16 Feb 2025: A friend has suggested that this needs to be rewritten as a story. I have also learned that many think that ‘naturalism’ as the explanation of the universe is past. Apparently there is evidence that people are returning to ancient spiritual traditions.
We’re going on an odd journey, we will check out a bit of math, Psalm 93, the Celtic Otherworld and the Ptolemaic universe, among other things, and try to get a better understanding of reality.
We have fooled ourselves into thinking that a mathematical proof proves the theory. We easily see/understand that 1+1=2. And with that understanding we conclude that 1÷1=1. Yet we know that Biology informs with the observation that one cell can divide and become two. The same is true of a board: saw it in half and we have two boards. Mathematics might claim that we have two halves, but the real truth is that we had one piece of wood and now we have two– many more if we count the sawdust!
The same holds true for taking two balls of modeling clay and squishing them together: now 1 ball + 1 ball = 1 ball.
Okay, the problem is related to semantics. ‘Piece’ is not a precise mathematical term. We can pile the sawdust and the two pieces of the wooden board on a scale, but no matter how you weigh it the language of Mathematics does not always demonstrate reality: where there was one cell we now see (with a microscope) that we have two cells. True, we are not accounting for mass. But we are accounting for unique pieces. It’s not merely being pedantic; it’s the inherent nature of language.
Mathematics tells us that if I have two apples and I give them to you then I add negative two apples to my assets and you add positive two apples to your assets. That’s not the way it appears in reality. We both see that there are only two real apples. There are no “negative” apples. This language of math is a systematic way of expressing reality: it’s not what actually happened, it’s how math describes it. That’s what we are considering here. The language of math can obscure some details of events.
For example, Ptolemy drew a “map” of the universe based on his observations. He observed that all celestial objects rotated around the Earth. Planets were odd, they wandered in a specific way, sometimes going “backwards” across the sky. These retrograde movements led others to conceive a map where the Sun was the center of the Solar System. And, true, that map explains the retrograde movement of the planets: but it is not what we observe: because we can’t (at this time) get “above” the Solar System and observe it.
But we have been to the Moon. From that perspective we observe the Earth “fixed” in the sky above the Moon. At the Moon’s equator the Earth is directly overhead, tracing an elliptical pattern in the sky. At the poles the Earth actually rises and sets. Sky And Telescope provides some excellent details.
( https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/observing-earth-from-the-moon/ )
Ptolemy wasn’t ” doing the best he could” but was actually defining reality as he saw it. For example, Ptolemy’s design of the solar system does explain an eclipse. The Moon does move between the Sun and the Earth.
My point here is that what we observe is our best effort to describe reality. In spite of Copernicus and Galileo we refer to Sunrise and Sunset. We can’t see negative two apples, nor can we see the Earth rotate. So, all this may sound rather silly: but I hope you can understand that reality depends on more than a mathematical or scientific account of our observations.
I’ve been watching some YouTube videos produced by well meaning physicists. They try very earnestly to explain Relativity, Time Dilation and Gravity. Yet none of them actually explain the phenomena; instead they explain the Theories. For example, we observe that light from distant stars bends when it passes near the Sun. The reason for this can be demonstrated by mathematics. But that demonstration is a Theory. The theory to explain this changes. But the real reason is not known; instead, we use the theory and work around the problems, just as Ptolemy had the planets move in retrograde.
The real problem is when we declare the theory to be fact. The Roman Catholic Church, mistaking theory for fact, denounced Galileo. The Bible does not demand that the Earth is the center of the Universe: it references “sunrise” the same way we do. Let’s examine the last part of Psalm 93:1 (NKJV): Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved. Most versions say something like this, that the Earth cannot be moved. That’s a very nice poetic way of describing our planet. We know that the Earth does move: but we cannot move it. It is fixed in its orbit in the solar system. But who can say that, considering the movements of the Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy, the group of galaxies where it resides and all the other movements of the stars and galaxies relative to each other, that the Earth is, in fact, at the center? We can’t know. We can only observe. We can observe and we can speculate. That’s it. Scientific Knowledge is merely observation combined with speculation. Mathematics can prove that our speculations about our observations are coherent. But we have no way of absolute proof. That is why, in a legal situation such as a courtroom, the jury is asked to find a “reasonable” verdict. So, can you prove that the Earth is not, after all, the actual center of the universe? Was Ptolemy right?
So we have come to the bitter truth: Quantum Mechanics. Please remember that we cannot actually see electrons or quarks. We see the results of an experiment. For example, we see the pattern light makes when it passes through two slits. From the pattern we conclude that light is a wave. But we cannot actually know. The problem is that waves pass through a medium: waves do not move the water in a lake, they just cause the water to rise and fall in a certain frequency. If light is a wave then it passes through something. I’ve not seen a good explanation of that. But even more disturbing, light is also a particle, the photon. Now mathematics proves these theories work: but we do not understand light. We know it is an electromagnetic phenomena. We might even know how fast it travels.
Science has a deeply ingrained problem: measurement. The length of a meter has been studied since it’s creation by the French. The definition was subject to error introduced by changes in the substances used to define the length. So it was based on the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. But that is subject to change. So the definition of a meter was based on the wavelength of light from a specific type of Krypton, an inert gas. In 1983 the length of a meter was redefined in terms of the speed of light. But that had to be rewritten in 2019. So, ultimately, we just “approximate” the length of a meter. But, because we define it in terms of the speed of light we have made the assumption that this speed is a “constant” or unchanging value. But how can we be sure? We cannot measure the speed of light: we can only measure the speed of reflected light: the speed of light going to a mirror and then reflected back. Because of time dilation we cannot measure the speed of light from point A to point B. If you move a clock you subject it to time dilation and the time the clock measures changes! Therefore, we cannot actually measure the speed of light, yet we use that as the basis for the meter and thus for all measurement.
In our efforts to study Quantum Physics we have discovered that magic exists: change a quantum object in one location and a quantum object in a distant location also changes. Some of these objects seem to travel through time. The deeper we dig, the more mysterious the universe seems to be. More and more I think God designed the universe to confound us: He wants us to trust Him.
Our understanding of the world seems absurd. Albert Camus based his philosophy on that absurdity. The ancient Celtic people may not have been able to split atoms, but they had an understanding of the world that gave them psychological stability. They operated in a world that we might call magical. But they saw it as real. For them The Otherworld was not magic; it just was. The same is true of the ancient Israelites. When Elijah stopped the rain for three and a half years it was understood that God actually stopped the rain. It wasn’t magic, it was the way things were. Same thing when Elisha cured Naaman of leprosy. The miracles–or signs–of Jesus were also seen as “natural” events. It was understood that he cured the ill by the power of God. When Pilate asks Jesus, “What is Truth?” he is not being flippant: he knows that history is written by the winner; that what we see as true today will most likely be in error tomorrow. Pilate could not understand that “Truth” is not a “What” but a “Who”.
Today we deny that God heals through miracles. We allow that He uses doctors, or other scientific methods, to heal. But real miracles? God does not do that. We trust the scientific principles to the exclusion of any other theory.
Faith exists outside of science. It is that “Otherworld” we can’t accept. But we know that the Bible claims we are saved by “faith alone”. What’s most interesting is that once you truly have faith in God then you begin to see the world as it truly is. It’s just like that day in school when you really believed in negative apples.