The Butterfly Effect – or, How We Learn to Love the Ship More Than Its Good Old Captain

17 May 2015

I once dreamed of a garden with a gigantic Tree inside.
A caterpillar was wiggling on a particular leaf of that Tree.
Suddenly the Tree shook violently and the caterpillar fell down.
The caterpillar looked around and found that its eyes had been severely injured.

“Hey, Tree! What’s wrong with you?”
The Tree was silent.
The caterpillar became as angry as it can ever be and it screamed and it shouted and it cursed, in hope of getting the Tree to open its mouth.
But the Tree remained silent.

Days gone by and its eyes still had not been healed.
It wiggled and wiggled but it could not find fresh leaves here.
Decayed leaves on the ground became its food.
In fact, the caterpillar became used to it so much that whenever he found newly-fallen leaf he didn’t like the taste.

Then the caterpillar became content with his condition.
And one day it became sure that there never was any Tree.
“If the Tree exists surely it can be sensed.”
Dear oh dear, see how the sober-but-injured eyes tried to find the gigantic Tree!

“Lack of evidence,” it muttered.
So the caterpillar went on living and became a cocoon.
“Oh, this is even better!”
It became dormant in comfort.

Months gone by and it had become a beautiful butterfly.
It learned to fly and went upward.
“How awesome it is to be up here!”
The butterfly could sense everything in the garden except the forgotten Tree.

Then it met other butterflies in the air.
They seemed to be discussing something interesting.
“We butterflies are awesome.”
Then a sacred game was devised to display their awesome-ness.

“If we flap our wings together, we can create a hurricane strong enough.”
So they flapped their wings together.
Butterflies, billions of them, in their colors, flapping in the name of Butterfly-ity.
Some even dared to hope that it would uproot the Tree.

Then they left.
They thought they had killed the Tree with their questions.
They thought they were free.
Years gone by.

—written as a humble consideration for 83% of so-called “atheist” out there: deep inside you know He exists. Does something inside still stirs whenever you heard the phrase “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him”?

(Don’t be so serious, of course that number 83% is not ‘scientific’ at all; I made it up)

Written by Mard Evan Posted in The Bridge Tagged with atheism, humanity and whatnot, mostly things you dont wanna read