Sunday, May 16, 2010

God's existence and the player

This is a simple little story I found somewhere a while back. It's intended to illustrate what the "Does God Exist?" question is like in human thought when our mode of thinking is faulty.

Imagine a family of mice who live all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the mu sic-invisible to them-yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.

Then one day a daring young mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player. Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth.

But the Pianist continued to play.