge of how to write poetry well, for example, can have just as profound an effect on the human condition as the knowledge of how to write mathematical proofs. Whitman’s poetry in particular has done much to help America imagine what social equality looks like. And Whitman knew that yesterday’s poems would not suffice for the new America we are still busy imagining.

In poetry, and no less in the sciences, we must leave the door on the classroom unlocked, so that we may walk outside, so that we may walk out of our historically conditioned and contingent knowledge, to look up at romantically timeless stars, and imagine, in silence, what might be.

The first eight lines of this poem connote the historical conditions of the lecture-room, which is a product of civilization. Notice also the building, and expanding tension of the lines. The first is short, and each of the next three is longer than the one before it. This expanding quality brings the poem to nearly burst out of itself at its climactic moment, almost as the poet would break out of his historical condition, and into a timeless realm. It is as if he breaks out of his paradigm. Yet here, there is nothing to say.

The last four lines, paradoxically, describe this silent, timeless moment. He enters into a place of solitude, out of the inter-subjective objectivity of his time. Here, there is nothing said, nothing yet to say, and nothing here can be contained in the classroom. No matter how large we make the classroom—even in our post-modern world with high speed internet access in the classroom—, we cannot fit the stars therein; nor can we fit what scientific paradigm we might dream up tomorrow in yesterdays ideas; for it will always be the case that what fits in a textbook is at once conservative and yesterday’s ideas. The dreamers must step out of the classroom in order to step beyond it.

But let’s now return to the particular scientist I wrote of above. I like to suggest to students that this poem is structured like our brain. This poem, like our brain, can be divided neatly into two parts.

The left hemisphere can be thought of as a serial processor, or as organizing our experience into linear structures and categories. The first four lines, with their whens, and with the charts and diagrams, adding and dividing: these are analogous to the left hemisphere. Further, the left hemisphere is the primary center for language. It is this language which makes up the intersubjective objectivity which makes the lecture-room possible.

In contrast, the right hemisphere can be thought of as a parallel processor, or as organizing our experience as objects or images in space. The last four lines are composed without implying any goals, and are filled with words of silence and peace. These lines are analogous to the right hemisphere. The language of these four lines transcend the intersubjective objectivity of the lecture room. Here, the language is not dry and abstract; but here, the night is living, and mystically moist.

The scientist I would like to present to you is a brain scientist. In the middle of her career, she had a stroke. The stroke was in the left hemisphere, and took her ability to use language away from her. What she discovered in this process was this silent, mystical moist night to which Whitman points us.

Again, I will emphasize that neither Whitman nor I imply that science is not one of the supreme achievements of humanity. Rather, we both hold that we must leave the lecture-room door open, and imagine that tomorrow will somehow be greater than yesterday’s ideas.

I hope you enjoy this video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s “Stroke of Insight.” The link is below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

To understand the significance more deeply, you can think of a distinction between appearance and reality. The appearance of things flows like a river, and is never twice the same. Reality is always the same. In Western Philosophy, which shares historical and linguistic roots with Hindu Philosophy, this is a central distinction. In the west, the eternal and unchanging is associated with Reason or Mind, which are both associated with masculinity. Reason, like the proposition that 2+2=4, is always the same.

In Greek philosophy, you can see the quest for the eternal expressed in Plato’s doctrine of the Forms. Further, you can look at his Allegory of The Cave. The world of illusion and change are the shadows at the back of the cave. The true world is represented out of the cave in the symbol of the Sun, which stands for masculine Reason. The Cave itself represents a kind of womb. The seeker is born, as it were, into the light of Reason. Mythologically, this is the quest for Father. As with the myth of Christ, one must be “born again.”

Remembering that there are important differences between eastern and western enlightenment, let’s look again at Siddartha’s companion. Govinda and Siddartha practice denying the body as ascetic monks, in order to know the mind, in order to know the eternal and unchanging self. They become monks. But this direction of self-denial does not work for Siddartha. He is still incomplete. So he parts with his friend, Govinda.

At this stage of the novel, he encounters a female, named Kamala, whose name is connected to Lakshmi or Durga. Laksmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity, and Durga is the mother goddess. Kamala is the female aspect of the Self. She represents the opposite of what Govinda represents, which is the masculine aspect of the self. Both Kamala and Govinda represent aspects of Siddartha.

Kamala is at once the lover and the mother. As her name relates to Lakshmi, she represents worldly desire. Through her, Siddartha indulges into desire, instead of denying it, as he did with Govinda. You perhaps have already realized that her name Kamala is related to the name we know well in the west, Kama Sutra, which is the ancient Indian practice of enlightenment through sensuous pleasure. It is this sensuous pleasure that leads naturally to the other aspect of her name, Durga. The lover becomes the Mother.

Let’s take at some linguistic artifacts in order to drive the point home. In English, which is deeply related to the Hindu language Sanskrit, we can see the etymology which connects the word “mother” with the body. In order to get the connection, we need to look at another indo-european language, Greek. The Greek goddess Demeter is the earth goddess. We can see in her name the English word “meter,’ which is a unit for measuring physical “matter,” the earth body. “Meter” and “matter” are both words are connected to the English word “mother.” Meter, matter, mother. Mater, material, maternity, etc. In fact, in all of the Indo-European languages, we can find the old association between “matter” and “mother.” In Russian, mother is ‘mat;’ in Hindi, ‘maataa;’ in German “mutter.” In our old mythologies, Earth is Mother, and Heaven is Father. The earth is matter, and heaven is mind.

Let’s make one more quick digression before continuing on, for there is an old historical relationship between Hesse’s Germany, and Siddartha’s India. You see, the Aryans, who migrated north to England, Germany, and Russia, also migrated to India, and with them they brought their language, which evolved into the various forms of of language in the into-european language family tree. The Aryans started out in an area which approximates modern day Iran (Iran = Aryan.) And it is this history which Hitler exploited when he called the Aryan race the master race. He took from this tradition the infamous swastika, and reversed it. You can find the swastika in both Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which have aryan roots. The language, mythology, and philosophy of all the into-european languages share in the same migratory roots.

But back to Kamala. Kamala represents the ever-changing body; Govinda represents the unchanging mind. Siddartha could not find completeness as a monk with Govinda. He needed to understand his body. So he leaves Govinda and meets Kamala. Having mastered his mind, he is ready to know the body. And when he knows both mind and body, these two opposites can integrate into a whole. Siddartha can integrate male and female, the two poles of the Self. And it is thus that Siddartha conceives a child, and becomes a father. This represents a new birth of the self. But he is not finished. His realization is not complete.

And so we enter into the third and final stage of the book. Having integrated male and female, the eternal and the temporal, the mind and the body, he gets his son. He was once a son; and now he, like his father before him, has become a father. Through all the change, something has remained the same. Yet he hasn’t realized this yet. In this third stage, he must realize and apprehend this whole, and so we meet the ferryman, Vasudeva.

Vasudeva is Krishna’s father, and his name means “the one who is the form of knowledge.” Vasudeva lives by the river, which appears always to change; and through meditation on the river, at the side of Vasudeva, Siddartha comes to realize the eternal Form. Like the river, life eternally changes. Though everything has changed, nothing has changed. Ever-changing appearance is eternal reality.

In this last stage, Siddartha again meets his brother, Govinda. Govinda has not changed; yet Govinda does not recognize Siddartha, for Siddartha has changed so much.

Many of our sports figures do model poorly for our kids. They all too often get into trouble with the law, abuse drugs, and generally act like overpaid arrogant asses. But that they act so poorly is weak justification for holding Tebow up as some kind of hero for his Christianity.

I won’t argue that Tebow is not a nice guy, that he does not do good things. I’m sure that he is, and that he he does. Nor will I argue that he is not talented; he clearly is. These are good enough reasons to hold the guy up as a sports hero.

But there is an insidious logic in celebrating him as a man of God. It sends the message to kids that God takes an interest in sporting events, and that He takes sides with the righteous, which implies, in turn, that the other side is either less righteous or not righteous at all. It follows that the believers are rewarded, and that the non-believers do not convert to first downs. At a level deeper, it follows that people get what they deserve, be it the Haitian Earth Quake or the Japanese Tsunami.

Yet there is an even more subtle danger in extolling this example of a poor reasoner. It will tend to attract kids to Evangelical Christianity, which is a black hole for young minds. Evangelical Christianity has the bad habit of promoting a kind of faith which would deny what modern science has provided our society. That is, it calls it a virtue to believe in certain accounts of the world, though these accounts would fly in the face of reason and science; and it calls it a virtue to believe in these accounts, though these accounts provide no real means of improving the world.

Evangelical Christianity is not the only Abrahamic theism which promotes this kind of anti-critical attitude. Evangelical Christianity is not the only guilty of the ultraconservative mind set which would demand that we express every new discovery in old and outmoded language. But Evangelical Christianity is a particularly shallow and stagnate cesspool for this kind of ignorance.

The language which these Christians insist to be the eternal and unchanging Word of God is shamefully weak, impotent, and unable to account for anything we have come to learn in the last few thousand years; and to promote to children that they should glorify this kind of language as excellent and suited for all times risks damaging their ability to master the language which we have developed to deal with our world.

The language of modern science in particular has empowered us to predict and control our environment such that we are able to diminish suffering a thousand fold. To name but one area, by the vocabulary and language of what makes up the Theory of Evolution, we are able to create vaccines, prevent disease, and heal the sick. To teach our children that it is good to value a particular way of talking—the Biblical way—as it were eternally the true way to talk about the world, and to dismiss ways of talking which negate the beloved sentences, is to promote illiteracy—the kind of illiteracy that we see in Afghanistan, where women cannot become gynecologists, yet it is forbidden that a man should view their reproductive organs.

The language of Christianity does little to explain anything which we need to know: those things which would help us to really help those who suffer. There is no predictive power in any of the language of Christianity. And there is nothing useful in language which does not help us predict.

Yet children want to help, and esteem heroes who would help. Tebow should be esteemed for wanting to do good in this world. Yet his Christianity unwittingly harms. Would that all the good people of Christianity would learn that words change, precisely because environments change, no matter what John insisted was in The Beginning.

We need to teach children to esteem people for what they do well. Tebow can throw a ball. Yet, outside of the keen logic required to execute a pass well, he does not show himself to be skilled with language that really can score a touchdown off the field.

Theists and metaphysicians ask that we would have a non-human foundation for morality. They employ words like “objective” and “subjective” to forward their case. But we have no access to anything which is non-human and yet would give us sentences upon which to place our morality.

Perhaps it is true (though I affirm that it is not) that God gave his word to a privileged few; but we have no objective ground to judge if these speak true, even if they speak honestly.

But God is not the only means by which to argue an objective ground. Kant did this by positing an a-historical condition called human reason, and created an objective morality thereupon.

Yet I do not accept that there is an objective ground for reason, if by objective we mean not historically conditioned.

I demand a thoroughly naturalized morality, in keeping with Rorty, which entails we drop the words “objective” and “subjective.” These words belong to theology and modernity; yet their utility has waned.

There is no non-circular justification for morality.

As a younger man, filled with equal parts idealism and ignorance, I’d have supported no evil, and have held no reserve in slicing a tyrant’s throat, except that I would soak my Doc Martens. But older, wiser, and wearing more sensible shoes, I find myself in the position of having to contradict my younger, more zealous ideals. It’s as if I’ve had to modify my ideals so to read, Give them liberty, but not yet!

After having watched the won-value of my several years’ savings and income plummet 40% in 2008; after having hung limp, low, and impotent, like the Korean Peninsula itself, before the edental and diseased harlot of history; after having felt myself become a kneeling and anonymous strumpet, while Wall Street and Washington would pander me tender: I came to identify still more deeply with the downtrodden, who lack fiscal and political autonomy. Wanting autonomy, ideals are but tales told by idiots, signifying nothing.

Now recovered, I yet lack the superfluous monetary value which would allow that I should care for the world’s destiny beyond my personal self-interest. Sure, I would like that all were free. I like puppy dogs, rainbows, and butterflies as much as the next guy. But I also want a decent exchange rate.

For me, the ideal world begins only once we have established that a thousand won approximate one US dollar. If we can establish and keep this, then I’m all for revolutions and all that jazz, so long as I don’t have to pay extra fees or taxes. Read my lips: I am a Facebook Revolutionary: I will Like anything you say; but I don’t give a cent about other’s problems. I can’t afford to. I’ve got too much to lose, and too little to bank on.

I’m a dad now, the state of which conserves this liberal, and which dares me to wear black business socks with my Birkenstocks. I would love to slap a dead-head sticker on a Cadillac. I will embarrass my kids. Yet I will first save enough money to put them through university. Failing in this, I’ll pay their taxi fair to the student loan office. In either case, I’ll see to it that they are educated in the wicked and black art of irony, and that they would reserve Sundays for Reading. (The liberal ironist needs to be familiar with more than one story, in order to spot a salesman.)

To make sure that the word education does not come to function in their vocabulary as a euphemistic term, but instead signifies a liberation, through which they will have learned to be, not cynical, but sufficiently ironic to deal with this world, I will need a firm enough ground from which to push: preferably it would be a grassy yard with a swing set, which entails accepting that I would not have every tyranny toppled at once. (I’m for giving the Presbyterians until 2013, just to show them that it is they, and not the Myans, who have got it right about the “last things.”)

Last month, my gorge rose to watch petty men and women weep and wail for the death of the salesman, Kim Jong Il. I could see through their tears that freedom is not a final value, that Sartrean freedom is only contingently possible. Given other conditions, such as those cultivated in North Korea, the love of freedom can be wholly wiped away with Party Tissues, with which they dabbed lovingly those masochistic tears they shed for their “selfless” tyrant, who, like a good Calvinist, worked himself to death in seeking atonement with his Father, who art President in Heaven.

Though I would love that every North Korean were free, that they had the Facebook freedom to Like The Death of A Salesman, I cannot afford that they get their liberty just yet. It would not be conducive to getting my kids back and running on the green green grass of home, playing catch with a football.

Let me put it another way. We all felt a little bit nervous upon hearing the news of the Dear Salesman’s death. The currency reflected international anxieties, and the value of the won plummeted. This directly threatened the value of my years of savings and hard work, and what I can provide for my kids. So it comes that I desire that no sudden revolution would break out in the North. I would they found freedom, just not yet.

Nor do I think that freedom is a state suddenly found. Never was one a slave on Monday, and free Tuesday. Wisdom comes dropping slow. (Just think how long it has taken for Darwin to catch on.)

I would that the North were free, that they would be free of suffering, and would have the chance to read more than one official story. I would they were free to be fully ironic, knowing many stories. But the horrible tension is that, did they suddenly find their state dismantled, suffering would be for a time much wider; and for some, absolute. For me, the suffering would not be absolute, just ill-proportionate and not justified. (Yet who would argue that there is anything rational in the force of history? Oh yeah—but give them until 2013 to make their case. Until then, pray for a good exchange rate.)

Yet I hear secularists criticizing evangelicals on this account, that evolution is beyond question. It is not beyond question; it’ll never be finally confirmed. It is impossible to finally confirm a theory, as Karl Popper taught us.

Yet there are good questions, and there are bad questions. The old schoolroom wisdom that there are no bad questions is quaint. Not all questioning is worthy of respect, especially when the questioning is no questioning at all.

The evangelical “questioning” of evolution is not an open and objective questioning. It is a rejection of a theory without having understood it. It is counter critical, and is not honest thinking. The word question thus used is an abuse of language , since the word has departed from its understood meaning. The evangelical use of the word means something more like privileged rejection 

Before evangelicals are granted the right to assert public policy on scientific issues, they must learn the issues and the method. They may question every step of the way, so long as they can formulate their questions clearly, and the word question is not so fuzzy as to mean nothing at all.

When public figures, such as we see in the GOP debate, claim that they question evolutionary theory, and present themselves as critical thinkers, they deserve all the mocking they get. They present themselves to be monkeys and apes, who know nothing of the art of thinking.

Yet when secularists present themselves so as to say that evangelicals are fools for even questioning evolution, they also use language foolishly. Evolution is always in question, otherwise science would fail and cease to be science. Scientists work to falsify their claims, which is to say they question their propositions. This is the essence of science, to test or question hypotheses, and to try to make them fail. Where is the weak spot?

Yet evolution has stood the test. More than one hundred years of questioning evolution, with the full force of the brightest minds civilization has yet produced, and the stubborn proposition will not fall. We must question evolution, if even to refine the theory. We each benefit from this mode of doubt and questioning. The evangelical use of the word question is inimical to the whole project.

What evangelicals call questioning is a sloppy use of language.  Did they learn the theory, and did they learn what question is and what questioning is not, then their questioning would be welcomed. As it stands now, the evangelical questioning of evolution is beyond question absurd, sloppy, and not worthy of respect.

And anyone running for office who thinks thus sloppily does not deserve the honor which is holding office.

Sammy,

Let me be straight here. You got me. You stole my money. I won’t get that money back. Very well.

Here’s the deal. I am going to assume that you are not pure slime, that there is some good in you, that you steal from people for some good reasons. Maybe you are trying to take care of a family. Maybe you have rough circumstances. Fair enough.

Do me a favor, though. Do something good with the money. If you have a baby, buy the baby a toy. If your family is hungry, buy some food. If you are saving for a book, buy it. If you do good with the money, I will be happy.

As for me, I will turn what information I have over to the authorities. I won’t do so for revenge, but rather because I think it is a good thing to do. I want a world in which there is less crime. I want my baby boy to grow up in a good world.

But this doesn’t make us enemies. I also want a world in which there is less need for people to turn to crime to get by. So I put my shoulder to what wheels will lower suffering, poverty, need, and injustice. The world is not fair, and I do what I can to make it fair. It’s not much I can do, but I do what I can.

So you have decided that stealing from strangers is a good solution to whatever problem you are trying to solve. I don’t know the depth of your problems, or your suffering. But do me one more favor. Do keep looking for a way to make your world and our world better.

If there is good in you, you will understand. You broke my trust once, but allow me to trust that there is good in you.

“A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, ” I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”‘

If I get you to look at the moon, my $210 will have proved a worth while gift.”

Sincerely,

Kim Lee

There is at least one Christian position which I respect, but yours does not meet this standard. Let me try to outline it so that you can at least be aware of it when you form your arguments among secularists and atheists.

The proposition, that God exists, cannot be disproven. But it has not been proven, either. Fully embrace this claim, and call your position faith.

But faith can have no authority, except insofar as the faithful would consent to a leader or a doctrine.

When in a debate with a secularist, say something like, “I don’t know if there is a God, but I live my life as if there were. I love the idea of God, and this is why.”

Understanding that you can provide no evidence, but only an account of what it is like to live according to the idea which you love, you would do well to acknowledge that atheists, agnostics, and secularists love ideas, too; and that they may have profound reasons for why they believe as they do.

But not all ideas are equal. We–you and I, however much we disagree–must acknowledge that ideas which have predictive power are greater than ideas which have less or no predictive power.

Astrology claims to have predictive power, but the evidence that astrology’s predictive power is at all accurate is weak at best.

But Ptolemaic Astronomy has great predictive power, which works even today. We can sail ships and get home following Ptolemy. Indeed, entire societies could be structured around Ptolemaic Astronomy. But the range of prediction is radically limited, especially with respect to the kind of predictions we need today.

The Copernican Astronomy does much better; and Newton brought that revolution to a powerful fruition, to be usurped by Einstein’s theory. The accuracy of Einstein’s theory is far greater than what came before; but yet it depends on all that came before–even, remotely, astrology–for, all theory begins with a question.

Until Darwin came along, there were a great many things that we could not predict, such as the proposition that, introducing small doses of certain harmful genetic strains into a system can bring about the conditions of immunity–ie, immunization.

Darwin’s theory is as firmly established as the Copernican hypothesis. Granted, there are anomalies; and granted, science may come up with (and hopefully will come up with) a greater theory which usurps (yet depends upon) what Darwin taught us–which is a lot.

I don’t think your criticism of Darwin’s theory is honest. You attack it because of your commitment to a form of Christianity. Therefore, I cannot take either your arguments or you seriously. It is as if you argue for Ptolemaic Astronomy because you prefer Dante’s vision, and the rights of monarchs.

If we accept the kinds of reasons which you present, we risk losing all of the predictive power we have gained. It may be the case that we will find a better system with greater predictive power, but it will not put the Earth back in the center; and it will not negate the proposition that one species evolves into another by natural selection.

When I set out to understand what is true, I was open to Christianity, and even loved Jesus. I was baptized as an infant. I have not had my boy baptized. But I was not so committed to my Christianity as to be stultified by it. Had I been provided with good arguments and presentations, I would have gone that way. But that was not the case.

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

–

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?–

If design govern in a thing so small.

Robert Frost lived a life filled with hardship, grief, and loss. His Father died of tuberculosis when Frost was only eleven years old, leaving his family with only eight dollars. His mother died of cancer when he was 16. In 1920, Frost had to commit his sister to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later.

Mental illness ran in his family; both Frost and his mother suffered from depression; his daughter was committed to a hospital in 1947; and Frost’s wife also fought with depression.

Frost had six children with his wife. His son Elliot (1896-1904) died of cholera before he was ten; his son Carol (1902-1940) committed suicide at age thirty eight; his daughter Marjorie (1905-1934) died of of puerperal fever after giving birth at age twenty nine; his daughter Elinor (1907) died three days after her birth. Only two of his children outlived him: Lesley (1899-1983) and Irma (1903-1967). And his wife developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.

By the time Frost first published “Design” in 1936, he had already lost three children and his wife, to say little of the other struggles of his life: the early loss of his parents, and the mental illness and depression that filled his world. His impression of this “Design” of nature is dark and deep, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Yet through his poetry he manages to find something lovely in nature: and this is what people emphasize when reading Frost’s poetry. We are all familiar with his famous lines in his poem “The Road Not Taken,” where he chooses to take the road less travelled by, which has made all the difference. This poem is often taken as a poem of optimism, of the beauty of following one’s own path, validating non-conformity.

There is nothing wrong with reading “The Road Not Taken” in this way, especially when teaching the poem to youth, who are looking to gain the courage to live meaningful lives, and who can be affected to the power of sunrise as many of us nearer sunset have long since forgotten.

There is much to be said for the argument that the author is dead, and that how the poem affects the reader is what counts. Sometimes this is the best way to read, since we weave our own lives as we would interpret them—with or without poetry.

Yet we can gain much by taking account of the facts of Frost’s life and time when we seek to understand what this dead poet would communicate to us.

When we read Frost carefully, we detect cold undercurrents in his river, upon which the Sun sparkles. And if we ignore his darker depth, we might miss his wisdom entirely. He tells us, at the end of his great poem “Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening,” that life is “Lovely, dark and deep.” Frost looks into the darkness, and yet shows us how to find it lovely.

Teachers tend not to teach Frost’s poem “Design.” They fear the controversy which the poem, carefully read, would bring to surface out of the cold depth. Teachers, with good reason, want to bring to students poems that will inspire them, show them the goodness of life, and send them out of the classroom beaming with rays of sunlight. And they know that to bring up evolution will bring about arguments so packed with emotion and irrationality that a class may devolve into a profound and designless chaos.

But to get to the power of Frost, we must have the courage to look into the deep, and see how it would testify for itself. What would life have to say for itself? And beautiful nature, lovely, dark and deep?

Frost lived from 1874-1963. He lived in a post-Darwinian world. Unlike William Blake, who published his poem “The Tyger” in 1794, Frost does not take the concept for a designer—or God—as a given. Whereas when Blake looks at nature, in the form of the Tyger, Blake gives us no sense of irony when he reflects on the designer. This is not the case with Frost, who is a poet in the modern age.

Modern poetry and literature is full of irony, which marks a profound shift between ages. Often, modern writers will present what was once a common assumption, and which is yet a commonly held though antiquated assumption, and argue that point so to call out its absurdity and make the case for the opposite.

In Frost’s case, he argues, full of sound and irony, for design—a tale told by . . . who would dare frame nature’s fearful symmetry?

We have to remember that Frost writes this poem in the years just following the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, which was decided in 1925, a case which pitted modernists and fundamentalists against one another. By 1927, there were thirteen American states which held anti-evolution laws, preventing that our children would be taught the concept, and so be held in the darkness, lovely, but not deep, their way lit with a candle, not an electric light. (Out, out brief candle!)

But Frost is a poet, a great poet, and as such presents an image of the time, and of the progress of the human mind. Just as Shakespeare recognized the veracity of the Copernican Hypothesis in Hamlet, which is a major topic in itself little discussed, Frost recognizes the veracity of the Darwinian theory and the literal mountains filled with evidence for the case.

It is no accident that the great poets of our time are not writing new versions of the Bible, as they did in King James’ time. The King James Bible is a beautiful work of literature, whose lines are crafted by the greatest poets of an age. But in our modern age, the best one can get in a modern translation of the Bible is a grammatically correct version. Even idiots can tell a tale crafted in grammatically correct sentences. Poetry has long since died in religion and has been reborn in the wilderness, crawling with spiders, and snakes.

I have yet to hear a fundamentalist with a shrewd sense of irony. And I take irony to be one gauge of intelligence—which is lacking in the intelligent design movement. The ironic man can hold two concepts in mind simultaneously, and indicate the correct concept by espousing its contradiction. 

Frost is full of irony, and the very title of his poem “Design” is ironic. In the poem, Frost tells us of a simple, small observation he makes of nature on a walk one morning. He shows us the macrocosm by focusing on the microcosm. He spots a “dimpled spider.” This spider, with its smiling dimples, has just killed a moth, which has unwittingly flown into the spider’s designed web—to start the morning right.

If we are to take the argument from design seriously, it follows that all of the horror we find in nature is either right, or our lives are but tales told by an idiot. Yet this dichotomy excludes a possibility, which is that the designer is cruel, and that therefore rightness has no real meaning.

Fundamentalists will not concede that God is cruel, for their god is good. Nor will they concede that God is an idiot, for their god is all-knowing. Then if god is not cruel, and is not an idiot, he must be impotent; for what kind of god, who is good and all-knowing, would allow for such suffering and cruelty, except he be impotent? 

This forces them into the contradiction. God cannot be good if he is all-knowing, all-powerful, and he allows such cruelty and suffering. The spider cannot have his moth and eat it too, if God is as theists claim.

The white and innocent spider’s dimples are insidiously ironic; it smiles, itself so small, at the grand systems of theology that he can innocently make tumble and fall–without even thinking. The spider is not intelligent; design is not intelligent. Indeed, it is no design at all, for design would require intelligence. 

The poem makes use not only of irony, but of pun, one of which is the word “morning,” which suggests “mourning.” Frost is witnessing a funeral in the morning, as he has too many times in his own life. His ironic tone mocks the “rightness” of this mourning in nature’s darkness. Right and wrong make no sense in nature, but are human concepts born of human designs. The universe is indifferent, if beautiful. 

The moth appears to Frost like a rigid piece of satin cloth. The moth is stiff, like a corpse, and coffins are lined with satin. There is no justice in the moth’s death, no design, just evolved systems. 

If there is to be any justice in the universe, we must create it. And we cannot create a sound system of justice if we do not account for things as we find them. Frost finds an innocent and dimpled spider eating an innocent moth, and finds therein neither design nor justice.

But we can make a better world, make a just world: we can harness the theory of evolution and minimize disease and suffering. Frost suffered the death of his children who died of natural disease. Nothing in their deaths would be unjust, except there be a god, or there be men who stultify the progress of science and medicine.

If there is a god, then this creation is a horrible injustice, and God is a cruel and sadistic murderer. This creation contains all the elements for a witches’ broth, and indicates a tale told by an idiot. Indeed idiots tell one hell of a tale. 

If there is not a god, then nature is just nature. In either case, it is unjust that men would prevent the ideas which promise cures to disease from going forth. Insofar as they deny the concepts which would set us free of illusion and give us real cures, for which they are provided sound evidence, they are unjust and criminal, except they were found of unsound mind.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,


In the forests of the night:


What immortal hand or eye,


Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
–



In what distant deeps or skies,


Burnt the fire of thine eyes?


On what wings dare he aspire?


What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
–



And what shoulder, & what art,


Could twist the sinews of thy heart?


And when thy heart began to beat,


What dread hand? & what dread feet?

–


What the hammer? what the chain?


In what furnace was thy brain?


What the anvil? what dread grasp,


Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
–



When the stars threw down their spears


And water’d heaven with their tears:


Did he smile his work to see?


Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

–


Tyger Tyger, burning bright,


In the forests of the night:


What immortal hand or eye,


Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

–William Blake, 1794

William Blake published “The Tyger” in 1794, before the birth of Darwin, when nature was a different nature, when nature’s root was not natural, when nature’s root was supernatural. But this poem is a portent, of sorts; it’s a looming. The poem represents a fundamental shift in the imagination of the Western Mind; it represents a willingness to ask certain deadly, murderous questions. This poem is implicit in the conspiracy to leave God a patient etherized upon a table, on life-support, flat-lining, with desperate theologians yet probing his brain in hope of therein finding a subject, upon whom to base their authority, though He were a vegetable.

Western Culture had already felt Earth thrust out from the center of an imagined creation; felt the tremblings of cathedrals as Jesus’ lifeless head bobbed back and forth, his corpse nailed to a cross; felt the foundations of king’s castles cracking as Copernicus’ dangerous idea undermined the very foundation of Western Philosophy, of Western Religion, and of the Western Social Order.

Though the Copernican Revolution moved both the Earth and the Church from the center; though the Copernican Revolution created the space wherein a radically new and political philosophy could be built; though the Copernican Revolution helped Philosophy to re-invent man and center him on Descartes’ subject, the Cogito, the I think; God the Creator still lived, and on His authority, men of Theological Knowledge could make demands of what a man would think, claim, and do.

This fundamental shift in the Western Universe, Nature, and Politics led poets like Blake to re-imagine the Universe and Literature. Indeed he re-imagined religion. He rejected the traditional authorities and wrote his own mythology, which he wove from the stuff of both the Bible and Greek Mythology.

As he sought to understand the World and Nature through his art, he got the rare chance to see a tiger on display in London. Seeing this magnificent beast brought the poet to reflect deeply on the what the tiger meant about Nature and her Creator.

Thus he opens his poem with the deadly question, “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

With this question, we can see a man standing at the end of one age, yet at the beginning of a new age. He is of the older age insofar as he assumes an immortal creator; yet he is of an age yet to come insofar as he is far-seeing and bold enough to ask the questions which conspire to murder God.

There exist those among us those who are yet wont to preserve the theological elements of the former age, who are wont to cherish images of a kind, caring, and loving creator. “God is love,” the cliche goes. Except for the more zealous among them, they are happy to discard images of Hell and horror. More people believe in God than believe in Satan. Most embrace the Lamb, yet reject the Wolf.

But Blake is an artist; he is a poet, a painter, and a printmaker; he knows the importance of shadow. Thus, when he studies this tiger in London, he sees through its stripes shadows and Hell’s flames. Thus, when he writes, “Tyger Tyger, buring bright, / In the forests of the night,” he expresses a natural theology, in which unifies three key elements: God, Satan, and Nature.

Looking at the Tiger, he sees evidence of an awesome creator: God. But this creator is unlike the loving Creator celebrated in the New Testament; he is more like the wrathful God to be feared whom we find in the Old Testament, wherein little is said of Satan. The Creator we find Blake imagining is awesome in the original sense of the word: someone for whom we find profound reverence; but he is also terrible, shadowy, even evil.

Who could create such a fearsome and terrible creature, and not be yet more fearsome? more terrible? But aren’t we taught that the Creator is kind and loving? the one who created the Lamb? who so loves us that he gave his only begotten Son? Looking on the Tiger, Blake asks, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

We see in the Tiger the expression of God and Satan, of the Good and the Terrible; we see in the tiger the expression of God; we see in the tiger evidence of God’s character. But the Tiger also expresses Nature, God’s creation, upon which God smiled and said, “It is good.”

Blood, horror, screams from the jungle: yet He said, “It is good.” This is not Plato’s universe, wherein what God would love, He would love because it is good. In the Tiger, we can see that what is good is good because God loves it. This is the very heart of darkness and horror. Who is it that watches over us?

Through this kind of art and thought, nature becomes that upon which we can meditate to come to know God’s Nature. This is called the Argument from Design. Thus God’s coffin is prepared. The artists are thus implicated in the conspiracy to assassinate the Ruler. Reason played its part; but the Imagination showed the way–and the why.

Born just fifteen years after Blake published “The Tyger,” Charles Darwin was in his youth a devout boy who had aspired to the priesthood. But he was an honest man and valued Truth. He followed his questions on Nature, the Evidence of God, to their conclusion, and gave up his belief in God.

The evidence has only piled on since, and since very few serious intellectuals counter Nietzsche’s tragic pronouncement that God is Dead.

But the Earth still shakes, Christ’s lifeless head still bobs and sways, and many take The Argument from Design seriously. And we should take it seriously. We should follow the evidence from Nature as strictly as did Darwin; but for this we need stout hearts and a taste for irony, of which I will write soon, when I address Frost’s poem “Design.”