Darkness And Light

I once had a debate with a very nice Baha'i lady on the topic of the origin of good and evil. According to her beliefs, she explained, there is no such thing as evil, evil is merely the absence of good just like darkness is merely the absence of light.
Ok, I thought, that's a reasonably logical position for a person of faith to take (despite the obvious fact that using that logic, good could just as easily be the absence of evil), but it made me ponder the way in which people use light as a symbol for God and goodness, and darkness as a symbol for the opposite.

I'm not a theist, I don't believe in a God or gods, but I do believe in light. And I know that light has some monumental limitations. For a start light is only "light" (as opposed to electromagnetic radiation of any other kind) if it can actually be perceived. For a blind person "light" is a non-entity. It's also only ever temporary, being pure energy it is easily absorbed or reflected, so that in any space at any particular time light is not a permanent thing. The light will eventually be destroyed or vacate the space it occupies.
And yet light is assigned to the divine, which presumably is supposed to be the least limited principle in the universe, limitless even.

Now lets look at darkness. To a person born blind darkness is all they know, it is the default, the base, if they were ever given medical treatment to allow them some sight, then this could only ever be a happy addition to that default. If they go into a dark room and close their eyes the darkness inevitably returns, because in reality it never left, it is the natural state upon which the mirage of light and sight can only play for a finite time.

So, if anything, darkness is the immortal one of the pair; it "exists" without a source, it cannot be destroyed or absorbed, it can only ever be temporarily concealed.

So what does this say of such light based god-concepts and the people who purport them, if anything?

Well, to me it only goes to demonstrate the significance people place upon the impermanent aspects of their existence (not that I'm blaming them or calling them silly, it's quite a natural thing to do). That they choose to use such a temporary and mortal entity as a symbol for that which they consider good and divine, while relegating that far more permanent and natural state of being into a position of distaste and fear says a great deal about how we as a species generally perceive the world.
That we fear the loss of the light, or perhaps the absence of God if you're that way inclined, shows us just how attached we are to the impermanent states of existence that surround us.
According to one wikipedia article Nirvana can be defined as "the reality that knows no change, no decay or death." If that doesn't describe darkness and it's dichotomy with light, I don't know what does.

Bringing all this waffle back into the context of the blog, darkness is of course symbolic of Oblivion - the eternal stage upon which the opera of life is briefly played out before being sucked back into the depths. Thus if anything, it is the opinion of this blogger that darkness is a far more fitting symbol of what is eternal, of what is powerful and "divine" in our lives than light ever could be.

Thank you for reading and goodnight.

Ceryx