> From this.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there is an animal called the Babelfish. Placed in the ear, the effect is to translate any language heard into the one you speak. Such an animal is deemed to be so useful it is the proof of the non-existence of God (it removes faith from the equation, and without faith God is nothing, the joke goes). In my thinking, music is like the Babelfish. (There are other things, but this is number one on our survey.) How is it that we can enjoy music? How does blind evolutionary process bring about attuning to certain sequences of tone? Its only purpose seems to be the conveyance of emotion, if it has anything like a practical application at all. We don’t need it to survive. Diplomatic treaties and instruction manuals are not written in musical notes. (Maybe they should be, to convey the spirit of the document all the better.)
It is a stunning coincidence. Can we look at this, and all that which is fortunate in our existence — how long until it becomes irrational not to believe in a higher pattern? Because music makes one question what “coincidence” actually may be.
We of science have believed that we are a run of the mill planet revolving a rather ordinary star, in an average position in our galaxy, which is itself nothing to write home about. This makes me think of the researcher who averaged the faces of serial killers and when he did so, came up with a more attractive face than all his inputs. If you “average”, he found, one comes up with beauty. How long will the white coats ignore that what they call “average” is what they mistake beauty for? And coincidence? Do not such phenomena deserve a different word? Those who believe God is luck, and not that God is love. Maybe that’s the paradigm shift they should be working on — from selling God short. Eggheads, before you try to absolve other people’s ignorance, start with the man in the mirror.
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