God and Science – a lecture

God and Science – a lecture – by P.K. Odendaal – August 2016.

(partially rewritten 27 August 2016)

I have been asked to give a lecture on the topic ‘God and Science’ by someone from the University of the Third Age – also called U3A. Of course I will jump at such an opportunity, as I am also actively involved in the University of All Ages at … you guessed it, my blog.

Typically, with me and my big mouth, I told the person that he is asking me to only speak on one subject, and that is God, and that the words ‘God and Science’ is a repetition of objects or subjects.

And so, I will immediately jump into the deep end, whilst realizing that my audience wants it straight and simple, with no strings attached.

Firstly, what are we talking about?

In my view there are two sciences, the one with God as the fundamental driver and the other one a godless one - the delusion of modern atheistic scientists that God does not exist or cannot be proven in this domain - and these sciences differ fundamentally. It is like we are driving a technologically advanced motor car whilst we deny that it was manufactured by someone.

If we say God is Love, we can also say God is Science, as God is everything, in everyone and everywhere. In short, God is the creator of the Scheme of Things and He is the Scheme of Things Himself. If follows logically that if God created everything, then He also created Himself and that He is in fact Everything.

Let me explain.

 

AXIOMS.

Axioms are statements or facts which we accept as being true without having proven them, because they are not provable in our domain of reality. We think they are intuitively true, and we have not found evidence that they are not true. We might find discrepancies in their application here and there, and then we go back to basics and see whether we have not made an error of deduction or induction somewhere, as we believe steadfastly that our axiom is true, rather than the deductions and inductions we make from them.

If we want to believe in God, we only have to believe in ONE axiom, and that is that God exists. That is called a belief system. There are many belief systems, of which Science is one, but the belief system in God is the only one which needs only one axiom. The deductions we make from that simple and basic axiom is that God can create things, He can converse with His creation on any level, He can influence it and he can maintain it. Nothing more and nothing less.

The axioms of Science are manifold, and it is also a belief system. We might start with counting, but before we can count, we first need to believe in five axioms which are:

·         We think therefore we are.

·         In our thinking, there exists a system of integers which we use to count.

·         There is a concept of adding which consists of adding the integer one to our previous deduced integer value.

·         The integer One plus One is the integer Two and so on.

·         Things that are equal to each other are the same.

OK, now only we are ready to count … or are we?

The fact is that there are an infinite number of axioms we need to believe in, to be able to start to count, and nowhere is it more ably demonstrated than by Lewis Carroll in his dialogue written about 120 years ago, between Tortoise and Achilles, which I quote here:

 

Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles," Mind 4, No. 14 (April 1895): 278-280.

Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.

"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise. "Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done?"

"It can be done," said Achilles. "It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constantly diminishing; and so …"

"But if they had been constantly increasing?" the Tortoise interrupted "How then?"

"Then I shouldn't be here," Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the world, by this time!"

"You flatter me -- flatten, I mean" said the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?"

"Very much indeed!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few Grecian warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil. "Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn't invented yet!"

"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!" the Tortoise murmured dreamily. "You admire Euclid?"

"Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won't he published for some centuries to come!"

"Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition -- just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your notebook. And in order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z:

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.

Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that anyone who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?"

"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School … as soon as High Schools are invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later … will grant that."

"And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the sequence as a valid one, I suppose?"

"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don't accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking to football."

"And might there not also be some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true, but I don't accept the Hypothetical '?"

"Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football."

"And neither of these readers," the Tortoise continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true?"

"Quite so," Achilles assented.

"Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically, to accept Z as true."

"A tortoise playing football would be … " Achilles was beginning

"… an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!"

"I'm to force you to accept Z, am I?" Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical …"

"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise. "… but you don't accept (C) If A and B are true, Z must be true."

"That is my present position," said the Tortoise.

"Then I must ask you to accept C."

"I'll do so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?"

"Only a few memoranda," said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: "a few memoranda of … of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"

"Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cheerily remarked. "We shall need them all!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate:

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other."

"You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles. "It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z."

"And why must I?"

"Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I imagine?"

"If A and B and C are true, Z must he true," the Tortoise thoughtfully repeated. "That's another Hypothetical, isn't it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C', and still not accept Z. mightn't I?"

"You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical."

"Very good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will call it:

(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.

"Have you entered that in your notebook?"

"I have!" Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"

"Then Logic would force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."

"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it

(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?"

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.

Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century -- would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

The generally delusional model of Science that Science is fact and God is faith or fiction, is totally incorrect and irrelevant, but it soothes the consciences of atheists. A more correct saying would be that God is based on one axiom and Science on an infinite number of axioms.

It is so that we need to start any investigation or hypothesis from first principles. If we do that then we need the minimum number of axioms. In the example above of counting, we skipped thousands of more basic axioms, with the result that we now need an infinite collection of axioms.  

 

WHERE DOES SCIENCE GO WRONG?

I need to understand why people think God and Science are two different things and why they think the two differ or are incompatible.

On reflection, I came to the conclusion that science has four serious shortcomings or impediments and they are glaring inconsistencies which everybody except scientists can or want to see.

 

Delusion 1. 

Science, mainly Physics, is very limited and really a miniscule part of God and Creation, of life, of reality and of the total realm of physics and metaphysics.

Science is about a thing called matter, a substance so volatile that it is difficult to even get to a definition of matter. It takes on many forms like heat, light, solids, steam, ice, radiation and many more. Just to study it when you can see it is futile. Therefore we have a word for things which are not physical, so to speak, and we call it metaphysics. The physics part of the universe is but a very small fraction of the universe and is orders of magnitude smaller than the metaphysical world.

It is similar to the idea of the subdivision of the personality of a human into three parts which are not brain or physical: the Id, the Ego and the Superego, which corresponds with the various structures in the mind. The graphic below shows it clearly - with apologies to Ali Oztas.

It shows that, like physics, of which the largest part is metaphysics, the unconscious mind is immensely larger than the conscious part.

 

 

Now what is really interesting about this graphic is the following (strictly my own thoughts):

If we turn this graphic upside down, it represents the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – and it then also has the form of a tree.

·         The lowest part coloured in white is the basic consciousness and knowledge of mankind since creation. In that scenario Adam and Even knew God, knew who they were and they knew where they came from and where they were going

·         The second part which becomes tainted is the knowledge we have gained from the Tree of Knowledge, and it is due to the exertions of our own ego and super ego because we wanted to acquire that knowledge, contrary to the wishes of God that we should not eat from that tree. The result of this is that mankind forgot who God was, who they were, where they were and where they were going and that is why we call that predicament one of being lost.

·         The next level or the Id section is what was previously called mystical knowledge, later philosophy and lately meta-physics. Instead of mankind going back to basics in the white part to find themselves, they entered the uncharted domain of the spirit to do that and got even more lost. One can hear echoes of this in the words of God in Gen 1: ‘And there was light’ to the words of Jesus Christ in John 1: ‘I am the light’.

·         It is thus my view that a search for God is a search in the conscious domain, not in the subconscious.

If we return to basics we can say that as god fearing creatures we started our knowledge from the lower tip of that tree and Adam and Eve at first knew and saw God. However, later they and we were shielded from His knowledge and holiness when we became sinful. In the latter event we have to start a a point which is the simple axiom that God exists.

However, scientists of today disregard that and start at the interface of the conscious mind and the Ego and Superego. At this interface knowledge has increased such that they cannot rely on the simple first axiom, but now have to rely on an infinite amount of axioms as a basis for their growth upwards in the tree of knowledge, and our saying of barking up the wrong tree is so apt, because instead of barking up the Tree of Life, they are barking up the Tree of Knowledge. Barking is such an apt word for the bark of the tree which shields them from its inner secrets. It was not supposed to be a pun.

For scientist now to pretend that their science is all important and pervasive is just plainly arrogant and a lie.

The adage about knowledge in their field is quite apt: they learn more and more of less and less until they know everything of nothing … and here is the rub … they do not even know what nothing is!

 

Delusion 2.

Scientists generally are not interested in the Maker of the universe and pretend He does not exist. They believe the entropy of the universe decreases with time and that animate things change in a random way to evolve over millennia into something beautiful and profound like we observe it, despite their own (proven) axiom that the entropy of the Universe in fact increases with time. That is what I call the Darwinian Delusion, named after the prophet they venerate.

Here is my take on their theory:

Excerpt from a scientific treatise of the year 3000 A.D.: Scientist have discovered a new strain of Ford Mobilis, a metallic form of life, which has evolved over millennia. The first Fords were of the Model T strain and have evolved over years due to genetic variation and mutation pressure into the later fossils of Ford Mustangs and later to Ford Mobilis. The fossil record is quite abundant except for strains which might have existed before the Model T, but scientists think of it as a gap or missing link between this and the Horse Cart found elsewhere in excavations. It is postulated that these creatures could walk, talk and think, as they appear widely spread over planet Earth, and some could even talk to humans by a process now known as voice synthesis and artificial intelligence. The brain found in this specie consists of flat ceramic plates covered with silicon bits or bytes – not intended to be a pun- which also invigorated the central nervous system.

Hogwash! 

 

Delusion 3.

Observations in science are affected by the presence of the observer, and especially so in nuclear or particle physics. A good example of that is what we read in the newspaper every day. A liberal thinker will interview many people in a town and ask them what they think of the mayor of that town. After hundreds of these interviews they will select the liberal comments and disregard the others. A conservative journalist will do the same and only publish the conservative views - and so readers will have two very divergent and skew views of that ruler or of those townsfolk, because the observers influenced the outcome of this survey. This is what science does, because everything which does not support the Darwinian Delusion is of necessity false and incorrect.

The scientific fact is that the observer effects the outcome of the observation is some way as described partially by the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.

How does this play out in real life?

Scientists are looking to find the source of gravity in the Higgs Boson particle, and they will never find it. It is like looking for a traffic jam in the glove compartment of a car or even more ludicrous it is like dissecting the human heart to find where love is seated. I can never be.

Let us ponder this for a minute to see how delusional they are.

They say that the first appearance of physical matter in the Universe was pre-empted by an explosion called the Big Bang which was an explosion of high energy light – devoid of matter. Yes, we God fearing people knew that three millennia earlier when God said in Gen.1:3 Let there be light and there was light.

If we believe them and God that the beginning of everything was just light, then gravity cannot be in a particle, because it was gravity which exploded and contracted the Universe before any particles were formed.

There is no other logical way than to accept the axiom that the forces were part and parcel of the light in the beginning and that none of these forces can dwell or be seated in anything physical or material.

If that is so, we might find fault with the present view that light is deflected around solid bodies due to the discontinuity or warping of space-time and that it is the solid body’s influence which has pushes the light away whilst gravity should have pulled it in. It could rather be forces which are inherent in the light, as we know they are, otherwise how can we explain the phenomena of interference and diffraction of light by the present theory of wave superposition without taking the electromagnetic forces inherent in the light into consideration. Why can’t we have only one theory for the nature of light?

Just for clarity these forces are: the force of Gravity, the Electro-magnetic force, the Weak Nuclear force, the Strong Nuclear force and Love, the biggest force of all.

 

Emotions.

I have not touched on emotions, which are also very strong forces, and which may be paired with Love.

If you think that the worst thing which can happen to mankind is that a nuclear bomb can kill a million of us, you have not come to the beginning of emotional forces.

Today, one statesman on this planet can destroy all of mankind – a few billion - by hatred, jealousy and a display of power by an arsenal of physical weapons too big to contemplate.

And what about this catastrophe: Six thousand years ago, an angel destroyed and killed the whole of mankind, even those who were not born yet, by the smallest arsenal imaginable – that of jealousy!

 

 

WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE TODAY?

I wish to learn from the past.

Science is alive and well and is living inside us, but only the Science which has God and a working knowledge of Him at its foundation - not an atheistic scientific approach which has no fundamental basis. In the latter you may have knowledge, but it will be restricted. That is only the knowledge from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The other name for this tree is Philosophy and Science. We rather need the knowledge of another tree in that Garden, the Tree of Life.

If I have a look at the history of August Kekulé below, I am more convinced than ever that the pursuit of science without the pursuit of God is futile.

The challenge we have today is the ability of mankind to count, but on a very different level than the one I mentioned in my opening paragraphs. It is known as putting two and two together.

Who could put two and two together? I give you a few examples – the three examples of excellence beyond our normal train of thought – and the first one inspired by God.

 

August Kekulé

The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry after 1865 that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé's honor, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds.

 

 

Eratosthenes (276-195 B.C).

He was the Chief Librarian at the Library of Alexandria. One day he read in one of the parchments the simple remark that at local noon on the summer solstice in Syene, the columns made no shadow. Just that … short and simple. Most of us would have glanced over it and gone on to something more trivial or complex.

He argued that if the columns in Alexandria at that exact time also made no shadows, then the earth would be flat, otherwise the earth would be round. On that certain day, he observed that the columns in Alexandria did make shadows. He hired a person to measure the distances between the two towns with a stade, and with the result he calculated the circumference of the earth which was only about 10% in error. Remarkable!

 

Isaac Newton.

He discovered the Laws of Gravity by putting two and two together. At the time Johannes Kepler was working on the movements of the planets and formulated his three Laws of Planetary Motion, which are still valid today. However, he did not know why those orbits were ellipses.

On the other side of the Channel in England, John Flamsteed was Astronomer Royal and had the most accurate and elaborate catalogue of 3000 stars, but he did not know what to do with it.

Newton read the article by Kepler, got the catalogue from John Flamsteed (after a fight) and formulated the Laws of Gravity, which are still valid today. Remarkable!

 

Edwin Hubble.

Edwin Hubble was working on the expansion, contraction and size of the Universe. He knew about Doppler who formulated the theory of the frequency shift of sound waves relative to moving objects.

He argued that the same frequency shift should be observable in light waves. Finding its manifestation in the colour of stars, he calculated the size of the known Universe. WE do not know how accurate that is. Remarkable!

You and I can also apply our mind and put two and two together in a new game of Hide and Seek which transcends the short sightedness of scientists.

 

AN ODE TO GOD.

For a mere mortal like me, and a very ignorant one at that, I can make no other rational deductions than God had created Himself. It is therefore with humility and wonder that I composed this Ode to God:

O, wondrous God, what happened on the instant you made yourself?

There were no mountains to tremble or thunders to rejoice,

There was no human or angel to bow before and adore you,

Yet the greatest miracle of all was born without a sigh.

Where did you get your raw materials from and on which blue print did you work?

Where did you suffer pain and grief to become so deeply human and compassionate?

Through which fire did you go to temper your love and mercy?

Where did sin try to attach itself to you, that you learned the art of forgiveness?

In which caverns were you born, in the absence of a manger?

And who burned sweet incense to you in adoration? 

Did you think of Adam then already, and was your desire for a friend so great?

That you risked the fall of your Kingdom for the sake of man.

Which darkness and voids did you meet when you opened your eyes?

And did your light illuminate the deepest chasms ever found?

Did the forces of nature combine in your being, with the beauty that they bring?

Or were they nestled in your being waiting for their birth?