Have you ever wondered how we got here? Who we are? Or do we even care? Unanswered questions are far more intriguing than those which can be answered with a few clicks on the internet or a stack of textbooks because what we don’t know makes us human. And even better, it makes us realize we don’t know everything, inspiring a certain sense of humility, awe and wonder.
The vast expanse of the universe is something which, when pondered can humble us, but moreover, make us acutely aware of our insignificance. To the human species, our planet is everything. It provides everything we need to survive. We need look no further for food, shelter, water and fuel. So why do we care about the rest of the universe? Are we all that matters, or are we such a negligibly small and insignificant speck in our vast universe, that we don’t really matter at all? If reality were merely the sum of all the matter in the universe, it would appear that we are indeed deluded about our significance. But we don’t care about the rest of the universe because it is out of our reach. What we do “know” is that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and commenced from an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point of potential, which “exploded” into our known physical reality. This only serves to distance us further from understanding our universe, let alone our sense of significance in the universe.
The idea of our insignificance provokes a sense of indignity when we recall our own lives, experiences, feelings, thoughts and accomplishments. Why do we feel that we are the most important thing in the universe? If we were as important as we think we are, would we not be privy to its mysteries? But still we carry out our lives on this speck of a planet as if nothing else could possibly be more important, unaware of the mysteries that lie beyond our biosphere. Why is this?
Think about the mind, the unstoppable product of electrical firings through living flesh and blood which is the carrier of thoughts, feelings, ideas and consciousness. Our consciousness creates this sense of importance in the scheme of things. What if we had no consciousness? Who would be there? Would there be a universe? Does the “who” even need to be there for the universe to exist? Most of us believe it doesn’t. We simply accept that a very long time ago, the universe was here, but we weren’t. Some believe that consciousness creates our reality. For those, consciousness is all that exists, but this is a little hard to accept.
However, even these ideas originate in our brains, without which, we could not wonder from whence we came. But brains are faulty organs since they are made of living, mortal material. So, our ability to interpret reality is faulty and limited due to the mortality of our bodies. Our consciousness cannot be the only thing that determines what reality is. We are individuals made of flesh and blood and sense our reality with our bodily organs. For example, our eyes can detect light waves reflected off objects, but cannot detect the shapes of individual atoms. A “perfect” sense of reality does not exist in humans. So, if we cannot perfectly “know” reality, how can we surmise anything about the universe with the slightest bit of accuracy? Is there a “consciousness” who does have this perfect knowledge of reality?
Well, we can “know” our world through observations and draw conclusions from them. We think, or postulate with our minds, but somehow, we can only “know” through observations. A particle accelerator, which causes high-speed collisions between subatomic particles, can only show the resultant patterns of these collisions on film, from which certain conclusions can be drawn about matter. Physicists working with The Large Hadron Collider, have recently discovered beyond a significant doubt that a particle called the Higgs Boson does, in fact, exist. It was postulated many years before, then “proven” after much experimentation. A tidy succession of events. If only we could “postulate” things that we desire, only to factualize them through years of searching. But can we only know realities which we can understand or are in fact looking for? You may observe a computer, but without knowing how to use it or even the fact that it is a man-made machine, you may draw unreasonable conclusions about the nature or purpose of its existence. You may believe it is “magic” or even “alien”. Understanding is the key to making observations make sense. We are still striving to “know” a reality that we can understand. This limits our “truth” to merely that which we can understand, and that which we are looking for. When we make an observation that we cannot understand, it is often hastily explained away or ignored, until much later, when we have advanced enough to draw meaningful conclusions from it.
But what if our brains cannot “understand” other dimensions, other universes or even our own reality? Some believe that that which cannot be observed by the five senses afforded us, is merely a theory. But many oddities arise from theories which cannot be proven by observation but make perfect sense mathematically. This is not to say that the science community is not living in the real world, but that their theories often are unproven by observation, or their observations often defy their understanding until a new theory updates our way of thinking. So, what is “real” is in a state of constant flux as our understanding of reality changes throughout history.
What is the point of squinting intently at the tiniest constituents of the world we live in, or searching for the beginning or the end of the universe? Whether we understand these things or not, we still eat, sleep, breath, live and die. In our relatively short life span, we experience everything we will ever know about the physical world, whether we think about matter in the universe or not. We may live an entire life span without ever thinking once about the Higgs Boson, on which our physical world is dependent. Yet we thrive without acknowledging it. So, truly speaking, matter doesn’t matter in its truest sense. Well, what does matter? Stuff? Or the stuff that makes up stuff? Apparently not. We might all have a sense of wonder about the universe if we were number-crunching physicists, but most of us are not. Our lives are limited by our own mortality, need for food, rest, shelter, and proliferation. If meaning were purely mathematical, our search for meaning would end at the discovery of a Grand Unifying Theory. But our search for meaning never ends at the heart of the “matter”. We care about the people in our lives much more than what they are made of.
However, if you do believe that matter is all there is, we must conclude that the universe is something so incredibly mysterious that the closer we look at its constituents the farther away we are from ever unifying our discoveries, and the farther we look out into space, the more we realize that understanding may be beyond our reach. Life’s trials and triumphs would seem to be all we would know had we not science to confirm that “life” in its physical sense is as mysterious as life in its experiential sense,
As evidenced by the rise in sales of self-help books, we are trying to “master” our lives as we also struggle to master the physical world around us. There is no formula in existence that guarantees that we will get the life we expected. We ask, “Why did this happen to me”? Or “why don’t things turn out the way I want them to?” If only we could mathematically calculate our destinies. We build skyscrapers, airplanes, computers, handy little digital devices, to enhance our lives, but how do we “master” our lives? To answer this question, we must hearken back to the very fact of our existence.
Many scientists believe that life created itself, over time, given the right conditions and according to laws of nature. The fact of our existence, however, cannot be accounted for by just a succession of “happy accidents”. The odds of these happy accidents occurring at the right time, in the right place, in succession for millions of years are so slim that we might as well believe that an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe (or multiverse). But wait! Don’t we already believe that, according to the Big Bang Theory, the universe appeared out of an infinitely tiny, infinitely massive point of potential? Scientific theories like this one, that can never be proven, already test our sense of reason. In a sense, when we say something is impossible, it is only impossible from a human perspective.
“With God, everything is possible”: How Science and Faith Coexist
For one thing, I do not believe that science and “faith” are mutually exclusive. Science is a very important tool in understanding God’s creation, the universe.
Possibilities lend themselves to a certain suspension of belief. A certain “faith” if you will, is required to grasp complex physics concepts.
But before delving into faith, it is very important to discuss the notion of “infinity”. Scientific theory is rife with infinities, which can be found by observing both our microcosm and macrocosm. Since “infinity” implies that something is endless, therefore very large or very small or massive etc., we cannot fully know what it is that we are referring to with any accuracy whatsoever.
To make matters worse, when we refer to something “unclear”, like a certain point in the future, it can only be characterized as a “probability” derived from an infinite number of possibilities that have the potential to be true, based on numerous known and unknown factors.
Why, it is simply mind-boggling that intelligent life even occurred on Earth in the first place, given the infinite other possibilities.
Who “chooses” from the infinite number of probabilities, the events that will follow? Our own acts of free will, of course, have some influence on the odds of a specific event happening, but what is the reason for failures in our best laid plans? Or for things that just don't go the way we want them to?
We find ourselves more and more in doubt of our own power to exact the desired results we want in our lives as each minute and hour passes. In the worst-case scenario, this frustration can lead one to resort to coercion or destructive behaviour. At best, we can expect a great deal of us to resort to “self-help” gurus, videos and books, all in vain.
“Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”
This does not mean you must abandon all investigation and effort. But when something seems incredible, we can remember that with God, all things are possible.
If we rely on our own understanding, we might find that some facts sound more like fiction.
Currently physicists postulate that multiple dimensions can exist simultaneously beyond the 3 dimensions we are accustomed to measuring. How many? At first, they calculated that 11 dimensions existed with certainty, but later recalculated that the number was…infinite? There it is again: infinity.
Certainty dissolves. Probability overwhelms.
A certain sense of comfort can be derived from knowing that our God who created us and the universe, is not overwhelmed by the probabilities that produce change, in each and every moment of our lives. Even atoms, of which we are comprised, are mostly made of space. Space that is occupied by an electron “cloud”, where each electron “dwells” within a “probability” of its location. Are we all living in a fog or “cloud” of infinite possibilities? Not so far-fetched when you consider that mankind has been wondering about his future since he has been on this planet.
God’s understanding of our universe is not like ours. We experience time, as cause and effect unfurls, each one at its own pace. For us, time moves forward sluggishly as each year of our life passes. We are in a “prison” of space-time. Given this particular limitation, it may not be possible to ever prove the existence of a “multiverse”.
How reliable are humans as accurate observers? Since we are made of the same “stuff”, aren’t we an altogether unreliable witness? Can something made of atoms accurately observe other atoms? Or is there something else “there” apart from masses of protoplasm interacting with machineries of measurement? Who or what is “seeing” into a telescope or microscope? What does it mean when you say, “I am” or “you are”?. What animates flesh and blood? All we know is that we exist and we are aware of it. “I think, therefore, I am.”
However, some would argue that such a thing as a “soul” does exist animating flesh and “shaping” our brains. Consciousness would be explained effortlessly, if a “soul” were its source.
So, what is a “soul”. Many writers have sought to explain this phenomenon from neurologists to biologists. The problem is that the soul is not a physical entity. There’s a saying that the body loses 21 grams at death suggesting that the soul has a mass of 21 grams and thus leaves the body when it dies. If you believe that the soul is physical, it would mean that it could be studied. This has not been accomplished yet and maybe never will. The soul animates our bodies, thereby making you “you” and not “it”. If consciousness could be explained, the existence of the soul as the source of consciousness makes for a good starting point. Of course, the body contributes to the conscious person as we are hard-wired to our brains and central nervous systems. But what would the brain do without a soul? Would it operate without a soul?
In Genesis, God “blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!”
Most certainly a divine feat! But can we breathe life into inanimate bodies? It is a popular belief that if we preserve our bodies or just our heads, indefinitely by freezing them cryogenically, we will find a way to “re-animate” them in the future. But will our souls remain “attached” to perhaps our DNA or some familiar bodily signature, waiting for re-animation? Not likely. The bodies that have already been recently cryogenically frozen at the times of their death will make useful cadavers for future studies, but sadly cannot make a functioning human being as we know them.
What does this say about the state of human scientific knowledge? That we are emboldened to freeze our bodies at exorbitant costs without having an iota of evidence for consciousness, let alone the ability to produce it from dead flesh. Another problem that asserts itself whenever the mystery of the origin of the universe is tackled, is the problem of dark matter. There seems to be a lot of it everywhere, but no one yet knows what it really is. Physicists posit that something called dark energy is responsible for the expanding universe. There is evidence that something is causing the universe to expand. But how is it that we know next to nothing about what dark energy is, how it fits in, and many other questions? Here’s another puzzle: Edwin Hubble noticed the expansion of the universe by the “redshift” of distant galaxies. It reveals that the farther the galaxies are from us the faster they are moving away from us. But is this expansion really expanding in the truest sense of the word? For what is it expanding into? Even if space itself were expanding, expanding into what? Even more perplexing, scientists once believed that heavenly bodies will eventually lose all their energy as they grow too far apart. At this point, stars will suffer a “heat death” and the universe will stop “cold”. Since this is merely linear thinking, is it plausible? Alternatively, will the universe expand to a certain point and then begin to shrink back again like an elastic band, to return to its original point of infinite mass, the so-called beginning of our universe? No human really knows…but we continue to attempt to describe the end and beginning of the universe without any idea if it’s true.
So much is still unknown, and the things we are the most unsure about are the things that matter the most: Life and what we do with ours. Believe it or not, our scientific prowess cannot hold a candle to the importance of living our lives in peace and love. Sadly, our planet has many difficulties in achieving these simple things.
How does science fit in with faith? To deny either science or faith is to miss the point entirely. There is no “competition”. We need both to define life in this age. If we believe that science can explain everything in the universe, we are indeed deceived by smoke and mirrors. Science may appear to be so complex that it can never be grasped by the layman. But it simply suffices to know that most of the phenomena in our universe cannot be explained by scientists. The universe is simply too complex and mysterious. Moreover, some hardcore atheists who say that “science” created the universe, forget that “science” is not a creator nor an entity. It is merely a tool used by humans to understand the physical world and a primitive one at that.
On the other hand, faith opens the door to living our lives in peace and love. As long as we are bound to this world, our purpose is to live harmoniously. This is not as easy as it sounds. It is easier to accelerate subatomic particles through a circular tunnel, and smash them together to glean information about matter than to establish some semblance of world peace.
What science and faith do share is the act of faith. Yes, a certain faith is required to be a scientist in the 21st century as many discoveries on quantum theory defy reason, and require a flexible, open mind. And simple concepts like “love” and “consciousness” have yet to be explained by science, but have been explained generously by mankind in the arts: poetry, music, painting and literature. Is it even necessary for “science” to explain these things to prove they are as real as everything else in our experiences? We experience gravity and science tries to explain how it works, but it cannot explain the attraction between two human beings. It is only when we accept both science and faith that we can truly be wise.