I have suddenly realized that somehow, somewhere, over the last however so many months, I have lost my faith. I used to center it in the altruism of humankind, the ability of my fellow creatures to reach outside themselves and do something for which there is no reward, other than the inner satisfaction that comes from being useful, being helpful, being needed. But I am now left feeling unfulfilled by that alone, that which is, for all intents and purposes, a mere mental construction, a sidestep taken to avoid confronting the persistent doubt that anything greater actually exists.

I have tried to find that something greater, grasping at the gods of different religions, trying to take hold of them, and yet unable to assimilate the gildings of humanity that entrap their ephemery – this god, this belief, this way. It makes no sense to me, my autistic brain insisting on the purity of a definition: that if it is god, then it must need none of those things. Humans need those things; gods don’t.

And how to ascribe to some unknowable force that which science readily explains? What’s learned cannot be unlearned. When understanding is best reached through critical exploration, double-blinded study, tissue- and cellular-level examination of life, sub-atomic dissection of matter, how to imagine anything beyond those extraordinary boundaries, those laws, so painstakingly acquired? I do not see god in churches, chapels, temples, nor under microscopes or in equations or in heavenly [sic] bodies, all of which are entirely describable within the parameters outlined above. There is a scientific underpinning for virtually everything. There is too little of what there isn’t to justify the existence of some all-powerful force with its hands on the levers. God didn’t take my shoulder pain away. A surgeon did that. God didn’t cure my insomnia. Medications alleviated it. (And imperfectly, I might add, on both counts.) God didn’t almost take Momma Ape from us last summer. Medical, scientific, human mistakes did that.

I can explain almost everything around me with science. What little I cannot, I am able to attribute to a depth of scientific knowledge as yet unplumbed. Where is there room for a god in that?

And yet I ache, inside. I am terrified of being spiritually alone. It crushes me to think that once the body I inhabit disappears, I, all of my thoughts, all of my personality traits, the way I smile, the way I write, the way I move (all more or less within the scope of modern genetics, of course), will disappear with me, just vanish, as though they never were. For what are they, anyway? Are they truly nothing, little bits of information, meaningless when taken apart, their very coherence the product of a mind biologically predisposed to assume the presence of a higher power with absolutely zero hard evidence as to its existence?

Was there more god in ancient times? Or simply less science? If we cannot explain it, it must be god, yes? Originally, some cultures assumed god was female, since females were the producers of life, back when males were not thought to be an essential component. Because they just didn’t know. People thought gods changed the phases of the moon, brought sun and storms, health and disease, made crops flower, animals come and go, seasons cycle past, all because they had no other explanation. And at every step, the more we learned, the narrower the scope became within which a higher power could work.

Certain humans and cultures fought to keep their god as science marched forward, fought to preserve a small corner of existence for a great unknown, claimed knowledge of an unknowable afterlife, clamoring for a piece of the mystical outside the reach of human influence. Now, even though we have yet to definitively understand how life as we know it began, scientists are so close that a guiding hand, or even a bare nudge, may soon become gratuitous to the explanation. And what then? What space will remain for god to inhabit? Coincidence? To think of a god reduced to scheming via luck, seems no god at all, just natural randomness that we choose to see patterns in, pattern-seeking creatures that we are. Creator? Not exactly.

But in complaining of this to a close friend a few night s ago, he responded, “Well, how do you expect God to act? By sweeping down from above?”

Is it possible that I have missed something? Is it possible that god is in everything, and that our understanding of it and the world is parceled out to us as such because it is the only way our minds can envelop it? Not because there isn’t more out there, but because the limits of our mental capacity bar us from comprehending it? That we cling to science because we need a world with rules, because a world governed by spirituality alone doesn’t make sense? That whatever god-thing there is is careful not to reveal itself, to act only in ways we can explain away, to hide in plain sight, to be everywhere and nowhere at once, for our benefit? For what would happen if we did suddenly discover that all of these laws of physics and chemistry and biology could be overturned at the whim of some all-powerful consciousness? What anarchy might descend if the rules no longer held, if god suddenly was everywhere?

There are certain, inexplicable outcomes that scientists refer to as “jealous phenomena”. These are happenings, turns of events, strange abilities that wither under the light of scientific inquiry, and yet seem to exist nonetheless; a cat that can tell when people are about to die; a child who knows when a beloved uncle has passed hundreds of miles away because he visits her in her bedroom doorway, a woman who can hear animals’ thoughts. In the same way that observing certain subatomic particles freezes them, changes them, as soon as we try to get a hold of otherwise inexplicable happenings, they vanish. Is this itself god, hiding from us, knowing that we simply cannot absorb the unadulterated entropy of a frameless existence, outside the time-linear, three-dimensional, physical world we comfortably inhabit?

Perhaps science, luck, coincidence, is god’s way of protecting us from the full havoc of its being. Perhaps it works through our physical laws not because it needs to, but because we need it to.

And it has been there all this time and I just didn’t see it?

More important, can I see it now?