In my analysis, I will be following the basic pattern of first giving you intimate details about myself and way of thinking (hopefully that doesn't turn you off too much, ha, ha) and showing you how my book is a microcosm of my own mind and spiritual struggles with faith and science. Hopefully, you will find something to relate to in your own experience. I will first give you the "inward" interpretation of my work, as it applies to me, and then I will give you the "outward" interpretation of how my book pictures what has been happening on this earth since Darwin first published The Origin of Species in 1859. More on that later. For now, this is the internal interpretation of Chapter One as it pertains to me. First I'll say that I'm a product of where I was born. I live in the nominally Christian nation of Canada, a democracy, ruled really by secular humanism and the state sponsored religion disguised as the "science" of "evolution". Evolution is the only mechanism that teachers are allowed to teach students about the origin of the universe and all life on planet earth. Any mention of God as a means to creation is viciously muzzled as teaching your religion in the classrooms. Overall, I prefer this to the other extreme of a ruling theocracy, where the opinions and interpretations from some "holy book" by some supposed "authority" would rule the day. But I've struggled mightily in my spirit to try and come to terms with what is really "true" about the nature of reality and existence and this concept of God. I'm a thinker and want to know the truth about these issues. For some reason, it is very important to me. My dad was a nominal Jehovah's Witness offshoot called the Bible students, although he didn't really teach me or my siblings the faith or live it much himself. My mom just believes in "being a good person" and not worry about faith issues. So growing up I've been exposed to some basics of Christianity but left to my own mostly, and also influenced much by my culture, which pushes the scientific ideas behind evolution. I really loved Star Trek growing up and much of the basic tenets of evolution versus religion are espoused on this show, but rather subtly so many people miss it, thinking it is just a wholesome sci-fi show. It wasn't until my late teens, as a student in university, that I watched one particular Star Trek show that really inspired me to think deeply about this idea of evolution versus faith in a literal God. The episode was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "Who Watches the Watchers". It follows a familiar Star Trek theme in that a primitive race mistakes a more advanced race as "gods". In this case, a primitive Vulcan like race called the Mintakans come to believe the Star Trek crew are gods, and specifically Captain Picard is their ancient God, the Overseer, after witnessing the seemingly magical things the starship crew can do with their advanced technology. These Mintakans were logical, like Vulcans, and had previously discarded their ancient beliefs about God and embraced reason, but their encounter with the Enterprise crew caused them to start devolving into fearful religious hysterics, even considering human sacrifice as a means to pleasing this "God". This episode really struck me as a subtle way of saying that mankind's concept of God is really just derived from ancient interactions of highly advanced alien beings with primitive man. This kind of plotline is common in Star Trek, but for some reason this episode really inspired me to consider any possible truth behind this question deeply. If evolution is true, it is logical that highly evolved aliens might exist that could have created all our religions and beliefs about God. But if so, why? What was their motivation? Assuming the aliens' intentions were good, couldn't highly advanced beings have foreseen all of the obvious bad that has come from their interference? Afterall, man has always loved to use God as an excuse for war and killing. What better justification for killing others than "God is on our side and commands it"! Maybe they should have just left us alone! :) Anyway, the book you are now reading is a result of my struggle with this question, and my vision of how our "cosmic parents" might one day reveal themselves. The struggles the characters have integrating the reality of the aliens with their Christian beliefs mirrors my own struggle with merging faith and evolution. To me, there is definitely something to evolution. It is an intuitive concept, at least to me it is. Even the development of consciousness from birth to adulthood is an evolution. I could never have written a book like this at 10 years old, as I lacked intellectual capacity. But my consciousness progressed, "evolved" if you will, to the point I could. But was this evolution of my consciousness just happening naturally or could there be an unseen God guiding it all? It seems intuitive to me also that there could be a God guiding my consciousness development. Afterall, anything complex that man builds goes through an evolution process, doesn't it? Didn't the first computers cost millions and fill warehouses? But look how far they have "evolved" to be inexpensive and ubiquitous. But the intelligence of man guided computer evolution. Just because we can't see an intelligent God guiding the evolution of our individual and collective consciousnesses, does it mean necessarily that God is not involved? Isn't it somewhat logical to conclude there must be some intelligence behind the progression of consciousness from childhood to adulthood? What is the answer to this mystery? But however intuitive evolution might be, I think there definitely has to be something to faith as well. While neither evolution alone nor faith alone can explain everything, I wondered if perhaps there was a way to marry the two concepts and explain everything. Indeed, I think there is and that is what this book is about. I will now detail a more in depth discussion of how Chapter One mirrors my own mind at the time. There is something of me in every character in this novel. I suppose the same could be said of any work an author writes, but especially an author's first book, as this one is for me. This book says a lot about me and the way I think. Most get a feel for me and who I am from a casual reading, but here I'm going to lay it all out about who I am and what I was thinking as I wrote it. Much of this I only came to understand deeply after I had written it. In this fictional world I've created in my book The Unveiling, you could say every character is a reflection of me to some degree. Pretend that the entire fictional world of The Unveiling is my mind, and every human character is like one brain cell. If all of the "brain cells" (ie all characters) could merge their individual consciousnesses to form one collective consciousness, that would be my mind. By understanding my characters, even the "bad" ones, you will understand me, for something of me is in each one. In the opening chapter, we have an international nuclear conflict that is threatening the entire world, the two main powerful players being atheistic Russia and Christian America. Since the entire world represents my mind, this conflict is analogous to the time I watched the Star Trek episode about the Mintakans and had a deep religious conflict between atheism (ie Russia) and Christianity (ie America), all of the citizens within the nations on both sides of the conflict like a powerful collection of brain cells in my head that were squaring off against each other. I would have considered myself a nominal Christian at this point in my life, but I also sort of accepted what I had been taught in school about evolution without thinking too deeply about what a contradiction this is against faith. But this Star Trek episode started a nuclear conflict threatening to destroy my mind. I felt the tension, as the reality of what this episode was saying hit home and I needed to have a resolution to the tension, or nuclear war would ensure and destroy my brain. It felt that intense to some degree. In my story, the major powers secretly meet with the alien presence and agree to halt military preparations, and then the aliens unveil to relieve the tension and give some answers to the people. This is analogous to me deciding to write the book, as the two sides in the conflict in my brain agreed to work together within the doctrine of the aliens, and speak to the rest of my brain about the alien philosophy (ie the TV broadcast to the citizens of the world). This gave me a venue to pick a side and express myself about what seemed true to me at the time, as I began to write the book. Then the governing powers of the various power blocks in my mind worked cooperatively with the alien leader to begin broadcasting the truth about science and faith to the rest of my mind, beginning to communicate a philosophy that perfectly merges the scientific realities about evolution (discovered over more than a century ago) with ancient beliefs I had assimilated in childhood about a sovereign God. When the aliens talk about mankind reaching an evolutionary point where they decided to place a "conscience-bubble mind implant" inside of every human born, you could say this is analogous to the point where I became self-aware, say around 4-6 years old, and the aliens revealing themselves later to mankind in our advanced nuclear age is analogous to me coming to terms with these deep issues of existence and God in my late teens when my mind was more advanced and could accept deeper understanding. At the end of the chapter, Valerie and her children Nick and Stephanie invite an alien to appear personally, and this pictures my mind warming to this newly forming philosophy of evolution-faith and inviting further contemplation. That's where Chapter One ends. |