There’s a lady who’s sure … she’s buying a stairway to heaven.
—Led Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven”
The works I have written on Christian Science contain absolute truth, and my necessity was to tell it.… I was a scribe under orders; and who can refrain from transcribing what God indites, and ought not that one to take the cup, drink all of it, and give thanks?
—Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writing
In the early 1970s, the British rock group Led Zeppelin released one of the most famous songs in rock and roll history—“Stairway to Heaven.” Its haunting and strange lyrics have been subject to much speculation and study, some experts concluding that the song refers to the Christian apocalypse and others believing the lyrics to be meaningless. Whatever the case, “Stairway to Heaven” sheet music sales remain the biggest in the history of rock, exceeding 1 million copies. The song is 8 minutes long, and since it first was broadcast, it has had roughly 23 million minutes of airtime—almost 44 solid years.
What can Led Zeppelin possibly have to do with God and omniscience? If God is omniscient with respect to the future, then God knows everything that will ever occur. Assume that Led Zeppelin brought into existence the song “Stairway to Heaven” through hard work, trial and error, and their amazing musical expertise. Let’s also assume that the song would not have existed without this group and its composing activity.
Let’s start with our first assumption: God is omniscient with respect to the future. (Some have used the term “omniprescience” to refer to knowing everything in the future.) This means that God knew before the creation of the universe that Led Zeppelin would be a rock band immensely popular in the 1970s and that it would include such longhairs as Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. God also knew before the creation of the universe that, in the 1970s, Led Zeppelin would produce the phenomenon of the song “Stairway to Heaven,” which did not exist until this point. Moreover, God knew that the first line of the song’s lyrics would be “there’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold.” In fact, God was aware of all of the words in the song. Thus, before God created the Garden of Eden, it was possible for God to recite all the lyrics of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Are you with me so far? All of this implies that if God so chose, He could have given His angels guitars and drums, and they could have performed the song in the clouds. This means that “Stairway to Heaven” existed before the creation of the Earth. God knew both that “Stairway to Heaven” existed and that it existed before He created the Earth.
However, I’ve started our discussion with the assumption that “Stairway to Heaven” did not exist before the 1970s. God knows the group created the song in the early 1970s and that the song did not exist, for example, in the 1930s. Yet, God also knows that the song existed before the creation of the Earth and universe. In some strange way of thinking, this means that “Stairway to Heaven” both existed and did not exist before the Earth existed and that God knew this. This contradiction suggests that divine omniscience and the idea of musical creativity are logically incompatible.
MUSINGS AND SPECULATIONS
There are good grounds for thinking that the sentence “God exists” has no common meaning for theists, atheists, and agnostics if, indeed, it does have a clearly understandable meaning for any of them. One reason for thinking this way is that there are claims made by different theists that justify the view that the sentence “God exists” has no common meaning even for all theists.
—Richard R. La Croix, “Metatheism”
Given our strange conclusion, as La Croix once suggested, it appears that we can’t subscribe to both the idea of divine omniscience and the doctrine of literary or musical creativity.1
We could actually leave “God” out of the picture. Consider our omniscient friend Dr. Eck. Assume he lived a million years before the creation of our galaxy. If Dr. Eck is omniscient, then every composition that will ever exist also existed before the creation of our galaxy. This includes the stirring works of Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. Yes, all of their compositions actually existed. And a band of Dr. Eck’s friends could play the Led Zeppelin song.
With God it is even possible that the musical compositions have no “beginning” at all if God lives outside of time. In any case, these scenarios suggest that the artists did not bring about the existence of the symphonies or rock anthems that they have “composed.” If the compositions have no origin, perhaps they are not brought into existence by any being, not even God. Should we praise Led Zeppelin for a song they merely made manifest but did not bring into existence?
“Hold on,” you say. I can hear you complaining that I am simply assuming that the musical compositions have no beginning. That’s true. But what if we assume they do have a beginning? Assume that Dr. Eck, an omniscient being, exists. If “Stairway to Heaven” existed before Led Zeppelin, who or what act brought about its existence? This contradiction still suggests that omniscience, especially divine omniscience, and the idea of human musical creativity are logically incompatible.
What we’ve discussed in this brief chapter applies to all acts of creativity. I write the words for a book title:
I Am Not My Wife’s Hippocampus
yet if there is an omniscient God, this awesome book title existed before the creation of the universe, and I cannot be praised for its creation in any traditional sense because I did not bring the title into existence.
Some philosophers have advanced the theory that God can choose not to know certain aspects of the future and about certain “compositions” (such as in science, art, and music), which casts free will and the actual authorship of artworks in a new light. To get a fresh perspective on this question, Eric Kaplan, M.D., asks us to suppose that God’s potentially perfect knowledge of future events, artworks, and so forth are represented by an immense book.2 Imagine such a massive book, leather bound, with gold trim, titled:
The Book of Everything God Can Know
As you can glean from the book’s title, the book would contain all the knowledge God could possibly possess. It must then contain all of our thoughts and actions and the ultimate disposition of our souls. By analogy, God’s possible “selective foreknowledge” could be represented by His choice not to look at what is written on some of the pages of the book. For example, God might avoid examining pages 24 and 666 so that His knowledge is self-limited. Dr. Kaplan writes, “However, and this is the point, whether He looks or not is irrelevant. The book has been written. It is perfect. It is done. We are ‘predestined’ just as completely, whether He looks or not. The existence of the book is sufficient.”3
One counterargument to Kaplan’s premise is that the book with the title The Book of Everything God Can Know has not been written. Kaplan’s response is that the fact that the book could be written is sufficient. For example, at this moment, you and I do not know the 1 millionth digit of pi. This information may not be written in any book. But the knowledge of the millionth digit of pi is potentially available. The fact that you choose to exercise selective foreknowledge and not make the calculations does not alter the fact that you could know if you chose to. Similarly, the fact that an omniscient being could know this kind of information is sufficient to assure that it is determined. The same logic applies to knowing events in the future. No actual book needs to be written. Whether God chooses to look or not does not affect the argument. Kaplan believes that God’s potential omniscience is sufficient to assure we have no meaningful moral free will. Similarly invoking a Book of All Art God Can Experience, we might also have trouble subscribing to the idea of divine omniscience and the doctrine of artistic creativity.
* * *
I sometimes wonder if God’s knowledge of “Stairway to Heaven” before the universe was created could be considered a “recollection” of sorts. Of course, the term “recollection” is a term we humans might use to describe a concept that has limited applicability to a being existing outside of time. (Perhaps we could use the word “precollection” rather than “recollection” in this divine context.) Nevertheless, religious people sometimes suggest that before God created the universe He was probably lonely or felt incomplete or dissatisfied. This would have been a possible motivation for His creating the universe. Leszek Kolakowski, author of The Keys to Heaven, comments:
It’s very difficult for us to imagine such a condition of loneliness when we consider that human loneliness is always in relation to something that once was; the loss of a reality that formerly existed and that was known. God’s loneliness, before the creation of the world, was unblest even by a single recollection.4
On the other hand, if God knew about Led Zeppelin, Shakespeare, Picasso, and Mozart before the creation of the universe, He did have recollections of a sort—in advance. Additionally, He could simulate all sorts of beings in His own mind, much like computers today can simulate primitive organismic behaviors. In any case, what exactly is loneliness when you can see all of history and all its people before the universe is even created?
* * *
I conclude this chapter with some fascinating facts on “Stairway to Heaven.”5
• In 1982, a hearing of the California State Assembly consumer protection committee featured testimony from “experts” who claimed that “Stairway to Heaven” revealed startling lyrics when played backward: “I sing because I live with Satan. The Lord turns me off—there’s no escaping it. Here’s to my sweet Satan, whose power is Satan. He will give you 666. I live for Satan.”
• On January 23, 1991, John Sebastian, owner and general manager of KLSK-FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico, played “Stairway to Heaven” for 24 hours to demonstrate his interest in a format change to rock and roll. He played the song more than 200 times, eliciting hundreds of angry calls and letters. Police came to the station when a listener reported that Sebastian probably had had a heart attack while on the job (not true). The police came again when they thought the station had been taken hostage by a terrorist.
• Dr. Robert Walser, professor of musicology at Dartmouth College and author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, writes of the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven”:
We might better understand the associative powers of the lyrics by breaking them up into categories. We are presented with a number of mysterious figures: a lady, the piper, the May queen. Images of nature abound: a brook, a songbird, rings of smoke through the trees, a hedgerow, wind. We find a set of concepts (that pretty much sum up the central concerns of all philosophy): signs, words, meanings, thoughts, feelings, spirit, reason, wonder, soul, the idea that “all are one and one is all.” We find a set of vaguely but powerfully evocative symbols: gold, the West, the tune, white light, shadows, paths, a road, and the stairway to heaven itself. At the very end, we find some paradoxical self-referentiality: “To be a rock and not to roll.”6
When God creates [in Genesis], He stands back in wonderment and, like a human artist looking at a canvas, observes that His creations are “good,” thus implying it might have turned out otherwise. An omniscient and omnipotent God would have no need to look back at what He knows will always be perfect.
—Alan Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
—Woody Allen, Without Feathers