In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
Not a Simple Question
In the Physical World
For tens of thousands of years, people were absolutely convinced that the world is flat. It was not a question. To everyone, it was simply the way things are.
In the statement, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” heaven is up there, and earth is down here. The answer to the question, “Which way is up?” was simple, and obvious.
When people learned that the earth is round, the issue became more complicated. “Up” still meant “toward the sky”, but for people on the other side of the earth, the sky is in the opposite direction. Put as simply as possible, in an earth-centered world, “up” means “away from the center of the earth”.
Once we learned that the Earth is in orbit around the sun, the question becomes virtually unanswerable. (I capitalize “Earth” because, being in orbit around the sun, it is one of the planets, whose names are capitalized.) We can point to the sky and say that that direction is up, but that only works when we are standing on or near the ground. When astronauts stood on the moon, pointing at the Earth was pointing up. From the surface of any celestial body, “up” is away from the center of that body. In the vastness of the cosmos, with its trillions of celestial bodies, “up” is a countless trillion different directions.
In the physical world, the question “Which way is up?” has no reasonable answer.
In the Moral World
It is odd that when Galileo was dragged before the Inquisition for supporting the idea of Copernicus that the Earth is in orbit around the sun, no one pointed out that this idea renders the expression “heaven and earth” of doubtful meaning. In a flat world, “heaven and earth” is everything. In an earth-centered world, the same is true. But in a world – a cosmos – in which the Earth is orbiting the sun, then the Earth is in heaven. The expression “heaven and earth” has lost its clear meaning.
In the New Testament, and in the Qur’an, “heaven” takes on a higher meaning. When Christians say that someone is in heaven, they do not mean that that someone is in the sky. Where the Qur’an refers to Allah/God as “the one in heaven”, it does not mean that Allah/God is up in the sky. (In the Qur’an, the word “samaa’” means “sky”, and there is no separate word for “heaven”.)
When we accept the statement “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” as revelation – albeit translated – then we can accept that Allah/God sent us a message that was clear in physical terms when we were convinced that the world is flat and still clear in physical terms when we became convinced that the earth is at the center of the cosmos, but also clear and true as a statement of the dual nature of reality once we learn of this planet Earth’s true place in the vastness of the cosmos.
“In the beginning, Allah/God created the higher reality and the lower reality.”
The higher reality is the reality of meaning and purpose – the moral world.
The lower reality is the reality of space and time, energy and matter – the physical world.
“Which way is up?” is asked here, in this blog, in these essays, as a moral question. And, it is not a simple question.
The most dangerous and misguided people in human society are those who are convinced they know which way is up. The prophets themselves – including the Messiah – looked to Allah/God to tell them which way is up.
I look to the scriptures – and to the Qur’an, in particular – for answers. I study constantly, study the world and the people in it. I study nature and the physical environment. I study history. And I try to keep my heart open to Allah/God.
I am constantly asking –
Which Way Is Up? 