The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible 9781491710999, 9781491711002, 2013920402

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 3
Chapter 12
Glossary

Citation preview

Reviews “Because medical doctors or physicians have made vital contributions to philosophy, from Maimonides, Avicenna, and John Locke in the history of philosophy to Raymond Tallis today, it should not surprise us to see Dr. James Frederick Ivey’s superb contribution to our philosophical reflection on the bearing of current physics on Biblical faith. Perhaps it takes a person well trained in the application of science in medicine to see the ways in which the application of science, especially modern physics, quantum mechanics, and relativity have important applications in our thinking about God, the Bible, and Judeo-Christianity. The terrain is not unexplored by philosophers, theologians, and popular writers, but it is rare to see the kind of engaging clarity, breadth, and conscientious, mature reflection to be found in Ivey’s book.” —Charles Taliaferro, Chair, Department of Philosophy, St. Olaf College; Editor-in-Chief, Open Theology “In his book, The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible, Dr. James Ivey, although a physician, has done his homework in both the physical sciences and philosophy. He argues that modern physics, relativity and quantum mechanics strongly infer the existence of God. He concludes that the historical man, Jesus of Nazareth, was not a lunatic or a liar, but truly God. He submits that Biblical Christianity has all the truth in it and is radically different from all other faiths. His book is a must read for those who have problems with science versus theology.” —David A. Kaufmann, Ph.D., Past Secretary, Creation Research Society and Professor of Applied Physiology (Retired), University of Florida, Gainesville, Fl.

The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible How Relativity, Quantum Physics, Plato, and History Meld with Biblical Theology to Show That God Exists and That We Can Live Forever Copyright © 2013 James Frederick Ivey, MD. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. ISBN: 978-1-4917-1099-9 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-4917-1100-2 (e) Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920402 Printed in the United States of America. All biblical quotations are from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise designated.

To my deceased wife, Nancy Joan Martin Ivey, as pure as Joan of Arc. In 2004, she went to be with Jesus, to be the face of His bride. She is ever loved by me and our children and many grandchildren. To my wife, Pamela Jean Birdsall Ivey, giver of unconditional love and genius of the give-give marriage. She is ever loved by me and her children and grandchildren. I thank them, as I thank God for them.

CONTENTS Foreword Preface My Christian Experience, Method, and Intent Personal Promises to You The Lord I Tout My Own Belief and Commitment Acknowledgments Introduction Overture: Plan and Purpose— Things Are Not as They Seem Orientation: Structure PART 1 Science, Religion, and Religions Chapter 1 The Shortcomings, the Dilemmas, and the Charge of Christians Jesus' Commands and Our Problems Count the Cost A No-Nonsense God of Character Real Christians and True Christianity The Christian’s Greatest Dilemma Chapter 2 Other Faiths The Importance of Comparison Judaism

Comparison with Christianity History of the Jews God’s Chosen Islam and Mormonism Hinduism and Buddhism Pseudosimilarities between Buddhism and Christianity Neoplatonism Less Frequently Discussed Subjects of Comparative Religion Chapter 3 Secular Considerations Chapter 4 Science and the World Beyond: A Dynamic Relationship The Special Theory of Relativity Relativity and Space-Time Relativity and Matter Relativity and Force More about Matter as Mathematics Mathematics and Greater Truth Yet Quantum Physics Mind over Matter The Ultimate Error of Materialism The General Theory of Relativity Reiteration and Other Thoughts Chapter 5 Science Stymied by the Prime Mover

No Causation without a Prime Mover Cosmological Considerations Good Fruit Born of the Objective Scientist Where Else Science Belongs A Procession of Great Ideas from Science More on the “Job Description” of Science Conclusion Chapter 6 Knowledge and Belief Science as Beliefs about Nature Usefulness of the Nonproven The Credibility of Theology as a Source of Information Perspective Faith: Valid, Powerful, and Multifaceted Faith as a Sense Faith as Remembrance of One’s First Love Faith as Remembrance of One’s Origin Ways to Faith Why God Emphasizes Faith Knowledge vs. Belief Chapter 7 More Lack of Basic Knowledge No Fundamental Understanding through Science Fundamental Understanding through Faith Mathematics as Evidence of the Existence of Deity

Our Lack of Understanding Demonstrated in Specific Fields Physics Chemistry Biology A Challenge Review PART 2 The Origin of God, Eternal Life, and the New Christian Apologetics: Relativity, Quantum Physics, and Philosophy Bolster Christian Faith Chapter 8 The Truth Is Inevitable: How God Can Exist and Why He Must The Abundant Life Famous Proofs of the Existence of God The Bottom Turtle The Function of the Truth Absolute vs. Relative Truth Relative Truth Natural Law The Truth Is Irrepressible The Nihilism of Relative Truth Conclusions Concerning the Truth Chapter 9 The Physics and Philosophy of Eternal Life: Einstein Showed That We Live Forever Science, Theology, and Apologetics

Modern Physics and Immortality Doxa and Logos Historical Consensus and Citing Ancient Times The Middle Ages The Early Modern Era The Later Modern Era Einstein and Planck et al. to the Rescue! Extrapolations of Modern Physics More Bright Men and Discoveries Mind Stuff Relativity and Quantum Physics Quantum Mechanics The Genius of Einstein The Special Theory Death Is Not as It Seems More Reasons to Believe That We Live Forever The Universe as Logos More Thoughts Related to the True Nature of Death Chapter 10 Quantum Physics and Ultimate Truth: Quantum Observation Crisis in Academia A Crisis of Faith The Common Remedy

The New Christian Apologetics: Preparing to Draw Conclusions Recall and Reiteration The Preeminence of Mind and the Thought of God Quantum Observation Scientists as Theists and Philosophers The Biblical God as the True God Chapter 11 Quantum Observation and Genesis: Beginning to Draw Conclusions PART 3 Final Observations Chapter 12 Conclusions Glossary Words Proper Names

Volume 1 of The Inevitable Truth

Foreword by James Thomas Ivey, my oldest son As my Dad's son, I am perhaps best able to contribute to your experience with the reading of this book by lending to you some of my perspective. I know the author very well, and perhaps I can help set the tone and context by telling you a little about him, the relationship we've enjoyed, and some of what we talked about when I was growing up. My earliest memory of my dad is of his holding out his hands to me. I'm sitting on a sloping tree trunk and he is standing on the ground, a few feet away, waiting. Next, he is building me a tree house with football-shaped windows, and this memory is followed by instructions he is giving me: how to reel in a weedless black worm bait for optimal presentation to largemouth bass. I dutifully perform this prescribed activity while he unloads a small green Jon boat from a pickup truck. By this time I can't be more than three years old. Then the memories take on a different character. They are framed in the picturesque majesty of Alaskan mountains and glaciers. I stumble over river boulders the size of grapefruit, hewn out and rounded by their formative association with rushing water and crushing ice. I follow my Dad through tangles of alder and thick stands of thorny Devil's Club. I follow along the thin blades of mountain ridges, dividing treacherously steep and rugged cliffs of granite outcroppings and loose shale. On another occasion, we transplant delicate broccoli and cauliflower bedding plants into the cool, silt-rich top soil of the Matanuska Valley. I can see their pale leaves flat against the dark earth, two-dimensional in appearance, softly reflecting the rays of the sub-arctic sun. It is perhaps ten or eleven PM. At some point, we began to talk about God and science. I talked and Dad listened. He carefully evaluated my every observation and patiently supplemented my understanding of concepts from his own reading and science background. Over time a compendium of conversation developed and became recurrent on many levels, spanning quite a range of topics,

from the origin of life to properties of light, from Biblical truths to the wisdom of philosophers and apologists of bygone eras. The essence of the conversation was that science, far from being a thing to be feared or resented as threatening faith, was rather something to pursue with the eager expectation that faith would be rewarded in learning all we could about our world and indeed our universe. In fact, we came to derive great enjoyment from discussing what appeared to be the ultimate nature of the physical reality of our surroundings. Was it the overwhelming beauty of Alaska that made so plain to us this notion that only a Creator could have formed our world? Was it my dad's knowledge and experience as a doctor of medicine that taught him that human life is precious and surely directed and affected by wisdom beyond itself? These questions I cannot answer, but I do know that truth, more than any other quality or substance, became my dad's life’s pursuit. And I know somehow that his faith was, and is, that, in finding truth, he would find God. I have no doubt that Dad has indeed encountered God. And I cannot help but think that his compassion as a physician moves him to share his discoveries with others. I have seen him turn and pause on the trail many times, pointing out the next blaze, or warning of a rough and/or steep stretch. I like to think that he is still the man standing at the base of the tree, holding out his hands, waiting. His answers may not be beyond healthy debate, but I continue to savor all that he has to say. And I have been listening for many years.

Preface

My Christian Experience, Method, and Intent Personal Promises to You This book is about Christian philosophy and apologetics. It turns on a few fascinating concepts (e.g., that of quantum observation in conjunction with God’s method of creation and the derivation of God from all-Goodness). It demonstrates that apologists are very close to the non-necessity of having to deal with whether God exists or not. I begin with imagination, which Einstein said is more important than knowledge, and work from there to imbue the reader with advanced perspective, such as the ability to see the world with a timeless mind-set. My son, James, almost like a twin brother to me, having read a piece that I sent to him, expressed part of what I am about better than I ever could. “I think these ideas are coming together in a profound way. When an object begins to be recognizable from many angles and distances, though appearing differently due to perspective in each case, that object begins to take form as an entity in our minds. Soon we can begin to imagine what it would look like even from a perspective as yet outside of our experience. (An example here is that I’ve never seen a polar bear quartering away from me to my right from one hundred yards, but I can imagine what it would probably look like.) You’ve come at the question of ultimate truth from many angles and distances. It seems like the conclusions are becoming increasingly recognizable—something we can think about and imagine, beyond our experience and perhaps beyond even our normal earthbound modes of perception.” I am a physician, and the primary maxim in the practice of medicine is, “First, do no harm.” This is a quote from the Greek physician Hippocrates,

who lived in the fifth century BC.1 I take it as a rule by which to live my entire life, professional and otherwise. It is reminiscent of Jesus’s admonition that we should not be judgmental. I do not preach in terms of condescension; in no way do I perceive myself as superior to you, and I certainly may not judge you. There is no question in my mind that only a person who is both morally perfect and omniscient can be the ultimate judge of anyone, and I am, of course, not such a person, such that it would be hypocritical of me to try to perform this function; actually, the stronger term, “ridiculous,” is quite appropriate here. Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1 KJV), and He meant that if we try to usurp His exclusive right to evaluate the innermost thinking of any person, we ourselves will be held all the more accountable for our own shortcomings. We are accountable enough already because our shortcomings are many and major. On the other hand, I do not think that all preaching is bad because, if I preach with respect and convince you that Jesus is The Truth and should be worshiped as the true God, I believe I have done a good thing. On the other hand, there is “preaching” in the form of lecturing, with the implication that the speaker knows everything about his subject and the listener knows little or nothing, and that kind of verbal display is rude and unrealistic. I promise not to do that and will keep my promise. One often hears people complaining about someone’s trying to impose his views upon society or another person. I, of course, do not have the power to do that, but, if I did, I would be wrong to use it. Certainly, everyone should be free to reject Christian evangelism without fear of derision. I also may well judge in terms of giving my opinion on this or that thought or behavior. One should hate bad behavior but love the person who is behaving badly, and we should, in fact, be careful about what we call bad behavior. Furthermore, Christians who seek to change the beliefs of others need to proceed with utmost caution and humility; otherwise, we can do much harm. The “bottom line” is that Christians need to simply present Jesus in love and depend upon the Holy Spirit of God to do the rest. The complexity, profundity, and sheer importance of the network of cause and effect that can result from an act or two carried out in the supposed interest

of others can be major and often quite detrimental. We often have not the perspective to visualize more than a tiny part of the damage we can cause by insisting upon a quick and positive response to that which we advocate. The following story will succinctly illustrate what I am talking about. I once viewed the movie Hawaii, based on the book by James Michener. The main character was a fire-and- brimstone, hell-and-damnation kind of minister who essentially worshiped a God of punishment and revenge. He turned many away from the Gospel with his intolerance of the traditions of the people he was trying to convert, trying to make their private business his, and constantly threatening. His words, demonstrating well the power of the tongue for destruction, caused a chain of events that led to such rash action on the part of the husband of the queen of the islands that he left his island home and struck out for the land of his ancestors, with the implication that he would probably die trying to get there. The missionary’s long- suffering wife, on the other hand, just let her faith show and spoke words of kindness in Jesus’s name, and she consequently provided the example of the Christ to the “natives” in a way that caused them to love both Jesus and her. Due to her influence, the queen herself became a Christian, explaining her conversion with the simple comment that Jesus was “such a wonderful young man.” Though I cannot criticize those who seek, find, and reject, those who do not seek at all I cannot understand. I cannot imagine a lack of curiosity with regard to the most profound questions humans can ask. To try to learn such answers is very enjoyable, for one thing, but particularly to rationalize, sublimate, or ignore the prospect of the approach of death makes no sense to me, though many of us, especially the young, seem to be good at doing that. The seeker, for purposes of this discourse, is one who wishes to discern essence and discover axioms, to open his mind to all of truth, to all of the reality that lies within space-time and beyond. This truth that is sought is not some abstract summation of human thought; it is something that is “out there,” something that we can find, that we can discover, as the human race has already found natural physical laws that detail the mathematical order of our world. It is part of the thought of God. I know that some of us do not

recognize the existence of axioms or believe there is any such thing as undeniable truth. I can only respectfully, though (most) vigorously, disagree with those who are of the opinion that what is true depends upon opinion and circumstance. It takes considerable concentration for me to be respectful in this instance because I believe that believing such is a recipe for death. I do not recommend anything to anyone that I do not think will improve him or her as a person; in fact, if I advocate anything that I do not intend to apply to myself, shame on me, much shame. That is, of course, the way one should act, and it is, in fact, the way one should be. I do not evangelize because I am afraid God will punish me if I do not, and I certainly believe that I am far short of “knowing it all.” As Jesus claimed no goodness, I most certainly do not. I claim only the Christ and the benefits He offers. I boast only in Him and believe, with Paul, that my life is preserved solely by God’s grace (His undeserved favor) and that it will be so forever provided I accept His graciousness through my faith. I try to pass on His gift largely because that is the most rational thing to do with it; it is most especially reasonable to do this because I can give it away without suffering loss, and passing it on results in my personal gain as well as that of anyone who receives as a result of my testimony. Giving good things is its own reward, building us up as persons. It provides us enjoyment, and there can be no greater gratification than giving the best there is.

The Lord I Tout The Gospel of the Christ presents to us a concerned God who affords us the opportunity to have meaningful life after death, joyous beyond measure, most likely in a state outside of time and space, “where” there is only a present and no past or future, and “where” we probably can no longer change, at least in any fundamental way. There is no reason to believe we shall ever have an additional life in which to prepare for such a scenario; therefore, I unreservedly recommend that we all exercise the free will God has given us and choose full commitment to Jesus of Nazareth as soon as we feel it at all reasonable to do so. His words make sense and jibe with all

disciplines of humankind, at the same time connecting positively with intuition and fitting in with all that we observe in our universe (provided we perceive it using the mind’s eye). Since I gave myself up to Him, particularly when I have prayed the most and have given the most, the happiness that has come my way has been exponential.

My Own Belief and Commitment Development by Experience When I was a child, I was trying to go to sleep one night and saw two young men at the foot of my bed. They said nothing and looked neither happy nor sad. One was tall and the other was short. This scenario was not at all like a dream, and I was not afraid, though I fully believed they were live persons. I lay there a minute or two, after which they disappeared. I then got up and told my parents what had happened. They said it was a dream. It was no dream; I believe they were angels, partly because it seems as though I have been protected all my life. I will not enumerate the many times I have escaped death when I could easily have died, due to my having done some dumb thing, particularly as a pilot. On one occasion, I could have taken a son with me to eternity—at another time, a friend. The most frightening of these was the first, wherein one of my childhood friends and I decided to tunnel through a very large ridge of dirt that had been deposited by a person in a large machine digging up a road, apparently to get at some pipes beneath. I said, “You go in that side, and we’ll meet in the middle.” Of course, the tunnel collapsed, and I could not move a finger. Fortunately, my friend had not gone in as far as I had. Someone once gave me a mug that said, “James—meaning protected.” (It was what I got in return from her having embezzled $20,000 from me.) I do not think this has anything to do with my having been guarded from tragedy, but it seems to me at least a major coincidence. Perhaps it was a little message from God. In any case, I am by no means a “Glory, hallelujah” person who interprets everything as some kind of sign. I simply and calmly, with a fully intellectual approach to the matter, feel that angels

have always watched out for me. Perhaps they did so because of my constantly praying grandmothers. There have been no tragedies in my family of origin or among my offspring, who are many. I have “had everything on a silver platter,” though my parents were not wealthy. I had a wonderful first wife for forty-three years, and, after she died, I married yet another exceptionally fine woman. My first wife did die young by today’s standards, and this, along with her suffering for years, was a tragedy with which I can deal only through an element of denial, exercised as I think about part of it at a time. Nevertheless, she got everything out of her body that she could have gotten, and I have reason to believe that God wanted her to come to Him at sixtyfive. In any case, her particularly severe suffering for about two years was so distressing to me that her death was less so. All of my children love each other, and all of their twelve children love their aunts, uncles, and cousins and are Christians except for those who are too young to understand such things. My offspring accept my second wife quite well. When I think of what I have compared to the majority of people I know, I am overwhelmed with gratitude, and I can only believe that God oversees my life. Part of my “silver platter” was that “Santa Claus” used to bring me about ten presents each Christmas. I would make a list beforehand and would generally get what I wanted, but the gift I liked the best was usually something I had not thought of. God is like my parents were in this respect. If we could handle it without believing we deserve it and more, He would probably be doing this constantly. I prayed every night during much of my childhood that I might have a long, full, happy, and useful life, and God continues to answer this prayer in spades.

Development by Learning Here are a few of the many items of information that I have encountered through the years that have convinced me that the true God is He of the Christian Bible and that Jesus is His embodiment. The setting of Jesus’s ministry was ideal in terms of providing the best possible point from which

Christianity could spread following His resurrection. His story connects with the secular history of His day in a way and to a degree that greatly enhances its believability. It takes place in just the right place, a locale that was in His time and still is now the crossroads of the world. It is where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet, and it is a part of the Middle East, “the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires.”2 It lay right on the path in ancient times of Rome with its breadbasket, Egypt. Jesus also lived at a time that was ideal for the spread of the faith that He engendered. Octavian, grandnephew, adopted son, and heir of Gaius Julius Caesar, had established the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a prolonged period of relative peace in the Roman Empire, which, at least for its citizens, provided much more personal freedom than one would think could exist in a dictatorship. In addition, having conquered nearly all the known Western world, Rome had established communication and relatively safe travel by way of impressive as he described it (Acts 9:1–9). The existence of not one, but two widely understood languages, Latin and Greek, enhanced communication and travel in the empire. Alexander, about 350 years earlier, had spread Greek culture and the Greek language to the Middle East and beyond, and Latin was spoken by many individuals throughout the holdings of the Romans. Thus, though we do not know how much Latin and/or Greek Jesus spoke, if any, we do know that the existence of these linguae francae hastened His becoming well- known throughout the Mediterranean world and most of the rest of Europe. Furthermore, the Roman authorities did not at this time worry a lot about what people worshiped, or even whether they believed in the Roman gods. Whether one put his deity above his allegiance to the Roman state was admittedly another matter; yet, the Romans, by virtue of the antiquity of the Jewish religion, allowed the Jews to do even this; they revered almost anything that was old. In any case, it was not Roman law that resulted in Jesus’s execution, but religious jealousy combined with the ability of Jewish leaders to make the local Roman governor fear that he might be seen as out of line with the wishes of the emperor of that time if he did not have Jesus killed.

These situations and conditions can hardly be coincidental. I have additionally observed that the writings of the early followers of the Christ connect well with one another. They also describe events that are quite believable, particularly as the authors relate them with complete candor. According to the well-known Bible translator J. B. Phillips, the New Testament has the “ring of truth”—it sounds intuitively right to him.3 It certainly does to me, and I believe that intuition is a valid entity based on information accumulated in our brains on the subconscious level. When recognized and discretely used, it is a helpful store of information. A particularly important reason that I am a Christian is that Jesus is the only person in the history of humankind who claimed to be God and made that claim “stick.” Furthermore, He did so “to the tune of” His having more followers today, two thousand years later, than any other religious figure. I am likewise impressed with the utter simplicity of Jesus’s message, which is also unique in its manifesting and commanding love and in its packing maximum amounts of wisdom into every sentence. We can summarize His message with just a few words—“Follow me; observe me, and do as I do.” The example that He sets is also easy to understand: It is that of an eminently wise man who maximally loves God and other humans but who manages to be humble as well.4 In the book of Micah in the Old Testament, we find, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to show kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (5:2). Thus, the basic admonition of God in the Old Testament is essentially the same as that in the New. Jesus, the embodiment of the true God, was simple to understand and yet enormously rich in personality and wisdom, and such a God is exactly the kind that one feels most comfortable worshiping. It is terribly sad that the Jews, who for centuries had expected their God to come as a man to the home they had built for Him, rejected Him when He came because they expected a military figure who would free them from Roman bondage.5

Notes

1. There were about two hundred “Hippocrateses,” with the original as their leader and/or prototype. Professor Sherwin B. Nuland, Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed through Biography (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2005). The Teaching Company might be my most important single reference; it conscripts the best university professors in the United States to produce its courses. 2. Professor J. Rufus Fears, The Wisdom of History (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2007). 3. J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1967). 4. Some people object to the degree of humility demanded by Jesus, but the only reason they can find for doing so is that it does not seem fair or democratic. However, if Jesus is God, and God made us, it is not up to us to decide and declare that He is under any obligation even to be fair to us. Additionally, democracy makes no sense when a better form of government is available (e.g., that of a dictator who is an omniscient being with nothing but goodness, love, and caring on His Mind). 5. Antony Flew, There Is a God (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

Acknowledgments To my wife, for great encouragement and for designing the book jacket of the original version of this book. A few years ago, I begin to list everything she does for me, and these presently number forty-five. Everyone who wishes to be her friend is heartily welcomed as such, and, to her everlasting credit, she almost seems unaware that racial, societal, or economic differences exist among people. To my father, James Frederick Ivey Sr.: pharmacist, scientist, and mentor— greatly beloved and sorely missed. To his mother—“MaMa”—Mary King Ivey: I was her love child, and she prayed for me daily. These Orlando, Florida, residents would not have heard of my getting less education than I wanted, at practically any university I might have wanted to attend. To my step-grandmother, Thelma Holly (Peggy/Grandmother) Milner, who also prayed for me every day. To MaMa’s sister, Elberta Hiley (named after the Elberta peach), who lived with her sister and practically raised me. I am so sorry, dear Elberta, that I took advantage of your limited mind and frustrated you no end. To my awesome maternal grandfather, Robert Toombs Milner, of Wetumpka, Alabama: attorney, mathematician, musician, and wise counselor. To my Uncle Bill Harrell, who wanted to spend time with me and teach me what it is like to be a man; to my everlasting regret, I turned him down. All who contributed to my upbringing were Christians. To my daughter-in-law, Eowyn LeMay Ivey of Palmer, Alaska, a novelist of Pulitzer caliber, not to mention her other fine characteristics. Thank you, Eowyn, for two bright and gorgeous granddaughters and for your meticulous critique of the earliest version of this book. Many congratulations with regard to your spectacular novel, The Snow Child, the best book I have ever read. May your next award be a Nobel Prize. To my children, with whom I include my oldest grandchild, Christy Thomas, a wise and loving mother, expert teacher, and present, as Nancy called her because she was born on her birthday. My oldest son, James Thomas Ivey, has been my alter ego and collaborator since he was old

enough to think, and his ideas are probably more profound than mine. He and his brilliant wife, Shereen, are raising children of genius and enormous talent and potential, all of whom are exceptional pianists like her. My other children—Mary Nell, John, Sam, and Dan Ivey—are equally loved and greatly admired. My wonderful and wise daughter is a source of constant joy and pediatric knowledge. John, my second son, is a hero and spectacular father. Samuel Service, my third son, is a regional director of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game; he is a manly champion sourdough through and through. I like to call him Shamrock Sam because he was born on St. Patrick’s Day. He is the best possible father and husband. Dan Ivey, my youngest son, is an expert in the English language and works for Boston University as administrative head of the Department of Composition. He is fluent in French and has an “Old Man River” bass voice. All my sons are in fact great singers, and they are all interested in physics and other scientific pursuits, particularly as they pertain to the Gospel. Can I be more blessed?! To my grandchildren—Jakin, the genius; Chandon, the great golf partner; Gabrianne, the gorgeous communicator; Colton, the musical and powerful driver of golf balls; Jolie of spectacular looks and natural athletic talent; Alexandra, the pianist; Angelica, the performer; Benjamin Hunter, named for his great-great-grandfather, who was a horse- and-buggy doctor in Alabama; Grace, the dramatist and spectacular singer; and Aurora, the cutest of the cute— they bust the buttons on my shirts as I swell with pride. To my great-grandchildren, who began to come along when I was the tender age of sixty-five. Layla Thomas is a brilliant, lovely, and kind little girl, and Miles Thomas is a little cannonball, a real boy’s boy. To two godchildren, Cathy van Keppel and Michael Coulter, alias blues singer Rusty de la Croix, and to my stepdaughter, Marci, together with my bright and talented twin step-grandchildren, Anya and Mariah. To my new step-granddaughter, Kyndra Jean Monroe, for repeatedly seeking me out so that we can do “Ride a Horse to London” and engage in other fun—Kyndra of the huge smile who is the best baby I ever knew. Kyndra was born January 3, 2012, to the great joy of Grandma Pamela Jean, who cannot get enough “Kyndra fixes.”

To my foster children, Tina Campbell of Anchorage, Alaska, and Todd Henry, RN, who lives in Germany—I am so proud of their progress in life. I am spectacularly grateful for the accomplishments, Christian faith, and love of all of my offspring. A richer life than mine I cannot imagine, and much of it is because both of my grandmothers prayed. To the late Dr. Norman F. Coulter, the doctor’s doctor— second vice president in the history of the American Academy of Family Practice and my mentor. To the Athenaeum Society of the University of Florida, the members of which elected me president while I was still pondering the honor of membership. I have made exceedingly valuable friends therein. To John B. Newsom Jr., my best friend. To all of the above, most hearty thanks and humble respect.

Introduction Overture: Plan and Purpose— Things Are Not as They Seem This book describes how modern physics, Relativity, and quantum mechanics have revolutionized thinking about the likelihood of the existence of God and how the philosophy of Socrates/Plato melds nearly seamlessly with belief in a single deity and even with Judeo-Christianity. Most basically, it is a work of theist and Christian apologetics.1 Things are not as they seem: one can consider ultimate matters solely in terms of logos, rational accounting. Trying to do so through doxa, the contents of space-time as they appear with the use of our physical senses, leads to complete failure every time because virtually everything in our world is illusory. Max Planck et al. and Albert Einstein provided us with discoveries that facilitate our looking beyond the veil in order to achieve some understanding of the most profound and fundamental issues of humanity. These pertain to origin, purpose, and our prospects of eternal life. I always capitalize “Relativity” in honor of Albert Einstein, that shaggyhaired genius of German extraction who was possibly the most intelligent and prolific scientist ever to walk on planet Earth. He not only gave us the “Special and General Theories of Relativity”; he was every bit as much a pioneer in quantum physics as was Werner von Heisenberg. Far back in the dim reaches of time, when myth and legend had barely given way to history, the brilliant Parmenides, mentor of Socrates, wrote of the need to “not let habit born from much experience compel you … to direct your sightless eye … but judge by reason.” We have here what is generally considered to be the earliest known claim concerning that vital principle of foundational learning about our world, “Use your mind, and do not be deceived by your senses.” It is not, however, the first such reference. Isaiah, the great Jewish prophet who lived a generation or two before Parmenides, recognized that the most important matters of human existence require our mistrusting our senses and depending more upon our minds if we are to gain any understanding of

them. In speaking of the coming of the Messiah, he tells us, “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.2 And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make a decision by what His ears hear; but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth” (Isaiah 11:1–4) (italics mine). Here we have the prospect of the Logos depending on logos in order to ensure that He sees reality and is not deceived by the mirages His bodily eyes might lay before Him. Isaiah thus guarantees that the Christ will avoid reflex actions based on doxa and will therefore correctly appraise situations and, utilizing such assessments together with His divinity, respond perfectly. From about a century later, around 400 BC, we have a third famous reference to the same precept. It is to be found in the greatest elaboration of philosophical thought ever published, Plato’s Republic, which begins with a story of friends and acquaintances who encounter each other at a festival and decide to have dinner and conversation between the afternoon and the evening festivities. The curtain opens onto the following scene. Socrates and Glaucon, Plato’s brother, have traveled from the city of Athens to its waterfront, the Piraeus, primarily in order to pray to the goddess Athena. We are immediately transported back to conversation that is as homely, homey, and familiar as any twenty-first-century gathering of men for the purpose of a card game or other “guys’ night out,” wherein “all of the world’s problems are solved.” It sounds like yesterday as Socrates and Glaucon happen to run into friends and/or acquaintances and a brother of Glaucon and Plato, engage in some typical male verbal sparring, and plan their evening. Socrates narrates: “I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful.3 When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and

at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: ‘Polemarchus desires you to wait.’ I turned round, and asked him where his master was. ‘There he is,’ said the youth, ‘coming after you, if you will only wait.’ ‘Certainly we will,’ said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother; Niceratus, the son of Nicias; and several others who had been at the procession. Polemarchus said to me: ‘I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companions are already on your way to the city.’ ‘You are not far wrong,’ I said. ‘But do you see,’ he rejoined, ‘how many we are?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘And are you stronger than all of these, for if not, you will have to remain where you are.’ ‘May there not be the alternative,’ I said, ‘that we may persuade you to let us go?’ ‘But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?’ he said. ‘Certainly not,’ replied Glaucon. ‘Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.’ Adeimantus added, ‘Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?’ ‘With horses!’ I replied—‘That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one to another during the race?’ ‘Yes,’ said Polemarchus, ‘and not only so, but a festival will be celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we shall have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.’ Glaucon said: ‘I suppose, since you insist, that we must.’ ‘Very good,’ I replied.”4 Thus begins a meeting of minds that leads to a discussion of justice wherein Plato, through the character of his legendary mentor, Socrates, lays out his pet theory of politics. In the process, he enunciates his analogy of the cave, his description of humanity’s deception by our physical senses and the foremost of all examples of the fact that, in our world, nothing is as it seems. This piercing view of what is vs. what seems to be exquisitely approximates Paul’s rendering of the same idea in I Corinthians 13:12, “... we see in a mirror dimly but then face-to-face,” and Brian Greene’s comparison of the world as it appears to us through our senses with a van Gogh viewed through an empty Coke bottle.5

Albert Einstein showed us his firm agreement with Parmenides, Paul, and Dr. Greene in this instance when, seeking to comfort the widow of a recently deceased friend, he told her, “Past, present, and future is an illusion, even if a stubborn one,” thus presenting his finding that spacetime, the framework of our universe, is not as it seems and providing an excellent example of the illusory nature of doxa.6 All of his work was carried out in the mode of logos, the universe as it really is, unveiled by the mind’s eye. Based on the fundamental, profound, and comprehensive principle of “Things are not as they seem,” we can establish a paradigm for ourselves that reattaches philosophy to physics, bringing it back whence it came, and, with the same stroke of understanding, we can do the same where theology is concerned. This mind-set, this worldview, will lead us to truths we may not have the time to process during our entire time-bound lives. In the eighteenth century, the so-called Enlightenment led humanity from the precept of logos, which had held sway since the dawn of cognitive thought, to experimentation with reliance on doxa in our quest to learn of ultimate matters, and, in the next century, the work of Darwin and Freud, as valuable as it was, brought us to a nadir of rational accounting as the way to truth. However, in the twentieth century, “Things are not as they seem” rose once again above the threshold of our consciousness, vigorously eclipsing the only period of human history wherein “Things are as they seem” had been our paradigm. In the very first year of that revolutionary century, Max Planck determined that, on its most fundamental level, matter existed in two forms, that of waves and that of particles, thus laying the first and most important brick of the edifice of quantum physics, the study of the smallest of the small. Twenty-seven years later, Werner von Heisenberg added mightily to this science with his uncertainty principle, and Sir Arthur Eddington, backed by Sir James Jeans, made what may be the most profound statement ever enunciated concerning the ultimate nature of physical reality when he proclaimed, “The stuff of the universe is mind-stuff,” thereby recognizing the profound implications of modern physics with regard to philosophy and

theology.7 Thus began the era of science’s revolutionary support of JudeoChristian belief and doctrine. Now, “mind-stuff” is nothing other than thought; therefore, Eddington opined in this most succinct statement that everything of which we are aware by way of our physical senses is thought, and this, if true, means that mind is primary, primal, utterly first, and, probably, the only thing in existence. Sir Arthur followed up his elegant analysis of our world by stating, more emphatically yet: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.”8 Bishop George Berkeley had, with some very simple logic, anticipated his grand insight some two centuries before, as we shall see, but the most dramatic connection with Eddington and his characterization of mind as primal was made by Antony Flew in his sweeping renunciation of his fifty-plus years of scholarly and unrelenting atheism with his book, There Is a God.9 I quote him thus, “This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality—that the stuff of which physical reality is constructed is mind-stuff.” Flew was the most prominent academic atheist of the last one hundred years. Obviously, his conversion to theism represents a gigantic apologetic item, and he touted Christianity most of all: “As I have said more than once, no other religion enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul. If you are wanting omnipotence to set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat!” Wherefore, then, this strange world, as Einstein called it, where all is illusory? Because God created our world of space-time this way in order to establish a camp for the development of cognitive creatures distinctly separate from Himself, men and women whom He could love, who could love Him, who could communicate with Him, and, most likely, who could

work with Him on heavenly projects presently beyond our corporate imagination. Hence, we are in the Mind of God and ever on it as well.10 We see examples of the inability of people to perceive our world as it really is in the spiritual blindness of the Pharaoh of the Exodus and in the attitude of Jewish leaders with regard to Jesus and His message. In particular, they could not understand Logos, the Word of G0d incarnate in Jesus. The universe as logos is essentially synonymous with the concept of the universe as thought, which we obviously can understand only through reason and faith, faith that is much more than blind belief. The person who best exemplifies the seeker with regard to the reconnection of science and philosophy with religion is the Reverend Doctor John Polkinghorne. After twenty- five years as an excellent theoretical physicist, he abruptly closed that chapter of his life and opened a new one by attending seminary and becoming an Anglican priest. He subsequently served as president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, for eight years, and he has written twenty- six books relevant to his new career. In the process, he has become the foremost authority in the world on the melding of modern physics with Christian apologetics, and he is the foremost champion of the concept that scientific and theological research are only superficially different from one another and that the kind of academic investigation that is carried out in the better schools of theology supplies us with information that is in no way inferior to that which prime scientific research affords. Dr. Polkinghorne is the main person I wish to emulate. I also seek to take up where Eddington left off and to convince skeptics that the Polkinghornesque paradigm is highly valid and probably irreplaceable if we are ever going to have an ultimate theory of everything that will reflect and explain the workings of our universe in conjunction with the domain of timelessness whence it came and with which it constantly relates. Eddington employed the broadest implications of quantum physics and Relativity, and he utilized theology and philosophy in his thinking on the same level that he employed science. Though he did not particularly emphasize faith, he did not disdain it. I will add a heavy dose of faith, particularly as it is the only tool we have for the investigation of the

timeless realm. It is as involved with science as it is with theology, since scientific research has taught us nothing of certainty. As we enter the twenty-first century with advanced and augmented perspective gained from the correlation of multiple scholarly disciplines, I am very optimistic with regard to our chances of making grand strides toward the dream of all philosophers since Hesiod gave way to Thales, to find the truth or at least a significant part of it. I predict that any truth we find will be founded on God in Jesus. One may find examples of progress already made in this regard in the chapters of part 2 of this work. Einstein’s radical explanation of how light’s velocity, unlike the speed of any other entity, is unaffected by that of any vehicle that carries a source of it leads us into an arena so unexpected, so nearly unbelievable, and so utterly fantastic as to make believing in God and the Gospel as easy as eating a piece of cake. Who in his wildest dreams would imagine that Einstein’s solving one of the most baffling mysteries of physics would not only enable us to destroy entire cities with single bombs, would allow us to keep submarines under water for tremendous periods without their having to take on fuel, and would give us the capability of providing electricity for enormous numbers of people without our having to harness rivers or burn untold amounts of fuel, but would also show us by way of a little reasoning that we are immortal? (We shall deal with the latter in chapter 9.) And who would have believed that we would ever propound a scientific theory that would give us insight into the possible origin of God? Who indeed, and all these things are founded upon “Things are not as they seem” and the universe as the thought of God. I utilize these principles throughout this book and its companion volume, and I constantly endeavor to employ the same kinds of armchair reasoning and mental experimentation that Einstein employed.

Orientation: Structure With the (needed) improvement of the status of women that has occurred over the past forty years in the United States of America and in other places, with which I basically agree, it has become particularly desirable to

replace Dear Sir and Gentlemen as the salutation in business letters with Ladies and Gentlemen or something similar, and it would seem correct and courteous to replace the masculine pronouns that have conventionally been used in the written and spoken word when writers and speakers have referred to women and men together. However, in doing that, one sometimes finds himself using he/she, he or she, him/ her, etc., two or three times in a sentence and perhaps a half dozen times in a single paragraph, thereby producing sentences and paragraphs that are cumbersome and cluttered. In this writing, though I in no way consider women inferior to those of the male gender, I utilize the old way of pronoun use most if not all of the time. (I do see women as much different from men, a condition for which I am most grateful.) Actually, I think that we men need this compensatory encouragement, this carrot of consolation, because woman is God’s ultimate masterpiece. Anytime I capitalize a noun that one would not ordinarily capitalize, I am referring to a quality of God or essentially putting the words, ultimate or original in front of that term. You will also see that I frequently capitalize the when it comes before capitalized Truth. I do this when I am using Truth as essentially a synonym for God, such that, in conjunction with this use of the term, I will even capitalize words that are associated with it, just as one does in the case of God, as exemplified by our capitalizing Mind when we use it in expressions like the Mind of God. You will fully understand what I am saying here when you have read the chapter, “How God Can Exist and Why He Must.” I suggest that you read with a Bible immediately available. In addition, a biblical concordance would be helpful, though not imperitive, and the Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, which represents one man’s thirty-one years of ordering Scripture in terms of subjects, is an excellent- instrument. There one also finds numerous other helps that open to maximal usefulness this most important and best-selling book of Western culture. I try to prevent your needing a dictionary. Most of what I write here pertains to strong belief, though I do entertain some ideas about which I have only mild to moderate conviction, and you will even find speculation and some items that I merely think are

interesting; the latter could stimulate meaningful thinking on your part and are, at worst, just fun to think about. I expect context to consistently reveal the degree to which I am convinced regarding any item of discussion. You will find endnotes at the ends of chapters and some other segments of this book. The most important purpose of these is to support my claims with the thought of others. The word Scripture, when capitalized, pertains to the Bible of the Jews or that of Christians; non-capitalized, it refers to scripture of other faiths. I mean no disrespect of other religions here, but I do want to clearly convey at all times that I believe Christianity represents the ultimate truth about all things. The concept of timelessness can present a person with great difficulty. I see it as the most fundamental characteristic that differentiates our universe from the word beyond, heaven for those who believe in such a thing. However, one can easily argue that time is a requirement for anyone to be able to do anything at all, even think, and, if this is true, one can have essentially no life outside of it. My intuition tells me that this is not a problem, and I therefore write as though it is not, but if I am mistaken, all is not lost, as there are other ways of distinguishing our time-bound world from that which lies across the veil. Please keep in mind the availability of the glossary. All biblical quotations are from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise designated.

Notes 1. Apologetics in the Christian sense consists of presenting rational reasons for believing, and an apologist is one who speaks or writes apologetics. These terms relate not at all to one’s being sorry for anything. 2. Father of David the King. 3. Thrace, also called Thracia (though neither name was used by its inhabitants), was, in ancient times, a region north of Macedonia, which was north of the main body of Greek principalities.

4. Professor Michael Sugrue, Princeton University, “Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues” (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company). 5. Brian Greene, PhD, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Division, Random House, 2004). 6. What Einstein told the widow was and is hugely important. It starts us on paths of discovery regarding the ultimate nature of our world, and it also tells us that Einstein believed death is not what it seems to be. If, then, it appears to be termination, and it indeed is not what it seems to be, it must not be that, if we are to believe the ultimate master of physics. Now, there is another factor here, a vital one. Having an eternal life does not guarantee that one will have a happy eternal life, and having an eternal life that is unhappy might be worse than having no eternal life at all. In the Christian point of view, one has either paradise or one has the absence of God, which is the worst situation imaginable because He is the Source of everything good and because such absence is permanent. It is timeless life in a void, meaning the absence of anything other than the person himself. In this case, there is no communication and absolutely nothing to do. The only possible saving grace in this instance would be a unique Guide, the Christ Who is the destination. Note that there are implications to consider when one ponders the illusion of space-time. For example, if space is not what it seems to be, it may well be that there are, in ultimate reality, no closed doors behind which one can misbehave in secret. Thus did Jesus say, “There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in inner rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops” (Luke 12:2–3). 7. David Foster, The Philosophical Scientists (USA: Barnes and Noble, 1993). This is a book that cries out for rediscovery; it is my most important reference. 8. This quote of Eddington is to be found online in Wikipedia.

9. Antony Flew, There Is No a God (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). 10. Xenophanes, another philosopher who preceded Socrates on the ancient Grecian scene, believed that “God is one” and able to move all things by his mind alone. He also believed that this God was the Creator of all things. David Roochnik, “An Introduction to Greek Philosophy” (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company).

PART 1 Science, Religion, and Religions Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes— The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh, Book VII, Line 8201 People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. —Augustine of Hippo

Chapter 1 The Shortcomings, the Dilemmas, and the Charge of Christians Jesus' Commands and Our Problems If one expects to have credibility, he must be prepared to admit any deficiencies, preferably before he attempts to convince anyone of anything. With this principle in mind, I think it best that we Christians point out our deficiencies before someone else does, particularly as someone else will certainly do it if we do not. Having the example of the Christ, I think we have done better than most. Nevertheless, in spite of our numerous advantages, we Christians are conspicuously imperfect. Christianity is the most intellectually satisfying of all religions. We are the easiest faith to treat apologetically—one cannot do this at all in Hinduism or Buddhism. We know what perfection is like, having seen it in the words and actions of our leader. In spite of all this, we have not lived up to what our role is supposed to be in the faith. It is a simple part: all we have to do is tell others about Him and what He offers, e.g. His gift of eternal life in paradise in exchange for one's complete faithfulness in keeping his promise of total devotion to Him forever. However, we so often want to elaborate, particularly in terms of legalism —"Don't do this, and don't do that, or you will burn in hell." Jesus asks that His prospective votaries give their all to Him, but He only requires that they do their best in carrying out this expectation, and His helpers, having described His perfection and unable to achieve it themselves, look like hypocrites in our falling short of His example. Because we cannot live up to the perfection of our Christ and, at the same time are asking others to commit to Him, we are seen as self-righteous. Thus, we must continually confess our inadequacy and never expect

anything from others that we cannot do ourselves. We know we are to tell others about Him, we know what we are to tell them, and we have good evidence to support our contention that Jesus is Lord and that His sayings concerning how we should behave constitute ultimate truth. Moreover, He has told and shown us how to speak and how to behave, and the message we are to spread includes His gift of eternal life in paradise. Therefore, we are well-advised to exercise eminent humility in the face of our gross failure to do what Jesus would do, and we must do so constantly if we are to succeed with our charges. We certainly must never engage in high-pressure tactics. Fortunately, this is unnecessary, as we are required only to describe what Jesus, the Son of God, is all about; the Holy Spirit of God takes it from there. Jesus forgave and said to forgive, and His followers need to do likewise. God’s capacity for forgiveness is boundless. We Christians can claim to be right without proclaiming ourselves kinder, smarter, or otherwise better than anyone else. Our gratitude should trump all of our feelings except for love and humility. We must never seek status in spite of our boundless wealth—particularly in terms of eternal life-bestowed by our Lord, and we should be more aware of our shortcomings than should others--to whom much is given, much is expected. The richer one is, whether the wealth consists of family, friends, wisdom, money, or anything else of value, the more responsibility he has to his fellows, and the less excusable is his improper behavior. Certainly, we Christians have fought bloody wars against each other, and there was little that was noble about the Crusades, which were mostly about power, the favorite pursuit of human males. Instead of fighting to conquer Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land, we should have busied ourselves in telling everyone about Jesus. We need not speak about Jesus until it appears that someone is prepared to listen; we should not try to force anything on anybody. We should offer sound evidence that what we say is true. After submitting our message and engaging in whatever discussion our possible convert desires, we are to move on unless we are asked to abide. The results of our efforts are often in the hands of other people and are always in the hands of God; we need not ever know what they are. We are

not to seek personal gratitude and, again, must never claim to know how God is going to judge anyone. We must acknowledge that which warrants admitting and show regret for that which we should regret, as I am doing now. s painful as it is, we followers of Christ must be honest about our history. We must be totally honest with everyone about everything. We must keep in mind that only He, God as revealed in the Son, Jesus, is in charge of the universe. Fortunately, the evidence for the truth of the Christ’s claims is easily sufficient to outweigh all the shortcomings of His members. Though I myself am suspicious of the idea that I should invariably respect a given opinion other than my own, I nevertheless think it imperative that I at least respect the person whose conclusions are different from mine (provided that his thought processes concerning the matter at hand are sincere, objective, and non-prejudicial). As I alluded above, we may find a given belief wrong or even repulsive and still love the believer; this is in fact what Jesus did and what He instructed us to do. Were He with us today, we would find Him looking for lost lambs in bars and back alleys. Jesus charged us with continuing His work, such that we are responsible for making the most strenuous efforts possible to be good to others because doing so was His forte and because such behavior will attract the most people into the fold. “They will know we are Christians by our love” is a line from a hymn that the followers of Jesus should be living every hour of every day. There are many reasons that Christianity best fits my hopes and my thinking about eternity and other ultimate matters, and its offer of eternal life, to be quite honest, attracts me more than anything else about it. Forever is a long time, and, without life, one has nothing. If we do not live forever, all is vanity for us. We must, of course, face the truth about ongoing life or the lack thereof, and God’s chosen, the Jews, praise the same God as I without including immortality in their doctrine. This is highly admirable; yet, I would still not be inclined to worship a God who would create someone who does not want

to die and then allow him to pass into eternal unconsciousness. I do not believe God has this in mind for His people . I have also another confession, which is that it may not be possible for anyone to write about such a great and high Being in a way that conveys significant information. St. Augustine said, following a period of unconsciousness, “I have seen the Lord; all I have written is straw,” and something quite similar happened to Thomas Aquinas. I hope my straw will be of value to you, but I cannot guarantee it. If I at least emphasize the love of Jesus for everyone and His command that we love one another, I will not be a total failure. We Christians sincerely believe we have the Answer to the most important questions anyone can ask, and our Leader has asked us to share it with as many people as possible. We also believe that our version of the Answer entails an offer of eternal life in a glorious state of enhancement to all humans who come to recognize the Person of Truth in Jesus and commit to Him totally, timelessly, and unconditionally. If we are right, sharing our faith, of which eternal life is the centerpiece, is philanthropy of the most extravagant order, and, if we do not share this good news, we are pseudoChristians.

Count the Cost The God of the Bible does not coddle and brooks no nonsense. Similarly, He asks us to begin our relationship with Him not with, “I am your ruler. Worship me.” He tells us to count the cost of a relationship with Him before giving back what He has given to us, life and unconditional love. He does not need us; yet, He desires us as a parent wants to find his lost or wayward child. All He really requires of us is the recognition of reality, which mainly is that He is our creator and sustainer and that He is infinitely greater than we. He loves us dearly and tells us so, but He also advises us to first count the cost if we contemplate following Him because, though He is not the steamrolling kind, He nevertheless expects complete devotion.

Paradox upon paradox, the Lord of all has a measure of every quality that He expects from us, even humility and modesty; yet, we cannot expect him to behave toward us as we are to behave toward Him. That would be consummately unrealistic, even fraudulent, because His superiority where we are concerned is infinite. Thus, we are to submit fully and unconditionally to Him, in complete trust and dependence, even dying in Him on the premise that we shall wake up no longer ours but His.1 He has given us free will; yet, we are well advised to imitate Him in every way. In this, He has made it easy for us in His having provided a human version of Himself for us to pattern ourselves after. If we answer Him positively in this respect, we are His true sons and daughters, heirs of the Almighty. However, the book of James, of the New Testament, written by Jesus’s brother, tells us that promising to follow Jesus and subsequently not behaving as a follower of His is expected to act brings the belief/faith and commitment of the fledgling Christian greatly into question; he was right, and he probably put it mildly. If you are not a Christian and at any time consider joining this faith, please read Luke 18:18–23, where Jesus makes it entirely clear that He is not interested in sometimes Christians or those who are not willing and able to fully commit on a forever basis. The same Man who said that His burden is light also said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 11:30, 8:20).1,2 The consequence of commitment without cost-counting can very well be to enter into a life of hypocrisy and, in fact, of taking the name of the Lord in vain, which is the subject of the only one of The Ten Commandments that is accompanied by a statement of what will happen to the person who does not obey. (Exodus 20:7) It is easy to ascertain why this commandment is so carefully and heavily emphasized. Taking the name of Jesus in vain is worse than openly opposing Him because it places one on a one-way road to hell where turning around is exceedingly difficult. Like all other failure to follow God’s admonitions, falsely devoting oneself to the Christ is a lie and even a lie that is unique because of its built-in mechanism of irrevocability. Better to have never come to the Lord than to have come to

Him fraudulently. Pseudo-Christians drive prospective votaries away and can even cause members of the faith to reconsider their beliefs, and God's feelings about someone who would do that are supremely negative. At the same time, having counted the cost, one should commit to the Lord as early as possible within the bounds of reason. If one requires virtual scientific proof as a prerequisite to responding positively to the true God, the chances of his ever doing so could be essentially nil. There is an important balance here. It is probably not possible to be scientifically certain about any questions of ultimate importance, e.g., the origin of our universe and whether we can live forever, but waiting so long to commit that one dies while waiting is decidedly poor form. In addition, one often does not learn much about any subject without committing to it, i.e., the more commitment one has to any subject, the more he will be motivated to learn about it. Additionally, we Christians need more optimism, humility, positivity, and exuberance in living out our faith and telling others about it. Moreover, there is no coddling or permissiveness in genuine Christianity, which is about reality and common sense, and we members, as I have noted, need to be fully honest.

A No-Nonsense God of Character God does not punish; there is no need for Him to do so because our expertise in punishing ourselves relieves Him having to administer any punishment we might need. As the consummate realist and in order to be honest and frank, Jesus did occasionally mention eternal misery as the unavoidable destination of those who do not respond to God’s call, but He did not say God would be the cause of his suffering. When we disdain The Truth, we put ourselves into that horrible condition. Moreover, coddling and permissiveness have no more place in Christianity than does nonsense. Thus, we should take Jesus’s warning with complete seriousness, but we should not hold God responsible for the consequences of our wrongdoing. He loves us much more than any human parent loves His children. God Himself probably cannot prevent the damnation of those who disregard Him because to do so would be to disdain His integrity and even His identity, and that is not something I expect Him to do. In essentially

describing hell, Jesus was telling us of a pseudo life of separation from the Source of all good things, the consequence of disdaining goodness.

Real Christians and True Christianity Many of us who go to church every Sunday do not apply our Christianity to our businesses or to the other matters of our daily lives. We seem to feel subconsciously that these and our law courts are the place for religion. Similarly, when something unusual happens, many of us who are faithful churchgoers and faithful contributors to our church look for any explanation other than one that involves the Divine. We are afraid we will look like a fanatic if we do otherwise. One of the major purposes of my writing this book is to try to convince people who are token Christians to admit it and to decide once and for all whether they are going to be full-time and fully dedicated Christians or non-Christians, as there are no other choices. If believers do not include their faith in all major decisions they make and all opinions they render, they are pseudo-Christians taking the name of Jesus in vain. No God could be more indulgent with regard to one’s seeking his own welfare than is He of the Bible, and I do not know of any other faith that is as pervaded with thoughts of happy immortality as is Christianity. In addition, it is the most intellectually satisfying of all faiths and therefore the easiest to treat apologetically. These are many reasons that it best fits my hopes and my thinking, and its offer of eternal life, to be quite honest, may attract me more than anything else about it. Forever is a long time, and, without life, one has nothing. If we do not live forever, all is vanity for us. We must face the truth about ongoing life or the lack thereof, and God’s chosen, the Jews, praise the same God as I without including immortality in their doctrine, but I would still not be inclined to worship a God who would create someone who does not want to die and then allow him to pass into eternal unconsciousness.

The Christian’s Greatest Dilemma To write Christian apologetics is to write of lofty matters, and it is so difficult as to require the utmost humility in anyone who tries to do it. The

greatest writers in this arena, in fact, have despaired concerning their abilities in this regard. Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century church father who, along with Thomas Aquinas, established the foundation of postbiblical Christian writing, wrote many volumes, but, when sometime near the end of his life, he became very ill and went into a coma, he emerged with the words, “I have seen the Lord; all I have written is straw.” Thomas died before he was fifty years of age, notwithstanding his copious Christian writings, and, a couple of years before his death, he too became very ill and subsequently recovered, having had a profound spiritual experience with his God. Exactly like Augustine, he never wrote again. Compared to the greatness of my God, I am surely writing straw, but perhaps my straw can in some small way help you come to the Lord or enable you to bring someone His way. Optimism should prevail in our quest for truth. That which we have already accomplished is major, probably enormous. As an example, we have cracked the code of DNA, that of life. All life on earth emanates from DNA —desoxyribonucleic acid—the ultimate blueprint of all known life forms. How do we explain the origin of this unimaginably complicated chemical compound in the absence of preceding life? It cannot have developed through chemical evolution because there is no such thing—there can be no driving force for it other than a person with purpose. Even if chemical evolution were real, it would take a lot more than fourteen billion years for DNA to develop by chance and any kind of natural selection. The existence of God is the only possible explanation for the existence of DNA. I beseech you to think big as we deal with the ultimate issues of humankind, as it is the only effective way to approach such considerations. Expand your mind and use your imagination as never before. Consider all possibilities; remember that Einstein was able to show that space is curved and that it warps when necessary in order to accommodate the absolute truth of the invariable velocity of light in a vacuum.

Notes 1. “Son of Man” is an interesting term. It is exactly what we would expect Jesus to be called by inhabitants of heaven if He indeed originated

“there.” “Dying” here is figurative; yet, we should be ready at all times to die for Him, as He died for us and as He made us. 2. How then is His burden light? It is that because of the gigantic discrepancy between what He offers us and what we have to do in order to receive it; it is essentially a gift because our part is nothing by comparison.

Chapter 2 Other Faiths Abstract: I almost have no choice with regard to comparing other faiths to Christianity. I do not like the philosophy of advertising by disdaining other brands of merchandise, but I do not think we are well advised to try to talk about the Christian faith in, so to speak, a vacuum. The history of the Jews virtually proves that they are God’s chosen. It is vastly—radically—different from the histories of all other peoples. Islamic doctrine declares that the faiths of Jews and Christians are corrupt and incomplete, and Mormonism is comparable in this respect, mainly insofar as its leaders have made additions to Christian doctrine that they have believed imperative. Hinduism is a religion that is so tolerant of other faiths that one can embrace it anywhere across an enormous spectrum of belief and be considered a Hindu. Buddhism is a philosophy with no God that, like Hinduism, advocates giving up one’s identity in this life and in any existence that might be to come. Christians say that we are to “die unto the Lord,” but that is enormously different from loss of identity; in Christian belief, the purpose of our lives on earth is in fact to develop our individual personalities.

The Importance of Comparison Jesus and His credentials are most overwhelming when He and they are examined in conjunction with the contents of other faiths, and this is the reason I feel it imperative that I include comparative religion in my argument that Christianity is the Answer, the sum total of the answers to all reasonable questions about The Truth. Such contrasting comprises one of the most important categories of evidence that I have at my disposal in order to present my case and promote my cause. Otherwise, I would not

speak of other faiths in this writing because I have substantial reservations about promoting Christianity by criticizing other religions. That is like running down competitive products in order to promote one’s own. That used to be taboo, but that was when there was a lot more moral fiber about than there is now. I hope that members of the faiths that I unfavorably compare with Christianity will not take too much offense. I respect you personally, unless you are a Satanist or something comparable. Anyone who sincerely seeks truth is to be admired and respected, regardless of whether his findings match mine. I do not exempt agnosticism or even atheism in this respect, though I do not believe such belief or lack of belief can or should be called religion. I have extremely great admiration for Gandhi, the Mahatma. I believe he was misled in rejecting Christianity (provided he did that), but I do understand that if one’s country is taken by force and its inhabitants are treated as inferior by people primarily purporting to be Christians, one is bound to wonder how their religion could be true. I do know that he admired Jesus. I look up to Gandhi because of his intelligence, courage, and determination. In any contest of superiority, he would rightly be placed ahead of me; I in fact do not claim that I am superior to anyone who seeks the welfare of others more than he seeks his own. I try in this chapter to be as tolerant, empathetic, kind, and even diplomatic as I can be without sacrificing my convictions. Nonetheless, Jesus said that if we are not for Him, we are against Him, and that makes complete sense to me because there are no shades of gray in matters of ultimate truth, as there likewise can be none on the ultimate level of existence, the timeless realm beyond (Matthew 12:30). Therefore, I do not withhold opinions that I believe to be well-founded and important to express.

Judaism Comparison with Christianity

Judaism easily qualifies as the religion to which I would ascribe had Jesus not come to us, but, as I believe He did come, to reveal the Father and to give us the opportunity to live forever, and because I feel that Jesus otherwise greatly and crucially augments Judaism, I opt for Christianity, which offers all of Judaism plus the Christ. Some Jews believe in a resurrection and some do not, such that one’s prospects of living forever are not a major thrust of the Jewish faith, and I find it quite admirable that its members are content to trust God with their eternal hope. The Old Testament certainly presents us with a loving God in spite of His requirement of justice that is so greatly emphasized in the Old Testament, but Jesus enhanced Judaism not only with regard to unending life, but by manifesting the Father and providing an easy way to Him, as well as by taking His own Judaism from memorization to understanding and from legalism to faith, while clarifying and fulfilling Jewish belief (Matthew 5:17, 23:40). Jesus took the Law of Moses, which is lengthy and impossible for any ordinary person to obey entirely and all of the time, and He condensed it into simplified essentials, intertwined with His sayings and His life of pure exemplary goodness. He interpreted Jewish Law, letting us in on the reasons for and rationale behind its content, thus taking us from an elementary school approach to the subject to a level of study that is comparable with the way one learns in college and perhaps in high school, where one learns via the assimilation of concepts. Often quoting and always upholding Jewish precepts, Jesus showed that, if the requirements of Judaism seemed to impose a heavy load before He arrived, they were nevertheless necessary because of the inability of humans to deal with any other approach in the pre-Christ setting. As very God, He said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” and He plainly revealed the God behind the law as so merciful, caring, and competent that He is able to teach humility by personal example to spiritual babes (Matthew 11:30). He in fact showed us that Judaism is not entirely legalistic in that it is fundamentally about the relationship of a people with their God as opposed to the mere obeying of numerous laws.1 God says in the Old Testament that He is much more interested in mercy than He is in sacrifice (Hosea 6:6).

Certainly I do not think the Lord changed between the Old and the New Testaments. All along the way, He exhibited and desired the qualities that He advocated in Jesus, but, in an era when His chosen people’s neighbors looked upon their gods as fearsome and demanding, the ancient Jews were, understandably, unable to comprehend entirely the thought that a genuine deity might want to care gently for them. They therefore tended to think that their God was not a lot different from those of surrounding peoples, and their writings reflect their views in this respect. God also indulged them in, for example, allowing them to have a king. Nevertheless, their Lord was particularly disappointed in their not recognizing His desire to snuggle them lovingly “the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 23:37). Particularly as Jews no longer sacrifice today, I suspect, and certainly hope, that much of what I am saying is not foreign to their current thought. Antony Flew had some additional things to say about Christianity beyond the passage I have quoted above from There Is a God. He recorded a discussion between N. T. Wright and himself, wherein Wright responded to his expressions of difficulties that he had with certain points of Christian doctrine.2 At the end of the discussion, Flew summarized as follows: “I am very much impressed with Bishop Wright’s approach, which is absolutely fresh. He presents the case for Christianity as something new for the first time. This is enormously important, especially in the United Kingdom, where the Christian religion has virtually disappeared. It is absolutely wonderful, absolutely radical, and very powerful.”3

History of the Jews The history of the Jews connects with today’s international events like that of no other people. Why? They are God’s chosen. Hammurabi, ruler of Mesopotamia in the eighteenth century BC, is a historically well-confirmed king. Abram, the patriarch of the Jews, began as a sheep and goat herder at Ur of Sumer, where civilization began just north of the Persian Gulf. He lived about two hundred years before Hammurabi and, historically, is as well confirmed as such a person can be. Chosen by the true God of all as a man through whom He would manifest Himself, He

faithfully followed his Lord’s direction of God to travel north northwest and then south southwest along the Fertile Crescent in order to go to Canaan, the future land of Israel.4 Following his arrival and after a number of adventures there, his wife, Sarai, asked him to have a child by her handmaid, Hagar, so that they would not be heirless. Abram, though God had told him he would have progeny by Sarai, agreed; his faith was not optimal, and Ishmael was soon born. Hence, Abram was first of a long line of imperfect people God has used for His purposes. Like the others, the biblical authors present him “warts and all.” God then essentially made a deal with Abram, saying, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly. You shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham: for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my Covenant between Me and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:2– 16). Abraham responded by saying that he wished Ishmael might be similarly endowed, but God said no, that Sarah would bear him a son, Isaac, with whom He would renew the covenant. Nevertheless, He told Abraham that He would multiply Ishmael exceedingly and make him the father of twelve princes and the builder of a great nation (Genesis 17:2–20). Thus, Ishmael became the father of the Arabs, nearly all of whom are now Muslims. The Arabs had spread widely, not only living in Palestine before the Jews came, but inhabiting the Sinai Peninsula as well. They were polytheistic before Mohammed, 570–632 AD, arrived on the scene, having left behind the God of Ishmael’s father. (One wonders if even Ishmael did not continue to worship Abraham’s God after he was expelled from Abraham’s family.)

Following Isaac’s birth and growth into childhood, God told Abraham to take Isaac into a distant land and offer him up as a burnt sacrifice. Abraham proceeded toward this end without questioning, but just as he was about to kill Isaac, God spoke again, telling him that he was only being tested. God then provided a sheep for the sacrifice to be used in Isaac’s place and told his father, “Because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son” (this certainly could remind one of God’s giving up His only Son for us), “indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore.5 And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:1–18). Years later, God made a similar promise to Jacob, Isaac’s son, even though Jacob had usurped his brother Esau’s birthright (Genesis 32:11–12, 33:1–4). Jacob had twelve sons and one daughter (Dinah) by two wives and two concubines. These were, in order of birth, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. God gave Jacob a new name, “Israel.”6 Thus, Abraham’s progeny inherited his relationship with His God. It sustained them as the first four generations of Hebrews made their living by herding in Canaan. Jacob’s children produced twelve tribes, the priestly Levites, and at least fifty-seven grandchildren in Canaan before he moved to Egypt with all of them. The descendants of Israel sojourned for about four hundred years there, subsequently traveling from Egypt to the east bank of the Jordan and crossing to the other side, thus completing a circle of migration over a period of something like seven hundred years, back to the land of their forefathers. They settled there after displacing most of the original inhabitants, who, presumably, had derived from Ishmael. The relationship of the Jews with their God has held true to this day in spite of captivity, Diaspora, and Holocaust. Many gentiles have achieved this same relationship, through Jesus and only through Him. Jesus was the lion of Judah, deriving from that tribe through heroes, ordinary folk, and a few of questionable character or worse. (Again, the Bible pulls no punches.)

It does not look like an accident that Jacob’s progeny are at the pivotal point of action in the Middle East 1,943 years after the Romans threw them out of the Promised Land, during which time they bequeathed us their Law and endowed us with the religious heritage of two out of seven persons in the world today. This in spite of the fact that the Jews do not proselytize and that they now number only about fourteen million. Considering that Abraham is the patriarch of Islam as well as of Christianity and Judaism, this man gave rise to the professed beliefs of roughly half the world’s population in our time. Of about seven billion earthlings, two billion are at least nominal Christians, and one and a half billion profess Islam. As a young man, Joseph incurred the wrath of his older brothers with the result that they sold him into slavery in Egypt. Almost miraculously, he rose to power there and became second only to the Pharaoh in that respect. A famine subsequently occurred in Egypt that was so extensive as to involve the nearby land of Canaan as well, where Joseph’s brothers remained with his father. The brothers, except for the youngest, Benjamin, reacted to the hard times by going to Egypt in search of relief. Joseph provided for them, such that they, their father, and their families moved there, where their posterity remained for about four hundred years, eventually degenerating into slavery, but growing into a people of large numbers. Nevertheless, as in later times, the Hebrews, as they were known at that time, held together as a people under their God. Most of us are aware of Moses’s leading the Hebrews, of which he was one, out of Egypt in what we call the Exodus. Over a period of forty years, they wandered in desert wilderness, finally arriving at a place just across the Jordan from the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, between 1200 and 1300 BC. They crossed the river and settled in the place Jacob and his progeny had left over four hundred years prior, driving out many of the inhabitants thereof, who probably included many descendants of Ishmael.7 Event by event, the history of the Jews was slowly characterizing the people of the true God and readying them f0r the ways in which they would manifest Him and ensure that His amazing plan would come to fruition. After two or three hundred years of theocracy, dissatisfaction, and much begging on their part, their God allowed them to exchange their nearly

anarchical system of government for a monarchy and crown a king.8 Their first king, Saul, was inept and was soon replaced by David, who, with his son, Solomon, led the Jews to the all-time height of their political status, achieved during a lull in the power of Egypt and the Hittites, who, while battling each other, had previously dominated the Middle Eastern scenario.9 Solomon’s son was, however, so unpopular that the northern half of the nation, retaining the name Israel because it contained most of the tribes, successfully rebelled against him and split from the southern half, which took on the name of its main tribe, Judah, though it also contained the small tribe of Benjamin and part of that of Simeon plus Levites who lived with each of the twelve tribes of Jacob’s progeny. Galilee included itself in the northern kingdom. Meanwhile, the first great empire of the Middle East, the Assyrians, had arisen in the 900s BC in northern Mesopotamia. Known for their cruelty, they fell to the Chaldeans in 612 BC. The capital of this people’s empire was in Babylon, south of Assyria and north of Sumer. They did not last long, but they became nevertheless the most abhorred enemy of the Jews in all of their history. The Assyrians conquered the reduced kingdom of Israel, part of it in 732 BC and the rest in 720, and Judah later fell to the Chaldeans. The population of Judah, particularly the most intellectual members thereof, were deported at that time to Babylon, where they remained for seventy years; this sojourn has been termed the Babylonian captivity or exile, and the Babylonians are remembered as the most heinous of the persecutors of the chosen race. Subsequently, Cyrus, the visionary first king of the Persian —in modern language, Iranian-Empire, which took over from the Chaldeans in the sixth century BC—allowed the Jews, who once again had held together because of their religion, to return to their land and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the temple therein, which had been destroyed during the Babylonian conquest. They even helped them to reestablish their city. Such benevolence of one country toward another is certainly unusual in the annals of humanity. That the Persians thus treated the Jews suggests to me that they were at least favorably impressed with their God.

During centuries of helpless struggle with major powers, the Jews also found themselves in conflict with smaller, more local, enemies. The people of these were probably, by and large, descendants of Ishmael. Then came Alexander the Great, a very young man with lots of ambition and a military mind of the caliber of Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Robert E. Lee. In his teens, he had led half of his father’s army in their subjugation of Greece. Following Philip’s assassination, he led his troops into the Persian Empire and conquered from Macedonia to Egypt and India. He turned out to be enlightened and might have engendered reforms that would have led to his benefitting the peoples under his control for centuries or even millennia to come, but he drank hard and did not otherwise pay attention to his health. He died at thirty-two, about the same age as that of Jesus when He succumbed on the cross. He left his empire to much less able men, his highest-ranking generals, and the part of his empire that contained Palestine came under the control of Seleucus, who sired a particularly abusive dynasty known by the family name of Antiochus. The Jews appealed to the Romans to rescue them from this oppressive dynasty, and the Romans obliged. Though the Jews, due to the age of their culture, were privileged compared to the other peoples of the empire, particularly in that they were not forced to worship the emperor, they soon felt that Rome was oppressing them beyond their willingness to acquiesce. They therefore instituted three rebellions, the first in 66 AD. The Romans did not tolerate such things, and the emperor, Vespasian, sent his son, Titus, in 70 AD, to smash them into submission. Titus did that so completely that the other two rebellions of the Jews were anticlimaxes. He and his men looted, desecrated, and destroyed the temple at Jerusalem, making shambles of the rest of the city as well. They scattered the Jews to the four corners of the known world, whence they did not return until 1948, when they grasped it, having increased their numbers in the area to the point of majority status. Vespasian rewarded his son with an arch built in Rome to commemorate his deed. After Titus was through with them, the Jews still held together spiritually and culturally for nearly nineteen centuries without a piece of real estate of their own!10 I cannot get my mind around that. Not only did they persist

without any land, they did so in spite of bigotry, ghettos, and practically all other manner of persecution. Not only did they hold together without a national home and under circumstances that have often been dire—a disproportionate number of them have, during the Middle Ages and since, excelled whenever they have not been under persecution, particularly in the area of commerce, which greatly increased in Europe as it emerged from the Dark Ages. As the modern era ensued, they assumed additional roles of particular importance, again in disproportionate numbers. Many Jews were involved in the scientific revolution. Hence, not only has this people held together, with no country, under persecution, excelling exceedingly, they have retained their identity and returned where they came from in the ancient world, just as their Scripture predicted. Merely that the Jews have retained their identity for over three thousand years supplies us with enormous evidence that they are indeed the Lord’s chosen. That they have additionally come back to the land from which they came so long ago is more impressive yet. That they have done so just as predicted in detail presents me with overwhelming evidence that their God is real and that His faithfulness and trustworthiness are unmatched.11 Numerous seers prophesied for millennia that the Jews would be removed from the Promised Land for their unfaithfulness but would eventually return to the land God had given them. In looking into a concordance of the Bible, one is taken by the number of references that predict the Diaspora and enunciate God’s intention to gather His people from their exile and bring them back home. The history of no other people even faintly resembles that of the Jews in terms of their disenfranchisement, scattering, survival in the face of rejection, persecution, prejudice, genocide, and reassembling. No other people have sustained their unity for thousands of years even under the best of conditions. No other people reclaimed their land after having been removed from it many hundreds of years prior. No other people had prophets who were even faintly comparable with those of the Jews. Why did Hitler choose the Jews to try to annihilate? Because they are the chosen of God as the Bible says. We cannot possibly attribute the history of the Jews to chance and coincidence.

Not only did the Jews return as predicted, they fell right back into a struggle with the descendants of the people they had failed to drive out of Canaan, as God had advised when they entered the Promised Land. From strife to strife, from brotherly hatred to prejudicial hatred and genocide and back to brotherly hatred they went. Such an amazing story without the involvement of divinity is unthinkable. The Jews outlived the greatest empire of ancient times, the leaders of which thought they had seen the last of them four centuries before the western part of the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. The Romans had arisen some thousand years before that, but the Jews trumped them in terms of ancient origin by about six hundred years, and, they remain with us some six hundred years after the fall of the eastern part of the empire in 1453 AD. Greeks remain in Greece, but we cannot really connect the people who live there today with those of the brilliant Greek civilization of two thousandplus years ago. That culture included the three greatest philosophers of all times, who appeared over three generations and provided most of the philosophical foundation of the United States of America and its European forebears. Yet, the spiritual foundation provided by the Jews, particularly through their carpenter who embodied their God, remains the solid underpinning on which even the Greek contribution to Western civilization rests. The Armenians, who established the first Christian nation, have also survived as a people for an enormous period, but they cannot rival the Jews in this respect, and their other attributes and adventures are and have been nothing like those of God’s chosen. Their place in history is practically obscure compared to that of the Jews. Even following their return to Palestine, we are still not finished with the theme of the Jews as the mighty mites of history. They have redoubled their previous accomplishments since their arrival back at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Here are some examples of what they have managed to do since 1948 with a country in which to dwell, with land that contains average resources and a thousandth of the world’s population. ***

The Middle East has been growing date palms for centuries. The average tree is about eighteen to twenty feet tall and yields about thirty-eight pounds of dates a year. Israeli date trees are now yielding four hundred pounds/year and are short enough to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel. Israel has the fourth largest air force in the world (after the United States, Russia, and China). In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel’s air force has an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s; this is the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the United States. Israel’s $100 billion economy is larger than that of all of its immediate neighbors combined. Israel has the highest percentage of home computers per capita in the world. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the number of people in their country in the world. Israel produces more papers that are scientific per capita than any other nation and this by a large margin—109 per 10,000 people. Israel has one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of start-up companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has more start-up companies than any other country in the world, except for the United States (3,500 companies, mostly in high-tech). With more than three thousand high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of high- tech companies in the world except for the Silicon Valley, United States. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds, right behind the United States.

Israel is third only to the United States and Canada in the number of its NASDAQ listed companies. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the United Kingdom. Twenty-four percent of Israel’s workforce hold university degrees, and 12 percent hold advanced degrees. Only the United States and Holland exceed the status of this little country in this respect. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Israel has the thirdhighest rate of entrepreneurship, and the highest rate among women and people over fifty-five, in the world. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant- absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity. Hundreds of thousands have emigrated there from the former Soviet Union. Israel produces the second-highest number of new books in the world per capita. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the twenty-first century with a net gain in its number of trees; this is particularly remarkable because of the large amount of desert in this land. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country. Israel’s Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside of a pill. Physicians use it to view the small intestine from the inside in looking for cancer and other disorders. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the United States, around 70 in Japan, and fewer than 60 in Germany. With over 25 percent of its workforce employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solarpowered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in the southern

California Mojave Desert. *** Israelis have achieved all of the above while engaged in regular wars with implacable enemies that seek its destruction and in spite of an economy that is continuously under strain because so much of Israel’s money must be spent on defense. No other country on earth spends more per capita for protection than does this nation. The money has been well spent, however, as they have had to defend their land twice since the United Nations bequeathed it to them, in 1948 and in 1967. On both occasions, their Arab neighbors tried to force them out, but, outnumbered and surrounded, the Jews prevented them from doing so.12

God’s Chosen God, for reasons of His own, chose the Jews as His peculiar people, to favor and through whom to show Himself to the world, and, if they are indeed God’s chosen, their God is of course the true God. The history of the Jews reminds me of something Jesus said, in John 14:10– 11 (paraphrased), “If you do not believe me simply because of the impression that I have made on you, at least believe because of the miracles you have seen and the teaching you have heard.” Whether we shall have peace, constant conflict, or termination of our world centers on the Jews and their nation. Radical Muslim terrorists hate them even more than they hate the people of the United States. Today’s headlines are in accord with the Jews as the chosen of God. Events in the Middle East command our constant attention, and the Jews are the bull’s-eye of that part of the world. Their archenemies, Arabic in descent and of Muslim persuasion, threaten them continually, while spreading terror in Europe and the United States. The politics of planet Earth revolve around the Jews, but this chosen people, for whom God may well desire the most respect, are the very ones that humanity uniquely rejects. Irony? It is more like a catastrophe. His chosen are rejected, and then He Himself, embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, is, at least with regard to His human aspect, murdered.

Iran’s current leader denies the right of the Jews to exist, expressing a sentiment toward them that is common among Arabic people. Sadly, the next least tolerant peoples have been those of supposed Christian persuasion. Hitler planned and executed (I am sorry for a bad pun) the most comprehensive genocide in history, and his target was, sure enough, the chosen of God. The difference between photographic scenes of Israel compared to those of other parts of Palestine just across the border is stunning. Why are the Jews so able, so artful, so advanced? The militant and extremist factions of the spiritual descendants of Ishmael may well represent the most dangerous threat to freedom and possibly to the very survival of humankind that has yet come along. The struggle between Jew and Arab, millennia old, has been a microcosm of a conflict that is now turning into international strife among particularly ardent Muslims, weary but determined Jews, and Christians of varying understanding and concern. The ancient jealousy of Isaac and Ishmael, smoldering for millennia, periodically breaking out into smallish conflagrations, is beginning to show signs of becoming an enormous forest fire. It is the end of subtlety and the beginning of the trail to Armageddon. It will probably become our terminal fight, the final conflict among us humans, whose entire history is that of discord. The events of our day are so biblical that I do not know how they can be otherwise understood. It therefore behooves everyone to know the Bible well. In no way do I blame the Jews for the problems of the world. They have made a handy scapegoat for a long time, and I do not believe anything is going to change in this respect. They represent the prime example of “Nice guys finish last.” This was a saying of Leo Durocher that expressed his feeling that one could not be nice to other baseball teams if one expected to win championships. Sadly, it applies well in many other aspects of life. The God of Judaism is a distinct individual Person with a unique personality; he is the personal God of all humanity, desiring to communicate with His created in a manner more intimate and loving than any earthly parent can imagine. Though a personal god entails maximum risk with regard to what He might request or require, this kind of deity has

by far the most to offer. Among the religions of today, we find such a God in Judaism and Christianity, and to a lesser degree in Islam. Ever so sadly, the Jews have not recognized His embodiment in Jesus, Allah is much too austere to have instituted such a thing, and so many Christians are nominal in their supposed faith.13

Islam and Mormonism Before I say anything negative concerning Islam, I want to make clear that I by no means see it in an entirely negative light. The bottom line is, of course, that, as a Christian, I believe I am in possession of the whole truth on theological matters, and it concerns me that one of the central tenets of Islam is that Judeo-Christianity is incomplete and/or corrupted. I do respect Islam for five times per day prayer, and I certainly support all activities directed at good communication among votaries of the two faiths and thorough discussion on matters wherein we agree. According to Islam, Judaism and Christianity have been corrupted. Mohammed and his spiritual descendants have purported to correct the errors that supposedly developed in these faiths before they were corrected through revelation from Allah. To this I reply that the traditions, rich literature, believability, and plain beauty of both of the older faiths thoroughly eclipse any such qualities that Islam might be able to demonstrate and that no evidence exists that supports any superiority of Islam. I think Mohammed believed what he said and therefore do not accuse him of lying, but he was dreadfully wrong. I take issue here with Muslim claims against the truth of Judaism even more than I do with regard to the conflict between Islam and my own faith. I cannot rid myself of the question in my mind that goes like this. Who did Mohammed think he was to say such things about this people who had been worshiping their God for something like two thousand years before he was born, who were the first monotheists of note, and who had produced reams of material that had instructed and inspired and which had unified a people in a way and to a degree that was unprecedented?14 Though the Roman emperors respected the Jewish religion over all others in the empire, Mohammed felt that he could call it erroneous and corrupted. I cannot but resent his doing so.

Many will not understand my reasoning here, but I see the beliefs of the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as quite similar to those of Muslims. The Mormons too claim that the Bible is incomplete, and they add material that they claim corrects the situation. They take the word of a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old boy with regard to golden plates he claimed to have discovered that were, he said, inscribed with revelations from the Judeo-Christian God. Yet these latter-day revelations of God have mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, as in the case of Islam, Latter-day Saints have produced additions to Judeo-Christian Scripture that they say is necessary if Christians are to practice their faith correctly. I invite your comparison of the Old Testament with the Koran. In the former, one finds richness, completeness, logic, wisdom, and order that is radically different from the lists of “Thou shalt nots” that characterize Muslim scripture. The Koran provides relatively little instruction of a positive nature, such that one cannot learn very much from it in terms of “do this.” Observe that the Bible contains organized history and law together with art, particularly in the form of beautiful prose and poetry, especially of the Psalms. Art is the capture of truth, and the Koran contains little if any of it. Looking at the books of Mormonism, one is struck with subtraction from the Gospel, replacement of dedication to Jesus and to his teachings with rules that corrupt the integrity and easy genius of the Christ. The New Testament allows Christians to develop maturity of faith, while the Koran holds Muslims back in this respect. The New Testament provides an ideal Personality to imitate, and Jesus is about love. This is the most important point of comparison that I have to make. Love is far and away the most important quality of which humans are capable, and Christianity’s taproot is love. The Koran is more about war than it is about love. The personality of the God of the Bible is clearly seen in its great richness, whereas Allah has no personality that I can discern. The true God is our Father in the Old Testament, and in the New, He virtually becomes our brother. In the Koran, Allah is shrouded in inaccessibility. Many people say that the God of the Jews and He of Islam are the same person, but they are radically different from each other. In addition, the God

of the New Testament cannot be Allah because Allah is not Jesus and vice versa. During the first few centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus, His church was occupied with establishing churches between Jerusalem and Rome and beyond, and with essentially conquering the Roman Empire, not by battle, but by converting the hearts of its pagan populace. Islam, on the other hand, in its first century of existence, was engaged in bloody battles in attempts to force its faith on everyone they could reach, from Persia to Spain. They even fought each other, as two groups within Islam arose as contenders for leadership.15 In both Islam and Mormonism, the main emphasis is on works as opposed to faith, which is the keystone of devotion and achievement in Christianity. Emphasis on faith is an unmistakable sign of truth because faith is the only means of connection between our realm and that of God. In chapter 6 of this part, I shall have much more to say about the nature of faith. In his book The Maze of Mormonism, Walter Martin supports Christianity vs. the claims of Mormonism as follows: “With one ‘Special Revelation,’ the Mormon Church expects its intended converts to accept the totally unsupported testimony of a fifteen-year-old boy that nobody ever preached Jesus Christ’s gospel from the close of the Apostolic age until the ‘Restoration’ other than through Joseph Smith Jr., beginning in 1820! We are asked to believe that the Church fathers for the first five centuries did not proclaim the true gospel, that Origen, Justin, Iraneaus, Jerome, Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and then later Thomas Aquinas, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, Wycliff, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and an additional vast army of faithful servants of Jesus Christ all failed where Joseph Smith Jr., was to succeed! With one dogmatic assertion, Joseph pronounced everybody wrong, all Christian theology an abomination and all professing Christians corrupt, all in the name of God!”16 Indeed, Mormon doctrine contains the precept that one cannot enter heaven if he rejects Joseph Smith; thus does it directly refute the teaching of the New Testament in a major way.

In Mohammed’s day, there was significant Christian heresy about. In this sense, there were indeed pockets of Christian corruption, but it occurred in outlying groups that represented a distinct minority. Perhaps there is a chance that a well-meaning person who observed one or more of these in action could have thought some changes needed to be made in the Christian religion, but Mohammed took the project much too far. It is true that Muslims consider Jesus to be a great teacher, but one does not have this option with the Christ; a person who claims to be God cannot be great unless He indeed is God. Joseph Smith stated that the Father was once a man (not the same man as Jesus) and that He became divine by way of a process available to any of us. Basic Latter-day Saints doctrine allows that anyone can attain the spiritual level of Jesus through his behavior and accomplishments in his time-bound life, but there is no basis for such belief other than the thought of Joseph Smith. Please note the status of women in Islam according to the Koran, which to the Muslim is as holy as Jesus Himself is to Christians. In the chapter “Women,” we read: “Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them.” Note that women are not only said to be inferior; only men are even addressed here—women are ignored as if they do not even exist, except when they are being admonished. Conversely, in the Bible, even in the Old Testament, not only are women respected—some of the heroes (heroines) are women. Deborah, as we note in the fourth and fifth chapters of Judges, was a judge and, therefore, a member of the highest level of leadership in Israel in the days before the kings; Mary, mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; Mary, who anointed Jesus’s feet; her sister, Martha; and Priscilla are held high in the annals of the work of Jesus. In addition, The Book of Abraham of the followers of Joseph Smith teaches that the black race is cursed. These attitudes toward women and Africans do not reflect anything like love, and love probably is second only to life under the heading of truth.17

The Koran requires that any nation adjacent to an area that becomes a Muslim country should be converted to Islam within ten years. NonMuslims may live in Muslim countries, but they are not extended full privileges. The “people of the book,” as Jews and Christians are known to Islam, must pay a tax as a symbol of their subservience that Muslims do not have to pay. They do receive credit for having received revelation from God prior to the time of Mohammed, though this has been, according to Islam, largely corrupted. Originally, pagans in Muslim countries had to convert or die, and the traditional penalty for anyone attempting to convert a Muslim to another religion in a Muslim country has been execution.

Hinduism and Buddhism Hinduism and Buddhism, especially the latter, virtually oppose the beliefs of Christianity, except for those of a strictly ethical nature. Both are pantheistic, though an argument can be made with regard to whether Buddhism can be theistic in any way because it entails no god at all.18 In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the chief end of humanity is to be consumed by an all-consuming god or force.19 In the case of Buddhism, identity is lost when one joins nirvana, such that the person is essentially dead. There is debate among Hindus with regard to whether absorption by nirvana involves giving up identity. The greatest document of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, is a beautiful attestation to goodness and a wonderful work of literature, but Hinduism has evolved and therefore changed so much since its beginnings in the dim mists of time that it has come to the point of offering so many options of belief that one cannot discuss it as a unit. Its broad tolerance of other religions would be admirable except that it is so tolerant that it is practically diluted out of existence. (The Bahai faith seems to be the same in this respect except that it began with such dilution.) The number of Hindu gods one may choose to believe in or to ignore is almost unending, and I do not believe it is possible to apply apologetics to this multiplicity of faiths. It may be that most Hindus believe in a chief God, but this concept is vague. Buddhism clearly would have us seek loss of identity and self-awareness. Even in the case of Hinduism, any thought of nirvana as a corporate mind

wherein our minds can combine with it and somehow survive as distinct entities, fails to be commensurate with any test of logic or rationality from the beginning. It appears that most Hindus do not worry about this very much, such that, like the Jews, they trust. This is probably noble and may reflect serenity with their religion and much faith. I will take Christianity, however. It is not vague; it spells things out, and one of the items it makes clear is what our ultimate state is to be. But, going back to nirvana, just as a very practical matter, even two minds combined into a unit invites disagreement and discord. Both Hinduism and Buddhism endorse reincarnation, though in neither case is this cycling deemed desirable. Buddhism holds that life is so miserable that it is good to be extinguished so that one will not have to continue to be reincarnated, especially since one can come back as something like a worm in a dung pile. (If I die and come back as a mindless worm, can I possibly be me?) Buddhism seems preoccupied with the idea that all is suffering in the time-bound life. No evidence exists in favor of the reality of reincarnation except for individual stories of dreams or déjà vu. Basic Buddhist doctrine has Buddhists striving for obliteration of the self even before death. Actually, this point of doctrine hardly needs expression because votaries are taught that they are a different person from moment to moment. Perhaps many of them, and probably most Hindus as well, nevertheless hope for a nirvana that is a kind of group consciousness characterized by ultimate peace and comfort. I do not think, however, that we can be clear with regard to possible loss of identity with Hinduism, and, again, I can see loss of identity only as death or the road that leads to it. (By death in this particular context, I am speaking of permanent unconsciousness, and the desire for such a thing is so thoroughly nonsensical to me that I can see little need to have a great deal of discussion about a religion that looks upon such doctrine as desirable.) The Christian expectation, on the other hand, is clearly that of a life much more intense than our present one, bristling with identity, where one’s “job” is to be joyful.20 I elaborate on this hope in visualizing myself as a timeless mind, an individual being with full access to the arms of the Father, to the Mind of the Omniscient, able to explore His personality and knowledge

forever. Such identity is in no way incompatible with humility, and it certainly entails complete subordination to the Perfect. (There are some Buddhists who believe in a more concrete version of eternal life than basic Buddhism puts forward, but such thoughts constitute additions that were tacked on long after the death of Siddhartha Gautama, after Buddhism had evolved and diversified—diluted.) I indeed hope and expect to have my identity enhanced, not in order to tout it or otherwise augment my sense of importance, but in order to be as alive, cognitive, and operational as I can be. I do not wish to be part of some kind of group consciousness or, most especially, a part of group unconsciousness. Without distinct identity and cognition, we have nothing, and all is vanity. (Compare Ecclesiastes of the Bible.) The doctrine of Buddhism is incongruent. Though based on relative ethics, it promotes good behavior in its Four Noble Truths and its Eightfold Path; thus, it assumes absolute ethical standards, with the implication that an authority figure beyond our level of existence underlies these, since we have nothing but opinion in the human sphere. The Dalai Lama himself teaches relative ethics, while advocating all kinds of caring concern for one’s fellow humans.21 Obviously such visible and sincere love is highly laudable, but it is not compatible with a relative standard of goodness; if we are going to be good to our fellow human, we must know what the definition of “good” is. If good is that which is good in the opinion of each individual person … well, Hitler called his attempted extermination of the Jews “good.” No one claims that the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who left wife and child to wander in search of truth, was more than a mere man. Without an absolute standard, we would expect Buddhism to be nihilistic, as were the Sophists whom Socrates battled because of their belief in relative truth, and, as we have noted, it indeed is that. It holds that our very existence is not real, such that its advocating extinction is nothing more than the assertion that one should face reality. If our existence is unreal, it would seem that the Buddha himself was imaginary, such that we end up in Buddhism with a worldview that is more nebulous than that of Hinduism, though for a different reason. All the while, we find the Dalai Lama, a very fine, compassionate, and intelligent

gentleman, advocating the pursuit of happiness while believing we are not really here; I cannot fathom this apparent entertainment of two incompatible thoughts, but it is exactly what Heraclitus did with his nonphilosophy. One could argue that both Buddhism and Christianity turn or can turn death into a kind of nonevent, but Buddhism does not do so in a way that leaves one with life. It gives hope for happiness in our present lives, but offers nothing desirable thereafter. Again, I cast my lot with a faith of hope, of happy expectation in terms of forever, which is infinitely more important than our present lives. As we in no way know that our prospects in eternity are hopeless, shall we not seek life? Why be extinguished if we can possibly help it? Part of the reason Buddhists seek extinction is to escape desire and passion, but neither of these are bad, unless one becomes obsessed with them or practices them in the wrong setting. They are very definitely and frequently overdone and abused, but I do not think we are so incompetent when we take hold of the help of Jesus the Perfect that we need to totally give up on life in order to escape these potential slave-masters. I cannot see that the solution to any undesirable personality traits, or with regard to misery and perversion in the world, should be to give up and die. Job’s wife advocated that her husband curse God and die in the face of stupendous misery, but he declined, and he came out well in the end (Job 2:9).22 To help us with our dealing with desire and passion, we have for the asking the help of Him who inspired the writing of Solomon’s Song of Songs. If you are not familiar with that Old Testament book, you will probably be surprised with its content. It is openly erotic and believed by Christians to represent the relationship between the Christ and His church, His bride. It clearly shows us that erotic love is good—wonderful—so long as it entails commitment and is monogamous. The male character in this book is the same One who drove the money changers out of the temple, wept at the death of His friend, and underwent, on a cross, consummate and very palpable misery beyond the imagination, subsequently rising unto glory (John 2:13–22, 11:35; Matthew 27:46).

I believe that God is not without strong emotion. Many would deny this, saying that emotion must include an element of weakness, which God cannot have. I say that a life without emotion would be inferior to one with it and that God has the best life possible. I certainly hope He does because, with all the responsibility He has chosen to bear, He deserves it. The hypertolerant stance of Hinduism does not seem to extend to all of its own members. Its caste system is well known and is based upon the concept that one’s situation in life is deserved, according to how he behaved in his latest previous life. Thus its most disadvantaged are considered subhuman, as “untouchables.” I can see no rational reason for such a judgment; yet, the heroic Gandhi, the Mahatma, the great-souled, claimed Hinduism as his own faith. He was very friendly toward the precepts of Christianity and the Person of Jesus as well. I cannot help but wonder whether he might have become a Christian if supposed Christians from foreign shores had not dominated his country and treated the native people thereof as inferior. I believe Gandhi erred by not committing to the Christ, but I certainly cannot be his judge, and I in fact strongly suspect that Jesus has deigned Him worthy of the Kingdom of the true God. Gandhi felt that truth is the source of everything that is, and this makes him very special “in my book.”

Pseudosimilarities between Buddhism and Christianity Christianity itself urges ego death in the narrow sense of the term, dying unto the Christ in thoroughly eliminating egotism and conceit from one’s personality. But this amounts to moral cleansing such that, as a new creature in Christ, born again, he enlarges, intensifies, and glorifies his individual, personal, and unique identity. Such “dying” and rebirth would have no significance if there were no continuing life of significance. The seventeenth chapter of John speaks of “becoming one” with God, but this consists of something like the unity of a group of soldiers, in no way negating the very thing we were created for—to be new minds, personalities who can relate to our Creator in love. Our oneness with the Lord is a matter of mutual melding, never absorption, and it only happens if we consent to it.

Living in Jesus and only in Him is to be more alive than ever one was before (John 3:3–8; 2 Corinthians 5:17). Christians desire, as a rule, to live as long as possible on this planet, for reasons that will become apparent later in this writing, though one cannot blame a person of great faith for wanting to go to heaven soon, as anyone may long to be in a better place, especially if he is in severe physical misery (though I abhor the concept of assisted suicide). Jesus Himself was appalled by death, as we saw in the case of Lazarus’s demise. He felt this way at least partly because death is a tragedy for loved ones left behind, which would be unnecessary were it not for sin. He wept when His friend died and asked the Father whether He Himself might be spared death when His own, by crucifixion, became imminent. Though He asked that the Father’s will be done, He did request that He not have to die unless there were no other way that He might accomplish His epic mission.23 Christians are certainly supposed to deny self to the extent of avoiding pride and putting the welfare and comfort of others ahead of their own, but this kind of denial of self is far different from that which Hindus and Buddhists advocate. Because there is no life that is greater and more gratifying than one of giving, the Christian version of self- sacrifice is a matter of the enhancement of life. In a sense, the followers of Christ are to even extinguish themselves in that we are to live only in Him, but Buddhists think in terms of comfortably having the lights of their lives put out at the time of death, as one might extinguish a candle upon retiring for the night, and we Christians seek to enjoy our present lives and look forward to our candles burning all the brighter in eternity. Extinguishing, where Christians are concerned, occurs in the manner of the candle that is put out because morning has come. We all anticipate a good night’s sleep with pleasure, but it is not the sleep per se that is enjoyed, except that at the end of it, one feels well rested. One can enjoy nothing without consciousness. Therefore, in order to derive pleasure from the process of sleep, one must doze. I have neither the desire to nor the intention of emptying myself, as Buddhists recommend; if I did that, all the accumulation of good memories

over the years would be gone. I therefore choose Christianity, wherein one fills himself with life and enthusiasm. I think that, in at least some sense, Jesus did empty Himself on the cross, but He in no way wanted to do it except as a way of making a unique, profound, and stupendous sacrifice in the name of justice. He was in the most extreme situation ever experienced by man or God. Also, He was “refilled” later, to an unimaginable degree. The words of Steve Lawrence’s song of yore, “I Gotta Be Me,” exude the self-centeredness of its and our times, but the title itself represents a truism. So long as it is done without selfishness, it is indeed good, even excellent, for me to be full of myself and you to be full of yourself (though what I subsequently do with myself and you do with yourself is crucial, especially with regard to the welfare of others). The assertion that we should otherwise empty ourselves or be extinguished without subsequent regeneration sounds to me like a great smoke screen for Satan to hide behind, if one believes in Satan.24 I think here of cartoons starring Sylvester the pussycat, in at least one of which he proceeds to give Tweety Bird what he says is going to be a nice hot bath. This “favor,” however, turns out to be a swim in a pot on a stove, wherein the water is intended very shortly to boil, so that Tweety Bird will be reduced to a nice morsel. I also think of Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, wherein the junior devil, Wormwood, seeks to consume his human subject, and Screwtape, the senior devil, unknown to Wormwood, plans to consume him after he has been fattened up with his own victims. All in all, it seems to me that Hinduism and Buddhism do contain fragments of eternal truth, but that these fragments cannot be joined into the coherent whole that is necessary if one is to make a reasonable worldview out of them.

Neoplatonism In the third century AD, a man by the name of Plotinus developed a scheme of belief drawn from the philosophical concepts of Plato and Aristotle, which has attracted a lot of attention and exerted much influence, though it

did not quite develop into an actual religion. It is called Neoplatonism and consists of everything spiritual that the two great philosophers wrote organized into a supposedly theological paradigm. It has been the subject of scholarly debate ever since its inception. It is extremely interesting, even fascinating, though it is rather involved and is, in fact, too complicated, so far as I am concerned, to be true. Its only claim to credibility comes through its apologetics, as one would expect when he is dealing with the likes of Plato. It heavily influenced St. Augustine in his spiritual development. It sounds rather Christian on its surface and has an intellectual ring to it; however, it is vastly different from the Christianity that Augustine finally embraced, particularly in its pantheism. I am not going to describe it in detail because: (1) it does not have the eloquence or the simplicity of Christianity, (2) it has, by consensus, been rejected by the human race, and (3) Augustine left it behind, and (4) it is pantheistic and does not have the ring of truth.

Less Frequently Discussed Subjects of Comparative Religion Zoroastrianism, the religion of old Persia, is still extant today, scattered in various parts of the world, primarily in India. It only has about one hundred thousand adherents, but it contains dualism and the “eternal return,” which are interesting concepts, primarily with regard to their contrast with Christianity. Dualism places the forces of good and evil on the same level. C. S. Lewis’s last sentence in The Problem of Pain succinctly negates this point of view. He ends that book by concluding that God can have no opposite because opposites are by definition equals, and God is the infinitely greater of the two. Evil is, in fact, a “minus,” a kind of nonentity; though it wreaks havoc in our world, it ultimately is still a subtraction, simply the absence of goodness, which is the same as the absence of God. (Later we will see that it may be even less than this.) It is the hole in the sweater; it is cold that is nothing more or less than the absence of heat. Evil is to goodness sort of like a lamprey is to a salmon. It is like a negative number in mathematics. You cannot have minus four apples, but you can have eight minus four

apples. Evil is nothing without having good to work on, and Jesus’s sacrifice has made the very quality of goodness forever immune to evil. I am happy to say that Zoroastrianism’s good god does win in the end. The eternal return involves our repeating our lives over and over in cycles of trillions of years. That is an interesting thought in that it is reminiscent of the big bang/ big crunch concept of universal behavior. Proponents of this idea claim that the universe bounces back and forth from big bang to maximal expansion and then back to a singularity, rebounding again after that in expansion that is again followed by shrinkage, etc., cycling thus forever. The length of time that adherents of Zoroastrianism figure passes between each life they live could conceivably be the same period that lies between two such cycles. However, cosmologists have recently come upon considerable evidence that the universe will never contract and, in fact, they have discovered its expansion is accelerating. Zoroastrianism lacks an explanation of how things got started, but, more importantly, like Neoplatonism, it fails Pascal’s test, which I recommend using as a help in evaluating any purported belief system. If we believe in it and are right, we get what sounds like excruciating boredom in the eternal return. If we believe and are wrong, we get nothing. If we do not believe and are right, we get nothing. If we do not believe in it and are wrong, we may get nothing or we may get the eternal return. None of these alternatives are attractive. Final contenders for our devotion might be other men of history who some believe showed marked similarity to Jesus during their lives. The most prominent of these appears to be Apollonius of Tyana. He lived about the time of Jesus and was a philosopher who is said to have performed miracles. What he had to say sounds fairly good, but we have only a few sentences from him at the most. Our prime source with regard to his beliefs is a follower, Philostratus, whose account is quite controversial. Overall, he seems anemic compared to Jesus, and he neither arose from a great tradition like Judaism nor managed to be remembered by anyone save a small number of scholars and researchers. He rubbed noses in high places, while the carpenter, Jesus, ministered to the lowly. He never claimed to be God. Information is available about him on the Internet, where references are

also given, and I invite the seeker to examine this material and other writings concerning this remarkable man. Having examined various religious faiths that vie for our attention as worldviews, let us now consider the possible consequences of devotion to science as the Answer.

Notes 1. The book of Job is primarily concerned with the proper relationship between God and humanity. 2. Nicholas Thomas Wright of Durham, in the United Kingdom, is an Anglican bishop and Oxford New Testament scholar. 3. An example of what Wright has to say in this discussion is as follows: “Many Jews of Jesus’ day believed that one day Yahweh, the God of Israel, would come back in person to live within the Temple. You find that in Ezekiel, Isaiah, Zechariah, and several of the later postbiblical tests … . And then we find in the Gospels this extraordinary picture of Jesus making a final journey to Jerusalem, telling stories about the king who comes back . . . . I have argued, as others have, that Jesus, in telling those stories about the king who comes back to his people, the master who comes back to his servants, is not talking of some Second Coming way in the future. … He’s telling stories about the significance of his own journey to Jerusalem, and he’s inviting those who have ears to hear to take this Old Testament picture of Yahweh returning to Zion and hold that in their heads as they see him as a young prophet riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. … I think Jesus staked his life—quite literally!— on his belief that he was called to embody the return of Yahweh to Zion. … I really do believe that Jesus believed that he was called to act on that assumption. And I think that was hugely scary for Jesus. I think he knew he might actually be wrong. … I think Jesus knew that that was his vocation, that he had to act in that way, to live and act on the basis of a vocation to embody, to incarnate, the return of Israel’s God to his people.”

4. The story of Abraham and his son, grandchildren, and great-grandsons is to be found in Genesis. 5. Of the seven billion people on earth, at least half—all Jews, Christians, and Muslims—are spiritual descendants of Abraham through Jacob. The number of grains of sand on all the seashores of our planet far exceeds three and a half billion, but that is still a large number of heirs. The majority of the earth’s population today profess that they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish—members of one or another of the religions that originated in this one man. 6. There are four ways in which “Israel” is or has been used in the Jewish story. It was the name God applied to Jacob as a Patriarch of the Hebrew nation; it was the initial name of the Hebrew state, applied soon after the Jews wrested the Promised Land from the Canaanites; it was the name applied to the northern Jewish kingdom when the country split over the dissatisfaction of the northern faction with Rehoboham, when he inherited the throne of his father, Solomon; and it is the name of the modern country that the Jews formed as a result of their reunification of 1948, following the 1,878 years of exile they endured at the hands of the Romans, who defeated their rebellion in 70 AD, destroying in the process all vestiges of Jewish statehood. (The southern kingdom that resulted from the split was called Judah, and the northern kingdom of Israel was later conquered by the Assyrians and known as Samaria.) 7. The peoples who surrounded the Jews after they had established first their theocracy and then their kingdom may have been descendants of Ishmael, and those within Canaan almost certainly were. The Jews fought the latter regularly because they did not eliminate them upon entry to the Promised Land, and they engaged in substantial strife with the former as well. Their problems with these people paled before those which they had with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, the governing heirs of Alexander the Great, and the Romans, but in modern times Arabs—Muslims claiming to derive from Abraham via Ishmael— are their main concern. 8. This story is to be found in the book of Judges.

9. The story of Israel’s kings through Solomon’s son is in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings. 10. “Teach me, Lord, to wait,” goes a hymn of recent vintage. Can anyone say that Christians have been unrealistic to wait so long for Jesus to return when the Jews waited 1,878 years for the opportunity to return to the land where they had spent thirteen centuries, after which it finally came? 11. We can repeatedly find the Jewish Diaspora predicted in the Bible. It tells us in prophecy from at least twenty-five hundred years ago that the Jews would dwell all over the world secondary to their expulsion from Judea in 70 AD. Sure enough, they were dispersed for 1,878 years before they returned to Palestine in 1948 following World War I, as the United Nations gave them back their homeland. There are various aspects to this prophecy and its fulfillment. “I will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you have been scattered—with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath” (Ezekiel 20:34). “In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth” (Isaiah 11:11–12, NIV). “Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 43:5–6, 21). “Let the redeemed of the LORD say this—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south” (Psalm 107:2–3, NIV).

The Bible predicts the exact order in which the Jews have returned, again in prophecy more than twenty-five hundred years old. The first returning Jews to Palestine came primarily from eastern Arabic countries. The next major movement came from the Western countries of Europe, especially from Germany. Then they came in great numbers from Russia to the north, at the end of the 1980s. The last great migrations of Jews returning to Israel came from Ethiopia in the south. This precise order of return was predicted by Isaiah the prophet and in a psalm, as per the third and fourth passages above. The new Israel was born in a day, by an act of the United Nations on May 14, 1948. Note Isaiah’s prophecy in this respect. “Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zi0n in labour than she gives birth to her children” (Isaiah 66:8, NIV). The ancient Hebrew language has been revived and become the official language of the state. Prior to this happening, the Jews spoke an impure form of the language called Yiddish. The return to a pure common language was predicted by Hebrew prophets before the time of Jesus. 12. Max I. Dimont, The Indestructible Jews (Toronto: Signet, 1973). The Jews’ history is overwhelmingly in favor of their being God’s chosen. Some of us who are particularly soaked in democracy may think it unfair that God chose to favor one particular people over all others, and a few—hopefully just a few—may resent it. But God has no obligation at all to be fair with us, particularly according to our standards of fairness, though I think He chooses to be. He made us, and without Him we are nothing whatsoever; we are the ones with the obligation. Nevertheless, I think that most of the reason the Jews have been persecuted has been/is that some of us have thought their claiming to be chosen was/is a matter of arrogance. I do not believe they are arrogant; I say they are accurate. If the Jews are God’s true children, and I am adopted, I am just happy that He has adopted me. Heck, I have avoided the persecution—thus far at least—they have had to absorb, but I have the same benefits as they, provided I accept and believe. I will take my

part of this deal any day. They can have the chosen part; it has caused them almost nothing but misery in this life. They likely could have prevented that being the case, but I probably would not have done better had I been in their shoes. Also, if it is their having been chosen that has made them so cohesive, I say more power to them. When we are outshone by others, we may well tend to resent them. When those who particularly excel are also in other ways different from those outshined, sour grapes are more likely yet to appear. We also tend not to like any idea of God’s playing favorites. (Yet God can do whatever He wishes so long as it does not betray His goodness; He did, after all, make us.) Thus, God’s chosen have not been well-received in their world. 13. The doctrine of the Trinity sounds like polytheism to Muslims. We do refer to the members thereof as Persons; however, they are more accurately aspects of the one true God, who is One Person indivisible. 14. The pharaoh, Akhenaten, ruler of Egypt in the mid- fourteenth century BC, worshiped the Aten, the disc of the sun as expressed in its rays. He and the Jews were the first monotheists. 15. Following Mohammed’s death, conflict between Islamic caliphates— successor groups—began, and the amount of fighting among these rivaled that which led to a Muslim empire that outdid even that of the Romans of that time. Islamic armies took over the Persian Empire, whose military had beat back all Roman attempts to conquer. Within thirty years of the death of Mohammed, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates—dynasties—were going strong. By 750 AD, they ruled all of Islam, with the Umayyads in Spain and the Abbasids controlling the rest of the Muslim empire, and their situation did not come about peacefully. Historians tell us that the rule of the Abbasids resembled Persian absolutism. 16. Walter Martin, The Maze of Mormonism (Grand Rapids, MI: Regal, 1975). 17. My most important source for information about Islam has come from the Teaching Company course Great World Religions, which contains an extensive section on Islam. According to Josh McDowell and Don

Stewart, in Handbook of Today’s Religions, Latter-day Saints revere three books besides the Bible as sacred: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenant, and The Pearl of Great Price. The latter contains The Book of Abraham. 18. Pantheism is the belief that everything in the universe is part of an impersonal power, perhaps a kind of force, like the dualistic one of the Star Wars movie series. A distinct minority of people in the world today adhere to pantheistic belief, which has not withstood the onslaught of progress in science very well. Pantheism does not contain the flexibility to connect or correlate with new discoveries that stretch and enhance the minds of humans such that they require much grander deity. Apologetics essentially cannot be applied to it. 19. I credit the Hindu and Buddhist sections of Great World Religions, for much of my knowledge of these two belief systems. This is another of the fine courses prepared by the Teaching Company. In addition, I have profited greatly from consulting McDowell and Stewart, Handbook of Today’s Religions. 20. C. S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven (United States of America: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984). 21. The current Dalai Lama, enthroned at age six and exiled from Tibet since 1959, has written a book, The Universe in a Single Atom, which I found very informative. This is a fine man who is progressive, bright, and loving, but, in my view, greatly misled. A very interesting article on the Dalai Lama in the March 31, 2008, issue of Time magazine states that his ethics are in no way absolute. 22. The book of Job is primarily a study of what the relationship of humans with God should be. 23. In Matthew 26:39 and Mark 14:36, we see Jesus asking that He not be crucified if there were any other way God’s mission might be accomplished. In the latter passage, He calls to the Father using the term “Abba,” which is like calling God “Daddy.” This is evidence that He was truly the Son of God, though I am at a loss trying to fully explain His being both God and the Son of God. In any case, He was fully man

and fully God, and this constitutes a good explanation as to why he asked that He not have to be crucified. 24. I cannot deny the existence of Satan because of the horrible things that happen in our world.

Chapter 3 Secular Considerations Abstract: Pure science offers no better explanation of everything that is than does religion, and science has no answer at all for origin. In addition, science is no more about knowledge—certainty— than is religion, and science is as much about faith as is religion. Moreover, science is less about understanding the most fundamental aspects of existence than is religion. Probably because of my family background, I once believed that pure science might be able to provide us with all the answers about everything that we could ever desire, but I departed from that line of thought a long time ago. I wanted Christianity to be true because I wanted to live forever; therefore, I committed myself to Jesus because the Gospel seemed the best possible way to eternal life. Through the years, however, particularly since I discovered David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists, I have found that science alone is not an answer where ultimate matters are concerned. Pure science has, for example, nothing resembling an explanation for origin.1 More recently yet, I have discovered that science supports theism to the point that, according to pure reason in conjunction with modern physics, my inescapable conclusion is that God exists. The evidence is so strong in this respect that it almost seems as though apologists need no longer consider the question of theism vs. atheism. The only answer the militant scientist can give when confronted with the question of why we are here is something like, “It just happened to happen.” With no thought of disparagement, I will generally be referring to this way of thinking as that of the “chancist.”2 No aspect of scientific thought or method, whether it be observation, experimentation, induction, deduction, or rational thought, can militate against the reality of God, and one of the major themes of this book is to

show that theism, particularly that entailing the Judeo-Christian God and, most specifically, the Gospel, affords us a more credible and far simpler explanation of the origin of the universe and what human beings are all about than does the approach of pure science. This concept is a major thesis in the writings of Paul Davies, a professor of natural philosophy and winner a few years ago of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (worth a million dollars at the time), who has written a goodly number of very informative and enjoyable books for lay readers. He believes that one must engage in such strenuous contortions to explain the origin of the universe in purely scientific terms that it fully makes sense to look to the mystical for such explanation.3 I, of course, enthusiastically agree, mostly because of the “prebangian”—before the big bang—ideas of prominent physicists such as Lawrence M. Krauss and Gabriele Veneziano. Though I feel strenuously respectful of Dr. V., the founder of string theory, he imagines two stupendous “branes” clashing together to initiate the big bang. (But where did these branes come from?) This is too fanciful for me. Dr. Krauss gives a more lengthy and complicated account of origin that is to me less likely yet to be true, and he too does not account for the existence of the components of his story. In this work, I shall directly proceed to the contention that the reality of God and His purposes and actions far outweigh the chancism of militant science on the scale of likelihood determined by reason. Along the way, I shall lean heavily on the thought that the order of the universe strongly implies the existence and involvement of a supreme Master of order and that design demands a Designer.4 Lafontaine said that we can know the workman by studying what he has made; this makes sense in the case of food and furniture, and it is valid in the case of universes as well. Because we see a stream, we can surmise an ocean, and perhaps the more streams we can follow, the greater chance we shall have of finding that ocean. We shall see where the rivers of philosophy, theology, cosmology, modern physics, and, to some degree, history, with their waters of imagination, intuition, logic, beauty, and simplicity, can take us in a search for The Truth. (Where they do take you will, of course, pertain to how convincing I am able to be.) I shall be seeking the answers to crucial questions (e.g., the most crucial ones, which are, “Where did God come from?” and “If God

made everything, how could He have done it, and who made Him?”).5 I am anxious to begin addressing these issues, but I must first lay a foundation. I am a skeptic, a skeptic of pure science. In conjunction with this stance, there are four major conclusions to which I have come over a period of years that detail my belief that science is grossly ill-prepared to submit the claim that it can explain everything, especially where our universe and we came from. The first is that, to be a pure scientist in this respect, one must reject a priori the possibility that the supernatural exists; no evidence exists that militates against the existence of God. In fact, science provides us much evidence to the contrary, as we shall explore in much more detail.6 The second conclusion is that—again previously mentioned—science inevitably ceases to be science the moment it tries to address the issue of a Prime Mover because, in order to do that, it must desert its most fundamental concept, causation. Yet, a Prime Mover is essential to origin. The third is that science can make no more valid claim than can Christianity to the possession of knowledge as opposed to belief; there is indeed no scientific knowledge, unless one considers mathematics to be science— there is only belief. My fourth and final contention here, closely related to the third, is that, though science has given us vast know-how and technology, it has not been able to explain the most basic aspects of any of its disciplines. Professor Steven Goldman, in his Teaching Company course “Science Wars,” heartily agrees with this assertion.7 I shall now examine my objections to the practice of pure science in some detail, devoting a chapter to each.

Notes 1. I use the term “pure scientist” to denote a person who will believe nothing without what he considers to be adequate scientific evidence. Pure science has nothing resembling an explanation for origin and is therefore incomplete and unsatisfying in the arena of one’s most profound questions. The difference between the pure and the militant scientist, as far as my usage of these terms is concerned, is that the latter are atheists with no

respect for the opinions of the religious, whereas the former are openminded and usually prepared to return to the theistic fold if they are given adequate evidence of its truth. 2. Chancist is a term I have coined with which to designate one who thinks in some vague way of the universe as an entity that just happened to happen and which is purposeless. Many scientific investigators, if not most, speculate that certain events could have occurred before the big bang in leading up to it or causing it. There are, however, no events outside of space-time, and, prior to the big bang, there was no spacetime, plus the hypothesized occurrences are very complicated and fantastic and are therefore unlikely to have occurred. Simplicity and beauty, as we shall see, are the most important indicators of truth. Chancism is nothing more than the ultimate nonexplanation. 3. Davies’s book to which I refer here is The Mind of God. Davies recently moved from Australia to Phoenix, Arizona, where he is a professor at Arizona State University. 4. I am, as a rule, using the terms “universe” and “world” synonymously. 5. It seems to me that, if one were to engage in a rational dialogue concerning the possible existence of deity without preconceptions, it would probably at least begin with something like the following exchange. Person #1: “Do you believe in God?” Person #2: “Certainly someone must have made us and all that we experience in nature.” #1: “Maybe, but who created Him?” #2: “That is a very good question; we don’t know, but that does not show that He does not exist. We also do not know that much about the common cold.” 6. The word supernatural may conjure up visions of fortune- tellers or Dracula, but it just means “beyond nature.” We have no reason to think there is no such thing because, given the limitations of our senses and the nebulosity of the basic components of our world, we cannot guarantee that we are able to perceive everything that exists, particularly with our physical senses. 7. The Teaching Company prepares university courses that one may take online or by way of DVDs and CDs. For this, they employ the best

university professors in the United States and beyond. Their address is 4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500, Chantilly, VA 20151.

Chapter 4 Science and the World Beyond: A Dynamic Relationship Abstract: Scientific explanations of ultimate matters such as how our world and we could have come into existence are more fantastic—more like “mumbo-jumbo”—than are the doctrines of Judeo- Christianity. Einstein’s theories of Relativity and quantum physics, especially the latter, are as fantastic as anything can be, much more so than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Relativity is explained in this chapter. Space-time, matter, and force are all illusory, and even matter is not what it seems to be. All of these are abstractions; for example, matter is mathematics. Examination of the universe and us with the mind’s eye reveals, then, that its substance is no more palpable than is its form. Therefore, the existence of spirits is nothing remarkable at all. As our bodies, including our brains, are abstractions, they are no more tangible than our minds are. Moreover, as the universe and all its contents are the thought of God, mind is primary in our world, far more basic than matter, such that, once again, the existence of souls and spirits should be our expectation rather than anything surprising. Our minds are not bound by time; they exist in timelessness already. (This is no more fantastic than the idea that we have doppelgangers, duplications of ourselves, existing in alternate universes.) We do not go anywhere when we die. If we have accepted The Truth, which is the Christ, we are in heaven already. If we have not done so, we are in hell already, which we may define as the absence of God. We perceive the timeless realm in a manner that is, as Brian Greene said, like viewing a van Gogh through and empty Coke bottle. Nothing exists for us until we view it, at which time the potential actualizes. The universe is in our minds.

Bottom line: As Rob Bell said in a Nooma video, “Everything is spiritual.” Matter is all in our minds. Everything, including our own brains and the rest of our bodies, is abstract. All explanations of ultimate matters given to us by pure science are more fantastic than that which theological study provides. As primarily fine people, scientists generally do not consider disproving the reality of the mystical to be part of their “job descriptions.” That is a particularly good thing because their actual discoveries not only support belief in the reality of the supernatural; they may comprise the leading force of our day that impels us toward believing in a realm beyond time and space. This scenario had its beginning following the nineteenth-century nadir in the relationship between science and the mystical, and it looks as though it will only deepen and broaden. Tracing the development of science from its beginning is helpful to one’s understanding of its nature and the views of pure scientists on fundamental issues. I will do this and, at the same time, describe various scientific phenomena, particularly those discovered since the end of the nineteenth century, that must be familiar as we investigate their relationship with philosophy and religion. Aristotle was the first exhaustive and methodical scientist, and his corpus of work comprised virtually the entire curriculum of the earliest universities, such as those of Bologna, Italy, founded 1080, and Paris, founded 1160. Following his example, investigators trusted their senses as they observed, experimented, recorded, and interpreted. The result was a sizable infusion of doxa into the church position of logos, particularly as the early universities grew out of cathedral schools. More doxa yet was added with the advances in astronomy, cosmology, physics, and mathematics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, effected primarily by Copernicus, Galileo, and Isaac Newton, and the result was considerably more substantial university programs. The tremendous contribution of these three men and others of that time was initially seen as evidence of God’s status as the Master of creation and order, as they seemed to unveil a “clockwork universe” of precise arrangement and function that demanded the existence of a “Clockmaker.”

Thus, the scientific revolution did not get in the way of the beliefs of the people of Christian faith at that time. Additionally, the assumption of the existence of the supernatural, which had represented the belief of humanity throughout all of history up to that point, held and was even enhanced by the discoveries of these scientific giants. Nevertheless, many intellectuals of the eighteenth century came to believe that these accomplishments meant that humanity had such great potential to be master of its fate that we needed no one of higher intellect to guide us. Hence the “Enlightenment,” engendered by the thought that its founders had disavowed superstition, though it was not basically atheistic. I fail to see it as having enlightened humanity and believe that it fostered regression because, though its movement toward reason was good, its drawing away from faith was not. In any case, in the next century, Darwin and Freud came along with ideas that made God seem unnecessary. At the same time, the so-called “romantic” period of Western history ensued, wherein philosophers questioned reason in favor of emotion. Men and women began to doubt their faith as evolution and psychoanalysis arrived on the heels of the Enlightenment. Lovers did a lot of swooning while writing mushy poetry to their paramours; paintings were lush and even gaudy, and it seemed to become fashionable to die young of tuberculosis. Growing religious uncertainty with its attendant fear of death required rushes of adrenaline as diversion and therefore remedy, just as it does today. When Albert Einstein and Max Planck arrived on the scene, however, with Relativity and quantum physics, respectively, in hand, they brought with them such an emphasis upon mind, as opposed to reliance on our physical senses, that a renewed paradigm arose in science, teeming with logos and the concept of “Things are not as they seem” and replacing the “Things are as they seem” of the Enlightenment. Modern physics was upon us, and it became relatively easy for science and theology to rejoin hands, for several reasons that I shall present. Einstein’s ideas produced cracks in the physics of Isaac Newton and the geometry of Euclid and filled them in with thoughts so strange as to cause disorientation of the mind.1, 2 The assertions of Planck and company were

more disturbing yet because they opened the door to the science of the impossible-yet-true. The most bizarre ideas of science fiction seemed like old friends by comparison, and one could no longer adhere to modern science and at the same time consider belief in the supernatural to be ridiculous. It looks as though this will continue to be the case from now on. Few people realized, however, that the supernatural was making, so to speak, a comeback until after the first quarter of the twentieth century had elapsed. It was then, in 1927, that Arthur Eddington, a well-known astrophysicist at Cambridge University, made the statement, “The stuff of the universe is mind-stuff”; in other words, he said, “the universe is the thought of God.” Sir James Jeans of the same institution agreed, as both of them applied Relativity and quantum mechanics to philosophy and theology in the most revolutionary way.

The Special Theory of Relativity As Einstein’s revolutionary work is crucial to this chapter, I think it well that we explore the basics of special Relativity before moving further. Fortunately, our purposes demand only rudimentary understanding of this strange and radical reordering of space-time. Actually, our likely inability to grasp it fully is part of a major point I intend to make, which is that we should not allow something that is incredible, fantastic, and/or impossible for most people to comprehend to be discarded for those reasons alone if that something could be a source of immeasurable benefit to us. The biblical God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ are easier to feature as genuine than practically anything in quantum physics and most of Relativity; yet, many doubt the Bible, while few doubt modern physics. The evidence in favor of God’s existence and His having a particular nature and personality is powerful and compelling, so much so that it can no more be denied than can the truth of the claims of Relativity and quantum physics. Yet, we are so prone to believe the input of physical senses as opposed to minds’ eyes that we often decline to take the extra time it takes to take the route of logos. Additionally, “The proof is in the pudding” is the ultimate test for everything, and the reality of God has been upheld by so

many people for so long that the pragmatic evidence alone in His favor is enormous.

Relativity and Space-Time In 1905, Einstein mathematically combined space and time into a framework of the universe that he found to be malleable, warping when necessary in order to accommodate the velocity of light, which must, in a vacuum, remain constant at all costs.2 His special theory of Relativity renders time a fourth dimension, virtually indistinguishable and inseparable from the three spatial dimensions of our world, which are length, width, and thickness. Astronomers, cosmologists, and physicists therefore no longer think of our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, or more distant star systems as merely existing in space; they are set in “space-time,” as per Einstein. The special theory has given us diverse benefits, such as that contained in the equation, e = mc2, which was an almost incidental finding that materialized as Einstein worked on the mainstream of his theory. That space-time distorts in order to accommodate light-speed and the math that they can provide us almost as a by-product is the power to destroy large cities in an instant. The mind reels. The astounding upshot of the special theory is that the lengths of an inch, a foot, a mile, etc., may under certain circumstances be different for you than they are for me, and the same goes for increments of time. As space-time will unfailingly behave in this way in deference to the constancy of the velocity of light in a vacuum, we see right away that there is something about light (and other electromagnetic waves) that is more important in the ultimate scheme of things than is the integrity of space- time. (I suggest a thoughtful pause at this point.) The principle of relativity states that natural laws of nature do not vary from one physical system to another; for example, these universal rules pertain to a stationary person standing on terra firma in the same way that they relate to someone who is passing by that person at one thousand miles per second in a rocket ship. The apparent incompatibility of light-speed’s constancy

and this principle had long posed a mystery to investigators, and Einstein’s solution to this problem was immaculate and beyond normal imagination. Einstein began his little book, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, with a description of phenomena in a moving train compared with those on an embankment by which the train passes. For a long time, I mulled over this amazing little book trying to understand how this was to help me understand Relativity. Finally I realized that he was explaining what the multiple systems of the principle of Relativity are all about. The person who is in the train bouncing a ball sees the ball bounce straight up and down, but, if the person observing the ball from the embankment could clearly observe the trajectory that it is tracing, he would see that it is a line with major waves in it. The person on the bank is looking at the movement of the ball relative to the ground on which he is standing, and the person in the train is doing so relative to the moving floor of the train. Yet, the amount of time that it takes the ball to go from hand to floor (for example) via the straight down path must be the same that it takes the ball to do the same when it traverses the wavy route. The wavy way is longer because a forward component has been added; yet, the ball travels that path in the same amount of time that it traces the other one. Where does that leave us? It looks as though an increment of space (the distance from one point to another) must be different for the one person than it is for the other, or, increments of time must be longer for the one than for the other. Or both? The one observer is part of a system that is different from that of the other, but the invariable velocity of light in a vacuum is a law of nature that is the same for both systems. Perhaps we can clarify our situation if we consider that light-speed, so to speak, does not recognize any difference between the two systems (e.g., their velocities relative to each other). The velocity of light is an absolute number; nothing can change it—the same is not true for any other entity, whether it be Planck-length or baseball-sized. Again, photons, the smallest possible particles of light, are every bit as much objects (“bodies,” to use the term that Einstein seems to have preferred) as are baseballs. It is irrelevant that photons tend to exist in groups of unimaginable numbers while baseballs are objects that we can perceive one at a time. It is

irrelevant that photons are infinitesimal in size while baseballs are, from our perspective, macroscopic and vastly larger. That having been said, let us set up a thought experiment, the likes of which, I believe, will give us much insight into special Relativity. Visualize a stationary train on a track that is on the ground and in a vacuum. The train can travel as fast as one hundred miles per hour on the track and relative to terra firma, and we have on hand a baseball pitcher, with his mitt and ball, who, even in his spacesuit, can throw the ball at a maximal speed of one hundred miles per hour. Now, let him throw the ball forward as hard as he can throw it from a platform built on top of the train’s engine as that train travels down the track at its maximum speed. If we then measure the speed of the thrown ball relative to the ground, we will see that it is moving at a rate of two hundred miles per hour. That is anything but surprising. The pitcher can only throw a ball one hundred miles per hour, but with the speed of the train helping him, the ball travels two hundred miles per hour, though it travels only one hundred miles per hour relative to the top of the train. Here is the punch line, and it is so amazing that it is no wonder it solves the original dilemma and was not appreciated before Einstein just happened to notice it, as he explained in extreme modesty. The velocities of the photons coming from the headlight, unlike those of the ball, are the same relative to the ground regardless of whether the train is moving or stationary. The speed of the train has not increased the speed, relative to the ground, of the photons coming from the headlight to any degree whatsoever. Remember that, in Einstein’s book, the speed of the bounced ball forward was increased in the case of the train and the embankment: it went from nothing to something, relative to the ground. But photons, unlike balls, do nothing of the sort, whether they originate in a moving train, from a moving headlight, from a stationary source, or from anywhere else. If the ballbouncing gentleman had been bouncing a photon, its trajectory would have been straight up and down, both from the point of view of the bouncer and from that of the observer on the embankment. The ramifications of this difference between photons and baseballs (and any other bodies besides) in this respect are legion and vast. Summary: When we have one person, p, who is stationary, and another, p2, who is traveling at speed s, or when we

have one person traveling at speed s, and another who is moving at different velocity s + n, the one person’s inch (or foot or mile, etc.) is not the same as the other’s, and the same goes for increments of time. (Preferably, the total velocity of p relative to that of p2 is almost as great as light-speed; otherwise, the difference between p’s time and space intervals and those of p2 would be difficult to perceive.) Now, let us now look at a couple more examples. In the first one, endowing ourselves with a special dispensation for the purpose of analysis and description, we shall speak of time alone rather than space-time. Now, in this setting, according to Einstein, if you are stationary, and a rocket ship passes by you, how fast time is going by in that vehicle will be, from your perspective, slower than the speed of its passage relative to your ship.3, 4 If you could somehow look in the window of the moving ship, you would see the hands of a clock in that ship moving more slowly that the hands of a clock in your ship. As Einstein showed that space and time are aspects of a single entity, we must assume that a ship like the moving one here also has something happen to it in terms of space (again, from the perspective of the pilot of the stationary ship), and it does. Contrary to any possibilities that we learned while growing up, from the perspective of a person in the stationary ship, the moving ship exponentially shortens in its length (provided it is traveling in a length- wise manner). Thus, the relativistic phenomena that I am describing indeed pertain to space-time as a unit and not to either of these separately. Nevertheless, we shall again utilize our special privilege to look at space and time separately, in order to illustrate the relativity of time in a way that is even more impressive yet. Suppose two people of age twenty years decide that one of them will travel to the star nearest us—about four lightyears away—while the other remains on terra firma. They further decide on a velocity of travel that is very close to that of light, and they determine that the traveler will return immediately upon reaching Alpha Centauri. Leaving out minor details (e.g., as the delay in building up to the planned velocity and the time it takes to turn around), the traveling person will be gone just over eight years from the perspective of the person who stays on earth, but,

from the perspective of the traveling person, almost no time will have elapsed during the travel, such that this individual will be only slightly older than she was when she left, while the person who stayed home would perceive herself as just over twenty-eight years of age. If said travel is done at a slower speed, there will still be a difference between the ages of the traveler and the nontraveler upon the return of the former, but it will be exponentially less than nearly eight years, proportionate to the difference between the velocity of travel and that of light. Again, one observes in this instance the warping of time (actually, spacetime), and Professor Einstein taught us to calculate the nature and degree of such warping. Finding the mathematical equations that govern all variations of this process, he found out that we do not perceive the variability of the form of space-time in our everyday lives because we ordinarily deal with speeds that do not begin to compare with that of light. It is then that the highly exponential relationship between relative velocity and the dimensions and shape of space-time begin to be significant enough for humans to notice. Any velocity of an object relative to another causes the relativistic effect, but at the speeds we are used to dealing with, it is virtually immeasurable. We, at least the great majority of us, have grown up thinking about time and space in a way that is not at all in accordance with reality. If we could somehow have developed from babyhood to adulthood in the quantum world—in other words, if our adult height could at any time have been something like 1/100000000000000000 0000000000000000 of a centimeter —we perhaps could have perceived subatomic particles traveling at speeds close to that of light, such that relativistic effects would be nothing unusual for us. Particle physicists indirectly observe such velocities quite often and may, therefore, be less astonished than are the rest of us about Relativity. Similarly, how we feel about the supernatural depends heavily upon our upbringing. Those of us raised in a strictly scientific household will ordinarily have most trouble imagining it, while those of us raised in a quite religious household might have difficulty imagining how it might not exist. In any case, one’s having difficulty imagining something does not prove that it does not exist.

In special Relativity, we find an unbeatable example of logos and the fact that almost nothing in our world is as it seems. One is dazzled by the brilliant thought and grand imagination that its pioneer demonstrated in showing us a startling example of what our senses are so ill-suited to perceive. His theory is now so well substantiated that we may call it a law, and it takes great part in a momentous trend, which is that science, which previously seemed to be leading us away from belief in the supernatural, now leads us back in the opposite direction. Now, if one is in a stationary rocket ship and a second ship goes by him that has attained the speed of light, where is that ship relative to where he is? I am not sure it is anywhere, at least relative to the stationary ship, because, if it shortens because of the difference between relative velocities in this particular case, it will shorten maximally and disappear from the point of view of the occupant of the stationary vehicle. Would it then be, as far as he is concerned, outside of time? I do not have a better idea, though, if the occupant of the moving ship wants to argue that it is the stationary ship that is moving and that it is actually he that is stationary, no one can refute him. Invoking again our special privilege, we can perhaps say that, given the slowing of time for the person in the moving vehicle from the perspective of the stationary pilot, time stops at the velocity of light. Here we have another explanation of why nothing can travel faster than can light in a vacuum: anybody doing that would leave time. In this case, one might be able to sustain a claim that the supernatural realm is timeless, as I believe it to be. Since light by definition travels at light-speed, does it originate and generally reside outside of time? I would say so, except that it not always be timeless, since its velocity slows when it is traversing matter. Therefore, I suspect it is transitional, able to exist in both space-time and in timelessness. If that is the case, we can reason as follows: if we are familiar with something that is outside of nature at least part of the time, we then know that a realm outside of nature (i.e., a supernatural sphere) exists, and if that something subordinates something so fundamental in our world as

space-time, we may conclude that the world beyond ours is superior to ours.5 With light and its velocity, I think we have a glimpse into eternity that is more clear than “in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12–13). I feel I must, in all honesty, point out that, if photons are points, with no spatial dimension, they might not be able to exit space-time in the way that I have described. However, if they are “strings,” as in string theory, they should be able to do so, and I am a believer in strings, wherein particles of matter and force have single dimensions that could, in relativistic fashion, shorten or lengthen on account of their velocity.6 Those who do not accept the possibility of the existence of the supernatural often enunciate their position in terms of tangibility, saying something like, “If I can’t get a grip on it (perceive it with reasonable clarity with my physical senses), I won’t believe in it.” This attitude is decidedly unscientific by modern standards, as we have seen in talking about Relativity, wherein one can get no (figurative or otherwise) grip even on space-time, the very framework of the universe, at least according to our physical senses. It is relative, not what it seems to be, and we do not fully understand its nature. We cannot, in fact, get the proverbial grip on anything in our universe, as we shall see.

Relativity and Matter The remaining components of our universe, other than space-time, are matter (including much of the dark kind, about which I cannot write for want of knowledge) and force.7 Let us now look at matter and see how it pertains to the special theory, remembering that my basic theme at present continues to be that the discoveries of science are no less fantastic than are the stories in and the claims of the Bible and that belief in the supernatural is therefore not radical. Matter no more escapes the consequences of Relativity than does spacetime. As an object—“body,” as Einstein called such—increases in velocity, its mass, as the primary parameter of matter, increases, as exponentially as

the processes of space contraction and time dilatation.8 If a body could attain light’s velocity, its mass would be infinite, and, if its speed could exceed that of light, its energy, and therefore its mass, would be greater than infinite, which is impossible. Therefore, nothing can go faster than light, and, therefore, mass is just as illusory as space-time; additionally, as one cannot feature matter without mass, one can only conclude that, if mass is illusory, so is matter.9 Put in a slightly different way, the faster an object goes, the more energy it has, and since mass and energy are united by the most famous equation in the world, e = mc2, as the energy of the body increases, so does its mass, and, by the time the object attains a velocity that is close to that of light, its mass is stupendous. This has tremendous implications, as President Truman and others noted when an atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, ending World War II. Like the shortening of the rocket ship and the decreased rate of the passage of time in it, this effect on mass does not become noticeable until the object’s velocity approaches that of light. Such ability to vary in mass greatly attests to matter’s not being what it seems to be, and there is another way yet to demonstrate this. When matter is maximally dissected, according to well- respected principles of physics of the quantum kind, with probing and exploration of its innermost secrets in the greatest detail possible, we find, as C. S. Lewis asserted, that we end up with nothing more than mathematics. The material becomes immaterial. Matter becomes abstraction, and, since we know that abstraction is thought, the analysis of matter prepares one well for the concept of the universe as the thought of God. With the knowledge that all matter in the objects that we regard and manipulate every day, from toothpicks to automobiles and including our own bodies, is abstraction, we see right away that there is ultimately no connection at all between palpability and reality. Hence, again, spirits can be alive. As we can see in the equation E = mc2, matter is energy, and energy is as nebulous and immaterial as anything can be, including the supernatural;

energy is a mere concept because we have no idea what it is—we only know what it does, move and heat things. By no means do I say that God is energy, but warmth and motion go hand in hand, especially on the quantum level, and these together sound like the bottom line essence of the action of God. Over twenty-four hundred years ago, Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates who lived in Abdera in Thrace, adjacent to Greece to the north northwest, made the claim that matter is not continuous substance but is composed of minuscule pieces that he called atoms, in reference to his belief that these could not be divided.10 Though he did very well to suspect the particularity of matter in a day when no one else had thought of it, physicists have since managed to upstage him by dissecting not only atoms, but protons as well, arriving at the quarks that make up all protons and all neutrons as well (except that the latter each contain a neutrino). Like Democritus, they believe they have found the most fundamental particles of matter (and also of force, as we shall see), and there are a rather large number of kinds of these, though the quarks and electrons are the only ones pertinent to present discussion; they are by far the most important elemental entities. When we examine in more depth yet the characteristics of atoms and their components, we find additional reason to believe that the fundamentals of our world are so bizarre as to make the prospect of the existence of God and His timeless Kingdom comparatively easy to assimilate; the bottom line here is that matter is palpable only because we are constructed in a way that causes us to perceive it as such. Atoms consist almost entirely of space, and protons outdo them in this respect.11 If we analogize the amount of material nuclear physicists consider to be present in atoms compared to the volume of space they have found therein, we may make the comparison of something the size of a housefly set in the middle of a cathedral. In the case of protons, the spatial situation is less imaginable yet. It appears that the ratio between the volume of space in a proton and the amount of substance therein is similar to that between the amount of space in the solar system and an object the size of a

house. How do quantum physicists know these things? Beats me, if you will allow me a bit of colloquialism. According to string theory, it is likely that the most fundamental components of matter and force (e.g., quarks and photons) are as small as anything can be, Planck-size (named after Max Planck), about 1/1000000000000000 000000000000000000 (ten to the minus thirty-fourth power) of a centimeter in length or diameter, whereas protons are stupendously larger and atoms are vastly larger yet. As vacuous as matter is, we can legitimately think of it as even more so by considering the possible nature of quarks and electrons. What are they made of? Many answer this question by saying that it is nonsensical because, as primary particles, they are by definition not made of anything. I do not think this answer is satisfactory, however, especially as we know per e =mc2 that mass and energy are equivalent to one another. Energy is no more separable from matter than space is from time. If we are in time, we are in space, and vice versa, and, if we have matter, we have energy, and vice versa. Thus, Einstein’s prediction through his famous equation provides us with great evidence that elemental particles are composed of energy, and atomic explosions have proved it, demonstrating that the amount of energy obtained when matter is converted to energy is commensurate with e = mc2, huge, considering the size of the number obtained when one squares the velocity of light. Now, if matter is energy, and energy is invariably ordered by mathematics, should we not conclude that energy reduces to math and that matter does as well, such that energy and matter are ultimately, like space-time, abstractions? This is a huge bolus to swallow, but it makes sense to me, and it is exactly what we would expect if the universe is the thought of God, as some very astute people believe and have believed. The components of our world indeed seem like mind-stuff, as we cannot truly perceive any of them with our senses. We can get no grip on either space-time or matter-energy. Are abstractions the only real entities? This may be the case, unless God Himself and the other residents of heaven have surmounted such an arrangement. In any case, we cannot perceive ultimate reality with our

senses. Our whole world consists of thought, and the world “above” and heaven may be peopled by bodiless minds, part of the thought of God, and both they and God may be able to produce reality that is more than abstract by means of thought. Even the minuscule amount of supposed substance we can find in atoms is no more tangible than we might imagine a spirit—a mind without a body— to be, and, when we again compare the amount of space that is in atoms with the amount of so-called substance there, the barriers to spiritual belief fade further yet into oblivion, particularly if we are careful to remember that our very bodies, including our brains, are what we are used to calling matter. Things are not as they seem. Seen with the mind’s eye, our entire world reeks with spirituality; it is in fact nothing else. Things are not as they seem.

Relativity and Force Force is as nebulous as matter. In quantum physics, it is particulate, and the elemental particles that compose a given variety of force in that scenario are as similar to those of matter as they are to the particles of the other kinds of force. As I will also be referring repeatedly to the four forces of the universe as we proceed, it is desirable at this point that I explain them for the benefit of those who are not familiar with all of them. We see energy most clearly in the four known forces of the universe: they are the strong force, the weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravity. These are at least as elusive as space-time and matter. The great majority of us are unconscious of two of them on a day-to- day basis; these are the strong and the weak, and the weak force is irrelevant for our purposes, particularly as it has been shown to be the same force as the electromagnetic. Gluons, representing the tendency of quantum physicists to engage in humor, are theorized as the intermediate particles of the strong force. Electromagnetic force encompasses both electricity and magnetism and is the force that is related to the charges of quarks, electrons, and such. Its intermediary particles are photons, the quanta of light. Magnetic force is the

same force as electrical; it would no doubt be considered miraculous were we not used to it. Quantum physicists think of all four forces as particulate, though the theorized particles of gravity, gravitons, are particularly speculative, and Einstein’s theory of gravity, a part of his theory of general Relativity, looks like a better explanation of gravity than that which quantum physicists have promulgated. Thus, there are two theories of gravity “out there,” and they are very dissimilar and apparently incompatible.12 Perhaps we think we understand electricity because we encounter it so often, but it consists of streams of electrons that are beyond our collective imagination, primarily because of their infinitesimal size and dual nature. Nevertheless, as we have noted, it was from the work of Hendrik Lorenz, a physicist whose primary scenario of study was electricity, that Einstein got the equations that are at the heart of his special theory. I shall provide only a cursory view of those equations, as we need nothing more for our purposes. Physicists believe that the four forces of our universe become unified at an exceedingly high energy level, which existed during the throes of the birth of our universe, in the first fraction of a second of its existence. It could possibly be obtained in experimentation if enough money could be found to build the device necessary to produce it. The diameter of this machine would be quite a few miles, and such supercolliders are normally built underground. The crucial quantity in the Lorentz equations is 1 over (divided by) the square root of the expression, one minus velocity squared over the velocity of light squared. I can make this clearer if I am allowed to us a diagonal line as the line in a fraction, in which case we have 1/the square root of (1. v2/c2), with the parentheses denoting that we are not dealing here with the square root of 1, but of the square root of the quantity, 1. v2/c2. This expression is found in the denominator in equations of the Lorentz and in that of Einstein’s Relativity equations. Again, e = mc2 is a sort of implication.

On the quantum level, the immaterial nature of force is no more apparent than is that of matter. In fact, if string theory is correct, there is no more difference between an elemental particle of force and one of matter than there is between two force or two matter particles. Additionally, in the theory of “superstrings,” each matter particle has a force particle associated with it and vice versa. Both matter and force particles are, of course, governed by mathematics, and we have ample reason to claim that both are energy. Therefore, both are abstractions, etc., etc.

More about Matter as Mathematics In working out the simple-looking proposition e = mc2, Einstein did so merely by inserting the speed of light into his equations and employing some algebraic calculation of minimal difficulty thereafter. This equation, a formula, first tells us that energy is equivalent to mass, which is tantamount to saying it is equivalent to matter. It then quantizes the energy obtained by taking the amount of matter in question, expressed in grams, which is its mass, and multiplying it by the velocity of light squared, which I am expressing in terms of miles per second. We thus obtain amount of energy = the amount of mass (m) x the product of 186,000 x 186,000 (c2) = 3,596,000,000 x mass (m) divided by 1 square second (i.e., 1, = 3,596,000,000 x m or 3,596,000,000m). This is an enormous amount of energy obtained per increment of matter, which explains our ability to blow up an entire city or more with a single bomb. Now if space-time and matter are essentially mathematics so far as where our human minds can presently take us, we only have mind, the origin of mathematics, with its product, mathematics, that we can currently grasp with any confidence at all, as we seem to have left substance and the material behind. These, along with light-speed, are all abstractions that, in conjunction with their nature, do not require time in order to be. Here we have additional evidence that timelessness exists and that it is associated with ultimate truth, whereas time is not.

Minimal thought reveals that math is invariably axiomatic; that 2 + 2 = 4 is always correct cannot be denied, and the verity of all the rest of mathematics successfully derives from this fact. Put another way, if 2 + 2 could = anything else under any circumstances, all of mathematics would not be absolute or axiomatic; it would be relative, as some philosophers erroneously claim goodness to be. I will admit that I have heard of mathematicians claiming to engage in experimental mathematics, but I think that is obviously and patently the most futile of endeavors. Such activities smack of considering that the ultimate example of doublespeak in Orwell’s novel, 1984, could actually be credible, and I, as you can easily assume by now, am not about to do that. In this novel, Big Brother has the masses, which comprise almost all of the population of his country, accepting as truth whatever he says is truth. The most startling example of pseudotruth with which he confronts them is “2 + 2 = 5,” a thoroughly ridiculous proposition. We have arrived here at a connection between math and ethics, and we will see that their relationship mostly consists of their both being part of The Truth, ultimate truth, discussed later in the chapter on the possible origin of God. Though mathematics proceeds from mind, it, at least in my view, is a major part of the Arche. In other words, we have something like this: The Truth, of which mathematics, by virtue of its being axiomatic, is a part, gives rise to God who, by thought, creates the universe on a foundation of math and, in the process, makes humans, who exist in His mind and can also understand mathematics and utilize it in their daily thought and work. Matter is not what it seems to be, and it “boils down to” mathematics. It is therefore elusive to an extreme (as is force). In conjunction with this universal anatomy, hear the words of Chris Quigg, from his article in the April 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine, “Elementary Particles and Forces.” “The Uncertainty Principle of Werner Heisenberg suggests … that the vacuum is not empty. According to the principle, uncertainty about the energy of a system increases as it is examined on progressively shorter time scales. Particles may violate the law of the conservation of energy for unobservably brief instants; in effect, they may materialize from nothingness (italics mine). In QED (quantum

electrodynamics), the vacuum is seen as a complicated and seething medium in which pairs of charged ‘virtual particles,’ particularly electrons and positrons, have a fleeting existence.” What conclusion(s) can we draw here? That there actually is no space at all? I do not know, except that I believe Quigg’s spellbinding comments lend further support to the contention that space-time is illusory. Also, I think they contribute further support to the proposition that matter is quite nebulous. Should they also lead us to think about “inner space,” that space which is inside of atoms and protons, separately from outer space, which we think of mostly in terms of its lying among planets, stars, and the like? Is there any difference between the two? I suspect that space is space, but I cannot answer these questions fully. When we think of the existence of a timeless realm evidenced by the behavior of light and in connection with the Christian faith, we see that the Kingdom of God most particularly fits our expectations of what this sphere might be like because Jesus is described in His Gospel as “the light,” not only connecting Him with the most stalwart and dependable entity in our universe, but also recognizing that, like light, He inhabits timelessness. He has shown His ability to abide in space-time as well; remember that I said the same about light, that it is able to exist in both realms. Jesus as the light also may refer to Him who enlightens. Special Relativity has a tremendous number of applications in our world. The one that first comes to my mind is the GPS (global positioning system) that enables us to locate ourselves on the surface of the earth.

Mathematics and Greater Truth Yet When we consider how ethereal matter is and at the same time regard the elusiveness of space and time, we see that mind and its product, thought, especially math, are the only entities we have identified in the universe that we can grasp with our minds as constant except perhaps for light-speed (unless Planck-time and Planck-size fall in this category, but these entail space and time, and, if space and time are truly illusory, it would seem that their divisions and increments would be the same). The principles of mathematics are irrefutable, and they are not dependent upon dimensions

(e.g., miles or miles per second), such that math, along with its source, is independent from space-time. Though math is abstract and only potential until it is utilized by a mind, it is the least nebulous of entities; it consists of knowledge as opposed to belief, and knowledge is not nebulous. Lightspeed, on the other hand, has both spatial and temporal dimensions, as in how many spatial units light covers per unit of time; thus, it eludes our full understanding. Additionally, we must at least doubt that the existence of matter is necessary for the existence of mind, since we can grasp the nature of matter easier than we can conceive of that of mind, and especially since the mass of matter is a variable entity, according to the special theory. One cannot imagine matter existing outside of space-time, whereas one can imagine mind in that realm; thus, we do not have to proceed very far in our thinking to put mind over matter in the hierarchy of the universe and the organization of everything that is. We can be certain that mind exists within our universe because of Descartes axiom, “I think; therefore, I am.” Thus it seems that, once again, we must add mind to light as an entity that is transitional between the realms of timelessness and space-time. (We possibly can, in fact, be more certain about mind in this respect than we can be about light.) If mind is transitional, so must be its product, mathematics, particularly as the latter is abstract and therefore independent of space-time and all of its dependent contents. Though we are continually frustrated by barriers in our world, there is something to be said for them. It is natural to believe that there is something on the other side of these, such that they give one opportunity to submit the proposition that a spaceless and timeless realm lies beyond the universe, and this is vital because we must look beyond our dependent and undependable world for something on which to base our lives, particularly if we desire to live forever. We need something that is analogous to the rock that Jesus said to found our lives and ourselves upon, as opposed to the sands of the illusory and variable (Matthew 7:24–27). I do not think we want to stake our eternal lives, or even our time-bound lives, on barriers, vagueness, or, in fact, anything in the time-bound sphere.

Let us now try to plumb the depths of mathematics more deeply. It is, again, a method of thinking and a product of mind. That being the case, it is subordinate to mind except that it is involved in another function that is even more important than the one under discussion here, which I discuss later in the chapter, “How God Can Exist and Why He Must” below. Meanwhile, we can at this point augment our universal hierarchy by placing math between mind and matter, reminding ourselves, if you agree, that matter is mathematics. Thus, matter is far, if not infinitely, below mind in status. Sir James Jeans held and very strongly attested to the supreme position of mind in the universe: “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds.”13 Jeans’s point here is enormously important, and he makes it in an exceptionally clear way. A corollary is that an entity that does not require space-time for existence trumps one that does, such that mind can give rise to matter whereas matter cannot give rise to mind. Further, the Mind of God trumps everything and imbues us with cognition, without which everything else is of no significance at all.

Quantum Physics We have learned most of what we know about the basic building blocks of the material universe since the year 1900, beginning with the work of Max Planck. He is the father of quantum physics, though no one has dominated this field like Einstein dominated Relativity. This science deals with the minuscule, while Relativity is about large things. Its name derives from the contention that all elementary matter and force seems to exist as packets that are the most elementary building blocks of nature. A photon, for example, is the smallest possible packet of light, according to string theory, about Planck-length in size. Planck initiated this most puzzling of scientific disciplines by postulating that these most basic pieces of matter and force

can behave as particles or as waves without violating their status as little hunks of something, and physicists can actually perform experiments that essentially prove this precept. We mere humans can reach but not grasp this concept. The best way to look at it is to think in terms of form and content, the shape and the substance that every material entity possesses; on the quantum level, we observe one or the other, but not both at the same time, whereas, in space-time, they are inevitably and forever joined. Quantum physics has endowed humanity with hugely important technology in spite of its being so foreign to the way our minds work that even its researchers remain baffled about the nature and the origin of the bizarre phenomena that they observe in this arena. Though at least 30 percent of the technology of the United States is based on quantum physics, no one really understands it.14 The uncertainty principle, formulated in 1927 by Werner Heisenberg, demonstrated that we can never simultaneously know the velocity and the location of an elemental particle of force or matter because measuring the one of these instantly changes the other. Besides showing more forcefully yet the nebulosity of material objects by demonstrating that their components can be localized only in terms of statistics, chance, Heisenberg’s discovery carries us further yet along in our development of the theme that it is mind and not matter that is primary in the universe. On the quantum level of size, when a mind makes a measurement of any sort, that act of measurement causes change in that which is measured; therefore, either mind is primary in the universe or the uncertainty principle is invalid. Our minds do not seem to be this potent when we measure things such as the length of an automobile, but when we measure the mass of a subatomic particle, an entirely different story pertains. Does Jesus’s statement (Matthew 17:20) that, with enough faith and thought, we can cause a mountain to be cast into the sea make more sense now? This faith of which He speaks is a product of mind, and I fully believe that Jesus anticipated quantum mechanics. Other research in quantum physics has revealed even more evidence of the effect of mind on inanimate objects. Whether fundamental entities (e.g., quarks and electrons) exist as quanta or waves at a given point in time

depends upon whether they are under observation. When nobody is looking, they do exceedingly strange things in behaving as waves, whereas, while they are under observation, they behave as packets. This characteristic of fundamental particles of matter is apparent whether the subatomic particles in question are those of matter or those of force; the experiments of which I am aware were done with light (i.e., photons), though the principles involved apply to any fundamental particle of matter as well as to force.

Mind over Matter Will Durant informs us in The History of Philosophy that we also find the principle of mind over matter in the sphere of philosophy, particularly in the writings of the eighteenth-century philosopher Bishop George Berkeley. Considering Berkeley’s philosophy together with fundamentals of quantum physics and the words of Jesus concerning a mountain’s removal into the sea, we see that science, philosophy, and theology all address and support mind over matter, not only with regard to mind’s superiority and matter’s subordination, but regarding the ability of mind to affect matter, even in ways that seem (but are not) magical. Let us not forget this throughout our investigations, as its implications with regard to Christian apologetics is profound. Before Einstein, the concepts inherent in the special theory of Relativity were unthinkable, and, before Planck and his cohorts and successors, the conclusions of quantum mechanics would probably have been thought to be ravings of the insane, but nowadays these are by and large accepted. Perhaps the thought of mind without matter would have been similarly ridiculed before modern physics arrived on the scene, but it is now quite evident that this idea is no more fantastic than are the phenomena of Relativity and the world of the quantum. The quantum sphere is full of what seem to be impossibilities to us because it connects more—perhaps entirely—with the true nature of physical reality than it does with the illusory world of our senses. The location of subatomic particles on that level, as we have said, is not a matter of measurements along three perpendicular lines; it is a matter of statistics, and this situation

would seem to fit nicely with there being no such thing as space as we know it.

The Ultimate Error of Materialism Though materialism is a lame concept according to lots of evidence, I wish, before proceeding further, to put some more nails in its coffin and bury it securely. Its demise, especially when accompanied by the illusory nature of space-time, makes belief in the supernatural most thoroughly reasonable and rational unless we are content to say there is no reality at all where we can really get a foothold. Meanwhile, our brains and the rest of our bodies are composed of matter that practically reduces to nothingness, such that belief in spirits becomes no problem at all. Our reaction with matter that is outside of our bodies is ultimately a matter of one group of strange particles reacting with another, except that the one group is somehow connected with mind and the other may or may not be. Our personal group is also, somehow, endowed with senses that detect other groups and does so when only tiny amounts of them are present, especially in the case of our sense of smell. In fact, when we think of the amount of space that is present in both the detected and the detector, it is marvelous that there can be any reaction at all of one with the other, particularly as the effects of which we speak take place in an illusory milieu. The depths of reality seem immeasurably difficult; yet, when all is known, when we see clearly and not in a mirror dimly, it will be incredibly simple, according to the wise counsel of Ockham, and so I say to plunge on and never give up seeking understanding and truth. We might well conclude at this point that we only think we can grasp the reality of space-time and its contents better than we can comprehend that which is outside of whatever the universe really is. Though we have not proved the existence of the supernatural, we have found it to be just as plausible as the natural, and I submit that, in our attempts to understand the world in which we live, we are well-advised to consider what may be outside of it, particularly as there exists reams of evidence that a supernatural realm exists, either without space-time or perhaps with

multiple dimensions of time. We should think in terms of mind and mathematics and readily admit the thought of philosophers and theologians of all times to our deliberations. I cannot sufficiently emphasize the principle of unity in our world (perfected in heaven). “Mind over matter” is no magician’s trick, and it expresses only part of a great truth. “Mind over all,” the result of looking at things through the mind’s eye, is a more accurate and complete expression of truth, and it easily phases into “the Mind of God over all” when one adds a kernel of faith to the mix. In their belief that God and the universe are one and the same, pantheists are only one step from the truth, but that step is a big one. If the universe is not what it seems to be, and if it is not God, then what is it? It is, as John Archibald Wheeler said, information. It exists, as Bishop George Berkeley essentially taught us, only in our minds because it does not consist of stuff that is “out there” independent of our perception of it. We connect here with quantum observation, a principle of quantum mechanics that informs us that nothing exists until it is observed. Much more about this later, but, for the moment, I will state that it is the Mind of God trying to connect with His cognitive creation. It is information about Himself and His thought. This scenario is most succinctly and beautifully illustrated by the central painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, which depicts the hands of God and Adam reaching out to each other. Their index fingers almost touch but do not make contact; this is crucial to the meaning of the work because the entire universe lies between these two fingers. In order to reach and receive God—in order to traverse what at least seems like a small gap between Him and us—we need faith because, if we in no way recognize His presence, we can never make contact with Him. I will have a lot more to say about faith later; suffice it now to say that it is not blind—it is in every way supported by reason. Meanwhile, think on God, not because He is everything, but because He is everything to us, everything of ultimate importance. He is the Source of everything, and in Him all good things converge. Without Him, all is nothingness.

When we do reach out in faith, even if we are humble and submissive only to the point of “I believe in Him enough to search for Him,” we can touch the finger of God, in the analogy of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, and, when we do, reality and very life fill us like day’s breaking, spring’s coming, and love’s thrilling. Mind is not merely the sum total of sensory input into a brain. It is something more primary than brains, something that does not require brains in order to exist; brains are subordinate to minds, and minds are therefore not dependent upon brains, which means that we do not have to worry about how our minds, which are the entities that many people call souls or spirits, are going to be able to disconnect from our brains at death so that we can live forever. We do not have to disconnect, but that is a story for a later chapter. When we have closed that little gap between God’s finger and ours, our minds are thenceforth fully connected to Him. (This is a decent illustration of the Christian principle of rebirth.) Eddington, Jeans, and Berkeley say, “Hear, hear.” Thus, with the eye of the mind, we discover that we inhabit or can inhabit a dual system—two realms existing together, in parallel—one that is timebound and one that is timeless or in some other way changeless. These are separated, in effect, by a rent veil that still abides but has been torn in two by the Christ as per the gospels, giving us access to the Father far beyond what we had before. However, because it is not completely gone, we perceive the “other side” only dimly and distortedly, as we have previously noted. In this scheme of things, the illusion of materialism is nothing more than part of the temporary residence in which God has placed us in order that we might develop identity, a world that is ultimately no more important than a shed snakeskin.

The General Theory of Relativity Of all the evidence that science supplies in support of the existence of the supernatural, none is more compelling than that which comes from the general theory of Relativity. This elegant extension of the special theory

affords us a view of the universe that demonstrates the relationship between it and the timeless realm in the clearest way that I can imagine. The general theory is a major example of “Things are not as they seem.” It shows us how logical it is to think of our universe as something one can be in, on, or outside of. Einstein taught us via this theory that our world is like the rounded surface of a sphere. This explains why the distance between galaxies and groups thereof is increasing and why, the farther an object is from us in “outer space,” the faster it is moving away from us.15 Thus, the realm of timelessness is no distance at all from us, as we live on the border of space-time. Already with the special theory we have seen that the mystical— supernatural—realm almost has to exist. We are aware of an entity, for example, that does not obey the laws of nature in even the simplest possible way, such that it, electromagnetic force, including light, is, at least in some sense, alien to our world, radically different from everything else in it. Einstein’s general theory augments the likelihood of the existence of the supernatural by providing us with a mental picture that is clearly analogous to the junction of the two worlds of our existence—the time-bound and the (probably) timeless—and the juxtaposition of the one with the other. When the great man expanded his special theory to include bodies in all manners of motion, as opposed to those with uniform motion—movement in an unvarying direction at a constant speed—in particular when he dealt with accelerating bodies, he theorized a universe that is like a three-dimensional spherical surface, a “3-sphere.” We can in no way grasp such geometry, but there it is: Einstein’s mathematics is correct.16 The body that is revolving “tries” to fall into the body it is revolving around, and if and when such a fall actually occurs, it will entail acceleration. However, such a fall is prevented for some period by the centrifugal force generated by the relatively high velocity with which it originally approached the larger body. The two kinds of acceleration here are, so to speak and as Einstein discovered in his greatest “eureka” moment, equivalent.17

If the earth were falling into the sun, it would accelerate in doing so. And it is actually doing that. Picture it this way. If you throw a ball straight out in front of you, it will fall to earth in a mathematically defined curve. If you could throw it so hard that it traveled so far out in space that, when it started back to earth, it “missed” the planet because of its having gone some critical distance past its surface, it would not return to earth, at least not right away; it would begin revolving around the planet. Particularly if it lay outside of our atmosphere and was therefore free of the impedance of friction, it might revolve for a long time, trying, as it were, all the time to accelerate to the surface in response to the force of gravity. Under the right circumstances, it might revolve for billions of years. In doing so, its centrifugal force would be balanced by earth’s gravitational pull, not to the degree that such a situation can last forever, but to the extent that it can last a very long time. Somehow, Einstein managed to conclude that the force that keeps such a body in orbit is essentially no different from gravity, such that the mathematics of the one is identical to the math of the other and such that the force that attracts the body and that which repels it have the same nature. Thus, Einstein imagined and then showed that and how gravity and acceleration are equivalent, and he imagined and described a geometrical figure representing the universe as a whole which few— perhaps none—of us are capable of comprehending in its entirety. In the process, he came up with curved space, one of the most foreign concepts ever presented to the human mind, thereby refuting the legendary Euclid and two thousand years of misinformed certainty. He not only showed but precisely quantized that, as on the surface of a globe, there are no straight lines in our universe, such that great circles are the shortest distance between two points, and lines that might appear to be parallel with each other can meet because they are not straight lines after all. There is no such thing as a straight line on a globe’s surface or in our universe. Lines of longitude look parallel at the universe and actually are that over an infinitely small distance, but they converge until they meet at each pole. The situation in the universe is essentially the same, though a third spatial dimension is in place.

Summarizing the three principles that emerge here, we have: (1) In spacetime, as on the earth’s surface, there are no straight lines—only great circles —such that a straight line cannot be the shortest distance between two points. (That is not something that we, in our high school days, would ever have expected to be successfully refuted.); (2) so-called parallel lines always meet because, on the earth’s surface and in “outer space,” all lines are curved, and lines of longitude meet at the poles. (Note that this is, so to speak, a 180-degree change, from “never” to “always,” and do not be surprised, because there are many situations where this happens when one uses his mind’s eye.); (3) if we were to proceed out into space far enough, we would eventually return to where we started. (Of course, limited life spans, limited food and drink, and the continuing— even accelerating— expansion of the universe combine to make such a venture impossible.) We cannot imagine a 3-sphere, but, if we are to trust Einstein, we must believe in such, and Einstein was a most trustworthy gentleman. His concept of curved space has also been proved since he enunciated it in 1916, such that we now find ourselves talking about a law of nature in which we believe but cannot mentally grasp; we have faith that it is true, and this faith is very strong. Once again, compare belief in God to our belief in this example of amazing science. Fortunately, for our present purposes, it is not necessary to think about a three-dimensional spherical surface, because a mere two-dimensional one will work just fine in our particular deliberations. That our universe is in every way like being on the surface of a globe means that it is finite—not of infinite size; yet it is unbounded. It is endless and without borders; yet its size is measurable without invoking infinity. By comparison, consider the surface of the earth; there are no barriers that mark the end of our travels on it. Yet it is finite, as space travelers have clearly observed. Now, as we can fly off the surface of earth, it is not illogical to imagine that we might be able to remove ourselves or be removed from the analogous spherical surface that constitutes our universe. In conjunction with this idea and given that “the universe” and “nature” are synonymous, we can, while remaining in the realm of reason, picture a “place,” off our universe, which

may be called supernatural, though we do not know how to get there—at least we do not know how to do so while maintaining our present form or existence. Attaining the speed of light, perhaps by falling into a black hole, might get our subatomic components there, but this idea lacks practicality, sounds distinctly unpleasant, and is meaningless because the parts of us that count, our minds, cannot be transported at all, since souls are not bound by space, such that they are already nowhere and everywhere, assuming that the supernatural realm is spaceless as I believe. With regard to the virtual particles of which Quigg spoke, what is more likely? That they materialize from nothingness or that they come from another realm, another dimension, as older sci-fi stories tended to put it? And where do they go when they vanish? To me it makes good sense to believe that they come from outside of space-time and go there when they disappear from here. In Paul Davies’s About Time, we read that John Wheeler believed it possible that there is only one electron in the entire universe and that it pops into and out of nature so rapidly in moving from atom to atom and from one atomic electron shell to another that it could service, so to speak, all the atoms in the world. Think big! And little too! This would make the electron supernatural at least part of the time, and this idea was posited by a very smart and reputable man. Thus we have yet another confirmation of the existence of a supernatural realm, which is probably no distance away from us time-bound denizens. In addition, if Quigg’s particles go where there is no time, we cannot talk about how long they are “there” or what percentage of their existence is spent outside of the space- time of our universe. All of this convinces me that we have accumulated enough evidence to substantiate that, in the realm of the minuscule, not only is it particularly easy to imagine the existence of the supernatural—we cannot even make a clear distinction between it and the natural. If the universe is the surface of a 3-sphere, a spatially tridimensional setting existing as a whole in a supernatural realm, a nonplace, without space and thus without “there’s,” “here’s,” or “where’s,” all loci in it are equivalent, such that God is literally as close to us as the air we breathe, particularly

because we cannot utilize distance in order to express the separation of His realm from ours.18 Therefore, when both John the Baptist and Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is “at hand,” they described this situation perfectly, and it seems to jibe with the concept that our souls need not go anywhere at the times of our deaths (Matthew 3:2 re John; Matthew 4:17 re Jesus). Hence, the special and the general theories, together with QED, a consequence of the principles of quantum mechanics, all provide evidence supporting the presence of a realm beyond the veil of the transition from space- time to timelessness (and lack of space).

Reiteration and Other Thoughts Many of us become wary when anyone speaks of spirits, particularly as it may sound to us like superstition, sort of like believing in ghosts. Yet, by the word spirit, we usually mean immaterial in some way that is not understood, and, given our present understanding of space and time, of the configuration of the universe, and of the atoms that make up our bodies, the only reason we do not seem like spirits now is that our senses are designed to perceive our bodies otherwise. Given bodies outside of time and therefore unchanging, plus senses more capable of discerning our true natures, we would seem very spiritual in every way right now. The Western world revolved around the God of the Bible in the Middle Ages, and, for many reasons, it begins to make a lot of sense that we readmit supernatural concepts to intellectual discussion and bring back the wisdom of the past in its recognition of truths that may have been deemphasized because of a false impression that scientific theory and technology could provide us with valid alternatives. Sometimes things were better in the past than they are now, and sometimes what seems like progress is regress. Not everything new is good; not everything old is bad. Einstein not only demonstrated the compatibility of the principle of Relativity and the absolute velocity of light—he did so by way of mathematical equations that not only reflect the malleability of space—they quantify it in strict

exponential proportion, according to how close to the velocity of light various bodies are moving. These equations constitute the basis of his special theory of Relativity, special because it has only to do with linear motion at a constant velocity as opposed to rotary and other accelerating motion.19 Our very bodies, particularly as we see them in the light of quantum physics, are not as they seem to be. We understand them only in terms of our perceptive equipment, and they do not exist for us except in terms of our perception of them. They are therefore abstractions, such that our leaving them at the times of our deaths should be of minimal concern to us, as such abstractions occupy no space to begin with. We are passing effortlessly from this bodily life to the spiritual existence of the world to come. More about this later. Space-time figuratively kneels before the presence of the inviolable velocity of light in a vacuum, and this sums up Einstein’s special theory. He characterized our world as “strange,” and it is indeed strange to me that its framework is subservient to what seems like a “second- or third-tier” phenomenon of our universe; I would think it quite remarkable if our world were limited by light, but it is bordered by light’s velocity. Strange indeed. Nothing exists for us until we view it, at which time the potential actualizes. As Rob Bell said in a Nooma video, “Everything is spiritual.” Matter is all in our minds. Everything, including our own brains and the rest of our bodies, is abstract, not only thought of God but thought of ourselves as well; we are, in a large sense, as spiritual as we will ever be. Our minds are not bound by time; they exist in timelessness already. (This is no more fantastic than the idea that we have doppelgangers, duplications of ourselves, existing in alternate universes.) We do not go anywhere when we die. If we have accepted The Truth, which is the Christ, we are in heaven already. If we have not done so, we are in hell already, which we may define as the absence of God.

Notes

1. In 1905, Einstein was a young man who had studied physics but had been unable to get a job in academia. While working in a Swiss patent office, in 1905, he published his special theory of Relativity in a German journal of physics edited by Max Planck. Merely by thinking and utilizing his mind’s eye, without observation or experimentation, this genius posed the question as to how the principle of Relativity and the imperative constancy of the velocity of light and all other electromagnetic waves in a vacuum could both be true. 2. The equations that characterize Relativity are not original with Einstein. (I am not referring to e = mc2.) They were derived by Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate Professor Hendrik Lorentz of the University of Leiden, and are called the Lorentz transformation. 3. This is indeed an imaginary situation because we do not have a frame of reference that allows us to call any object in space “stationary.” The earth itself has at least four known movements: rotation; revolution around the sun; movement with the rest of the solar system around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way; and movement through space with our galaxy. The reality of the situation I am describing is movement of both ships relative to each other. However, for the purpose of simplicity, we will imagine one ship to b stationary and the other to be closing on it at a speed quite close to that of light. In the case of two ships moving toward one another, we would add their respective velocities in order to determine how soon they would meet. If we had two ships moving at angles to each other, we would have to determine the forward components (vectors) of the movement of each ship and use them in our calculations, as opposed to the actual direction and velocity of each in whatever direction each is actually going. 4. The waves of electromagnetic force occur in a spectrum of wavelengths, and the visual spectrum with its colors is just a small part of the total spectrum, which ranges from gamma rays, which are ultrashort, to radio waves that are tremendously long. The term, “light,” in our present usage, is a convenient way of referring to the entire spectrum, one that allows us to avoid more complicated language. 5. It is superior to those who find The Truth in this world and cling to it.

6. String theory probably represents the best hope that physicists currently have of being able to solve the dilemma of the divergent nature of quantum physics vs. the theories of Relativity and their implications. As I believe it is good theory, I may therefore speak of it as though it is as established as Relativity or some of the aspects of quantum mechanics. It remains, however, only one of various possibilities. In conventional particle theory, one characterizes elemental particle of matter and force as points, objects having no dimensions. In string theory, these fundamental particles all have a single dimension, which we call length, though they have no width or thickness. Their length is believed to be something like Planck-length; thus, they are similar in appearance to strings. (In a more advanced version of string theory, we find structures with an additional dimension, “branes,” short for “membranes,” because they are conceived as membrane-like, with length and width, but no thickness. Henceforth, for simplicity’s sake, I will ignore branes.) The beauty of string theory is that its structures, “strings,” having length, can shorten from the perspective of an observer when they travel lengthwise at high speed, which means they can participate in relativistic phenomena, such that, instantly, the dilemma of the incompatibility of quantum physics with the special and general theories of Relativity evaporates. Strings vary in appearance; some are loops, and others are short and stubby, but these and other details of string theory have no bearing on our present discussion. String theory also supplies us with a handy and clever method for the identification of the various elemental particles of force and matter (e.g., photons, electrons, and quarks). If you are familiar with the vibration of the strings of various musical instruments (e.g., pianos) you know that each of them vibrates simultaneously in an infinite number of ways. In other words, they have tones and overtones that are mathematically determined. Let us take a string tuned to middle C as an example. The

entire string vibrates in a mode of 256 cycles per second, but it also, by virtue of a “nodal point”—relatively stationary point—at its middle, vibrates as two strings, each of which moves at 512 excursions per second. Moreover, it additionally vibrates as four strings with three nodal points, each vibrating at 1,024 cycles per second, etc., etc., to infinity. Strings are usually indistinguishable from each other except for the way in which they vibrate. Analogous with piano strings, one variety of quantum string may vibrate as a single entity, while another may have one or more, as it were, nodal points. In this way, photons are distinguished from electrons, which are distinguished from quarks, etc., etc., until the entire spectrum of elemental particles is accommodated. One notes here that there is no more difference between a force string and a matter string than there is between two matter strings or two force strings. The concept of “superstrings” is that each matter string has a force string associated with it, and vice versa; the practical significance of this I do not know. Most of what I know about strings comes from Brian Green’s awardwinning book The Elegant Universe (United States of America: Vintage Books, 2003). 7. I must also leave out the term “dark energy” for the same reason. 8. Time dilatation and space contraction are the terms that Relativity physicists use to denote warping of time and space, respectively, in order not to violate the constancy of the velocity of light in a vacuum. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. 9. Mass is not so much a measure of weight as it is of composition. It amounts to the quantity of material in a given body, related to and defined by inertial considerations and depending only upon the number of protons and neutrons in the atoms of its composition, since electrons are of almost negligible mass. Weight is the amount of gravitational force exerted upon a material object when it is involved with another body of some particular mass.

In the case of weight, the actual situation is that two objects are attracted to each other by way of gravity, no matter what the relative size of each is, such that, if you jump up into the air and come back to earth, you and the earth have actually moved toward one another, though the earth’s movement is probably not measurable. Nevertheless, it has a certain weight relative to the gravity that you impart, just as you have a certain weight that is relative to the gravity that it imparts. Newton found that the force exerted in the case of two collections of material depends upon the sum of their masses divided by the distance between them squared. In any case, mass has nothing to do with gravity, and weight has everything to do with it; one cannot sensibly talk about weight at all without involving gravity. Weight pertains to the mass of an object and the strength of the gravitational field it is in. On the moon, one weighs one- sixth as much as he does on earth, but his mass is the same regardless of the gravitational pull of the body he happens to be on. The metric system, with its grams, milligrams, kilograms, etc., uses the same units for mass as it does for weight, whereas the unit pound is not an increment of mass, but strictly a unit of weight. A body’s mass increases with its increasing velocity because speed imparts energy and energy essentially equals mass. Einstein’s theories of Relativity have tied together in spectacular fashion various qualities of our world that previously were not seen as so tidily interrelated! 10. Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy. 11. We may not have to invariably think of photons as consisting of 99+ percent space, because, though quarks in the packet phase may be Planck-size, they may be any size when they are waves. Can we then say that quarks might at times, or in some sense, take up all the space in the protons they form? I very definitely do not know; actually, I do not think so because I have only said that size is irrelevant in the case of waves, not that waves can be any size. Or is there a difference? Perhaps atoms can also be more solid than we previously thought because electrons can sometimes fill up all the space among all the electron

shells. After all, electrons do not have specific locations— they only have likelihoods of being in a particular place at a particular time. Not only all of this, but nuclear physicists have found that, if one splits a photon, the two halves are able to have some kind of bizarre communication with each other. (Dr. Davies calls these “psychic photons” in About Time.) The questions we can ask here seem endless, and they serve to vividly illustrate the fact that what we know or think we know consists merely of scratching the surface of all that there is to know, which is what God knows. Our experience in this instance helps us to understand Augustine’s statement that, having seen the Lord, all of his writing—many volumes—were straw. 12. The greatest problem that theoretical physicists have is that, though both Relativity and quantum physics appear to be highly valid, all the mathematics anyone can muster suggests that they should not be able to coexist in the same universe, particularly since Einstein’s concept of gravity, which contains no gravitons, appears to be so excellent. The holy grail of physics is to determine how this can be. If we are ever able to figure out how to mathematically combine the four universal forces, we will probably discover at the same time how to combine under a single theory these two components of modern/theoretical physics. 13. Jeans was a physicist and mathematician who worked with astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered that our universe is expanding and who was honored several years ago in having a well-known space telescope named after him. Again, in string theory, they are Planck-size, and they are able to take both wave and particulate form. 14. At least one good article in existence summarizes this branch of theoretical physics and makes fascinating reading. Max Tegmark and John Archibald Wheeler, “One Hundred Years of Quantum Mysteries,” in the February, 2001, issue of Scientific American magazine. 15. You can plainly visualize this phenomenon if you take a large round balloon and put pieces of tape on it scattered all around. Then blow up the balloon further, and you will see that the pieces of tape move apart and that the pieces that are farthest from an area on your side of the

balloon move away faster from each other than do those near the piece of tape that is closest to you. 16. With the 3-sphere, we have the impossible but true showing up in spades in a theory of Relativity, and, as I have noted, we are used to such conundrums in quantum physics. I therefore ask again, “Why should one ever completely deny the existence of God when it is possible and when, in fact, most people consider it to be true?” 17. To be perfectly accurate, Einstein’s eureka moment was his realization that there is absolutely no difference between being in a gravitational field and standing on the floor of a box that is accelerating upward with its top leading. The equivalency of gravity and acceleration is the basis of the general theory of Relativity. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. 18. Of course, if space-time is illusory, how certainly can we speak of the location of anything in it? 19. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.

Chapter 5 Science Stymied by the Prime Mover Abstract: A Prime Mover is necessary for the existence of everything that is, and science cannot deal with such because it is imperatively tied to causation, while the Prime Mover must be causeless. Cosmologists have traced the history of the universe back mathematically to the first 10-43 second of its existence, but can go no further. Before that, there is nothing but mystery. This investigation is based on causation, but, amazingly, when the pure scientist arrives at the first 10-43, he deserts it. The combination of the big bang and inflation theory fits beautifully with the way in which one might see God as having created the world. He got it going, and He then molded it to fit His plan and concept of goodness. Mainly, he saw that matter was spread out to just the right degree—not too much and not too little—for the much later arising of life. Scientists judge the correctness of their theories largely by how elegant they are. Science is about how, and religion is about why. They are strictly about doxa, and doxa is strictly about how and does not reside outside of our world. When scientists try to say anything about the possibility of a world beyond, whether it be pro or con, they are no longer functioning as scientists. They can be highly important in leading philosophers and theologians in the right direction, toward ultimate truth, but they must pass the baton to them before they arrive at such depth in their research.

No Causation without a Prime Mover We now come to my second objection to the idea that pure science could possibly answer questions of an ultimate nature. These questions are not a part of science’s domain. According to Goldman, scientists since the

eighteenth century have well understood that they are to explain natural phenomena strictly in terms of causation and that they are not to range beyond the bounds of nature in doing so.1 If they try to understand anything that is not universal, they are no longer practicing science but metaphysics.2 Whereas philosophy and theology may or may not be tied to causation, the scientific method has this as its very basis. Therefore, science does not have the means to reach the Unmoved Mover because, by definition, it cannot desert cause and effect, and the Beginner, the Source, the Arche, cannot need a cause or to be created in order to exist. Einstein wrote, in Ideas and Opinions, that “The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.” The prime question science asks, and always should ask, pertains to the cause of phenomena and the natural reason for the existence of all entities, as best it can be found in nature. Science is not responsible for telling us about prenatural or supernatural matters (e.g., the origin of the universe), nor is it charged with matters of purpose (e.g., the reason for our existence). Additionally, issues of eternity (e.g., helping us to learn what might be the possibility of our living forever in a desirable state), are not part of its mission. Put most succinctly, science investigates God’s creation and nothing else. Nevertheless, the participation of scientists in the search for the Arche is by no means without precedent, particularly if one allows that Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were scientists as well as philosophers.3, 4 Aristotle called the first of these three “the founder” of what came to be to be known as natural philosophy, which is what science was called when it first split from philosophy long after their time. These prototypic philosophers pioneered their art in Greece, where they were known as “phusiologoi,” practitioners of “phusis,” which means “nature” and is the earliest form of “physics.” They primarily sought the Arche. They lived in Miletus, on the west coast of what is now Turkey, about a century before the time of Socrates. Thales believed the Arche to be water. His student, Anaximander, could see it only as an entity comprehensible by mind alone and not by the senses, something permanent and infinite. (Brilliant!) Anaximenes, student of Anaximander, believed it was air.

These three trailbreakers provide us with a sort of microcosm of how we can either confine ourselves to the limitations of our senses or take advantage of the ability of the minds with which we are endowed to range far and wide, utilizing the wonderful ability called imagination. The centrality of air and water with regard to life, together with their fluid nature, certainly make them look like substances that might be able to give rise to much, but Anaximander chose to look deep into himself for the Answer, and he came up with an idea that is more commensurate with modern thinking than are the opinions of Thales and Anaximenes. He dared to look beyond physics to philosophy for the Answer. Einstein, a bit later in history, also showed how such expansive thinking can bear much fruit.

Cosmological Considerations The search for an Arche virtually assumes that the universe had a beginning, and the great majority of cosmologists nowadays believe in the concept called the big bang, which indeed represents a Beginning. Of the ideas presented concerning beginning from the time of the pre-Socratic Grecian intellectuals to the present, only the steady state theory, the big bang, and the Hartle-Hawking theory offer us any science relating to the beginning of the universe that deserves our attention.5 (I will refer to the latter below as “H/H.”) The best-known recent advocate of steady state, which seems now to be almost completely out of favor, was the late Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer. Hoyle vigorously denied the occurrence of a big bang, though he, in derision of it, was, quite ironically, the originator of the term. Like Hawking’s and Hartle’s idea, steady state denies any beginning at all and states that the universe has always been. It also postulates that new matter is continually coming into being within the universe. The natural questions that arise here are, “If this is so, how and why does such material come about?” and “Where is it?” Hartle and Hawking proposed that, if we imagine ourselves going backward in time toward what we expect to be the beginning of the universe, we note, quite near what might have otherwise been the beginning, that time gives way to space, such that, in the first ten to the minus forty-third of a second

of the universe’s existence, there in fact was no time, only space.6 In that instance, there is no need to consider the start of the universe because the beginning of its existence could have preceded the existence of time! Thus, Hartle and Hawking proposed a universe with no beginning or end, which is nevertheless not steady state; it has no boundaries in time or space, but contains no continuous creation of matter.7 Their idea is very interesting and clever, but it does not explain how we got here, and it certainly does not present us with any evidence against the biblical account of creation. We need a first cause whether the universe is eternal or not and whether it is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded; the most strenuous mental striving (to eliminate God from all scenarios) cannot put that necessity aside. I do not know whether Hawking now actually believes (in the latter part of 2013) that his and Hartle’s theory represents the most likely mechanism of the universe’s beginning. I doubt it. It is not commensurate with a big bang kind of origin, and most physicists now believe in such, particularly as they have been spurred on by George Smoot’s giant step of confirmation of this concept, as described in his book of 1994, Wrinkles in Time. Hawking himself, years after his collaboration with Hartle, implied his acceptance of the big bang by describing Smoot’s work as “the scientific discovery of the century, if not of all time.”8 Hawking has also made some direct statements about his and Hartle’s proposal that tend to negate it: He has admitted that it does not really explain how anything can exist in the first place and does not clarify the “beginning vs. no beginning controversy.” He has also stated, “It cannot be deduced from any other principle. In real time, the universe has a beginning.”9 In addition, Hawking wrote to Fred Heeren that H/H did not by any means exclude God,10 and Paul Davies says H/H is pure speculation based on somewhat shaky foundations.11 The Hartle-Hawking model is rooted in imaginary time and consequently is so abstract that it is difficult to know how it could ever be utilized.

Paradoxically, however, I find H/H helpful to me in that it serves as a good example of a concept that ties theology, philosophy, and science/mathematics together in a very large way. Heeren writes that Hartle and Hawking chose the initial conditions and therefore the geometry of their Beginning, which is not a beginning, on the basis of mathematical elegance, and their gauging the correctness of their work according to this standard is something that physicists and mathematicians quite frequently do.12 We may logically proceed from there to claim that, since mathematics is not a matter of belief but of knowledge (as we will investigate further in the next chapter), its elegance cannot be relative, and this fits nicely with my feeling that all elegance has to be absolute because it is synonymous with beauty, and beauty is essentially synonymous with truth.13 Thus, H/H gauged the validity of their theory from its beginning on the basis of absolute beauty and therefore on a belief in absolute truth, whether they knew it or not. (I am not saying that they are or are not relativists.) And all of us humans must go beyond humanity for absolute truth because everything that we claim is true except for mathematics and various ethical precepts can only amount to opinion. H/H’s theory raised the question concerning the necessity of God’s existence and action, but ended up providing good evidence that we cannot do without Him, though Hawking seems to have more difficulty with the necessity of God than he has with God’s existing. Incidentally, the concept of absolute beauty connects with the concept of monotheism. If there were two or more omniscient and ultimately powerful gods, absolute beauty probably could not exist because each would have his own opinion re what is beautiful. As I have already noted, I believe that ultimate reality is based on unity, while we readily see that our time-bound world is pluralistic.

Good Fruit Born of the Objective Scientist The big bang certainly has the aura of unity, which is obvious in this quote by the late Robert Jastrow, a well-known astronomer and an agnostic, at least at the time he wrote what I am quoting below.14

Scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon that cannot be explained. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes that every event in the universe can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event. This faith (italics mine) is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. He reacts by ignoring the implications, or by trivializing and calling it the big bang, as if the universe were a firecracker. Consider the immensity of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing or was it gathered together out of preexisting materials? And science cannot answer these questions because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This development was unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But we scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning because we have had, until recently, such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. We have been able to connect the appearance of man on this planet to the crossing of the threshold of life, the manufacture of the ingredients of life within stars that have long since expired, the formation of those stars out of the primal mists, and the expansion and cooling of the parent cloud of gasses out of the cosmic fireball. Now we would like to pursue that inquiry further back in time, but the barrier seems insurmountable. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Where Else Science Belongs The concept of a big bang that was the Beginning leads us to thoughts of what might have happened after that, and cosmologists have indeed constructed, in a convincing and compelling manner, an account of the early universe, in telling us about the events and the sequence thereof which followed the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a ten millionth of a second of the universe’s existence.15 Amazingly, the part of its history they cannot fathom is crucial in spite of its astounding brevity (i.e., ten to the minus forty-third of a second.16 During that period of time, they find that the laws of physics were not in operation, such that there is no way of figuring out what was happening then. Also, trying to plumb the depths of the first ten to the 43rd power of a second of the universe’s history is like trying to dissect or analyze a quark. This length of time is probably basic, fundamental, such that there is nothing to cut it up into. This turns out to be important and pertinent to our discussion. The article “The Once and Future Universe,” by Rick Gore, David Jeffery, et al., which appeared in the June 1983 issue of National Geographic, gives us a rundown on the first millionth of a second of the universe’s existence.17 A partial accounting of it goes as follows, with my own comments in parentheses: In the beginning, there was an unimaginatively tiny and dense point located nowhere (To say everywhere might make just as much sense, but would it then be a point? Good question.), which contained all the potential space, time, matter, and force of the universe to come and which abruptly began to expand.18 (Immediately we perceive something here that sounds a lot like it could represent supernatural creation. Where did the point come from and could it have begun to expand for no reason?) The following events then occurred before a millionth of a second had gone by since the big bang Beginning: The universe grew to about the size of our solar system; protons formed from previously formed quarks; much antimatter came into being and destroyed a large portion of the matter; the universe cooled to a temperature much greater than a billion degrees; and an “inflationary epoch” occurred that lasted about a trillionth

of a trillionth of a hundred thousandth of a second, wherein a condition like negative gravity developed (repulsion as opposed to attraction), which resulted in an extra, homogenizing burst of expansion, which smoothed out the matter in the young universe to just the right density so that it did not either collapse back on itself or spread out too diffusely to later clump into stars and galaxies.19 Though the inflationary epoch did not even finish out the first millionth of a second from the Beginning, it appears to be that which determined what the basic form the universe would have from then on. The rest of its development was essentially a matter of expansion as opposed to any kind of further molding. Dr. Timothy Johnson, medical consultant for the American Broadcasting Company, has written astutely about the sequence of events that Gore describes here, in presenting his philosophical opinion on it, which includes thoughts (e.g., the following): “If this specific scenario had been proposed in any of the world’s holy books, it would probably have been dismissed as fanciful myth.”20 These postbangian events sound a lot less fantastic than the proposals by Krauss and Veneziano regarding initiation of the big bang that I have noted above. Now, let us run through the first (approximate) millionth of a second again in an attempt to clarify as much as possible. The universe began at a point, the location of which we cannot talk about because all locations, all places, that we know about are in the universe that was obviously nonexistent prior to its beginning. It initially appeared in and out of nowhere and simply expanded, but, before the first millionth of a second of that enlarging was over with, it was molded into the overall general form it would have from then on. (The militant scientist, I suppose, would say something like, “It molded itself,” but I do not think we know of any inanimate entity that does anything to itself.) Thus, during the inflationary epoch, it became homogenized to a degree, but only to the degree that it would still be lumpy enough to form the kind of mixture of space and heavenly bodies that we now observe. If it had completely homogenized, all matter would have evenly spread out, and there would be no heavenly bodies at all. If it had not homogenized at all, the matter in the universe would be spread out in huge globs much farther

apart and much larger than those collections of matter that astronomers now study, with virtually nothing in between. It is doubtful that, in either of these two extreme cases, life could have arisen. The first millionth of a second of the universe’s existence looks like someone’s taking a hunk of wet clay and working it on a potter’s wheel.

A Procession of Great Ideas from Science George Smoot and his associates were able, by some very imaginative and ingenious research, to get a kind of look at the form, the pattern, that resulted from the inflationary phase of the history of our world as it looked after its first three hundred thousand years of existence had passed.21 By finding and demonstrating the degree of irregularity in the fabric of spacetime that resulted from the inflationary epoch’s arrangement of matter, Dr. Smoot and his colleagues seem to have shown that the big bang and the inflationary epoch—subsequent accelerated expansion phase—indeed occurred. It thus certainly looks as though there were two events at/near the Beginning that were very purposeful and which, therefore, vouch for the existence of a Supreme Intelligence as the Beginner, the Creator. The occurrence of the big bang itself constitutes quite impressive evidence in this respect, but when we add the inflationary epoch to it, the evidence that a Mind caused the Beginning and then purposefully molded the universe is, so far as I am concerned, overwhelming in its magnitude and legitimacy. And not only do we have inflation as well as the big bang itself, we have inflation’s occurring exactly at the right moment and injecting, with great precision, the right amount of perturbation into the process.22 The big bang and the inflationary epoch are two of the most important ways in which the universe has been fine-tuned, with regard to the microcosmos as well as the macrocosmos. Dr. Hugh Ross has compiled and described more than a hundred more of these. Individually, they essentially rule out the possibility of chance occurrence in the beginning and maintenance of our world; together, they provide evidence of design that is so great as to be beyond the imagination.23 Smoot himself said about his discovery, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God.”

God thus exerted and confirmed His control over the universe at the time of inflation, setting its course at the earliest imaginable moment, if not before, to facilitate its (and, later, our) development in the way He planned. Gerald Schroeder, who emigrated to Israel in 1971 to do research in physics, in The Science of God, says that the only conceivable explanation for life must involve the laws of nature plus catalysts in just the right places at just the right times, and Patrick Glynn, a Mensa member and once an atheist, states in God: The Evidence, “In order to get life to appear in the universe billions of years after the universe began, you had to start planning very early, from the first nanosecond.” Can we imagine anything more sudden, dramatic, or sweeping than the change in the developing universe that inflation caused? The universe is proceeding toward chaos and lifelessness, minding its own business, when ZAP!, it is impregnated, loaded, crammed, satiated with such an unimaginably abrupt, powerful, and comprehensive injection of order and direction that its developmental characteristics are set for the next three hundred thousand years and for billions of years beyond that. (It makes sense to me that the potential for life was injected at this time, but this is, of course, pure speculation.) In terms of sheer chance, such an event is essentially impossible, and I contend that it is probably the most purposeful event in the history of all existence. Certainly its occurrence begs the question as to why. Combined with the moment of creation, the big bang, the inflationary epoch proves beyond reasonable doubt the occurrence of planning and most vigorous action that emanated from a Mind that is so rational that we can only gaze in wonder at His work.

More on the “Job Description” of Science Another aspect of causation in science relates to distinguishing how questions from why questions. Militant scientists and other atheists cannot think of why as relevant because, if they did so, they would have to admit purpose into their schemes of ultimate issues, and they must be and remain chancists in order to do without God. (Defending one’s atheism is as difficult as trying to live down a lie.) Perhaps they might say that why could

be a factor in the mix but that there is no possible way we shall ever be able to find such answers or that there is no need for us to even try to grasp them. In any case, they walk on thin ice; science is not about why anyway. Therefore, the Answer will not be found within its confines, which are bounded by the borders of doxa, within which why does not reside. Nevertheless, scientists have always seen purpose right before their eyes in their discoveries. This is particularly because they do not invent, and they do not promulgate; they discover, and they find. Equations, theorems, and natural laws can be likened to cameras, golf balls, and DNA in that, if one finds any of these or anything else with significant structure or organization lying around, it makes sense to assume that it fundamentally emanates from mind and was made for some reason. There is no getting away from it. This is all the more true in the case of things of such magnitude as the universe and of such importance as life, especially that which entails the ability to think.

Conclusion The greatest event that we know of which has ever taken place, except for the resurrection of Jesus, is the beginning of our universe. Therefore, if there is any event that needs to entail causation, at least where science is concerned, it is this event. Yet, it is most exclusively here that some if not many scientists are willing to consider desertion of the cornerstone of their discipline. The only reason to forsake the need for a cause in this instance— and it is of course the poorest of reasons—is that no scientific cause can be found. On the other hand, science can perform great service for the philosopher, the theologian, and for all of us by taking a great part in leading us in proper direction toward ultimate truth, so long as science turns the baton over to theology and philosophy before we actually get to such depth in our research.

Notes 1. Arche is an ancient Greek word that means ruling principle; it was used by seekers of truth more than two thousand years ago to designate the ultimate entity that gave rise to everything else that exists in our world,

the first cause. With regard to Anaximander, hear his words: permanent, infinite, understandable by mind but not by the senses. I shall respond with a few more of my own: This man was insightful, far-seeing, prophetic, and large-minded. 2. David Roochnik, of Boston University, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy, a university level course produced by the Teaching Company of Chantilly, Virginia. 3. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. 4. Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy. 5. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University is probably the most prominent physicist in the world today. James Burkett Hartle is a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley. 6. Such a situation is so strange that it is difficult to describe in words. Imagine the universe’s beginning depicted in graphic form with space (size) on the abscissa and time on the ordinate. Initially, starting from zero, there is an increase in the magnitude of space alone, such that the figure drawn to represent the growing magnitude of space- time from its beginning looks (with the arrow of time now pointing forward in the conventional direction) like a U instead of a V, as it has no beginning in time—only in space. Davies, Paul. The Mind of God (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993). 7. Davies, About Time. 8. George Smoot, Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time (New York: Avon Books, 1994). 9. Davies, About Time. 10. Fred Heeren, Show Me God (Wheeling, IL: Searchlight Publications, 1995). 11. Davies, About Time. 12. Heeren, Show Me God. 13. I will henceforth capitalize Beauty when I am speaking of it as the ultimate standard of elegance, as Plato capitalized the Good, his

template of all goodness. 14. Jastrow, a self-proclaimed agnostic, was an American astronomer, physicist, cosmologist, futurist, and founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 15.

Ten to the minus 43rd second is a fraction written, 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000. This fraction of a second is called Planck-time, and is probably the shortest period of time that can exist. Like Planck-size, this quantity was named after Max Planck.

16. Also amazingly, we are not talking here about some kind of careless speculation on the part of physicists; we are talking about mathematical investigation. Somehow, theoretical physicists can almost peer into the universe’s beginning by means of very advanced math. I do not have enough math myself to explain this any further. 17. Rick Gore, “The Once and Future Universe,” National Geographic (June 1983), 704–49. 18. The rate of expansion during inflation seems to have been far greater than the speed of light, but that is all right because it did not take place in space-time. It took place— at least theoretically—in nothing and into nothing, into a “void.” In that case, however, can we even assign a rate of speed to it? I do not think so. Gore, Ibid. 19. It has been theorized that the universe could have come into existence from nothing by way of nothing’s splitting into opposites. Such an idea is at least very interesting. It could go like this: Any positive number added to its negative counterpart equals zero; at least mathematically, any equation can be reversed, such that zero equals any number added to its negative counterpart. Hence the mathematical possibility of the world’s coming from nothing. Then, if the negative counterpart could somehow be gotten rid of, we would be left with the positive number, such that zero would have given rise to something. This is, of course, abstract and incredibly speculative, and actualization does not seem likely. Nevertheless, though it sounds like nonsense, it is at least comparable to the situation of modern physicists having found that energy can yield matter plus antimatter, the reversal of the process

wherein an encounter of matter with its equivalent in antimatter results in annihilation of both to yield energy. It was this discovery that led to the idea that such a process might have kick-started the universe. Again, the antimatter, in this scenario, would then be shoved off into a faraway corner of the universe so that structures consisting of matter could form without danger of obliteration. Energy is admittedly not nothing, but we cannot fully grasp what it is. I do not think it is the Arche, but it probably should be included in any discussion of same. On the other hand, it does act somewhat like God; perhaps in some sense it 20. Some concern has been raised with regard to the velocity of expansion during the inflationary period as greater than the speed of life. This is no problem. Expansion is not into space-time; it is into a void, into nothingness “where” there is no space-time and where, therefore, no limits can be set, whereas light-speed takes place in space-time where it is possible to set limits. 21. Timothy Johnson, MD, Finding God in the Questions (United States of America: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 30–31. 22. It is believed that the inflationary epoch involved such a huge rate of expansion that the universe at the end of it was so large that one might think of its having expanded at a rate faster than the speed of light. However, as it was not expanding into space but into nothing, Relativity would not apply, such that Einstein’s axiom that pertains to the travel of an entity in space-time would not have been violated. If something is expanding into space, one can measure its progress in terms of miles per hour, etc., but, if it is expanding into a void—nothingness—there is no space or time and therefore there are no units of measurement that pertain. 23. Hugh Ross, PhD, The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1993).

Chapter 6 Knowledge and Belief Abstract: Science is no more about certainty and fact than is theology, and science is just as much about faith as is theology. The suspected as opposed to the proven is in fact enormously important in all fields of human endeavor. The best evidence is that which we find in more than one discipline on a single issue. The more paths there are to a given conclusion, the more likely is that conclusion to be true. God is of such magnitude that He cannot be contained in human minds. That is why we cannot access him fully and directly in this life and why most of us have doubts about his existence. In the case of scientists, however, it is those whose work takes them most deeply into the wonders of our world who are most likely to be believers, and, among all individuals since Christianity conquered Rome, most have been Christian (though many have been Jews). Perspective and imagination may be the two most important qualities a person must have in order to investigate our world most thoroughly. Faith, however, may be more powerful yet. This valid, powerful, and multifaceted mind-set is in no way blind. It is a sense, it is remembrance of one’s first love—why one first believed in his chosen faith, and it is remembrance of one’s ultimate origin, subconscious in most or all people except for Jesus. Faith can be learned—cultivated and honed— beginning with commitment followed by study.

Science as Beliefs about Nature

The third reason that it is not the job of science to answer questions about ultimate matters concerns its inability to produce facts; there is little or no scientific knowledge, and scientific endeavor and discovery involve belief and faith much like Christianity does. Requiring knowledge here as opposed to belief in order to put our scientific findings into action would render us highly impotent compared to what we are currently able to do with a method of thinking and learning that has revolutionized human abilities. Each of us has his place in the order of things, and we do best when we figure out what it is and try to excel in it. The same would appear to be the case with regard to various scholarly disciplines. We had best not try to get a crew to the moon and back by harnessing the beauty of the writing of Shakespeare or applying Adam Smith’s seminal work on economics, though the former may help us to see how such an accomplishment fits into the state of being human and the latter could ultimately help us in some way to obtain the money to pay for such an adventure. Thus does science likewise need to step aside at the point where it is doing nothing but getting in the way, even though it contributes mightily, across the board, to human progress. I think most scientists, particularly those whose studies pierce deeply toward ultimate realities that we cannot fully grasp, accept this concept and that of fitting the task to the method. Objectivity is certainly a central pillar of all good science, especially when that science is applied, as in the practice of medicine, and objectivity begins with being honest with oneself. Such honesty in turn begins with recognizing the limitations of one’s mind and the contents thereof— the quantity and quality of its content and its ability to manipulate information vs. its lack of wisdom and/or technical skill. The bottom line here so far as the scientist is concerned is the realization that there is no scientific knowledge any more than there is philosophical or theological knowledge; there is in fact more likelihood of finding axioms in the latter two disciplines, since ethical axioms can best be categorized there, and mathematics is not part of science. We have explored the error of leaving theology out of one’s thinking a priori, and we can and should make a similar plea with regard to

philosophy. Having thus accepted all three paths to enlightenment as legitimate, we are then well advised to look for connections among them, for it is in these crossovers that we are often able to confirm, to the extent that they can be confirmed, the greatest truths and the most truth. In other words, when we are led to the same conclusion whether we begin with science, with philosophy, or with theology, we find ourselves in possession of the most powerful kind of evidence that a given conclusion is correct. We have already encountered some of these truths, and we shall find many more. Such correlations are often found on such a simple level that they are not immediately recognized as being particularly profound, but they are all dependable and exciting indicators of discovery, markers that are similar to beauty and simplicity in their validity as such. A great vein of logic runs though the confluence of science, philosophy, and the theology of the true God, and it is here that other disciplines as well dovetail to our advantage. The more paths there are to a given conclusion, the more likely is that conclusion to be true, and there may be multiple paths within a single discipline. As all roads led to Rome mainly because it was Rome that had built those roads, it is my contention that all thoughtful deliberation and intellectual discovery leads to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is vital that we be objective enough to proceed without prejudice, to utilize all the varieties of human endeavor without allowing preconceived and subjective ideas to creep into our thinking. Obviously we must come to believe what is actually true rather than simply that which we would like to be true if we are to achieve the goal of all philosophy. Probably scientists have the greatest difficulty self-enforcing this principle. As we have previously noted, science has come to be looked upon as a great, perhaps even exclusive, source of certainty, and it is no such thing. It includes faith and belief aplenty, as I have already claimed in so many words.

Usefulness of the Nonproven Physicians have been increasingly careful in recent years to be sure that our conclusions concerning diagnoses and our recommended therapies are supported by solid evidence, but that does not mean that we always do our

job on the basis of ironclad proofs. We often treat on the basis of judgments and probabilities. These are composed of factors such as how sure we are that the findings of this or that research are truly valid and of the degree to which we are certain of diagnoses. If, in order to act, we required the kind of certainty that is called for in court in order to convict someone of murder, it would render us much less capable than we are. As humans can be certain only of math and various ethical axioms, we must otherwise operate on belief. Faith is, therefore, an everyday thing, not something practiced only by the pious. If we consider the magnitude of a God who has the capability to do all we have thus far indicated that He would have to do in order to warrant His title, we can readily see, I believe, that it would be improbable that He, the Lord of the universe and beyond, the Potentate of time, and the Origin of Being, could be confined in/by minds as limited as ours, and such confinement would be the case if we knew of His existence as opposed to believing in it. It is furthermore quite incongruent for the pure scientist to demand something close to absolute proof from the theist that his claims are true and at the same time promote Beginning scenarios that are fantastic beyond adjectives. I am not saying that such schemes are necessarily wrong —some may be right or partially so; what I am saying is that none of them represent the answer, the ultimate explanation, mostly because none of them involve a Prime Mover. Also, it is incongruent to expect such proof from Christians concerning our faith while approving of the practical uses of science that are based on tentative evidence, which I have exemplified. There is as much faith and belief in science as there is in religion and probably more. The scientists who best understand what I am saying here are those whose work takes them to the limits, or at least to what may seem to be the limits, of what the human mind is able to assimilate; these are probably the ones who best realize that all we know of what there is to be known is comparable to scratching the surface of a sphere the size of the universe. Theoretical physicists probably comprise the best example of such researchers, and scientists of this ilk talk about God considerably more than do those whose investigations are less sublime and more directly utilitarian. It is, therefore, not surprising that we find a man such as Dr. Francis

Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, writing a book about his belief in Jesus. He calls his book The Language of God. This is certainly apt; his group has thoroughly analyzed DNA, and reading the awesome double helix is like plumbing the depths of God’s recipe book with regard to all of life that we know about. The faith of Christians is no more blind than that of pure scientists, and both are based on rationality. That the information provided, admonitions delivered and recommendations given to us by way of the Gospel are highly and entirely reasonable is the reason that I am a believer, and I cannot square the doctrine of any other religion with anything approaching the degree of rationality with which the faith of the Christ exudes. Absolute certainty is as best elusive in our world, but one can believe that certainty exists. Christianity works. It fills the bill. It responds positively and emphatically when we seek answers in its Scripture. It provides us with description of behavior that, were it put into action by all, would result in a world that the most blatant idealist has never been able to imagine, and it gives us answers to all the questions that are of the most vital importance to us. Some Christians say that they are sure of their faith, that they have no doubt that Jesus was who He said He was. Who can say that they are not? Who can effectively state that God has not inspired them or that He has not spoken to them in a way wherein they indeed know and do not just believe? I have seen such claims in action, and the resulting lives have been truly amazing to behold. These individuals often become sages, revered by Christian and non-Christian alike, and people often want to sit with and learn from them after initially hearing no more than a couple of sentences rife with wisdom and teeming with obvious and sincere caring. Certainly some of these grand people are scientists, and one of them was my wife. (Please do not think I am running down scientists; I am one myself and proud of it!) They realize that our finest science has a foundation that consists of theories in which we have faith. We believe theories mostly because of their dependability in enabling us to predict what is going to happen as a result of the existence of a given set of circumstances that we may or may not have

created ourselves.1 In a word, our science is very empirical, and I certainly submit with, in fact, great enthusiasm, the Christian faith for scrutiny with regard to what happens when one adheres to it (i.e., to empirical consideration).2 Objectivity is a central quality of all the truly intellectual, such that it is certainly incongruent that so many who claim to be scholars are so closeminded that they reject a priori any concept as sheer fantasy that cannot be tested by resorting to our physical senses. The scientists among them are those who ridicule any thought of the validity of the supernatural without giving any real thought to this issue at all. This kind of thinking is anything but expansive. These individuals tend to speak assuredly of scientific “knowledge” and religious “belief,” without stopping to think about some things that they very well know but do not keep in the forefront of consciousness. For example, Newton’s theory of gravity was well accepted as fact until Einstein corrected him, and Newton got us to the moon with his discoveries, though they were incomplete and not entirely correct. They represented belief, not fact. We know very little, but we believe much, and our belief, synonymous with or highly comparable to faith, empowers us beyond belief.

The Credibility of Theology as a Source of Information In no way does one sacrifice intellect in order to be a theist or a Christian, and history has shown that the opposite case is in fact true. Prior to the eighteenth century, at least in the Western world, people thought about the possibility of God being a mere myth, and of course, in Europe and the Americas, Christianity was by far the most popular way of thinking about Him. Countless fine minds in the mainstream of human thought, of scientific bent or otherwise, have had no problem reconciling rationality with belief in deity, as one can easily see by examining the course of human history over the past two thousand years. Francis Bacon, who, around the turn of the sixteenth century, thought large enough to question some of Aristotle’s schemes with a great degree of success, said: “A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy

bringeth men’s minds to religion”3 (italics mine). (Maybe this is the reason Alexander Pope said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (italics mine). Socrates, a man so astute, a person so advanced in examining his own personality and motives that he seems superhuman across the twenty-four centuries that separate him from us (I find myself wanting to capitalize his name), concludes his immaculate discourse with Phaedrus (according to Plato) by suggesting and engaging in prayer; for this greatest of philosophers, piety capped off all thought.4,5 Even Voltaire, perhaps the heart of the Enlightenment, and a man who had not the slightest worry about what anybody thought of him, said that with religion there are difficulties, but with atheism there are absurdities.6 That wise and versatile statesman, publisher, and scientist, Benjamin Franklin, wrote the following to the president of Yale University shortly before his death: “You desire to know something of my religion. … Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.”7 Franklin may have been a deist, but the step between belief in ethical monotheism and Christianity is a short one indeed, as Lewis found.8 Virtually all of the founders of our country, the first and greatest example of thorough personal freedom the world has ever seen, believed that God provided paradise for those who in this world take the right path, even though they lived during a time particularly characterized by intellectuals who questioned the authority and necessity of God. Unfortunately, it has often been difficult for persons of theistic ilk to insert their theological opinions into intellectual discussions because the assumption of the other participants has tended to be that they are trying to evangelize. Nowadays, such mind-sets should not be prevalent because, more and more, modern thinking is diversified, containing philosophical and theological thought that is as respected as is scientific information and

speculation. Discourse is freer and more inclusive and expansive than it has been since Plato mentored in his academy and Aristotle taught in his lyceum. Those of us who are believers should take advantage of the tone of today and be quick and uninhibited in taking scholarly discussions to the new heights we shall engender with the interjection of objective and evidencebased theology into our discourse with others. Swimmers who restrict the use of their arms because they are longer than those of their opponents will not win any races. Similarly, believers who leave ideas and opinions that are beyond doxa out of discussions for the purpose of avoiding ridicule would seem to be intellectually dishonest, possibly cowardly, and out of sync with most of the great thinkers of human history. Many people are disturbed by the idea of believing in any deity because they like to be in control, and they do not want to be told what to do. But disbelief does not change the fact that we are not in control, whether we like it or not. Your or my brain may be squashed on the interstate tomorrow, or one of us may begin the morning with a seizure, indicating the presence of an incurable brain tumor, to cite two small examples of the human condition that are obvious but seldom considered on the conscious level. Independence is similarly illusory; we are thoroughly dependent, either upon chance or upon a higher power, according to our viewpoint in this respect. We are also dependent upon each other; the great majority of those who decide to be entirely self-sufficient give up that idea when they begin to be deprived of grocery stores, electricity, water, and even car dealers.

Perspective Perspective, perspective—always think perspective. Perspective is not quite everything, but it is a lot of what ultimate reality is all about insofar as we are concerned. I have written of the importance of perspective in our examples of the workings of special Relativity, and I have described it briefly with regard to God’s point of view vs. ours. We can gain perspective on a forest fire by going up in an airplane, and we can gain perspective in philosophy by continually thinking big and including imagination and timeless thinking in our repertoire of thought. If we include faith in the true

God as well, I say that we will be able to deal with much more than at first seems possible and will gain understanding and wisdom with maximum dispatch.

Faith: Valid, Powerful, and Multifaceted “By grace are ye saved through faith.” So wrote Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (2:8). Through faith we can have the best chance of avoiding the elusive entities and even outright barriers that seem so often to come to the fore just when we think we are about to truly understand basic workings of the universe or get a real glimpse into the realm beyond. The path of logos carries us far in such seeking, but, in order to go as far as is possible for us time-dwellers, we must have faith.

Faith as a Sense Faith is the sense that enables us to surmount time and space, and we may think of the border, so to speak, between our earthly lives and the Kingdom of God as a veil analogous to the one in the temple in Jerusalem that tore when Jesus was killed (Matthew 27:50–51). It is the only sense that penetrates the veil and allows us to see into the sphere of ultimate reality that is the Kingdom. This figurative rent in the boundary has forever after given us direct access to the Father through the Son, but a large degree of division between the two realms remains, such that the analogous veil, though torn, is, in effect, still hanging.9 In other words, we certainly do not clearly see, hear, feel, smell, or taste “the other side,” but we can access it to a real and true degree by belief, which usually proceeds from commitment, which most commonly comes from learning about the Lord and almost always leads to such learning. In addition, the other augmenters of faith (e.g., reading Scripture, talking to fellow Christians, listening to a competent person expound on the Word, and especially praying constantly), sharpen this sense of faith, whereas our natural senses can be improved only in limited ways, most of them artificial (e.g., the acquisition of glasses or hearing aids). We can hone our faith, but we cannot improve our sense of touch.

Faith may be the only sense we have in heaven, which would seem to be a realm of pure mind, wherein images, sounds, feeling (both touch and emotion), smells, and even tastes are more intense than they are in our present lives. We will live there with new bodies that will be products of our own minds, and, as there will be only the present “there” and no past or future, life will be immeasurably rich. Our bodies in heaven will be superior to those we now possess, and I even expect they will have all the same functions that our time-bound bodies have.

Faith as Remembrance of One’s First Love Christian faith is not or should not be a matter of believing because of fear of damnation or because of having been raised a Christian. It often, probably most often, grows out of commitment; other than having been divinely inspired to do so, one may decide to commit to the Christ for many logical reasons engendered by learning, socialization, and other experiences. In this case, faith is a matter of one’s remembering why he first believed. It may also be a matter of intuition, which is subconscious memory in action. We remember our First Love, as Revelation puts it (2:1–5), in the face of the passage of time wherein we may forget why we first believed because of the cares of the world. Thus, the practicing Christian cultivates his faith, not because of stubborn and mindless determination to remain in the fold, but because the temptations of the world can divert one from choices made and decisions rendered in the lengthening past. In cases wherein people cannot remember when they did not believe, they can exercise their faith by taking care lest they forget the time(s) when they believed the strongest. Remembrance was the primary way in which C. S. Lewis thought of faith, and it is what Paul meant when he said to pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Similarly, Brother Lawrence counseled that one constantly practice the presence of the Lord.10 To some this is closed-mindedness, but it is rather learning how to prevent error from creeping into one’s thinking without his being aware of it.

Faith as Remembrance of One’s Origin

One also may develop faith in God as a result of his not feeling at home in his present life. Speaking from the time-bound perspective, we talk about going to heaven, but, if heaven is timeless, one wonders if it is possible to talk about having arrived there. In timelessness, there is not only no future —there is also no past. Therefore, anyone who is in heaven—provided it is timeless—has always been in heaven, and, if that is so, I suggest that we came from there, in a sort of embryonic form when we were first born on earth, in order to develop into distinct individuals, in order to develop identity.11 Consider how much more of a distinct personality you are compared to when you were a child; you have learned and done many things that have made you who you now are. Difficulties in life have endowed you with strength and wisdom. You have developed opinions and convictions. You have developed identity. Interestingly, it is kind of traditional to think of babies as something like “bundles of joy from heaven,” and birth has a miraculous aspect to it, but I am speculating that they may really come from the Kingdom of God as not entirely blank states, but with a divine foundation. I intuitively believe this because of individuals I know or have known who seem to have been born with great faith in God, and I believe such faith results from God’s foundation plus remembrance of heaven that is greater than that of most of us. I suspect that, except in the case of Jesus, this remembrance is at best vague and hardly ever, if ever, rises to the conscious level, but that, in some people, it is nevertheless quite powerful.

Ways to Faith Faith in God can develop, especially with regard to its beginning, in a variety of ways. Which of these paths a person follows is not very much under his control, and one may arrive at belief by way of more than a single route. As previously discussed, it can be a matter of intuition. I call this the “I know that I know that I know” way, after the way that my first wife described it. She had believed for as long as she could remember, with no concept of what it might mean to doubt. Her personality and witness, along with those of others I know and have known who believe and believed in

this manner, have led me to believe this is the best way. It is also the way that Jesus seems to have endorsed (John 20:29). I am sure it involves grace, the grace of God. I suspect it is a matter of inspiration/revelation, God’s favoring a person for reasons of His own. Perhaps it has to do with His foreknowledge of who is likely to please Him the most. Another way of coming to the true God is per the following discourse, which may be entered at any point of its circular form: Inspiration leads to a closer walk with Him, which leads to more inspiration, which leads to a closer walk yet, etc., or perhaps something good happens in a person’s life that seems to be divinely directed, and this results in a closer walk with Him, which results in a person’s having greater ability to sense God’s attempts to get in touch, which leads to inspiration or increased inspiration, etc., etc. This is a very good way to proceed for those who cannot do so by way of intuition. (Many would call it the way of the right brain.) A third way is that which I have long been in the habit of calling the Doubting Thomas way to faith, demonstrated in John 20:24–29. Thomas says he will not believe in Jesus’s resurrection unless he can see the nail wounds, put his finger in them, and put his hand into the wound in His side. Jesus allows this, but he essentially tells John that the way of faith is better. I have previously equated it with the apologetic path to the Word, but have recently realized that Thomas’s needing more evidence via the route of his physical senses is contrary to my belief that things are not as they seem. I indeed have needed evidence, but it has not been the evidence of doxa that I have required, but that of logos. Thus, the true Doubting Thomas approach amounts to requiring direct assurance of Jesus’s resurrection, as opposed to rational evidence of His validity. I infer from the way that Jesus responded to Thomas’s request that he see His wounds and put his hand in his side— verse 29—that He does not entirely disapprove of this approach, though He clearly prefers a different way, that of the apologetic.12 This is the way that I approach almost all issues of profound importance, possibly due to the influence of my father, who was very scientifically oriented. Ironically, however, my dad could have been an intuitive believer. Near the end of his life, when I spoke to him of my Christian belief, he simply said, “I believe it,” right afterward remarking to my mother, “I think

Jimmy was worried about me.” (Something similar happened with regard to my mother, I am glad to say.) Though I believe my way is inferior to the intuitive path, I believe it is satisfactory, so much so in fact that I am writing in support of it. If, however, you believe intuitively, read my works solely out of interest if at all, and do not let me get in your way. In any case, faith is a circular process, in that, the more we believe, the more obvious His existence becomes, and the more obvious His existence becomes, the more we want to learn of Him. The more we learn of Him, by way of the Bible, through discourse with other Christians, and in reading dependable Christian authors, the more we believe. And so it goes on and on. One can begin at any point on this circle, and, if one simply decides to thank, praise, and/or offer love to God, he will find himself in the circle. Think of a conversation you might have with God here. You say to God, “Show yourself.” Perhaps He then answers, “Believe in Me.” You reply, “Show yourself a little, and I will believe a little.” He might reply, “Believe a little, and I will show myself a little.” You (hopefully) reply, “Okay, I believe a little.” (Alternately, you might say, “I offer you a little commitment.”) Perhaps then God might show Himself a little, and you might—hopefully—recognize that He has done so. In that case, you might respond by believing more, and He might show Himself more yet. This process continues, and eventually you believe a lot; you have found strong faith. Another important conversation could go like this. “Lord, I have not been very religious, but my daughter is very ill, and I am seeing the error of my ways. I ask that You heal her. If you will do so, I will believe in You and serve you.” Reply: “If you ask a doctor to heal your daughter, what does that entail?” Having much insight, you answer, “I put trust in the doctor.” “And what is trust?” “Okay, I see—I have faith in him.” “Right,” replies God, “and I would like the same consideration.” Give-give: The superior way of dealing with people and the best way to work with God. It is closely related to win- win. I will do this for you; I hope you will do that for me. Nay, I believe; I have faith in you. Hence, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” This is the way that God operates. He has taken the initiative, in more ways, to keep us in His way, as close to

Him as possible. It therefore behooves us not to respond—“You have done this; therefore, I will do that”—but to give to Him with as little thought as possible about what you might get in return. A contract approach to relationships is not God’s way; it is a compromise, necessary because so often we have not the integrity to “do” give-give. Give-give is the best way in a marriage, and it is the best way to a good relationship with God. Again, “Lord, I will serve you unreservedly from now on, regardless, but would you please help me, not as a favor in return for my promise, but because I humbly ask.” If you want something from God, believe as much as you possibly can, and if you do not feel you are able to believe, then commit, unconditionally, as in a proper marriage.

Why God Emphasizes Faith It makes sense that the degree to which God reveals Himself to a given individual is directly proportional to the amount of faith possessed by that person, because, if He made Himself obvious to people not already dedicated to Him, they would tend to love Him because of what He could do for them, and He, like humans, desires to be loved because of who He is, as in the old song that goes, “I love you ’cause you’re you.” We see the danger of the development of an undesirable relationship in the situation wherein one nation is helping another, financially or otherwise. Unless the recipient country is devoted to the donor country, there is considerable tendency for the recipient to feel that, the more it gets, the more it should get. Not only can this lead to a vicious circle—or, better said, a downward spiral— wherein the recipient hates the donor more and more. This happens because: (1) the recipient feels inferior and therefore responds negatively, (2) the recipient develops a feeling of jealousy toward the donor, (3) the recipient develops a feeling of patronage on the part of the donor, and (4) the recipient comes to think of the donor as being so rich that its giving is nothing special. God can easily become the donor in the analogy, and, for His own sake, He does not want to be hated, but mostly, I suspect, He does not want any of us to hate Him because of what happens, by no act of His, to people who do that. To hate the Source of life and of everything else that we have is not

only asinine on the face of it—it may well cause us to end up with nothing at all, especially by losing a life in eternity that we really want. Yet, we see this happening around us all the time. Gee, if I only believed there was a 2 percent chance of the reality of the God of the Bible, I would be following Him.13 The consequences of our rebellion do not even require action by God in order to occur because of the profound truth of the adage, “Give him enough rope, and he’ll hang himself.” If we are not exceedingly careful with the nearly unimaginable gift of free will with which He has forever endowed us, we will treat it like a rope and kill ourselves with it. We look with wonder at athletes who throw away millions of dollars in order to augment their sex lives or who even kill someone, but take a person with free will and give him an amount of money he cannot even comprehend, and funny—not so funny—things may well happen. The same kind of things happen in the instance of one’s being given the world—this is exactly what God did for us—together with free will. This is the reason that it is not a good idea to shower our children with too much worldly pleasure. It is to our benefit and theirs to have things withheld. God and we are alike in this respect: We not only want everything that is good for us—we want everything that is fun. However, God is wise enough to restrain Himself, and we need to be too. In order to prevent ruination of the character, God must moderate His fatherly desires for us, and parents must do the same with regard to their children. This may be a reason why God may very well decline to reveal Himself without advance action on the part of His creature. It is like tough love. A parent who indiscriminately gives to a child may well see that child “go down the drain.”14

Knowledge vs. Belief To the pure scientist, roughly equivalent to the entirely worldly person, we have scientific knowledge and Christian belief. But I think that the truth of the matter is that we can only have something closer to scientific belief and Christian knowledge and that the Christian who hones his faith is better able to arrive at certainty than is the scientist with his methods, which I

have previously delineated. For belief can lead to know-how, we may inquire into science; if we seek understanding, certainty, or knowledge, I submit that going to the Gospel affords us a greater chance of success. Science is an outgrowth of doxa, and philosophy and theology are where we find the most logos. Knowledge is elusive on earth, but it is an everyday benefit in the Kingdom of God, where there are no maybes. Yes, mathematics is precise, but mathematics is an expression of God’s creative thought and is more supernatural than natural.

Notes 1. This method of testing could remind us of the principle practiced by the ancient Jews that the credibility of a prophet was measured by the extent to which what he predicted came to pass. 2. Let us please leave out of this process people who mark down a Christian denomination on forms and even go to church but do not know what Christianity is all about and are not committed to its Founder; these, sadly, are legion. 3. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926, revised edition, 1933). 4. Michael Sugrue, Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues, a university-level course produced by the Teaching Company. 5. One cannot call Plato the greatest of philosophers without paying Socrates the same compliment, and vice versa, because Socrates wrote nothing, and Plato put most of his philosophy in the mouth of Socrates. 6. Durant, The Story of Philosophy. 7. Quoted from The Physics of Immortality, by Frank J. Tipler, PhD (New York: Anchor Books, 1995). 8. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955). 9. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 2004).

10. This would mean that all of us were once in the flock of the Great Shepherd, but that some are lost because they deserted God and The Truth in the time-bound sphere, lured by the attractions thereof, which are illusory. Hence, we hear preachers talking about the lost, and we remember Jesus’s parable concerning the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). In addition to preprogramming obtained through preexistence in heaven, I also believe that God actively programs all of our brains before we are born here in time, as computer programmers put information into computers before we buy them. This is particularly true with regard to an absolute standard of ethics. In addition, God builds into all of our brains at least a tendency to want to seek The Truth, which is Him. Thus, people who have particularly strong faith may also possess such because God, for whatever reason, programmed them more extensively than He did others. (This is not unfair. God gives us our very lives; He can do what He wishes with our lives.) 11. Because the veil is torn and the Father is therefore accessible because of and only because of what Jesus did, it makes sense that we should utilize this access only through Him; thus, we Christians end our prayers with “in Jesus’s name” or something similar. 12. Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” 13. Unless I was convinced that something better was available—not a very likely thing. 14. Many more excellent analogies may be composed that compare God and humanity with parents and their children.

Chapter 7 More Lack of Basic Knowledge Abstract: We are in possession of no more fundamental understanding in science than we are in theology. Examples of this fact are given with regard to physics, chemistry, and biology.

No Fundamental Understanding through Science We now come to the fourth reason that science cannot explain everything. It is to some degree an elaboration on the third and concerns the profound incongruity between our capabilities and our understanding. During the entire history of humankind thus far, scientific investigators have given us no understanding at all of the bottom-line workings of things, and it seems that, if they were going to be able to do so, they would have done it by now. In terms of technology, synonymous with know- how, they have made such astounding things happen that one could rather easily assume that, if science cannot produce the answer to something, it cannot be produced, but its wonders come about, as we have noted, in spite of their producers not knowing how they caused them to occur. Scientists come up with physical formulae and produce awesome results from them, but, strangely, do not quite know what happens between the blueprints and the products. As I believe and certainly hope I have already made clear, I view our scientific disciplines with anything but disdain; the participants therein by and large deliver on what they claim they are able to do. Scientists do not claim omniscience, and being able to detect and utilize that which is not understood is rather amazing in itself. Galileo had no problem with leaving profundity to theology; he said that we should look to science to learn how the heavens go and to the Bible to learn how to go to heaven.

Modern scientists are more likely to believe in God than are today’s philosophers. There was once a college professor who was looking for an atheist to be part of a discussion he intended to lead concerning God and science. They could not find one in the science department; they had to go to the philosophers. Most all scientists know they have no answers to the why questions, and they tend to readily admit that even their explanations of how are not always complete. I do not believe there is any theoretical physicist who will not agree that, on the most fundamental level, though humans have learned to do amazing things, we do not understand the basics of how we do them. This is very strange, but it is true, and it is obvious to all who think most deeply, such as the Japanese philosopher Masanao Toda, who had this to say about Relativity and its equation connecting matter and energy: “No one, apparently, can claim to know what time is. Nevertheless, there is this brave breed of people called physicists, who used this elusive notion as one of the basic building blocks of their theory, and miraculously, the theory worked. When one of the leading figures of the clan, by the name of Albert Einstein, quietly mumbled his secret incantation, which sounded like ‘Combine time with space in such a way that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, then mass is equal to energy,’ lo and behold, atoms exploded ever so noisily.” E = mc2 consists partially of time because it contains velocity, which is defined by how far a body travels through space in a given period of time. The crux of what Toda is saying is that, beginning with this equation, which contains a factor we cannot begin to understand, we can end up with a mechanism that can blow up cities, run submarines under the sea without refueling for amazingly long periods of time, light up huge areas of land with exceeding efficiency, and on and on, in spite of the fact that our foundation for all this capability consists partially of an illusory entity that is inseparable from space, that quantum physicists believe comes in quanta, and which is no better understood than consciousness and life itself. Davies has written, in About Time, that time is a highly derivative concept of the higher intellect, which has nevertheless very mysteriously become a central conceptual pillar around which Galileo, Newton, and Einstein all

built scientific pictures of physical reality. Time looks as though it is all in our heads, and it apparently is. But, if it is virtually imaginary, how can it affect us so dramatically, or does it just seem to do that? How can it be so powerful when it is so nebulous? It is really strange: we do not know what time is all about, though we spend every minute of our lives in the closest of relationships with it. It is like air is to a bird and like water is to a fish. We are like tadpoles that do not understand the nature of water and will eventually leave it behind and get our oxygen and preserve our lives without living in it. We are so intimate with time that timelessness seems impossible to us. This is not surprising, since we have never experienced any situation that does not entail it. We are like computers that are programmed with time and space, but not with timelessness; it is no wonder that eternal life is inconceivable. (Yet, eternal unconsciousness is just as much so.) Someday we will live without time and think nothing of it. We place great faith in mysterious time as a constant and crucial parameter of our daily lives, and it delivers astonishing benefits not only in spite of its relativity and its subjectivity. As I have come to understand, I cannot say how fast time is going by for you, nor you for me, but consider this. A moose is old by the age of ten. Do we have here a pitiful animal that goes to all the trouble of attaining a weight of perhaps fifteen hundred pounds and growing seventy inches wide only to keel over dead at an age where human children are just beginning to really experience their world, or is there more to the story? Is the life of this animal really short? What really is a short period? I thought four years in college was practically forever; now that length of time goes by before I even realize it has. Does ten years seem short to a moose? Well, of course we do not know, and I doubt that the moose is bothered about the whole thing because it does not think. However, even if the moose could think, I do not think it would feel discriminated against. What about a variety of insect that lives only one day in its adult form? I leave consideration of all this to you, but I think time may be going by more slowly for the moose and for the day fly than it does for humans. Science not only leads us to thoughts of the reality of the supernatural by way of paths already pointed out: By its very existence as little more than

theory and technology, it strongly impels us toward belief in the existence of divinity. If science cannot give us understanding, and we desire to have it, we are obviously going to have to look elsewhere for it. The biblical God has, for many years, been derided as the god-of-the-gaps by nonbelievers who have claimed that believers account for His existence only by desperately plugging Him into gaps in scientific knowledge, which religious skeptics claim are constantly decreasing in magnitude and will eventually disappear as science progresses. When the gaps are gone, say they, the god will be gone, because there will no longer be any need for deity to compensate for our lack of understanding.

Fundamental Understanding through Faith However, those who claim thus often fail to take various aspects of the gaps into account. The gaps are fundamental, elusive, and large. They are everywhere in the proceedings of scientific inquiry, between blueprint and the product, between mathematics and action, and between theory and phenomenon. And the easy gaps have by and large been filled; the remaining ones tend to be quite complex. Therefore, I submit that we will never be able to fill them without resorting to the supernatural, given all the time from now until time-bound humanity is no more. These gaps involve desertion of causation and/or tend to be lairs of dreaded singularities, the single most frustrating barrier of all of science. The latter are like dead-end roads with mile-high walls around them. They seem to be the spoilers in an otherwise immaculate system. They completely stymie the mathematical investigation of him who would plumb the depths or scale the heights of the cosmos, forcing sad seekers to turn around, go back, and find a friendlier path to tread. Then there is that bothersome principle of the more we know, the more we know that we do not know, such that the gaps are increasing both in number and in complexity, and exponentially at that, because scientific progress is exponential. Though the mathematical aspects of our scientific discoveries amount to knowledge and, usually, understanding, and though math has yielded us mountains of amazing information, all of it is discovery. We have simply

found things. We have found mathematical relationships, natural physical laws, as a person might find a shell on a beach, but we cannot use mathematics or science to help us discover what the shell is doing there. At least we have been doing good science for about 450 years and fantastic math for about three hundred without learning anything at all about this basic proposition. It seems quite safe to say that the answer as to what the shell is doing on the beach is part of the Answer and that finding the Answer is not part of the job description of science. Seeking the truth, pursuing the ultimate, and searching for excellence all pertain to the acquisition of wisdom, and wisdom is a quality that emanates from philosophy and religion, not science. All of these terms are those of the bedrock of creation, and the Christian God is the God of the bedrock. The fear (standing in awe) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom is about bedrock understanding (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 1:7, Job 28:28). We certainly do not understand God in spite of His being Everything to us, and we do not understand the characteristics of the power of the velocity of light in a vacuum in spite of its supreme function in our world. That the velocity of light does not—yea, cannot—increase relative to the surface of the earth even if it shines from a headlight that is moving at any rate we might choose is thoroughly incomprehensible to us. It would seem that we are the size that would most facilitate our understanding of the organization, the function, the aspects, and the physical bodies of the universe, as we are about forty orders of magnitude (factors of ten) larger than the smallest things in our world and forty orders of magnitude smaller than the size of the whole universe.1 On the other hand, we are vastly larger than the smallest things and vastly smaller than the largest things, such that we indeed see in a mirror dimly in both directions of size, just as we do so in attempting to perceive the supernatural realm. I do not think it accidental that we are right in the middle of the size spectrum of our world.

Mathematics as Evidence of the Existence of Deity

Mathematics is our single greatest investigational tool. This is not surprising because math is the only entity that we can thoroughly understand. I do not mean to say that anyone fully understands it. When Einstein was asked near the time of his death how his life might have been better, he replied that he would have liked to have additional capability in the realm of mathematics. The redeeming feature of doxa is mathematics. Everything perceptible to our senses is underlain by math, and math is all that is left when doxa is subjected to mental dissection and analyzed in terms of ultimate reality. Doxa’s most fundamental characteristics—its rules of order and the manner in which it functions—are steeped in math, whether they relate to spacetime, to matter, or to force. That is why we can and do investigate with math; the job of many physicists is largely just to sit around (or maybe pace the floor) and do math, and, when we proclaim what we have found, we do so in the language of math, which may be the foundation of the language of God. If we knew that extraterrestrial living things with cognition existed, we would not say, “Hi! How are things?” or even, “Cogito ergo sum!” We would transmit something like 2 + 2 = 4 or E = mc2. Thus, by virtue of an entity that does not require the existence of the universe in order to exist itself, an abstraction that does not require creation in order to be, we achieve substantial understanding of the part of our universe that remains when we have cleared away the part that is either illusory or intangible to hand and to head. Still we have only theological explanation for the most basic fact pertaining to doxa, which is the very fact that nature operates in sublime order according to laws that we can discover. When the pure scientist denies a role for God in the deepest mysteries of our world, he can only replace Him with humanity and claim that we make rather than merely find. It is then that the most far-fetched concept ever appears on the horizon—the final anthropic principle, the idea that we will become so knowledgeable and technologically advanced in the future that we will be able to create in the past. Frank J. Tipler, a physicist and cosmologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, has written two books that pertain to this ultimate fantasy.

Thinking such as this is at the bottom of every thought and every action of every man and woman who has ever become a scourge of humanity; it is responsible for all wars. Theologically, we first see it arise in the story of a beautiful and favored angel who thought himself equal to God, an entity variously called Satan, the devil, the accuser (of humans), Beelzebub, and other appellations. Then we find this way of thinking among the Sophists, the persuaders who had so little regard for the truth that they were just as happy arguing one side of a point of law as they were arguing the other. To them, it was not about the truth at all; it was about who won. (Our modern concept of a court of law is no better.) Through the centuries before and since, it is the philosophy behind the hubris of emperors, kings, tyrants, and dictators who lust for power and have no qualms about devouring any cognitive creature that stands in their way. Nietzsche idolized such “supermen,” as he called them, and Hitler idolized Nietzsche. Let us then admit our deficit and objectively seek to overcome it, placing no subjective restrictions on ourselves in our search for information and truth, and especially making no a priori assumptions. If there were only a small chance that the only source of such understanding might involve the mystical, we would be well advised to include that realm in our search for it. But, in fact, there is a very large chance. The God of the Bible repeatedly tells us to seek wisdom, knowing that an objective search for that crowning jewel will lead us to His Word and ultimately to Him because He is the only Source of wisdom. Such a course of action will even lead us to heightened acumen in the perception of physical reality. Let us therefore follow the lead of the psalmist here: “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from whence shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1–2).

Our Lack of Understanding Demonstrated in Specific Fields Numerous examples of the dichotomy between know-how and understanding can readily be found in any scientific discipline. I shall go through some of these, beginning with physics, the most basic science and

the one that has given us the greatest technical wonders that we have and the largest number of them. Once again, we have a lack of answers to why questions. Now the skeptic might say, “Why, that is the very point I am making; there is no ‘why’ to the universe! It is purposeless.” But I think we shall see it is obvious that there is a level of discovery beyond how that we never reach in our searching. This situation holds for both the entire universe and the parts thereof; it just happens to be more evident where the details of our world are concerned because, when we consider our universe as a whole, we are treading much more foggy terrain. Professor Steven L. Goldman of Lehigh University has composed a course for the Teaching Company that confirms my thoughts (and shows that they are grossly nonoriginal). In it, he describes the views of a myriad of historically famous individuals who noted the how/ why problem and vigorously argued its validity. Goldman tells us that differentiating knowledge from opinions and beliefs is a problem that was well known to classical Greek philosophers and that it has “played a contentious role in Western cultural history.” He notes that the “fathers” of modern science, Francis Bacon and René Descartes, approached scientific investigation in ways that were so different from each other as to raise serious doubt that one could trust science to reveal “objective truths about nature.” He reminds us that Sir Isaac Newton assumed space and time were absolute in order that he might compile his mechanics, his mathematical theory of matter in motion, but that Einstein, two hundred years later, showed that this most basic assumption is erroneous. This is the legendary Newton we are speaking of here—Newton who propounded a theory of gravity that has taken us to the moon and back, Newton who confirmed Copernicus and Kepler, Newton who explained earth’s tides and gave us a comprehensive theory of mechanics, Newton who put together a particle theory of light and invented the calculus, Newton who had many other accomplishments besides. Goldman informs us that, as of the year 1700, at the threshold of the Enlightenment, founded upon the premise that humankind had “advanced” (quotes mine) to the point of less emphasis on God, there was no method of scientific reasoning that guaranteed knowledge rather than opinion or belief. During the ensuing century, nothing happened that enhanced the status of science in this respect. By the nineteenth century, at

which time science was deemed to be at the heart of human progress, it was equally clear that its role was only empirical, practical, and pragmatic, as scientists themselves began to question whether science could provide true understanding as opposed to know-how and technology. Individuals whose names are now ubiquitous in textbooks of science, often as designations of velocity, cycles per second, and the like— men such as Mach, Hertz, and Kelvin—began to throw in the towel regarding the claim that science is about basic understanding and ultimate reality. The longtime dream and expectation of scientists that they would be able to delineate certainty began to fade away, and, when Einstein trumped the twenty-three-hundred-yearold geometry of Euclid with his special theory of Relativity in 1905, it became apparent that nothing in science is sacrosanct.

Physics Physicists have found that protons possess a property they call “spin,” which is altered in the process of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); we have no real understanding of its nature—we are, for example, not at all certain that protons spin like a top. Nevertheless, we can utilize this property to practically vivisect people without laying a hand on them. Even with the monumental aid of the general theory of Relativity, we do not know what gravity is. The downhill nature of Relativity’s explanation is easier to feature than is attraction at a distance, but it is essentially an analogy; we do not understand the nature of the incline. We have seen that it appears to be analogous to depression in the fabric of space-time, which itself is a concept we can reach for but not grasp, and the comparison of gravity with a tightly spread net that has heavy balls representing heavenly bodies helps us to gain a little understanding of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, any knowledge concerning that which keeps our planet from flying out into space continues to be nil even when we add the presently separate discipline of quantum mechanics to our thinking, as we cannot correlate the gravitons we envision in that mode with the concept of gravity which the general theory holds out. For practical purposes, quantum mechanics adds little to our concept of gravity because, though we can imagine packets of force between two

bodies pulling them together, we cannot begin to say how such particles would manage to act in that manner or where these particles would have come from in the first place. Do gravitons form something like a lot of cords stretching millions of light-years, in holding such gigantic things as galaxies in proximity with one another? Even if we knew that to be true, we would then have to ask how they happen to attract each other or the bodies they affect. If we put a baseball or a piece of rope on the ground between you and me and call it an intermediary particle, that does not cause it to even connect us, much less pull us toward each other (unless mind enters the picture wherein each of us takes an end of the rope and one or both of us decide(s) to do some pulling). In spite of all this puzzlement, we have utilized gravity in our trips to the moon, including it in equations of such precision as to get us there and back on schedule and allow us to adequately predict where we will be when. We have no better idea how gluons go about holding quarks together in atomic nuclei, or how the force particles of the weak force—photons— could possibly work. And we are unclear as to why photons have a fourfold function, as light quanta, as particles of electrical force, as particles of magnetic force, and as the intermediary particles of the weak force. Yet we can control the behavior of photons to the extent that we can split the nuclei of certain large atoms and fuse two hydrogen atoms together to form helium, thus causing one element to become another, with the release of huge amounts of energy according to E = mc2. With regard to magnetism, we have a so-called positive pole with a deficit of electrons that is attracted to/by a negative pole that has an excess of these. Around and between these, photons form an electromagnetic field composed of lines of force. We see a representation of these lines when we place iron filings in the vicinity of a magnet, but we do not really know what they are. They would seem to be composed of energy, but, as previously noted, we do not know what energy is—only what it does. We can turn a switch with the result that electrons flow to one end of what becomes a powerful electromagnet, with which we can pick up heavy metal objects, but the ultimate nature of its pull (or push) is a complete mystery.

When one of the universal forces causes something to move, its energy is transmitted to the object that is set in motion and is then represented by the motion itself. As the object then accelerates and then slows to a halt (if friction is part of the mix) or continues to travel at a given velocity for an indefinite period (if there is no friction), further energy transfer takes place. As these processes take place, order does not increase. It cannot, according to Newton’s law of entropy, but, if there ever is any order, where does it come from? Order would seem to be necessary for the production of order, and its production would seem to require energy. Such application of energy implies the existence of an Applicator.

Chemistry Chemistry is the intermediary discipline between physics and the science of living things that has the electromagnetic force as its foundation. It is based solely on the qualities of this force and its effect on the behavior of electrons in the outermost shells of atoms. By manipulating these electrons, we can put together, dismantle, and analyze chemical compounds, thereby performing great feats such as the production of life-saving drugs, highly transparent and/or very tough sheets of plastic, and amazingly adhesive materials.2 Every day physicians administer intravenous sodium chloride solutions to patients, utilizing highly reactive sodium and extremely toxic chlorine which, when chemically combined and then dissolved/ionized in water at the right concentration, which is about 0.9 grams per 100 milliliters of water, yields the solution that is the basis of blood and of the fluid in which every cell in our bodies is bathed. We have no idea why, with each atomic sodium/ chlorine combo—molecule—the movement of one electron from one place to another makes so much difference, and why there is such a great difference between the atom pair and the ion pair that results when this transfer has taken place is a great mystery. Nevertheless, a 0.9 percent solution of sodium chloride, table salt, carries all substances in our bloodstreams to their destinations and initiates the removal of metabolic wastes from our bodies by carrying them to the kidneys. As we ponder the phenomenon of ionization with the formation of solution and other

chemical reactions like it, we never have any idea how electrons know they “ought to” move in the direction of completing shells or how they manage to move in such a precise manner. And not only do we not know why the different shells contain varying but predictable numbers of electrons, we also do not understand why having an outer shell that is complete can sometimes take precedence over balancing the positive forces in an atom with the negative. The entire basis of the combination of elements with one another to form chemical compounds, which may be very simple, as in the production of table salt, or very complex, as in the case of the proteins of the body and DNA, consists of just two ways of bonding, ionic and covalent. I will give a simple example of each. In the case of the ionic combination of sodium and chloride to form table salt, we have an element, sodium, with only a single electron in its outer shell, and an element, chlorine, the outer shell of which is one short of capacity. Thus, each sodium atom gives up an electron to each chlorine atom, with the result that the outer shell of both have outer shells that are at capacity. We then have a mixture of sodium ions (charged atoms) and chloride ions. (For whatever reason, sodium retains its name when it becomes charged while chlorine becomes chloride in the same situation.) Because bodies of like charge repel each other and those of unlike charge attract, the cations (ions with positive charges) snuggle up with the anions (ions with negative charges). One cation of sodium combines with one anion of chloride because only one electron per atom pair has been transferred. The cation/anion combinations dissolve in water, and they do so particularly well because water molecules are polarized, having a negative charge on one end and a positive charge on the other, such that sodium ions are attracted to one end of water molecules and chloride ions are attracted to the other. Most inorganic compounds, especially acids, bases, and salts, are formed via ionic bonding, and organic (always carbon-containing and usually related in some way to biological life) compounds are formed by bonding wherein electrons are shared. The latter process is called covalent bonding,

and it is particularly strong because the atoms have their cake and eat it too: They complete their outer shells and end up electrically balanced as well. Both kinds of bonding can be present in the same molecule. In the case of covalent bonding, electrons are shared. Let us look at carbon dioxide—CO2—as a simple example. Carbon atoms have four vacancies in their outer rings, while oxygen atoms have two electrons in their outer rings.3 The latter would “like” to do something with those two electrons in order that its outer ring may be at capacity. So, with two oxygen atoms, we have four electrons which, when shared with a single carbon atom, yield CO2.4 This structure of carbon causes them to be able to take part in a gigantic number of combinations with other elements, especially oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which feature covalent bonding. If we add the chemical compounds of calcium and phosphorus to the resulting combinations, we have almost all of the material of which the human body is made. Ionic compounds may contain ions with charges (valences) of two or more; this presents no problem as long as they are electrically balanced. The compound “calcium carbonate,” CaCO3, is composed of molecules that contain a calcium ion, valence +2, each that is combined with a single CO3 radical, valence -2. The “C,” carbon atom in each molecule, is four electrons short of completion of its outer electron ring, and its covalent combination with three oxygen atoms leaves the radical with an excess of two electrons per radical. Calcium ions then combine ionically with CO3 radicals on a one to one basis with the production of CaCO3. The main point to be made concerning the formation of chemical compounds that is particularly pertinent to our thesis is that we have no idea what complete and incomplete shells are all about. The need for electrical balancing seems logical, but the idea of forgoing this in favor of shell completion sounds contrived. Yet, when we put that theory into action, it works. Apparently, the completion of shells results in an atom’s having a diminished energy state, but we really do not know why nature seeks lowenergy states. We do not even know why bodies with like charges repel one

another and those with unlike charges attract; of course, again, we do not even know what charge is. The formation of water from hydrogen and oxygen is another phenomenon of great interest, particularly because water and oxygen are two of the three most vital elements that have to do with biological life and on account of the contrasting characteristics of the combining elements and those of the resulting compound. Hydrogen is so flammable that it burns almost instantly in the presence of oxygen. Application of a little heat to such a mixture results in the production of a lot more heat and much light, as energy and photons are released in dramatic fashion—an explosion if the hydrogen is in a closed space—signifying the combination of hydrogen with oxygen and the consequent formation of water. Thus does hydrogen burn; all burning is oxidation, the combination of the burned substance with oxygen. When this happens in the case of hydrogen, a highly dangerous gas, we obtain a substance that functions as the milieu for all chemical reactions that take place in the body (which, trust me, are many). We must wonder why the sharing of two electrons of two hydrogen atoms with one atom of oxygen, thus completing the outer (only, in the case of hydrogen) shells of three atoms, turns two gases into an exceedingly tame liquid, with an enormous number of purposes, thus eliminating the danger that elemental hydrogen poses while producing a substance that is the great majority of the weight of every human body and is quite commonly used to put out fires. We do not know the answers to these questions. Let us ask ourselves how all the energy waiting to be set loose from hydrogen atoms comes to reside in these to begin with, and what is the mechanism through which energy moves and heats things? We are not likely ever to have an answer in this instance. The largest library in the world might well be incapable of holding what we might casually call “scientific knowledge”; yet, all of this material is baseless because none of it entails comprehension of basics. Admittedly, most of it works when put into action, but we take it on faith. How then can anyone disdain faith in God, in favor of whose existence there is an enormous compendium of evidence and with whom we have less problem

with regard to fundamentals. (See if you agree when you read chapter 1 of part 2.) Some elements are inert (i.e., they will not combine with anything). This is because their outer shells are complete. An example is helium. Thus, we have really clever theory that works in enabling us to predict what is going to happen when various elemental substances come together, but we do not know anything further of a fundamental nature about chemical combination. We have no direct evidence concerning the nature of ionization, covalence, solubility, or inertness; these phenomena/states are understood only in terms of very clever speculations that beautifully correlate with the way things turn out. As in the case of physics, there is nothing really basic that we understand in chemistry except for its strictly mathematical aspects. Some molecules are extremely complex, containing very large numbers of atoms of various kinds. This is especially true in the case of organic chemistry, that discipline which deals with carbon-containing compounds, most of which are found in living things. Having four electrons per atom to share, carbon atoms can form chains and rings. This grand capability makes it the ideal element on which to base living things—DNA, RNA, proteins, and fatty substances such as lipoproteins, fatty proteins. The stupendous numbers of such tremendously complex molecules that must be present and constantly functioning in all of our bodies, coordinating with other complex molecules, in order that we may even survive—whereas we actually thrive —points to our continual attendance by an Organizer who sees that untold numbers of chemical reactions occur in the right sequences and at the proper times in our bodies not only from day to day but from moment to moment.

Biology Similarly, we find vast order, which demands the involvement of a Director, in all of biology.5 The ball is in the court of the militant scientist to try to show, in rational terms, that such a Director does not exist.6 It has looked exactly like there is indeed such a Person at work ever since humans began

to think about this kind of thing, and discoveries in science have never made His existence less likely. Compare the human body with a very large army. Can we imagine a few million people, from privates to generals, carrying out duties from garbage disposal to high-level meetings with no leader? Could we possibly go into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and observe people in impeccable outfits walking here and there, cranking out documents in near-perfect form on computers that have access to virtually all the world’s information, and others who are sitting around tables conferring with regard to what troops need to go where, and at the same time assume that there is no cognitive person in charge? If we compare this scenario with the coordination of sequential events on the biochemical, tissue, and organ levels of our bodies’ mechanisms, matters that are far more complicated than those the Pentagon workers are dealing with, we have no recourse but to assume that mind in some form is making things happen in our bodies, and we know our own minds do not determine what is going on in most cases here because most of the events are involuntary. We do not, for example, consciously regulate our blood pressures, the speed of transit of material through our bowels, or the caliber of our arterioles. It happens without our cognitive involvement, and, as in the case of the creation of the universe—to give a few examples —there must be an initial cause, a Prime Mover, with regard to all the motion of all the smooth muscle of all the bladders, bowels, and blood vessels that have ever existed on earth. The function of DNA (desoxyribonucleic acid) is to carry physical traits from individuals to their offspring, and its coordination with RNA (ribonucleic acid) in the production of huge numbers of proteins is fraught with mechanism of which we have no understanding at all. Many of these proteins are enzymes, organic catalysts that cause tremendous numbers of biochemical reactions to occur in our bodies without which we could not live. They are organize catalysts that exist in the right place and at the right times in close proximity with the substances with which they are designed to react. They facilitate these reactions by way of mechanisms of which we have no understanding, and these mechanisms are exquisitely tuned; we need a Tuner, so that they will happen correctly, without insufficiency or excess.

We have good reason to believe that DNA uncurls and forms a template where the future components of RNA can line up in proper order for the purpose of connection to the DNA, which in turn connects the parts of RNA together. Here again, though, we can describe what happens, but that is as far as our abilities take us. We do not know how each component “knows” where to go when or when to go where. The same issue pertains when RNA (ribonucleic acid) in turn forms templates on which the amino acids of proteins-to-be align and connect to one another in order to become all they can be. How also does the RNA know how and when to break away from the DNA pattern, and likewise the proteins from the RNA? How do the proteins manage to do that and then go to the place they need to be in order to take part in the structure or the function of organisms? We can describe, record, and organize our findings in this sphere, and we can apply terms to represent entities, but the basic mechanisms of what happens continuously elude us. Let us now explore on the level of organs. Looking at a specific system of our bodies, the hematological, we find that we have white blood cells and antibodies with which to fight infection and a cascade of chemical reactions via which blood coagulates, after platelets initiate the mechanism.7 The latter is so complex that one can make a career out of investigating it and treating patients with clotting disorders. We have learned a lot about hematology, but we have no concept of the nature of the attraction of white blood cells or antibodies to a site of infection or the attraction of platelets to the edges of a hole in a blood vessel, and we no more understand the movement of antibodies to the location of an infection or the nature of the entity that might cause them to be produced at the site than we can perceive how gravity can attract at a distance.8 Even with recruitment of all the hematologists in the world, we must depend upon previously arranged and automatic cascades of action to ensure that we will not bleed to death from minor injury or die because of the first infection that comes along, and such arrangements require an Arranger. In addition, the mechanisms of which I speak are finely tuned— they want a Tuner. Moreover, the distances involved here are relatively great, unimaginable when one considers the size of microscopic bodies in

comparison with how far they have to go. Also, the muscle in the walls of arteries must contract in coordination with the other mechanisms that I have described in order for control of hemorrhage to be as effective as we observe it to be in our bodies. Such logistics invite comparison with both civic and military emergencies, which we would never imagine combating without both leadership and organization. Yet there are no plans to be had without cognition, and we know that we cannot consciously direct our white cells or platelets. We need the help of a mind higher than ours. Electromagnetic force is the only force that is available to us in biochemistry, as we have noted. We do not know how our bodies turn it off and on in order to initiate and regulate untold biochemical processes that work rapidly, yoked with other processes run by the same force.9 Finally here, a word about the body’s, especially the brain’s, gasoline, which is glucose. It may be directly consumed, produced in our digestive systems by way of cleavage of the chemical bonds of starches, or derived from glycogen stored in our livers. Once it is in the bloodstream, glucose undergoes a cascade of reactions sufficient to tax the recall abilities of the finest of freshman medical students before generating a substance entirely different from itself, via which energy is supplied for cellular function. We can describe this Krebs Cycle, and we have identified the end product, adenosine phosphate, but we do not know how all the very numerous molecules involved “know” where to be or where to go in the enormous number of cells in which this cascade of chemical reactions is taking place. In addition, these reactions happen very rapidly, so much so that we can favorably compare them with the operation of advanced computers in this respect.

A Challenge Thus does pure science not hold up in the face of critical analysis as the or even a source of fundamental answers though it has become one of the pillars of apologetics, a terrific source of information that hones our minds, often to the point from whence we can see the necessity of God.

Numerous scholars/authors have claimed that Christian Scripture has deficits that should lead one away from believing it, but I confidently invite anyone to read those who have engaged in higher criticism or any other dilution or denial of the faith after reading the New Testament and the arguments I have and will set forth, preferably along with The Creator and the Cosmos, The Language of God, and possibly The Ring of Truth, and to then come to conclusions with regard to which side of the argument makes sense.10,11,12 All critiques of the Christian faith pale when they are placed beside the evidence in favor of Jesus and His Word. Though some of them are valid, they are refuted by material that renders them thoroughly anemic.

Review Scientific analysis of the universe seems at first to lead us to three constants, which are the velocity of light, Planck-time, and Planck-size. But the latter two are called into question by the illusory nature of time and space, respectively. Also, light per se may be sort of a sojourner in spacetime, though its velocity, at least from the perspective of humans, affects the universe more than any other entity. All this begs for humility on the part of humanity. Our scientific pursuits have yielded no more certainty or depth than the constancy of the velocity of light in a vacuum, and even this knowledge is rendered vague when we consider that space (and therefore distance), time, and therefore all velocities of our universe except probably for that of light in a vacuum, are illusory.13 Our discoveries in math are certainly impressive, but mathematics is abstract and fundamentally different from all other disciplines. (I think that our understanding of it is a gift of God.) Protagoras’s statement, “Man is the measure of all things,” is a puny, though dangerous, dead-end branch off the mainstream road of supposed philosophy. (As this is also what Heraclitus believed, I do not think it is philosophy at all.) Anyone who is determined to try to do without God should perhaps stick with Pythagoras and worship math/numbers, except that, in that instance, he would be at a loss with regard to what to do with mind. If he instead chose to worship mind, he would be particularly hard-pressed to avoid worshiping

the Primary, the Prototype, the Original, the greatest mind—Mind itself, Being itself. He would then find himself in company of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the ancient Hebrews, Jesus, Augustine, Mohammed, Galileo, Newton, Gandhi, and innumerable other brilliant people of all times. I like this company, and many of these were/ are quite respectable scientists. Mind not only does not require matter in order to be; it gives rise to matter. Our brains consist of matter, but they reduce to mathematics, which is an abstraction dependent upon mind. We can get into a maelstrom of error by believing that mind is dependent upon brain in order to be. Our brains are a part of doxa and are therefore not what they seem to be. We tend to see them as necessary for the existence of our minds only because of our lifelong immersion in doxa. No abstraction is bound to or by space-time, and this holds most especially for mind. Even individual minds can work across the veil, by way of logos and faith. Some have made the statement that we, during the past eighty to one hundred years, have been turning from reason to faith. I think this is a good thing, except I do not believe reason must diminish for the sake of faith; we can have lots of both. I have speculated that light occupies both the timeless and the time-bound realms, though I cannot maintain this claim in the absence of string theory, and even then, photons would have to travel in a direction parallel with their dimension in order to disappear. However, I do not think we can speak of its velocity outside of nature, as there are most likely no dimensions in the world beyond (i.e., there is probably no such thing as distance per length of time “there” to enable anything to have velocity). Light is often used in analogy in matters that entail God. Were it alive, light would be rather similar to deity. As I have noted, God enlightens, and then we read in John 1:4–5, as the author writes of Jesus—“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend it.” The word comprehend here can also be translated from the original Greek as “overcome.” Thus, we can argue that light is similar to Jesus in that both exist or have existed in time and outside of time, and in that both are constant and invariable in that both can be

associated with enlightenment and salvation.14 Both can bring us freedom and overcome evil—light, of course, in a much smaller way than that of the Savior. Light overcomes literal darkness, and Jesus overcomes figurative darkness, which is far worse. All this fits together so very well: the God who is Jesus is One and is constant and invariable outside of space- time, as is, exclusively, the velocity of light within space- time. The only entity in space-time, light’s velocity, that we have been able to identify as constant and invariable— leaving math out of our considerations at the moment— is apparently an aspect of God, who is the Ultimate in constancy and invariability. A corollary to my belief in this instance is that light, by virtue of its relating to the nature of Christian deity, is so important that even an aspect of it, its mere velocity, has vital effects in the time- bound realm, effects that we have noted in examining the consequences of the special theory. In other words, light with its velocity, the most palpable reflection of the true God that we perceive in the universe, trumps space-time, matter, and force. Thus do we add another very large batch of evidence to the case for Christ, as Lee Strobel put it. Though it is obvious that thinking is always involved, we can obtain knowhow primarily by working with our physical senses in our setting of becoming. In order to have any chance of attaining understanding, however, we must expand our minds from doxa to logos and consider everything in terms of being and faith.

Notes 1. “Orders of magnitude” refers to the logarithms of which I have previously spoken (e.g., ten to the minus forty-third power). Ten to the first power is ten, ten to the second power is ten times ten, and ten to the third power is ten times ten times ten, etc., to infinity. These “logs” are written as an exponent of ten, written above the line, or imaginary line, on which one is writing. Ten to the tenth power is ten with an exponent of 10,000,000,000. Ten to the minus tenth power is ten with an exponent of 10,000,000,000, which

can also be written as a fraction consisting of a “1” above the line and 1 followed by ten zeros below the line. Numbers the log of which is between two whole numbers can be written as follows, using 283,000 as an example: “2.83 times 10 to the 5th power” or 2.83 x 105. Logs can be calculated or, preferably, looked up in a table. 2. The smallest amount of an element that can exist is an atom, and the smallest possible amount of a compound is called a molecule. Atoms can be molecules, and molecules can be atoms, except in the case of elements such as oxygen, in which case neither of these situations can exist because single atoms of these substances never exist in nature. For example, free oxygen is always “O2,” two oxygen atoms loosely joined. The same process can take place with the transfer of more than one electron per atom. For example, calcium can donate two electrons in combining with this or that element that is in a position to be able to receive electrons. For example, it can combine with two atoms of chlorine to form CaCl2. A complete first electron shell contains two electrons, a complete second shell contains eight, and a complete third shell contains eighteen; in the case of heavier elements, with more than three shells per atom, the shells that are farther from the nucleus all still have their invariable capacities. The energy level of sodium chloride is lower than the sum of individual sodium and chloride atoms; this is why sodium and chlorine tend to combine. A salt is the combination of one or more cations with one or more anions (e.g., potassium or lithium with bromine or fluorine). An acid is the combination of one or more protons (hydrogen ions) with one or more anions. Acids have a tendency to donate protons to various substances, often damaging any object that consists or partly consists of the substance in question. The molecules of bases (alkaline compounds) are composed of cations combined with hydroxyl radicals, “OH,” that “crave” protons. Bases also can damage various materials as they extract

protons from them, and water is produced along with various salts. Bicarbonate radicals may also be the negatively charged component in bases; the resulting alkaline compounds are weaker than those containing OH-1. 3. All life on our planet is based on carbon, the atoms of which have two electrons in their inner shells and four in the second shell. 4. Carbon dioxide is to plants what oxygen is to animals, in which kingdom of living things it is the waste product of respiration. With this compound, we have a friendly gas that combines with something like soot to make a gas that plants essentially breathe and which they convert to free oxygen. In this way, plants and animals are beautifully symbiotic. Is this likely to be an accident? 5. Biology is the study of living things. An organism that is biologically alive exhibits ingestion, digestion, assimilation, excretion, metabolism, mobility (at least in the case of the great majority of animals) and reproduction. 6. “But all these questions are why questions,” objects the chancist, “and we atheists do not believe there is purpose in the universe. How many times do we need to tell you?” Answer: “You are broaching a philosophical question that does not pertain to what I am talking about. Science is all about cause, and we are always justified in asking, ‘But what caused that?’ You are equally within your rights in asking, ‘But who or what caused God to be?’ The difference between us is that I have an answer to that question that does not require or even allow another ‘But who or what caused that?’ and you have no answer other than, ‘It just happened to happen,’ which I contend is no answer at all.’” (See chapter 1 of part 2.) 7. The system of hematology includes the reticulo-endothelial subsystem, cells or groups of cells scattered through the body, especially in the blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen, and Peyer’s patches of the ileum (the distal part of the small intestine), the function of which is to protect us from pathogenic microorganisms by ingesting them or by producing antibodies, proteins that neutralize them.

8. Chemotaxis comprises a particularly important example of know-how and labeling of processes minus fundamental knowledge in biology and medicine. Somehow, in answer to chemical signals in the bloodstream and the “interstitial fluid” that bathes each cell, a white blood cell leaves the bloodstream, wiggling in between the cells of a capillary wall in order to do so, and proceeds to a site of infection, where it ingests infecting agents. As the endangered cell is not conscious, we must ask how the chemical stimulus can so precisely direct and aid the white cell to travel, to travel accurately, and to get by potential barriers. We believe it is a matter of chemistry and electromagnetic force, but that is as far as our research results and imagination take us. We do not understand the attraction we call chemotaxis any more than we can fathom the attraction of gravity. Applying a name to a process contributes nothing in the way of understanding that process. Nevertheless, we again have theory and acumen here that works for us in medical care. 9. There seems to be some kind of connection between mind and brain while we are in space-time, but it is different from what it seems to be. The timeless state is that of ultimate importance, and there can be no connection “there.” 10. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1984). 11. Francis Collins, MD, The Language of God (New York: Free Press, 2006). 12. J. B. Phillips, The Ring of Truth. 13. I suspect that light is an exception because of its independence manifested by our inability to add to its velocity. 14. If one is lost in a deep, dark cave, he can probably get out if he has a map and some source of light.

PART 2 The Origin of God, Eternal Life, and the New Christian Apologetics: Relativity, Quantum Physics, and Philosophy Bolster Christian Faith There once was a little old lady who was heckling a young cosmologist who was trying to explain in scientific terms, as best he could, the origin of our universe. From the back of the room, she enunciated in a loud voice, “Young man, everyone knows the earth is supported on the back of a huge tortoise.” Thinking he had her where he wanted her, he responded, “Please tell me, ma’am, what is supporting that tortoise?” “You are very clever, young man, but it’s turtles all the way down!”

Chapter 8 The Truth Is Inevitable: How God Can Exist and Why He Must Abstract: Jesus is the only person, divine or otherwise, who has offered His services as Guide in the realm of beyond, and His qualifications as such are impeccable. Without God, there is no Christ and therefore no life worth living. In this chapter, I begin by presenting proof of God’s existence in a manner similar to that of Anselm and Descartes. It seems to me that their efforts in this regard are effective in the abstract but not practically defensible, and I hope to improve upon them. Absent great revelation or inspiration, one needs reasonable evidence of the existence of God in order to believe in Him. It is not certain that any timeless entity needs a beginning, but, if such is indeed necessary, The Truth, everything that is axiomatic and good for cognitive persons, is the sole candidate for “Beginner” because it is the only entity able to exist without creation. The Truth can personify because its primary component is life, and it must do so because it is the most energetic, powerful, compelling, and potent entity imaginable. God is the Personification of The Truth.

The Abundant Life “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). This is the ultimate claim of Jesus. The truth is what philosophers have always sought, “the way” is virtually synonymous with it, and “the life” can come only from God. Karl Marx called religion the “opiate of the people,” but he went against the grain of history and consensus in doing so. We humans have believed in deity throughout history and before, and we have not done so out of fear of death; we have done so because such existence seems most likely in terms of what we observe and experience in our world. Consider Ockham’s razor:

A watch lies on a beach—conclusion, someone made it, and someone left it there. By the same token, we exist; therefore, someone made us and placed us in space-time for a purpose. This conclusion is what immediately comes to the rational mind, and the militant atheist, who is usually a militant scientist, must try to hide it in a corner because, out in the open, it dilutes his a priori premise, that nothing as silly as a supernatural god could possibly exist. As I have contended, one’s claims and evidence must be objective in order to be meaningful, and the opinion of the atheist here is entirely subjective. Until quite recent times, the great majority of people did not even imagine that atheism could be a rational way of looking at things.1 Those who dispute the existence of divinity these days do so on the basis of several foundations, all of which are weak: First, they take advantage of the average person’s mediocre knowledge of science and claim that there is no pure knowledge other than the findings of science. They would do better to say that there is no pure knowledge except for math and various ethical axioms. Next, they tend to assume that modern individuals are more intelligent than people who lived five to ten thousand years ago in spite of the fact that, generally by their own admission, evolution is a very slow process. Third, they often tend to claim that science has disproved the existence of God when it has not. Such skeptics claim that the corporate knowledge of humankind has grown to the point where we, as a race, are too sophisticated to believe “fairy tales.” Yet, for such a statement to have any validity, these claimants would have to have shown that religion is strictly a matter of fairy tales, and, if they had done that, they would have their victory over the faithful and would not need to be making such unfounded claims to begin with. In addition, this ploy of the nonbeliever takes advantage of the fear that most people have of acquiring the label of fanatic. It tends to divert the attention of the believer from “sticking to his guns” to worrying about his reputation, and it is speculation at best and con artistry at worst. The skeptics—chancists—generally believe that “it just happened to happen.” This idea with regard to the Beginning is the narrow-minded position of one who has, a priori, for no reason, decided that God cannot be, one who probably wishes to avoid confronting the subject altogether.

The person who believes this nonsolution tends to believe that the religious have no objectivity; yet, by holding to such an idea, the atheistic reveal their own subjectivity. Fourth, they falsely assume that theology is entirely based upon worthless factors (e.g., claims of authority, tradition, fear mongering, rationalization, lack of intelligence, and lack of objective research). The venerable Dr. John Polkinghorne can handily squelch such babble.2 Fifth, they ignore consensus, which has changed little with regard to the existence of deity since ancient times and before, in spite of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The consensus of intellectuals and societal pillars is still in favor of theism. Sixth, they fail to realize, or perhaps realize but are unwilling to admit, that science is as much about faith as is religion. Seventh, some of them try to tell us that the combination of the strong and final anthropic principles constitutes a reasonable concept of creation, but these are fantastic theories backed by no evidence, and the likes of Stephen Hawking see little validity in them.3 Finally, and eighth, they ignore the fact that quantum mechanics has nearly proved the existence of God, such that the discoveries of Albert Einstein and Max Planck and his successors have more than reversed the antireligion effects of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. We shall explore this contention in chapter 3 of this part.

Famous Proofs of the Existence of God The best-known attempt at proving God’s existence is that of Anselm (1033–1109), but René Descartes fabricated a proof of the same form and underlain by the same kind of reasoning. As I like his better, I shall present it in favor of Anselm’s. Descartes demanded rationality of the highest order, and, reasoning as follows, he satisfied himself that God is real and that He lives as a Person. He said he could imagine a perfect being, and that he could imagine a unicorn. He knew by definition that a unicorn possessed one horn, but he did not know whether a unicorn existed. However, he could see that there was no necessity in the unicorn’s existence in terms of the satisfaction of logic. It could be and remain a figment of one’s imagination without being an affront to reason. On the other hand, the

Perfect Being exists by definition; without existence, it is not perfect and is not even a being. Therefore, a Perfect Being exists. The atheist responds, “Come on and admit it; you don’t really believe this word salad. You are just afraid of death.” I am not sure I can argue; I am not sure that Descartes or Anselm succeeded in proving anything. Atheists and agnostics have an advantage in this argument, which is that, ever since the scientific revolution, began by Copernicus and headed by Newton, inhabitants of the Western world have tended to assume that scientific findings take precedence over all other kinds of observation, experimentation, and reasoning. There was never any reason to believe this, but science came on like Elvis Presley—the most common expression is “like gangbusters,” but Presley is more likely to get attention nowadays— and, so to speak, swept people off their feet. Interestingly, and happily for apologists, militant scientists now find themselves almost in a reductio ad absurdum situation. The concept of relative truth is indispensible to their worldview, but their beliefs concerning science and their need to deify it force them to claim certainty about it. In other words, they supposedly do not believe that anything is invariably truth; yet, they are hard-pressed not to claim certainty in the scientific sphere, as to do so is to weaken their argument.

The Bottom Turtle In this chapter, I have undertaken the most humbling task of all, that of trying to determine how God might have come to be. I strongly believe nowadays in the God of the Bible, and I seek satisfaction for myself as well as for others in attempting to discern how He could have come to be. What is the bottom turtle, the Arche, the “Ruling principle” that is or gave rise to the Creator and Source of everything that is. I say It is The Truth. For many people, there is no use in my writing this chapter. To them, it is obvious that a God of all exists, and, particularly with Dr. Flew’s having virtually proved that He does, there is no need to go any further. To these, I say, “More power to you,” “I envy you,” and “I count you spiritually

superior to me” (provided that you also believe Jesus is who He said He is). For the sake of the rest of us, I plunge on. The First Cause is no such thing unless It/He has no beginning or cause; the Prime Mover must not require creation in order to exist. It would have to be inevitable and exist even in the absence of anything else, potential— abstract—or actual. The Prime Mover must exist even when there are no consequences of its existence. It is then potential without application, but it exists nevertheless and is just as valid in that case as it is in any other. Love is a good thing even in the absence of lovers, “2 + 2 = 4” is true in the absence of anyone who counts or calculates, and the concepts of life and thought exist in the absence of living things and the cognitive. What then is this “bottom turtle?” It is The Truth. (Note the capitals.) “What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate of Jesus shortly before condemning Him to death. This is the most ironical question ever asked because The Truth, Jesus, was standing right before him. The best synonym for the word truth, is reality, and it must be, almost by definition, the truth that philosophers have traditionally sought ever since there have been philosophers. The most insightful of these have realized that our physical senses do not reveal truth and that we must seek it by way of logos, rational accounting. Those who are more exceptional yet add faith to the mix. Now, if The Truth is reality, what is reality? It is Being, taught Parmenides, mentor of Socrates. He said that Being is, that non-Being cannot be, and that it is not possible for Being not to be. From his teaching, we gain two vital precepts: the truth is an entity, and the truth is inevitable. What then are the contents of this Truth—what are its aspects? Above all things, it is all that cognitive individuals desire or should desire. Put another way, goodness encompasses all things that a cognitive individual wants or should want for his own sake. Nothing matters except as it is done by or affects the cognitive, as only the cognitive have lives that they recognize as

lives. We humans have meaningful lives only as these are closely connected with the Creator, and noncognitive organisms lead meaningful lives, if they do so at all, only as these lives connect with the cognitive—in our world, humans. Therefore, we may say that The Truth is everything that is good for the cognitive. The Truth contains nothing bad, nothing evil, and indeed cannot do so. The Truth is goodness, all-Goodness, everything that is right and correct. It is “pure white,” and any—even a single—dark spot in it destroys its existence as an entity, just as a white lamb with only a single dark spot is a spotted and not a white lamb. The other reason that Truth cannot contain even the smallest quantity of evil is that there is no evil for It to contain; evil is less than nothing. It is a “minus entity.” Here is a story to illustrate the truth of what I am saying. A philosophy professor confronts his class with the question of the existence of God: “Is God good?” “Sure! God’s good,” replies a student. “Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?” “Yes,” the same student replies. “Are you good or evil?” “The Bible says I’m evil.” The professor grins knowingly. “Aha! The Bible!” He considers for a moment. “Here’s one for you. Let’s say there’s a sick person over here, and you can cure him. Would you help him? Would you try?” “Yes, sir, I would.” “So you’re good.” “I wouldn’t say that.” “But why do you say that? You’d help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn’t.” The young man hesitates; a few snickers are (barely) heard. The student does not answer, so the professor continues. “He doesn’t, does he? My

brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?” The student remains silent. “No, you can’t, can you?” the professor exclaims. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. “Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?” “Er … yes,” the student says. “Is Satan good?” The student doesn’t hesitate on this one and replies, “No.” “Then, where does Satan come from?” The student falters. “From God,” he admits. “That’s right. God made Satan, didn’t he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?” “Yes, sir, evil’s everywhere.” “And God did make everything, correct?” “Yes.” “So who created evil?” the professor continued. “If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.” Again, the student has no answer. “Is there immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?” The student squirms on his feet. “Yes,” he admits. “So who created them?” The student once again does not answer, so the professor repeats his question. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. “Tell me,” he continues with another student. “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?” The student’s voice betrays him and cracks. “Yes, professor, I do.” The old man stops pacing. “Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?” “No, sir, I’ve never seen Him.”

“Then tell us if you’ve ever heard your Jesus?” “No, sir, I have not.” “Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus, or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God, for that matter?” “No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.” “Yet you still believe in him?” “Yes.” The professor continues his barrage, “According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?” “Nothing,” the student replies. “I only have my faith.” “Yes, faith,” the professor repeats. “And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence of His existence, only faith.” The student stands quietly for a moment before asking a question of his own. “Professor, is there such a thing as heat?” “Yes.” “And is there such a thing as cold?” “Yes, son, there’s cold too.” “No sir, there isn’t. You can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, megaheat, unlimited heat, white heat, or a little heat, but we don’t have anything called ‘cold.’ We can get down to 458 degrees below zero Celsius, which represents no heat at all, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we could be colder than minus 458 degrees cold. Absolute zero (–458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel when we have insufficient heat.” “This is going to be a good semester,” thought the professor. The student continued. “Professor, does darkness exist?” The professor responded, “Of course it does.”

The student replied, “Once again, sir, you are wrong. Darkness also does not exist. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. We can study light, but we cannot study darkness. In fact, we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color, but we cannot measure darkness per se. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. A single candle eliminates darkness. How can you know how dark a certain area is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used to describe what happens when there is no light present.” The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer. “This is going to be a great semester,” thought the professor, who was quite fair-minded—a person who believed that whoever has the best evidence in hand is the person we should believe, even if he disagrees with us. He begins to smile at the student in front of him. Finally, the student asks the professor, “Sir, do you believe in the existence of evil?” Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course, as I have already said, we see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.” To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that we have created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God and His love present in his heart. The existence of evil did not require creation. It is, from always to always, unless it has been annulled by the sacrifice of Jesus, and I believe that is just what Jesus’s death and resurrection accomplished. It is like the cold that comes when there is no heat and the darkness that comes when there is no light. The heat and light exist, but the cold and darkness do not, except in terms of the absence of

heat and light, respectively. In this way of looking at our subject of discussion, God could not be further removed from evil.” “So what is the point you are making, young man,” the professor replied. “My point is, professor, that your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and therefore your conclusion must be flawed as well.” The professor cannot hide his surprise. “Flawed?! Can you explain how?!” “You are working on a premise of duality,” the student explains. “You essentially argue that there is life and then there is death, and that there is a good God, and there is a bad God. Additionally, you are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science cannot even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood, either one of these. To view death as the opposite of life is to be dualistic and inaccurate; death is the harbinger of the opposite of life, unless one is a follower of the Christ. Now, tell me, sir, do you teach your students that humans evolved from monkeys?” “I do not, but I am not a zoologist. My colleagues do, and I believe them. I believe in evolution.” “Sir, have you ever viewed, tasted, heard, felt, or smelled the evolutionary process?” A few more little snickers. The professor shakes his head, smiling; he realizes where the conversation is going. “Wow, this will be the semester of my dreams!” The student continues, “Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work, we cannot even be sure that this process is an ongoing one. Sir, are you therefore teaching nothing more than your opinion? Are you now not so much a scientist as a preacher?” The class collapses into an uproar, and the student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. He then looks around the room. “Has anyone ever seen the professor’s brain?” he inquires. “Has anyone ever heard, felt, smelled, or tasted the professor’s brain? I see no hands. Thus, professor, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable

protocol, science says that you have no brain, and, with all due respect, sir, I must ask how we are able to trust your lectures.” The room fills with an atmosphere of stunned silence. Visions of administrative and punitive ire pervade the students’ minds. The professor stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, he answers, “I guess you’ll have to take it on faith.” “I will do that, sir; your reputation precedes you. However, I ask that you also respect my faith.” “Son, you are more perceptive than most. E-mail me what you have said; I would like to ponder it. I look forward to more discussion on the subject of whether God is real.” Thales of Miletus, an Ionian Greek, was the first known philosopher of ancient Greece. With his student, Anaximander, and with his student’s student, Anaximenes, he lived on the west coast of what is now Turkey, across the Aegean Sea from Athens and the rest of what we now call Dorian Greece. These three were also the first physicists of the Western world; in their day, there was no thought of separation of physics from philosophy. Thales thought of the Arche as air, and Anaximenes saw it as water, but Anaximander believed that the entity from which all things derived was an abstraction. Quoting Roochnik: “Anaximander argued that ‘the indefinite,’ ‘to apeiron,’ was the Arche.”4 This could also be translated as “the infinite,” “the unlimited,” or “the indeterminate.” As an abstraction, his Arche was permanent, as, in our universe, only abstractions can be. Anaximander’s ruling principle was highly similar to Parmenides’s “Being,” comprehendible only through rational thought, logos. His contemporary, Xenophanes, also declined to go to along with Greek polytheism and saw the Arche as the Prime Mover, able to move all things with His thought. He thought of this deity as unmoved, unique, and permanent. Parmenides saw the unmoved mover as Being itself. He said that Being is, that non-Being cannot be, and that it is not possible for Being not to be. He perceived it as inevitable, something that could never not be. He disdained

appearances and taught that the changes wrought by time are illusory, such that our becoming this or that in our time-bound lives is an imaginary concept. In this sphere, he preempted Einstein by about twenty- five hundred years. From his teaching, we gain two vital precepts: the truth is an entity, and the truth is inevitable. Please keep in mind that, up to this point, we have “truth = reality = Being.” We could extend this by adding “= the Arche = Goodness = an abstraction.” Parmenides saw death as illusory and said that we do not come into our present lives, remain here for a time, and then die. If we are real now, we are real forever, and Parmenides never tried to make a case for our nonexistence—quite the contrary. Coming from the only man known to have ever defeated Socrates in a debate, we have here opinion that we cannot ignore. Parmenides’s Being, like Xenophanes’s Arche, was eternal, one, and indivisible. Quoting Roochnik, “Being must be eternal, for it could not come to be. If it did come into being, it would have to come from nonBeing. But non- Being is not. (It does not exist.) Therefore, Being did not come to be. For the same reason, it cannot perish. Where would it go?” Roochnik goes on to say concerning Parmenides’s Arche, “Being must be one and indivisible. If it were more than one, it would have internal divisions. But if it had internal divisions, then one part of Being would not be another. But Being cannot “not be.” Therefore, Being cannot be divided. It is one.” Thus, Parmenides also distinguished between reality and appearance, between doxa and logos, which means, says Roochnik, that he distinguished between doxa and The Truth. (Interestingly, Dr. R. capitalizes “Truth” here.) Thus, Roochnik equates Truth with reality and reconfirms that doxa is not Truth. The true philosopher seeks reality, and the particularly astute philosopher realizes that we cannot find it with our senses, that it must be sought with our minds. He seeks the ultimate nature of the universe, and, if he is particularly insightful, he looks for what may lie beyond. His method of inquiry is, once more, logos.

Reality, virtually by definition, is a corporate entity containing the answers to our ultimate questions (e.g., “Where did we come from?” “Have we a purpose?” and “Can we live forever?”). In addition, philosophers have always been interested in ethical matters as part of the truth they seek and have sought. For example, they have asked themselves whether “Love is a good thing” is an axiom in all cultures, in all parts of the world, and during all periods of history. Socrates and Plato answered this question in the affirmative, as have the great majority of ethicists since. These investigators discovered an absolute standard of ethics, a code of natural law that is “out there” for the finding. It comes to us largely via the voice of conscience, and to break it is to contribute to disorder, in fact to chaos. Mathematics is the most obvious axiom of our world. It is autonomous, requiring no creation in order to be. It is pure knowledge—irrefutable, permanent, and limitless. (It is no wonder that Pythagoras made it into a religion.) If there is anything that stands between our universe and utter chaos, it is mathematics. It is certainly part of the Good. In addition to principles such as “Love is a good thing,” The Truth must also contain ubiquitous and glorious concepts such as life, communication, learning, love, humility, excellence, honesty, friendliness, and creativity. Additionally, as all worthwhile knowledge is good for the cognitive, those who pursue truth naturally include this as a part of their truth.5 (Philosophers will never run out of things to talk about.) The Truth is unique. Because it is all-Goodness, there is no alternative to The Truth as the origin of everything. We see in our present lives that goodness is the most compelling entity and that it has always been such. It is supremely constructive. The universe and we exist, and there must be a reason why; something or someone got us to where we are. Only The Truth is compelling enough to have led to the existence of all there is. (Believers, please do not throw the book down yet; I shall extricate myself from this seemingly godless statement.) The Arche must be an abstraction because all actual entities require creation in order to be. Considering then the creativity of goodness and probability that nothing more compelling can be imagined, The Truth is the best and the only candidate for the Arche. It contains within itself all the ingredients of a perfect creation.

The Truth is in no way dependent upon humans. I cannot overemphasize this. It is not the corporate thought of humanity, nor is it a summation of all we have learned in pursuing our disciplines and endeavors. Perhaps most important, it is not anything of the future. We humans have only scratched the surface of learning, and The Truth lies at the very foundation thereof. It is something that we can find, that we can discover, much as we have already found natural physical laws that underlie and summarize the order of our universe. It is, however, of such magnitude that we may never be able to comprehend much of it, at least in our time-bound lives, and it is so profound that we must have a guide in order to deal with it, and the only effective Guide is the Christ, He who came to earth as the embodiment of the God of the Jews.

The Function of the Truth How, then, can an abstraction do anything, particularly as abstractions are timeless, and doing anything at all pertains to events, all of which seem to require time in order to happen? This is a difficult question, but we have seen that Stephen Hawking did not shy away from at least speculating with regard to an abstraction as the Arche. Here are his words as he wrote them almost at the end of A Brief History of Time. “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? (Italics mine.) Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him.” Thus, if one wishes to dispute my idea of an abstraction that can do something, he will have to go up against Hawking. The Truth can and does personify, but that is all it can do. It personifies because it is so compelling that it must do something, and there is nothing else it can do directly because everything else requires the operation of mind. Everything besides personification requires thought— guidance,

direction—such that personification must take place before the existence of The Truth can result in any other existence or phenomenon. Besides, if The Truth did not personify into a living Person, it would be inferior to humans, and it is difficult to feature The Truth as inferior to anything. Therefore, as life is its prime component, The Truth gives rise to life; as an irrepressible entity, it personifies; as the abstraction of perfection, it personifies into Perfection; and, as it contains the potential of omniscience, it personifies into an omniscient Person who is therefore omnipotent. The Truth gives rise to God. The Truth is irrepressible. It is like a round boulder lying on the side of a hill. Provided it does not sink in, if it lies there long enough, it will roll down, and, if it lies there forever, it must and will roll down. If the boulder is outside of time, it is lying there forever, essentially, such that it rolls down. Outside of time, potential and kinesis are equivalent; therefore, it rolls only in the present tense. The rolling of this boulder, a figurative representation of the transition from The Truth to God, is not an event; it is a state. We do not have an occurrence here wherein The Truth exists as the forerunner of God at x hours, and The Truth exists as God at x hours plus, say, two minutes. We rather have “The Truth is God, and God is The Truth, from always to always.” Hence, God has always existed. God arises from The Truth in the manner of equivalence. It is like a chemical reaction that can go in either direction. Most commonly, we have something that looks like this— Na + Cl NaCl—which essentially says that, if one puts some uncombined sodium in a cloud of chlorine gas, one ends up with table salt. If the reaction could just as well go in the other direction, the arrow would have an arrow at each end, as in . This is the state of God and The Truth: they give rise to each other. After all, once God exists—we must immediately correct this to “as God exists”—He can bring forward, through His thought, any part of The Truth in any form that He chooses. As He is The Truth, this is not surprising. Given His power, however, along with the compelling nature of The Truth, which may be infinite, He can make or do anything that is or will be good for cognitive individuals. Because, in His world, the potential is the actual, when He

thinks of something, it is—it exists. Because He is alive, He has a mind; nay, particularly as He is Being itself, He is Mind, and the thought of His Mind is reality. The Truth is the personality of the one true God—the contents of His Mind. It is the summation of perfection, and there can only be a single perfect Being because, for there to be more than one, the personalities of the others would have to be different from that of this Divinity, and, if they were different, they could not be perfect. On the other hand, if they were perfect, they would be Him and not a different or additional Being. As your personality is your abstract counterpart, so is The Truth that of God. Both The Truth and God may be considered to be the Arche if we want to think simplistically; however, The Truth and God are more closely associated than space and time. Together, they are One, just as God is One in spite of His having three aspects. One could critique my opinion about God’s origin by claiming that, as there are no beginnings outside of time, and since God is timeless, He simply has always been— end of story. To which I reply, “I’ll take it.” If you will believe that, so will I. Nevertheless, it leaves us with an incomplete feeling. I prefer the “equilibrium” of which I have spoken: again, God emanates from The Truth, and God proclaims The Truth, such that the one gives rise to the other eternally, without beginning or end.

Absolute vs. Relative Truth A giant panda bear enters a restaurant and orders a large meal. He consumes all of it with a flourish, enjoying every bite. He then wipes his mouth, pays his bill, stands up, pulls out a pistol, shoots the waiter dead, and leaves. The police are called, and they intercept him at an intersection in his automobile as he is driving home. He looks puzzled as the police tell him they are arresting him and read him his rights, but he remains calm and does not resist them. A couple of months later, he testifies for himself at his trial, “Your honor, I am at a loss to know what all the fuss is about. I have behaved in the normal

manner of pandas. If you will consult Wikipedia, you will find that the giant panda of China eats shoots and leaves.”6

Relative Truth The majority of intellectuals and others throughout human history have believed that the truth is absolute, as in, for example, “Murder is a bad thing,” no matter who you are, where you live, what is your culture, and when in history you inhabit planet earth. A minority of people, the relative ethicists, believes that what is right or wrong does not vary according to factors (e.g., culture, time in history or the place where one lives). If the truth is relative, all I have written about The Truth and God is in vain, and not only that, it is consummate foolishness. Advocates of the principle of relative truth do not so much claim that everything is a matter of opinion as they contend that there is no ultimate standard, such that arguments and debates are strictly about who wins, and neither side is right or wrong. The ancient Greek Sophists were just as happy arguing one side of a case of law as they were arguing the other. Gorgias wrote a book in which he successfully defended Helen of Troy, and he was proud of it. Obviously, there are many questions without answers, and one person may have a particular opinion as to this or that answer while another person may have another, but a correct answer to each question does exist, and the opinion that opposes that answer is incorrect. The underlying and more expansive principle here is that everything is either good or bad, and God irrefutably knows which is which. There are shades of gray in space-time, but, in heaven, all is, as it were, either black or white. Great confusion obtains when we do not recognize this. The term “relative truth” belies the entity it purports to represent. “The truth” denotes the discovery of the true state of affairs of all of creation in terms of certainty, and the insertion of the adjective “relative” before it subtracts all of its meaning. “Relative truth” is worth talking about only because so many people believe it is real. We should otherwise discuss nothing more than “the truth” vs. “a lie.”

So-called relative truth is strictly about who wins. In a civilized society, conflicts theoretically take place in courts of law, but there is no guarantee of such limitation when the only motivation is to thrive regardless of how others are doing. Nietzsche and his Superman philosophy is the natural result of relative truth. I would say “end result,” except that, so very sadly, the next step after Nietzsche was Hitler. One only needs a single example of the truth and reality of absolute ethics to show that the relativist position is incorrect, and I do not think anyone can make a case for child abuse. Another good example of the weakness of the relativist position is seen in a psychiatrist’s office when the practitioner labels a person sociopathic when the patient’s behavior substantially and persistently harms others; a diagnostic assessment of this sort meets essentially no opposition. Yet, the accused might say, “It is a lifestyle with me. I am a child abuser; therefore, it is normal for me to abuse children. You go to football games; I get my kicks by scalding little girls.” (Shades of the infamous giant panda!) In addition, very few deny the goodness of Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer. Virtually everyone, absolute or relative ethicist, knows that Hitler was consummately evil, but the person who does not believe in an absolute standard floats in a sea of uncertainty and confusion as he tries to convincingly label him as such, while the absolute moralist builds his case on the firm foundation of the Natural Law. Said Lewis, “If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something— some Real Morality—for them to be true about.” The relative truth person might just as well not bother to debate, for, by his own admission, he cannot be right, just as his opponent cannot be right. This is a handicap of the first order. The tradition of at least the Western world is to divide philosophy into that which entails absolute truth and that which advocates the validity of relative truth. I do not see the latter as truth at all, and I therefore am unable to call it philosophy, which is the search for truth. The very term is an oxymoron because to be true is to be right, not “perhaps right.” Within a hundred years following Thales’s life and efforts, Greek philosophy had split into these two supposed camps. Heraclitus of Ephesus

originated the thought of relative truth and Parmenides that of absolute truth. As far as I am concerned, Parmenides is the great-grandfather of Western philosophy. His branch of philosophy is huge, with vigorous branching and glorious flowering. Though he lived in a polytheistic society, he believed in a single God, Being itself, and championed meaningful life wherein one cares about others because they and their lives are highly significant. He immersed himself in eternity. Parmenides’s way of absolute truth repeatedly leaves the concept of nothingness, worthlessness, and lack of identity behind with its connection and correlation with logic, the best ideas of humanity, and the greatest events of our history. As we have noted, it is the way of logos, while Heraclitus’s thought is that of doxa. Parmenides was objective, positive, clear, and optimistic, while Heraclitus’s thought was vague, shallow, and pessimistic. The difference between the two is perhaps best illustrated by looking at their philosophical offspring; Descartes, in the case of Parmenides, and Nietzsche in the case of Heraclitus. Descartes was one of the two main founders of modern science and probably the most precise philosopher ever, as he refused to include anything in his philosophy about which he had any doubt. As we have seen, he began with confirmation of his existence and worked from there. Thus, as the student in the story informed us, evil is a subtraction, a minus quantity. A sweater is a good thing. A hole in a sweater is a bad thing, and evil exists only in relation to something good, from which it subtracts. Goodness underlies everything meaningful and otherwise good that ever happens because goodness is constructive and creative. Evil is destructive, and is therefore unable to be associated with any true progress. We begin to see relative truth in action with Protagoras, a Greek Sophist teacher who lived nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, who, as the first known humanist, said that man is the measure of all things. This is not, in my view, merely wrong—it inevitably leads to a situation wherein that which is good and right depends solely upon what the most persuasive people are able to impose upon those who are less so. In this instance, one ends up not with objective learning, but with the declarations and orders to the oppressed from a person or a group that has managed to become the

most powerful entity of a state. Protagoras used and recommended rhetoric as the means of persuasion and was a professional instructor in it. He strictly utilized rhetoric, but means of persuasion can sometimes involve physical force as well. Hitler was the all-time ultimate beneficiary and user of the Sophist method, and, when he combined it with his vicious amorality, which included no inhibition with regard to killing anyone who stood in his way, we clearly saw what humanism could become. Bolstered by Nietzsche’s concept of “the Superman,” the ultimate evil and destructiveness of that Sophist thought of so long ago dramatically emerged in the person of the Nazi monster. Sophist thought and that of Nietzsche and Hitler all reject absolute truth. Hitler also presented it as Darwinism extrapolated into the sociopolitical arena, something that Darwin never envisioned. The Sophists taught that no issue is about absolute truth, that it is all about who wins. Sophism is the philosophy, or perhaps pseudophilosophy, of power. It is the mind-set of attorneys who do not have a moral compass to lead them to good values and high goals. The Sophist creed was that the end justifies the means; this is also the way of the tyrant who calls himself a leader. The majority of religious people of our world ascribe, when asked, to a religion based on absolute truth, which, so far as I am concerned, is synonymous with The Truth that I have described. These are primarily the devotees of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Natural Law The voice of conscience is God’s reminding us of Natural Law, the ethical part of The Truth. It is our most persistent reminder that the truth is absolute. The Stoics of ancient Greece based their thought on God, The Truth, and Natural Law, and their concepts have been virtually uncontested to the present day, at least in places where freedom predominates.7 The writers of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America had no

difficulty in perceiving Natural Law and its existence, and they were thoroughly dependent upon it in their deliberations. Lewis nicely outlined the rules and regulations of numerous societies throughout history in the appendix of his book, The Abolition of Man, showing that marked similarities exist/have existed among these various cultures in spite of major differences in religion and even differences in ways of thinking that were/are highly variable and deeply fundamental.7 In Mere Christianity, Lewis described this appendix thus: “If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. I need only ask the reader to think what an entirely different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a culture where two and two makes five.”8 Thus, humans all over the world have the same set of morals, from the pressure of which we cannot rid ourselves. We hear a voice of conscience emanating from Eternal Truth and telling us what we ought to do, but all of us break these laws with considerable regularity, whether we think we believe in absolute morality or not. Lewis calls these two observations “the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.” Lewis goes on to say that no one has ever admired selfishness, and that, though men have differed as to whether one should have one wife or four, they have never agreed that it is proper for a man to have any woman he likes. Whether we agree regarding the existence of an absolute standard of ethics that supersedes humanity, none of us follow it very well, and all of us consistently make excuses when it becomes apparent to others that we are failing in this respect, even those who deny the existence of absolute truth. Thus do those on either side of the issue attest to its validity and universality. Again, Lewis: “If we do not believe in (a standard of) decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having

behaved decently?”9 Yea, how many people want their daughter to marry a person who has no conscience? The relative ethicist often attempts to play upon the idea that human progress has left behind the need for rules because we are now like adults, able to regulate ourselves, whereas in ancient times, which were brutal times, we could not, or at least did not, do that. Such a claim is belied by the fact that the twentieth century has probably given us the most extreme examples of the abandonment of Natural Law ever seen on planet Earth, in the hubris, savagery, hate, and devotion to murder of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. They appealed to the most base and dark regions of human souls, smothering kindness and decency by lighting fires of resentment, envy, and prejudice. They used their power to consume, just as Satan does.10 Like the Sophists of old, Hitler dominated through rhetorical persuasion, while Stalin concentrated on the use of fear and force. The Berlin fiend mesmerized while the Moscow monster brutalized. Natural Law provides the basis of true liberalism, belief in the freedom of the individual to do as he chooses so long as he does no harm to anyone else, directly or indirectly, in the process. Such is an example of eternal and axiomatic truth, potential if there are no living and thinking individuals to practice it. The antithesis of this way of thinking began in earnest with Nietzsche, though Heraclitus had foreshadowed this way of thinking about twenty-five hundred years prior. Nietzsche died in an asylum for the insane, leaving behind a legacy punctuated by Hitler, the all-time best example of his “Superman.” Nietzsche was no authority, just as Heraclitus was no philosopher. In spite of the existence of the rules about Right and Wrong, God does not offer us a legalistic existence. It is not, with Him, “Do this or else” or “Don’t do this if you want to avoid execution.” He did not even create the rules; they exist from always to always without any need for promulgation. They are part of The Truth. Perhaps this is the reason some of them seem to be mutually exclusive. An example of this possible concern is the conflict between love and justice. We are to love everyone, but civilization requires regulation, and laws made for the benefit of all members of a community must be followed. The solution to this dilemma is nicely exemplified by

difficulties that parents sometimes must face. The good parent is both loving and wise, and, when his child, let us say, kills someone for gain— not, for example, in self-defense—he practices tough love for the sake of the community and to the benefit of the child as well. He does not shy from justice, and though he may love his child more than life, he provides, in this case, an object lesson that satisfies both love and justice. This is called “tough love,” and it is one of the most important principles of child raising and God’s “raising” us humans as well. Our heinous principle of political correctness emanates from the error of always putting love first because of an inability to identify what constitutes love in a given situation. It is vital to always practice common sense and thoughtful judgment. Any system of laws must have an element of flexibility. Many claim that our morals are the result of evolution. A summary of my feelings here is “Nice guys finish last.” Leo Durocher coined this term, which is similar to Johnny Carson’s “No good deed will ever go unpunished.” Durocher meant that empathy directed toward opponents in sports is likely to lead to losing ballgames. Though, in eternity, in the long run, those who have done good deeds in time will fare much better than those who have primarily sought their own comfort and pleasure, there is not only no evolutionary advantage of goodness on earth—there is a disadvantage, as Leo said. This being the case, the fact that so many people are so altruistic almost proves the existence of God and is equally evidential with regard to His goodness. Indeed, the majority of us experience innate impulsion to help others that feels quite natural, and many of us are willing to risk our lives in order to yield to it. Altruism is dangerous; yet, even apparently bad people will often rush to a burning automobile in order to pull someone out of it, and, when asked later why they thus risked their lives, they do not know. When such occasions arise, one’s feeling, which may even be subconscious, is that he ought to help in spite of his not even wanting to, and Lewis observes that this is strange indeed.11 He suggests that we analyze as follows: We ordinarily do not have just two feelings in response to this kind of call for

help; we have three. We feel obligated to help, we worry about the risk to ourselves if we choose to do that, and we perceive a sort of inner voice that judges which response on our part would be right, good, and correct and urges us to enact it. Hence, the conscience, which cannot be one of the other two urges.12 We have talked about the nature of the God of the Bible, particularly in considering the nature of The Truth, as we are still doing, and we can easily see here that The Law of Human Nature is something we might well associate with Him. It is not likely that we on our own would have three thoughts about the single situation in question here: “do it,” “don’t do it,” and “you ought to do it.” The third one sounds out of place as anything that could have developed because of the survival of the fittest. It comes from God and pertains to Natural Law. It centers on unselfishness and love, which means that it correlates quite well with the message of Jesus. The Law of Human Nature can be about intent (as Jesus said), because of our free will. To be resolved to do something evil is bad in itself, even if circumstances arise that prevent one’s carrying out his plans. Lewis notes that he is angry with a person who tries to steal his briefcase even if the person does not succeed, but that he is not angry at the man who is occupying the best seat on the train because he got there first. In other words, when one behaves in a certain way that is reasonable and fair, he is not to be maligned even if what he does is not in our favor. In this context, let us recall that the God of the Bible has given us free will and that one of Jesus’s interpretations of Old Testament law consists of bringing intent into the mix—the concept that intending to do something that is evil is as bad as actually doing it (Matthew 5:21–22). Thus, Natural Law seems right at home in God’s Word, especially in the New Testament. In my view, the voice of our conscience is that of the Holy Spirit of God. Before Jesus left the disciples after having appeared to them in his heavenly state, He said He would send them a Comforter, a Helper who would indwell their very minds (John 14:16–17, 15:26–27, 16:7–11). We are most

likely to recognize the presence and communication of the Holy Spirit when we have faith. Natural Law, which we perceive by way of our consciences, is a tremendous part of The Truth, and its existence nearly proves that the truth is absolute. If it is indeed an extant compendium of rules about what we should do and not do, we can easily move to “The existence 0f laws demands a lawgiver” (i.e., God). If ours were a universe of chance, arising in a dead and purposeless void, we would not expect there to be any such thing as absolute truth. In that situation, we would not expect any concept of sin, guilt, or regret to exist. We would have a dog-eat-dog society, anarchy, and everyone would consider it quite normal. Yet, guilt, as an example, is very real. Depression is generally underlain by guilt, and many depressed people kill themselves every day of the year, whether they are amoral or not. This would not happen if there were no absolute standard in existence. Five thousand years of law, which was and is necessary if humans are to be able to associate with one another, cries out against disbelief in Natural Law, which also shows up in our natural altruism. The majority of us experience innate impulsion to help others that feels quite natural, and many of us are willing to risk our lives in order to yield to it. Altruism is dangerous; yet, even apparently bad people will often rush to a burning automobile in order to pull someone out of it, and, when asked later why they thus risked their lives, they do not know. When such occasions arise, one’s feeling, which may even be subconscious, is that he ought to help in spite of his not even wanting to, and Lewis observes that this is strange indeed, He advised that we think about it as follows. We do not have just two feelings in response to a call for help wherein we might be endangered; we have three. We feel obligated to help, we worry about the risk to ourselves if we choose to do that, and we perceive a sort of inner voice that judges which response on our part would be right, good and correct and urges us to enact it. This call of conscience cannot be one of the other two urges. It is the call of conscience; it is the urge of Natural Law.12 Natural Law or “The Law of Human Nature,” which was C. S. Lewis’s favorite term for it, may well join mathematics to form the two main

constituents of The Truth. In the first chapter of Mere Christianity, Lewis presents evidence that there is a God from whom conscience flows into our minds, bringing us this or that component of Natural Law whenever and as we need it in order to be able to make the choices that each day presents. Even the person who claims to be a relative ethicist will cite this absolute standard of ethics if he feels someone is mistreating him. That is why the relative ethicist cannot maintain his belief and continually finds himself in a situation of reduction ad absurdum unless he is prepared to be content with all situations. He cannot complain about anything; he must say things like, “Oh, you just punched me in the eye, rendering me blind. But that could be good.” Once he says it is bad that you committed such an atrocious act, he has appealed to that which he claims does not exist. Again in Mere Christianity, Lewis defended the reality of Natural Law in a way I thought particularly clever. “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong,” he wrote, “you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking your promise to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties don’t matter; but then, next minute they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong—in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? It seems then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.” Therefore, the existence of a Natural Law of human ethics is undeniable. Supposed relative ethicists strive mightily to deny a place for it in the annals of logic and tradition, but it pops up on a regular basis in spite of their best efforts to quell it. Situations invariably and repeatedly arise that prove its validity, as I have noted.

The Truth Is Irrepressible The Truth represents potential of the highest order. Its component, mathematics, underlies all of the mechanics of the universe—all action thereof, by way of equations such as f = ma, force equals mass times acceleration. Mathematics underlies existence as well as action. We have previously seen that all matter reduces to energy and that the warping of space-time is precisely captured in mathematical equations. The Truth is positive, and positivity, with its dynamism, underlies all creative events of significance. Positivity tends to be good, and negativity tends to be not so good. Of course, sometimes something bad can be removed, subtracted, and that kind of negativity is, of course, a good thing. The removal of a cancer, for example, is, philosophically, the subtraction of a subtraction, which is a good thing, a positive act. In any case, the Lord of all has to be good if one is to believe that he does good things. We have alluded to creativity as an aspect of goodness and something that is therefore highly compelling, and one would expect the Personification of Goodness, The Truth, to be creative to an enormous—probably infinite— degree. Further, as The Truth is not only good, but all-Good, the Best, a Person who is the embodiment of The Truth would be creative to an enormous—probably infinite—degree. He would be as compelling as any entity can be, and He would be as creative as it is possible to be. Now, again, here we are! We exist, and there must be some reason that we do. Someone made us, but how could He have done that, and how could He have come to be? If we cannot imagine a rational reason why we are here and why God exists, we have no alternative but to resort to imagination on the level of an Einstein in order to come to any conclusions at all. The ultimate truth of the matter is that we are thinking on such a high level, in such a profound depth, and in such a mysterious sphere that we cannot know, but we can look at possibilities and judge which is the most likely. As Einstein used his imagination to such an extreme that he theorized things that, to minds of his day, were impossible, almost ridiculous, we must, because we have no alternative, come to conclusions that cannot be imagined as true by the vast majority of minds of today. I say, again, that

The Truth is so compelling and irrepressible that it had to do something and that it did do something—it personified. After that, things went as I have described. I do not speak of magic here, as in the waving of a wand that causes the appearance of people and a world. I say that God exists on such a high level and is so creative that His thought is reality. After all, He is The Truth, and The Truth is reality. It is not a “Let there be …” and “Zap! There it is” thing. It is a matter of the nature of God and of The Truth. These natures are inevitable, and, if everything that I have said about God and The Truth is true, one would expect a God who emanated from The Truth to be, at least for practical purposes, omniscient. Now, what is the sole quality in a person that can make Him omnipotent, able to do everything? The more we know, the more we can do, and, if we know everything there is to know, we are able to do anything and everything. If He is that and maximally creative, His thought’s comprising reality follows seamlessly. We humans are able to make things through a sequence of learning, thinking, planning, and the acquisition of needed materials, followed by some work. That being so, it does not seem strange to me that God, on a level of existence much higher than and vastly superior to ours, would be able to create merely by thinking, that whatever He thought of would be, would come to exist. Having expected this ability of His on a philosophical basis, we then find that bright and famous scientists (e.g., Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans) believed in it for scientific reasons, because of the profound “fallout” of quantum physics and Relativity.13 Finally, we can consult the first chapters of the book of Genesis and find God’s creating by thinking, by imagining. (Much more about this in chapter 10.) Our universe and we are the thought of God, as I have previously noted. Mind, specifically the Mind of God, is the cornerstone of the timebound world and everything that is in it.

The Nihilism of Relative Truth If The Truth is indeed the Arche, those who believe that the truth is relative at least court nonexistence because The Truth, as the Origin of everything, is absolute. Consequently, it is not surprising that believers in relative truth

of the most profound thought have seen themselves as unreal. I have examined this concept in terms of the Sophists of ancient Greece. Belief in absolutes and meaning, purpose, and reason connect irrevocably with one another, and disbelief in these connects with uncertainty and confusion. Without absolute Truth, we humans are imaginary, whatever that would mean. With it, we live and can know we do because we can trace our ability to live right back to the Beginning, which is God and which is The Truth. Basic Buddhism, as excellent as it is with regard to the definition and recommendation of desirable behavior, is relativistic with regard to Truth. Certainly, the Dalai Lama is: He stated that clearly in an article in Time magazine several years ago.14 Therefore, this gentleman is nihilistic, and it is common knowledge that this is so; he does not believe that he actually exists.15 In Buddhism, votaries go from death to death; I do not wish to be insulting, but nonlife—nihilism—to consumption by nirvana is essentially death to death, from quasi-identity to no identity at all. For practical purposes, the Sophists did the same thing. In Christianity, one goes from life to better life, from some identity to complete and glorious identity. Again, in Sophism and Buddhism, one goes from nothing to nothing, whereas, in Christianity, one passes from something to something better. Gorgias, Protagoras’s pupil and the ultimate example of Sophism in Plato’s day, quite readily stated that he doubted his own existence. Death to him was therefore irrelevant. In some sense and to some degree, this is true with regard to Christianity as well, but there are major differences. Though the Christian passes, in death, to a glorious state, the shadowy and frightening passage to that destination and state—death—is not to be taken lightly. Death is in no way good; it is thoroughly bad. It is not a “part of life.” Jesus considered it a tragedy and wept in its presence (John 11:35). There could be something positive to be said for it (since it represents passage from this world to a better world, provided one has the Guide) were it not the wages of sin (Romans 6:23), which is deviation from The Truth (i.e., reality).

Another way in which we may consider nihilism is as follows. When one denies the existence of natural laws, axiomatic and irrefutable Natural Law of the ethical kind, then one has nothing to discuss with anyone else. What kind of debate, what kind of argument, what kind of agreement, what kind of worthwhile, gratifying, and enjoyable discussion can one have if there is no such thing as absolute truth that provides one a conclusion that is worth coming to? Why bother to have a discussion to begin with under such a paradigm? Yet we know that communication among humans is good and, in fact, crucial. Lack of communication leads to chaos, which is a hallmark of Satan. Do we humans hold learning up as good? Even where advocates of relative truth are concerned, the answer is yes. Yet, none of the words we have used to describe Satan or evil can logically be connected with the pursuit of learning. What is the use of an imaginary person’s exchanging beliefs or supposed knowledge with anyone? Nothing could be vainer. Without love, it is probably not worthwhile to exist, but, without communication, we essentially do not exist. Objective research has revealed that solitude for extended periods leads to profound changes for the worse in human mentality. Likewise, without learning, we exist in the most feeble fashion.

Conclusions Concerning the Truth Something must be the Arche, and The Truth is the only candidate. Reams of evidence exist in its favor as such. I conclude my fundamental beliefs, ideas, and opinions concerning The Truth by stating how I feel about its components in terms of their relative importance: 1. As I have already written, cognitive life is the most important factor because, without life of the kind associated with thought, nothing else is of any importance at all. Without organisms possessing this kind of life, no other entity can be perceived, such that all is vanity. 2. Communication is of greater importance than love, but only because we cannot do anything about love without communication, such that it can

come to fruition only in connection with communication. 3. Love is high on our list for obvious reasons. It is the centerpiece of Christianity and the most important source of its strength other than the triune God Himself. Its position in the forefront of Christian belief, behavior, and evangelism is what led to this religion’s conquering the Roman Empire. Mercy is the most important corollary of love. 4. Humility is much more important than most people realize; in fact, its opposite, pride, is usually felt to be a very good thing. It is not, unless the pride we feel is for another person. If we are proud of ourselves, we at least flirt with the common denominator of evil. Satan’s great lie was his pride. He believed he was or could be equal to God, and he is supremely wrong, derelict in his duty, hateful, and entirely asynchronous with reality to think such a ridiculous thing, especially because, as the personification of evil, he is a subtraction, not a positive reality; he may even be annulled because of the acts of Jesus. If we all possessed and exercised humility, we would eliminate all strife, such as war, and enjoy something like heaven on earth. 5. Justice, so important, so vital that seeing it as far down this list as number five in this list does not seem right until we look at the examples of goodness that subordinate it. Justice is necessary for the cohesion of reality. The Truth is the summation of perfection. It is virtually synonymous with beauty and probably with simplicity as well.

Notes 1. It seems to me that consensus is highly important and that humanity would have to be a race of ignorant people to have believed in God in error for so long. Yet, we have produced astounding technology. 2. The Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne has written repeatedly in his works about the similarity of the research done in science to that of theology. 3. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Books, 1998), 128–31.

4. Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy. 5. Though I am not sure it is necessary—it may not even be desirable—I cannot resist addressing the question as to whether The Truth contains all worthwhile knowledge. There would seem to be major consequences or implications that result if this is so and if this is not so. If The Truth does not contain all meaningful knowledge and God is omniscient, as the majority of religious people in the world believe, God must learn or have learned. If The Truth contains all knowledge of significance, He has nothing to learn. Though The Truth, synonymous with Him, may not contain all knowledge, it does contain all wisdom and therefore the ability to judge. I noted from the first that I would at times engage in discussion that would not entail strong conviction. I am certainly doing that now. I am speculating; yet, my thoughts here are compatible with my intuition, though they could be just a matter of wishful thinking. Jesus said that He had other flocks to which to attend; conceivably he could learn from these groups as well as from us. Yet, if He, as The Truth, is the Source of everything, how can there be anything for Him to learn? Possibly the answer here is tied up in our free will. If we are able to choose to do something from which we learn something, could we possibly pass that learning on to God? This seems quite presumptuous to me, but perhaps it could happen; I simply do not know. Perhaps God could experiment. In fact, I must wonder if that is why He made us, that he could see what happened when we used our free will. Thus, He might just observe us or He might cause us to do something and then observe the effects of our doing it. Perhaps, maybe, though I am not entirely comfortable talking about it, but if the knowledge we had a hand in producing only became such when He judged it as such, I could perhaps buy into this concept. It is reminiscent of Haisch’s idea, expressed in The Purpose- Guided Universe, that the purpose of our existence is to enable God to

vicariously enjoy what happens to us and what we cause to happen. As a Person outside of time, He can theoretically do nothing but think (though His thought is supremely interestingly since it is reality); therefore, to have thinkers and doers such as we in time to do things in His place might be a plausible way of having experiences He might not otherwise have. Again, I do not know, and I am not comfortable. I do not think such an idea is, however, necessarily in opposition to Judeo-Christian belief, though it is not part of it. Yet, it sounds like God “using” us, and that thought is not quite commensurate with my idea of the nature of God, though I do not believe we are in a position to try to be authoritative with regard to what is His nature. (I do, however, think we are fairly good judges, especially because of our consciences.) It is fascinating that we can consider whether God learns or not and still believe that He is omniscient. However, as a timeless Being, there is no “when” in regard to his learning, and therefore He has always known everything regardless of our talk about the possibility of His learning. Even if He did not achieve the omniscient state by being The Truth, He is omniscient from always to always. Or can that be? It is a heady thought. The nicest thing for us about all of this is that we could possibly be or become partners with our God, and I believe that, at least in a way and/or to some degree, we have been created for that purpose. Wow. If God learns, The Truth is fundamental reality, but not all of reality. Does this mean, then, that God is dependent upon us humans? Or does it torpedo The Truth as the origin of God? Well, I have gone far enough—I have reached the boundaries of human possibility. Let me bring us back to where we need to be, at least most of the time, by abdicating to utter simplicity: I adore God, and I worship Him. For humans, that is reality and, in some sense, all of it. Conceivably, knowledge emanates from events that can only happen in time. If this is so, it may be that the existence of large numbers of people is desirable and possibly necessary in order that many things may happen, such that much knowledge can be produced. Humanity might be

sort of a matrix through which events that generate knowledge occur, scientific and otherwise. In this instance, God might learn by assimilating such knowledge. We may generate knowledge in this life and learn it as such in the next by exploring the Mind of God. God may have other sources of learning, of knowledge, for instance, through other people on other planets, who may even be in other universes. Whether He learns or not, He might or might not have any need for us as producers of possible knowledge. If we are His thought, as I believe, and if God learns as I have speculated He might, we have before us a scenario of God’s learning through logos, in fact through thought experiments. This situation would correlate nicely with our previous discussion concerning learning through study of doxa vs. learning via engagement in logos. Time’s being illusory could be the entire key to our problem here. If it is indeed not what it seems to be, its absence may not be what it seems to be, such that our grand dilemma dissolves. Jeans spoke of “a designing and/or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds.” 6. Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (New York: Profile Books, 2003). 7. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: MacMillan, 1976), 97– 100. 8. Lewis, Mere Christianity. 9. In order to be omniscient, one must have endless knowledge, and, the more one knows, the more he can do. If his knowledge is infinite, his capability will be likewise. 10. I am unable to disbelieve in Satan because of the terrible conditions and situations that I see in our world. 11. Lewis, Mere Christianity. 12. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

13. Foster, The Philosophical Scientists. 14. Time magazine, in its March 19, 2008, issue, depicted the Dalai Lama as a relative ethicist. 15. Great World Religions: Buddhism, part 2 of a course produced by the Teaching Company: Professor Malcolm David Eckel, PhD, Boston and Harvard Universities.

Chapter 9 The Physics and Philosophy of Eternal Life: Einstein Showed That We Live Forever Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to each other, “Why do we sit here until we die? If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ then the famine is in the city and we shall die there; and if we sit here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare us, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die” (2 Kings 7:3–4). (Here describes the plight of three rather helpless outcasts agonizing over their plight in a setting where Jerusalem is being besieged by the ancient Assyrians.) Abstract: Unless we live forever, all is vanity, and there is no reason for this book to exist. Happily, Einstein taught us that we are all immortal. As he showed us that time is illusory, and because time is the immediate cause of death, death itself is an illusion because anything caused by an illusory entity must itself be unreal. Thus, what onlookers perceive as termination of life is actually transition of a mind to timelessness. However, we will need a guide in the life to come because it will be entirely unfamiliar; therefore, those without Jesus are forever lost.

Science, Theology, and Apologetics We all live forever, and I will provide enough evidence to this effect here to win a civil court case or a debate on the matter. We have seen in part 1 that things are not as they seem, that almost nothing in our world is, in fact, what it seems to be. We have noted that our physical senses serve us well in their helping us to live our lives in time but that they have little to do with the discernment of ultimate truth and reality. We have characterized the belief that things are as they seem can best examine this feature of our time-bound home in terms of logos and doxa, and we shall do

so in this chapter as we develop the concept of a logos universe that is quite different from the doxa universe that our physical senses present to us daily. This will enable us to perceive more clearly the ultimate nature of the physical universe, a world where death is not what it seems to be. This is the first of two installments of the “new” apologetics. As we begin here our investigation of what is new in the vindication and defense of God, we shall find that the subordination of the universe and everything in it to mind, together with Einstein’s belief that space-time is illusory, leads us to a concept of our world that is fundamentally new. We can make a case for the insignificance of death by way of the use of words (i.e., as it were, through the technique of debate); whether it is otherwise meaningful, I do not know, but I think our discussion would be incomplete without it. Julius Caesar, assassinated exactly two thousand years before my first wife and I began to go steady in high school, has, from my perspective, been dead for 2,056 years and eighty-two days as I write today, but how long he has been dead from his perspective, which would seem to be more important, is quite different. As far as I can see, from “where he sits,” he departed time only an instant ago. One cannot refute the claim that Caesar was killed on the fifteenth or sixteenth of March in the year 44 BC, but, for someone who is outside of time, time does not pass. Therefore, insofar as Caesar is concerned, whether he is conscious or not, it is still March 15 or 16, 44 BC. We are unconscious for quite a while longer than this every night, so why worry about death that removes us from time? Yet it is easier to say that than it is to comfort the bereaved with it. Therefore, I am going to treat death much more seriously than this line of thought suggests I should. Jesus did: Jesus wept (John 11:35). I am not presently writing about whether we will be glad to be alive forever. Happiness in eternity is a religious matter, one to which we will be paying a great deal of attention. Obviously, we must, if we are to have a discussion about something that anyone cares about. There are basically three possible ways to spend eternity: alive/happy, alive/unhappy, and dead. The third is better than the second unless perhaps the degree of unhappiness is mild. The degree of misery could be severe, however. Imagine something like being buried alive forever, and you will quickly see what I mean. At best, our arrival at the end of our appointed years in our present lives will lead

us, provided we indeed remain conscious, into a realm with which we shall be entirely unfamiliar, such that satisfactory life in it will necessitate our obtaining help. The only available Guide in our world to come is Jesus the Christ. Theology is mostly about authority, such that much of the research in this field consists of finding reasons to believe the claims of religious figures and those who support their validity. In order to assess the likelihood that these people are dependable, one looks at their credentials, at the rationality of their contentions, and at whether their communications jibe with Scripture. In addition, we should look for the ring of truth, the intuitive feeling that we receive when we hear or read what someone says and what others whom we respect say about them and their beliefs. Thus, where the Christian faith is concerned, we examine Jesus, primarily by reading His words; we examine the writings of the authors of the New Testament that support His divinity; we examine the works of subsequent writers of good repute after we have distinguished the ones on whom we believe we can rely; we evaluate the integrity and the words of our peers in this respect; and we decide whether this or that faith has the ring of truth.1 Apologetics per se is, of course, not about authority; it is entirely objective, whereas not all of religion can be entirely so. I do not ask you to believe anything because I believe it, because my grandmother believed it, because I am fretting about the fate of your immortal soul, because I think you might be thinking or doing things that are repulsive to me, or because I believe my welfare in eternity depends on how I do with regard to your prospective conversion. I do not even fret about my offspring anymore, as I believe the Holy Spirit of God will take care of the important things if I do the footwork, and the footwork is not difficult. In fact, I enjoy it.

Modern Physics and Immortality Modern physics afford me all the information I need to support my contention that we will be forever conscious and eternally able to think coherently. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene states in his most recently published book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, that (paraphrasing) the most

important message we have received from scientific investigators during the past century is that experience is often a misleading guide to the true nature of reality.2 Compare this to the contention of the brilliant Parmenides, almost a mentor of Socrates, twenty-five hundred years ago: “Not let habit born from much experience compel you … to direct your sightless eye … but judge by reason.” Hone in on the words, “experience,” “habit,” “sightless eye,” and “reason.” He is saying, “Do not allow the deeply ingrained habits you have learned through much experience to prevent you from replacing your undependable senses with reason when you are attempting to discern the ultimately true state of things.” The only essential difference between Greene’s and Parmenides’s statements is that the ancient Greek adds his advice that we seek important answers through rational accounting. In rendering his opinion here, Greene shows he heartily believes that things are not as they seem, and he emphatically underscores this fascinating assertion with a vivid illustration. He tells us that our view of ultimate reality is comparative to that which we obtain regarding a Van Gogh if we view it through an empty Coca-Cola bottle. In expressing this opinion, he is in good company: Both Plato and Paul subsequently say the same thing, with different language. Plato believed it is our thought, not our senses, that can show us ultimate reality, and Paul wrote in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, verse 12, “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!”3

Doxa and Logos The concepts that “Things are as they seem to be” and “Things are not as they seem to be” can conveniently be defined and described in relation to doxa and logos, respectively. Doxa, which gave rise to such English words as orthodox and paradox, refers to everything in the universe as perceived by our senses. For those who believe that doxa reveals ultimate reality satisfactorily, things are as they seem. Logos means “rational accounting,” and those who disdain doxa as a revealer of ultimate truths and believe that

logos is the key to such matters necessarily believe that things are not as they seem. With logos, one sees with the mind’s eye. Certainly, both “doxa people” and “logos people” employ rational accounting, but the latter consider that doxa is substantially deceptive in revealing whatever it reveals —very little—in the way of the ultimate nature of physical reality. There is no doubt in my mind that those on the logos side with regard to that which best points us to ultimate truths (e.g., the Answer) are correct, though I believe that faith in the true God is vital as well, as I shall discuss below. Most often, one finds that doxa people are atheistic or agnostic and that they are negative or neutral in their feelings about the possibility of living forever. These individuals particularly admire the scientific method and tend to derive their beliefs concerning all matters from observation and experimentation. For them, nothing, such as ethics, is axiomatic. Most believe that what is right or wrong is relative and depends on various factors, such as the time in history a person lives or the society in which he dwells. Logos people, on the other hand, are generally religious and believers in immortality. They may well look to science for evidence concerning ultimate matters, but they see doxa as often deceptive where these are concerned, employing rational accounting and/or faith in their seeking truth. They are apt to utilize thought experiments as opposed to the more conventional sort. These people believe in axioms, facts that do not need creation or proof in order to exist, particularly in the sphere of ethics. The doxa-oriented are nearly always humanists, whereas the logos-oriented usually do not believe the assertion of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things.” Protagoras is the father of humanism, which is a lot like a religion, and his student, Gorgias, carried it forth quite competently. Protagoras, building on the confusion of Heraclitus, taught that all begins and ends with humanity, that because we do not detect with our senses any minds superior to those of humans, we should assume that there are none in existence. Socrates and Plato strongly disagreed, but Aristotle, though a student of Plato, almost “straddled the fence.” Considering how much he learned in a scientific mode, almost entirely on his own volition, and how much of this he transmitted to his students, who included the illustrious Alexander the Great, he must have been hard-pressed to de-emphasize doxa in any way.

Humanism and the claim that doxa is our only source of ultimate truth correlate closely with one another, though many humanists believe there is no ultimate truth at all, at least none that is worth pursuing.

Historical Consensus and Citing The first step we will take in supporting our thesis of eternal life will be to go through the history of humanity and see what the prominent beliefs of intellectuals were from one era to the next with regard to immortality, deity, axioms, and logos as the primary path to ultimate reality. We shall see that the consensus of humankind with regard to death as termination vs. death as transition has almost always been in favor of transition, at least in the Western world.

Ancient Times Looking at the Greek philosophers who lived, studied, spoke and wrote prior to the time of Socrates, one finds that most of them trusted their minds instead of their senses in contemplating the ultimate. I have already mentioned the most important of these, Parmenides, was especially adept as well as enthusiastic in his extolling the virtues of logos. He was possibly the only person ever to win a debate against Socrates. As I essentially noted above, he told us to utilize logos for these purposes and not to depend on “doxa.” Certainly, the two founders of Western philosophy, Socrates and Plato, living well over two thousand years ago, believed in immortality and that things are not as they seem. Socrates, one of the three greatest teachers of all times, and probably the wisest person who ever lived except for Jesus, went to his death without fear, firmly believing in Providence and an afterlife. One sees this clearly in Plato’s four dialogues that have their settings in the events surrounding Socrates’s trial, sentencing, and execution. In the final one of these, the Phaedo, Plato describes the great man’s swallowing the hemlock and continuing to provide wise aphorisms as he feels his limbs becoming heavier and heavier as he fades away into eternity. He is characterized as remaining completely placid while his friends grieve in forte tone and beg him to try to escape.

Socrates wrote nothing because he felt that communication was insufficient unless it consisted of discourse, such that he could not adequately duplicate conversation with the written word. He felt that give and take is crucial in this respect. More importantly, he was not as much interested in conveying information as he was in stimulating thought, the development of opinions, and friendly debate. He recognized that what we can know for sure is vastly less than what we can believe, for which reason he concentrated on helping people to organize and clarify their beliefs because doing so enhances one’s understanding of why he believes as he does. Plato wrote strictly in dialogue in order to make his works as much like conversation as possible, and, with the greatest of modesty as well as admiration of Socrates, he put the great majority of his philosophy into the mouth of his mentor. Therefore, in most cases, his convictions cannot be distinguished from those of his teacher. Most students of Plato’s works consider his Republic to represent his greatest accomplishment. It contains his analogy of the cave, which goes as follows. Humanity is represented as people sitting chained to chairs in a deep, dark cave. Even their heads are restrained in a way that prevents their turning them. A fire burns behind them, projecting their images onto the cave wall. They watch the movements of these images and believe that they represent reality and all of it. Eventually, one particular person, representing the philosopher, yearns for additional knowledge. He manages to escape his chains and make his way to the entrance of the cave. He goes out into the sunshine and sees the grass, trees, birds, and other animals, and he is dazzled as he realizes there is so much more to reality than anything he had ever imagined. Thus did Plato present to us the most famous and probably the most piercing illustration of “Things are not as they seem” that anyone has ever constructed. Alfred North Whitehead, a prominent British intellectual of the early twentieth century, said that Plato was such a great philosopher that all philosophy since his came upon us has been but footnotes on his work. I can only agree; he is to philosophy as Michelangelo is to sculpture. Whitehead was at Cambridge at the same time Sir James Jeans and the highly insightful Sir Arthur Eddington were there. (These two figure

powerfully in our story, as we shall soon see.) He was clearly in the camp of logos. Though enamored with doxa, Aristotle could not bring himself to disconnect from Plato with regard to the best way to seek fundamental truths. Traditionally, we can list the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews as believers in immortality, though they generally held out no hope of happiness after death. In both Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, the major heroes descend into the underworld, the realm of the dead, and find it to be an unpleasant place. One of them encounters Achilles, who makes the statement that he would rather be a slave in an earthly life than a king where he now finds himself. Then, in the first book of Samuel, in the Bible, we find Saul hiring a medium to call Samuel up out of sheol so that he can ask the prophet what he is going to do against the Philistines. (The news is not good, and, the following day, Saul is able to consult with Samuel without having him brought up out of sheol (1 Samuel 28:7–20). The Jews were doubtless logos people, probably from the time of Abraham until the present. (To their great credit, they have always worshiped their God without His having given them the hope of eternal life.) They therefore represent an exception to the general rule that theists tend to believe in immortality, and there are others. Jesus was the ultimate logos person, particularly with regard to His supernatural powers. He was and is, in fact, “the Logos,” the Word of God, as He is the executive aspect of the Trinity and as He came into space-time to deliver God’s most important messages. Certainly, raising the dead and telling people that they could, with enough faith, move a mountain, reflects His mind-set of logos. I have already noted how Paul the apostle, Jesus’s greatest missionary, expressed in his first letter to the Corinthians the same thought that Plato enunciated in his analogy of the cave. Very interestingly, the biblical book of Isaiah, written a half century before the time of Paul and containing much Messianic prophecy, offers us the following tasty piece of that genre: “He will not judge by what His eyes see,

nor make a decision by what His ears hear.” This is a very unusual and insightful statement that I would not expect to see in the context in which we find it unless it truly reflected divine inspiration. It could just be that Isaiah was a particularly excellent philosopher who was familiar with the doxa-logos controversy, but I am surprised that he deems it particularly important that the Messiah would avoid utilizing his visual and auditory senses in order to judge whether he was in the presence of truth. Christianity, rife with the confidence of its votaries in logos, became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the latter part of the fourth century AD, and the Western part of the empire, which had been fading in authority since the third century, fell in the fifth. The Germanic and other barbarians that took over that part of the Roman possessions also took on its Christianity. These peoples melded with the Romans and others of the Roman lands that they conquered, forming early Christendom. The European Middle Ages, the age of the church, was upon us. Thus, during the time of the late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages, logos continued to dominate. The eastern part of the empire took on the Christian faith at the same time as the western and subsequently did much better than the west in the political and military spheres. It successfully fended off invaders until 1453 while the western part lasted only until 476, but both held to their faith and utilized it in their military operations and daily living.

The Middle Ages Roman Catholicism prevailed in both East and West until 1054, the year of the East-West (“Great”) Schism, when the easterners, who were no longer willing to recognize the pope as supreme authority in the church, formed the Greek Orthodox Church under a patriarch. Though thinking of the doxa sort frequently occurred in conjunction with practicalities at this time in history, logos was clearly the prevailing mind-set among the people of the lands of the formerly combined Roman Empire until the time of Darwin and Freud. Insofar as the church was concerned, it was essentially part of doctrine, and the same was true with regard to Islam. The same was

essentially true with regard to Islam beginning in 610 when Mohammed began to proclaim that Allah was the true God and that he was speaking to and through him.4 Various orders of Christian monks arose during the early Middle Ages, often called the “Dark Ages,” which lasted from the fifth century until the ninth. Living together in monasteries, monks devoted most of their time to reading Scripture, praying, performing ritual, and in general seeking to draw as close as possible to their Lord. These intense devotees, highly logos-oriented, copied and recopied reams of Christian writings. Beginning around the year, 1000, they unexpectedly began to preserve pagan writings as well, but they were quite particular regarding the pagans of whom they approved. Working on the same materials as many Muslims, they participated in the preservation of the works of Plato and Aristotle. Charlemagne, who ruled much of Europe during the late eighth and early ninth centuries, conferred regularly with a chosen group to discuss intellectual matters. His attempt to encourage deep thinking was rather feeble—it is questionable whether he could even write his name— but, considering the age in which he lived, he was at least forward-looking in this respect. By the time of the high Middle Ages, the ancient Greek genius had penetrated Europe to the extent that, except for church studies, the writings of Aristotle essentially became the entire curricula of the earliest universities, which had come to the fore at the end of the eleventh century and were first established in Bologna (Italy) and Paris. Plato and Aristotle also fed the great exacerbation of learning that occurred in the (primarily Italian) Renaissance5 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Aristotle’s stupendous studies and findings on most of the aspects of doxa as well as social matters must have led readers in the direction of confidence in their surroundings as perceived by the senses without a lot of thought, but the teachings of the church held so firmly that Europe remained Christendom in spirit, and belief in immortality and that things are ultimately not as they seem remained in place not only beyond 1500, by convention the first year of the modern era, but a great deal longer than that.

The Early Modern Era The Scientific Revolution arrived in the sixteenth century with Copernicus, a Polish priest who showed that the planets revolve around the sun. It hit its stride in the seventeenth century, primarily with Galileo in Italy, the first person to point a telescope at the heavens and learn something important by doing so, and Sir Isaac Newton in England, who invented the calculus and gave us our first theory of gravity and our most basic and important equations of physics. These advances were in the physical sciences— disciplines such as physics, astronomy, and cosmology—and they had little if any effect on people’s beliefs. Masters of the arts, in fact, responded at this time with compositions glorifying God, best exemplified in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, who celebrated the order of our universe with melodies of precise rhythm, pervaded by exuberance that thrilled the soul, pointed out order, and promised security. The somber chants of the 1500s and before gave way to happy celebrations of the partnership of God and humanity. There was in fact so much change in the music that the era is known as the “Baroque,” meaning the “Bizarre,” period.

The Later Modern Era Even the Enlightenment of the 1700s, with its emphasis on humanism, did not much impact the convictions of the average person or even most intellectuals. Even Voltaire, perhaps the most “enlightened” of all, died “adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.” Logos continued to prevail. Nevertheless, our race began to be proud of itself and its accomplishments. With Hayden and Mozart, music became grander as we celebrated our cleverness in what we now call the classical era. Aloof aristocracy danced the minuet, and the coming effect of discoveries in the life sciences was foreshadowed. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species and, soon thereafter, Sigmund Freud began to tell us what he had learned by way of psychoanalysis.6 These life scientists caused God to seem less necessary than He had in the past, and logos began to give way to doxa. Evolution seemed to suggest that, given enough time, various life forms could develop

by chance just as well as any God could create them, and psychoanalysis raised the question of whether religion was just another manifestation of sexual fixation or some other foolishness of the subconscious mind. With failing faith in God came fear, which insinuated itself into the minds of men and women. With diminished hope of heaven, they needed diversion —to emote much in order to think less about death. Beethoven obliged in spades, adding lush and romantic tours de force to the classical music created mainly by Mozart and Haydn. Chopin’s sweeping masterpieces carried one away to exclusive retreats of the heart. Thus, otherworldliness declined in the 1800s and probably arrived at its nadir between 1900 and 1927. Concurrently, many physicists of that time came to believe that there were no other major discoveries to be made and that further scholarly investigation would only consist of filling in details. Philosophers began to have similar pessimistic thoughts. The pendulum of thought swung in the direction of doxa, such that many became overconfident in it. “Things are as they seem” made more sense to people than it ever had before. The ideas of the pre-Socratic, Heraclitus, who saw nothing beyond the time-bound world and was thus preoccupied with change, returned with an authority his teachings had never attained during his lifetime. The “Things are not as they seem” way of thinking about immortality and such, which had been prevalent at least since the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers, faded in favor of, “Enjoy and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Nietzsche, in spite of psychosis and eventual treatment by confinement, attained widespread recognition as a philosopher worth reading. Thus, human history entered into a period of corporate depression, inevitable with diminished belief in Absolute Truth with its absolute ethics. Faith, belief in eternal life, and feelings of security were shaken to their very foundations. In large numbers, people began to change in their feelings about deity, wondering whether such existed and whether death might be permanent. People withdrew into themselves—communication dried up. Narcissism became more common than it ever had been before. This state of mind leads to failure of the development of identity, a sense of self and, in fact, self per se. The person most about self is he or she with the least

self, and vice versa; narcissism, in other words, leads to small personalities. Knowing little about others, one tends to hate them. We cannot say for sure what this had to do with wars, but the American Civil War, mainly caused by the insistence of southern magnates that some people were born to serve others in bondage, produced over six hundred thousand American casualties from 1861 to 1865. The Spanish- American War followed, and then came World War I, begun over what was a triviality compared to the greater than ten million deaths it caused. This war caused the next, and fifty million people died in World War II. Communication is the essence of meaningful life. Without it, one can possibly attend to necessities, such as food, water, and shelter, and one can even learn, but, with no one to discuss anything with, life is barren. One is left with a pseudolife of competition, and it is not gentlemanly sport to which this situation gives rise—not at all.

Einstein and Planck et al. to the Rescue! It was like a melodramatic movie; at this lowest point for humanity since the barbarians stormed Rome, two shining knights of science appeared. The first was Karl Ernst Ludwig Max Planck, and the second was Albert Einstein, both of whom found extraordinarily large and unsuspected holes to fill in human understanding and some vast expanses in which to roam and employ their vast intellects. The work of Planck and his intellectual progeny virtually resulted in the discovery of God, and the work of Einstein, the most positive influence on logos since the Logos Himself, showed us that time is illusory, such that death, a result of time, is also not what it seems to be. Like Einstein with his famous thought experiments, Planck also discovered by means of logos. Thus, these two men dramatically restored thought as the primary way of investigating the profound, while at the same time rescuing physics, and possibly philosophy as well, from the threat of dormancy. Planck’s intellectual descendants indeed performed conventional experiments of importance, but they spent and spend most of their research hours in thought and calculation. Relativity has remained almost entirely in the sphere of rational accounting, particularly in its thought experiments,

though an observation in the heavens in 1919 virtually proved that space is curved, as Einstein had predicted in his general theory of Relativity, thus providing major support for that work of genius that he revealed to the world in 1916. Because of Planck et al. and Einstein, we have now added an entire second discipline that we list under the category of physics. It is “modern physics,” which has joined “classical physics” and which has caused the fear of running out of subjects to study and discover in the halls of physics to evaporate like ether in Arizona in the summertime.

Extrapolations of Modern Physics Most of us are so used to thinking of philosophy and science as greatly different from each another that, with only two undergraduate degrees ordinarily available, one is called the bachelor of science and the other the bachelor of arts. The one usually involves no study of philosophy, and the other quite often does. Yet, science and philosophy are closely bound, and discoveries in science can well have philosophical implications. Einstein philosophized openly and on the same level as professional philosophers of his day. He recognized that the heights and depths to which his physics soared and plunged necessarily thrust him into metaphysics and beyond. The profound philosophical consequences of quantum physics and Relativity became fully apparent about 1927, according to Foster, when scientists Eddington and Jeans began to make philosophical statements that revealed Einstein and quantum physicists had made discoveries more profound than was previously realized. (Eddington had led the expedition in 1919 that had, by observing a condition revealed during a total solar eclipse, proved the validity of Einstein’s general theory of Relativity.) They in fact went beyond philosophy in their claims and spoke also in terms of theology, showing that it was once again proper to include God in scientific discussions. In an interview published in the (London) Observer, Jeans, when he was asked the question “Do you believe that life on this planet is the result of some sort of accident, or do you believe that it is a

part of some great scheme?” replied, “I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental and that the material universe is derived from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe. In general, the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine. It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in an analogy involving the mind of God.” (Italics mine, and I believe he actually meant “cognition.”) This is, of course, one man’s opinion, but he was a very smart and experienced man. On another occasion, he said, “Mind and matter, if not proved to be of similar nature, are at least found to be ingredients of one single system. There is no longer room for the kind of dualism which has haunted philosophy since the days of Descartes.” In The Universe around Us, comparing the universe to a painting, he mused, “the protons and electrons are the streaks of paint which define the picture against its spacetime background. Traveling as far back in time as we can brings us not to the creation of the picture, but to its edge; the creation of the picture lies as much outside the picture as the artist is outside his canvas. On this view, discussing the creation of the universe in terms of time and space is like trying to discover the artist in the action of painting, by going to the edge of the canvas. This brings us very near to those philosophical systems which regard the universe as a thought in the mind of its Creator, thereby reducing all discussion of material creation to futility.” Both Eddington and Jeans believed that the universe is thought, that of a Supreme Being, and we know that Eddington at least was among the prime physicists of his day. This is huge in the annals of theist apologetics.

More Bright Men and Discoveries The year 1927 was a very good year for theists! Besides being the year that von Heisenberg presented the uncertainty principle and that during which Eddington first expressed his belief that the universe looks like thought, it was also the year that Edwin Hubble announced his discovery that the universe is expanding, that space-time is constantly enlarging, causing the amount of space among its contents to constantly increase. This finding unavoidably gave rise to the idea of the big bang, which pictures the

universe as having emanated from an infinitely small and dense point located in a void—nowhere, since there was no space until there was a universe. The big bang, of course, fits well the story in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Though conventional Christian doctrine holds that He created “from nothing,” my idea is different, as we shall see. Hoyle derided the reality of the big bang, saying that his opponents were possessed by an idea no more significant than that of a firecracker. He was not afraid to tell anyone anything. He eventually became a theist, however, at least in the sense of believing in a Super-Intelligence who regulated the universe. We might say that he was dragged kicking and screaming into belief in deity.7 After the big bang came the “big molding.” In response to the question of the mechanism by which our universe has just the right amount of perturbation of homogeneity, just the right amount of clumping vs. homogeneity of matter—a state of exquisitely regulated balance in this respect necessary for the development of life as we know it—Alan Guth proposed the idea of cosmic inflation in 1981. He believes that, during a minuscule part of the first second of the universe’s existence, it passed through an unimaginably rapid phase of exponential (accelerated) expansion wherein it grew at a rate that far exceeded the velocity of light. (Though the special theory of Relativity states that the speed of light cannot be exceeded, that rule, more precisely stated, refers to all other electromagnetic waves as well, which are essentially in a vacuum.) Now, there is a difference between a vacuum and a void, or at least what I choose to call a void. The “inflationary epoch” that followed right after the big bang consisted of expansion into the void, “something that we cannot comprehend at all” or perhaps “nothing that we can comprehend at all.” This is, of course, impossible to grasp, but we can reach it with our minds to the extent that we can use the term and the concept in our discussion. To reiterate, with the expansion of the young universe, space- time expanded along with the rest of our world. As all space-time of which we know was part of the universe, it could not have expanded into space-time. We can perhaps say it expanded into the “void.” (Of course, that is nothing more

than the best term I can think of.) This theory, together with that of the big bang, gives rise to a mental picture of Creator and Adjustor, with the result that the existence of God seems especially likely, and the concept that He did not merely start things going but made the effort necessary to form the universe into a kind of place that is people-friendly is supported as well. The big bang and the big molding: Can anything sound more like the acts of a Person? Do either of these, especially the second, sound like things that happen without cause and for no reason? I submit that one can believe such a thing only after having rejected the existence of God a priori. Guth did not study doxa in order to come to his conclusions. Once again, logos was at the bottom of important discovery. This is not surprising since Guth is a physical scientist—a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. The scientists in these fields are the ones who investigate subjects that reach to the greatest heights and depths of human thought and concern themselves with the very largest and smallest objects in the universe, and they are the ones we find are most likely to believe in God and therefore in immortality; this, I believe, says something to us about the likelihood of His existence and the probability that we are immortal. The work of George Smoot at the end of the 1980s demonstrated the residua of the big bang and provided additional evidence for the validity of the inflationary universe. Stephen Hawking called his work “the scientific discovery of the century, if not of all time.”8 Thus, the theories of the Beginning that correlate best with Genesis received more support yet. Though Smoot’s work was about doxa—it involved conventional experimentation on the universe—it was done for the purpose of confirming a theory that was founded on logos. Smoot stated about the results of his work, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God.” He also said, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and Christian notion of creation from nothing.” Dr. Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project that unlocked the secrets of DNA right after the turn of the millennium and presented humanity with its most important biological discovery since that of Charles Darwin, is a devoted Christian and believer in heaven, which shows us that life scientists as well as physical scientists can believe that things are not as

they seem.9 It has been recently noted that, if one is looking on campus for an atheist, he or she will more quickly find one in the department of philosophy than in any of the science departments; this was not true a hundred years ago. An increasing number of scientists are doing what Foster said they must: “In my extensive reading about philosophical scientists, I have found few … who at some stage or another did not have to introduce God. The critical moment is when one finds proofs of an Intelligence that exceeds human intelligence, and in Foster’s book the critical point was the realization of biological (improbable) specificity. Presumably, the most elegant scientist is the one who can go farthest down the scientific road until at last he has to declare. ‘I give up, God exists.’”10 Though Collins’s work shows us that we cannot entirely disregard doxa as a source of help in discovering hugely important and fundamental workings of our universe and its contents, what we do with that information is clearly a matter of logos. Here in the early twenty-first century, something quite ironical is going on. We have not heard from intellectuals as a group, and the masses (a convenient term, not to be taken as derisive in itself) are descending into the deepest depths of doxa, the adoration of the sensual. Those scientists who have been atheists or agnostics, particularly those of the physical kind who work in the fields of study that are especially on the cutting edge of human progress, are swinging from doxa to logos, such that an increasing number of them believe in God. (However, their cosmic intelligence is admittedly not always the God of the Bible.) We have thus witnessed the resurrection of logos by the founders of quantum mechanics and Relativity and have seen how Eddington and Jeans extrapolated and interpreted modern physics to the point that they realized it meant that everything with which we are familiar is thought, “mind-stuff,” as Eddington put it. Things are indeed nothing like they seem to be.

Mind Stuff The book of Genesis relates that God repeatedly said, “Let there be ” in creating the world. Who did He say it to? Apparently to Himself, and that

makes these proclamations thoughts. Xenophanes of Colophon, living during the sixth century BC in a town in Ionian Greece near Miletus, reasoned that the Arche is a single God, who moves all things by way of his Mind.11 Aristotle, that giant of study and thought, saw the Creator of all as the Unmoved Mover, whose sole activity is thought. Sir Arthur Eddington enunciated in 1927, “The stuff of the universe is mind stuff,” and his fellow Cambridge professor, the same year that Edwin Hubble made his famous discovery that I have described, had this to say shortly thereafter. “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds.” Thus did this scientist of excellence and renown express that which had been impressed upon him by years of searching the heavens and trying to find a common denominator for all he had observed, and he came up with mind and Mind. Like Eddington, he believed that the universe is thought— that of God. Michelangelo showed the profoundest of insight into the mechanism of the origin of the universe when he painted God reaching out to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel against a background shaped exactly like a sagittal section of the human brain.12 In that way, he represented the creation of mind by Mind in this greatest of all masterpieces illustrating human efforts to show God at work. Sir Isaac Newton stated that space is the sensorium of God. Cecil B. DeMille said, “Let the divine mind flow through your mind, and you will be happier. I have found the greatest power in the world in the power of prayer. There is no shadow of doubt of that. I speak from my own experience.” Compare what DeMille had to say with Jeans’s contention. It appears to me that the true God desires the closest intimacy with His cognitive creatures and that Mr. DeMille may have spoken more profoundly than he realized.

Bishop George Berkeley was an eighteenth-century theologian and philosopher who had the insight to see that any object is merely a bundle of perceptions from the perspective of any person that is sensing that object and that, no matter how one struggles to claim it is really “out there,” existing independently, we know absolutely nothing of it except through our senses, which feed into our minds. “Thus, even something as obtrusive as a hammer striking your thumb ultimately consists for you only of your brain’s interpretation of the pain impulses streaming up your arm to the parietal cortex and impulses via the retina and optic nerve to the occipital area of your cerebrum, as you watch in horror.”13 Presaging Jeans’s views of two centuries later, Berkeley saw mind as primary relative to the universe, matter as nebulous, and our senses as undependable with regard to the revelation of ultimate reality. Jeans was right; mind subordinates everything in our world. John Archibald Wheeler, who was, until his death in 2008, the dean of American physicists, believed that our entire universe consists of information.14 He initiated a recent trend among theoretical physicists to think of the universe as information, with space-time and matter as incidentals. Such belief demands the existence of an informer with a stupendous mind, and virtually amounts to seeing the universe as the thought of God, the great Informer. Thus did Wheeler, who worked well into his nineties, echo Eddington’s and Jeans’s concept of the universe. Information is not ordinarily synonymous with thought because not all thought is correct, with one exception; if the thinker is omniscient, His thought will be pure information. The information of the Informer is all of reality except for God Himself and the axiomatic Truth. Logos thoroughly trumps doxa when we are seeking to understand the most profound aspects of the universe and our lives in it and beyond. We best recognize the value, validity, and superiority of logos in the perception of our time-bound world when we compare it to a painting and realize that we must not look at/into it in order to find the artist because the artist is outside of it.15 The art streams from the Mind of the Source. The universe is the Thought of God.16

I cannot imagine a more potent tribute to logos than the universe as the thought of God.

Relativity and Quantum Physics We now return to the thought of the intellectual powerhouses of modern physics, those who are mainly responsible for Greene’s Coke bottle analogy, who will lead us to the crux of the physics of eternal life.17 Einstein is most important here, but we will begin with Planck and his associates and successors. Workers in quantum physics have given us such an extreme version of “Things are not as they seem” that most current investigators in that field do not even understand the subject of their study; they just know it works, and it yields practical results of momentous proportions. The MRI machine is a good example.

Quantum Mechanics In 1900, Planck, defying the warning of von Jolly and to be followed by a host of investigators in the field of quantum mechanics which he established, became the first person to perceive that, in the quantum world, the smallest possible entities of matter (narrow sense of the word) and force can exist in either wave or packet (quantum) form. Planck’s discovery pertains to a fascinating way in which our world is set up differently on the quantum level than it is on the level of our size. In the realm of quanta, form and substance can be separate from one another. If we analyze any “hunk of matter,” we see that it has form, which is essentially shape, and substance. Our bodies, for example, have certain shapes, and they contain “stuff” within the borders of these forms. We do not imagine that our shape could be put in one corner of the room and our substance piled up in another, especially the former. Yet this is actually what Planck discovered can and does happen on the quantum level. He also found that, when we observe a quark, photon, or other elemental body, we see substance, but that when we look away, form takes over. When we observe, in other words, we perceive substance, but when we do not, matter (broad sense of the word) behaves like waves. This may explain

some of the other strange characteristics of the denizens of the quantum level (e.g., elemental entities’ going through walls and the two halves of a split photon’s seeming to communicate though they are far from each other from our perspective because our observation causes them to be quanta to us). Form is more likely to go through a wall than is substance, and the two halves of a photon are not separate when they are both in waveform. I believe we can think of form as more or less abstract, whereas substance is strictly actual, or would be if it did not reduce to mathematics, as we shall soon discuss. Abstractions, of course, have no location, whereas actual objects do. In 1927, Werner von Heisenberg presented his uncertainty principle, which, with its consequences and implications, became the most strange and exciting aspect of quantum physics. It appears to show that our minds directly affect the behavior of quanta on the quantum level, though it has been interpreted in a different way by some.

The Genius of Einstein In 1905, amid a total of five papers he submitted that year as a clerk in a Swiss patent office, Einstein produced one that told the community of physicists that space and time are inseparable, illusory, and relative. Planck happened to be the editor of the journal in which this master of the shaggy and deranged coiffure declared his discoveries and opinions, born of mathematical thought and based on the findings of investigators who had gone before him. One of the other papers won a Nobel Prize, but the special theory of Relativity forever changed our conception of the framework of our universe.18 Einstein upstaged the previously unrivaled genius, Sir Isaac Newton, showing that perspective is crucial and that differences in perspective are produced by the relative velocities of objects. He also taught us that space and time are so intimate, so indistinguishably similar, that whatever is true for space is for time and vice versa.

The Special Theory

Near the beginning of this book, I told the story of Einstein’s having told the widow of a deceased friend, in his own way, that our passage from past to present to future is an illusion. This might be the most important thing he ever said to anyone. It is huge. Those of us who, like me, must try to figure everything out in order to feel comfortable can be substantially worried about the prospect of eternal life because we cannot imagine forever and a life that goes on and on not for a long time but endlessly. Then one of the all-time most brilliant people comes along and points out that for seventyplus years I have been living an illusion that has colored my thinking to the point that I cannot begin to grasp time in terms of reality. Once we have left our time-bound lives, we will astoundingly realize that it is the passage of time that is impossible to fathom and that timelessness is what is natural for us. In the immediately previous chapter, we looked at special Relativity in some detail, again experiencing in some sense the deceptive nature of mysterious time. And so we arrive now at the reason death is not what it seems to be. Perception, perspective, logos, Relativity, Truth: via these divine paths, a whole new world and life awaits us.

Death Is Not as It Seems We are now ready to hone in on the crux of our story, the most important consequence of time as the illusion it is. The most basic cause of death is time, and, if a cause is illusory, the event it causes will be likewise. Therefore, death is not what it appears to be. If death is not as it seems to be and if it looks like termination/annihilation, it must not amount to termination or annihilation. Remember perspective, particularly as we have observed it and its effect in looking at special Relativity. There, things looked differently from the point of view of one of the pilots compared to that of the other. Similarly, death is the end to those who witness its occurrence in another person, but to the dying person himself, it may well be something quite different, and I think it safe to say that what it is from the perspective of the dying person is most important in this instance. (Let us consider also the perspective of heavenly occupants.

We may see a gaunt, pale, and dry old woman stop breathing, while they see a beautiful young lady coming their way.) Consider two fetuses in a single uterus. They are both warm and comfortable. Insofar as they are concerned, it does not get any better. Then one day, labor begins and one of them is expelled. The fetus left inside thinks something terrible has happened to the other one, but the fetus who exits experiences an entirely new and wonderful world where opportunity is enormously enhanced. We may also compare the cave analogy of Plato here as an illustration of the phenomenon of perspective. In his thinking about ultimate reality, logos, vs. the way we ordinarily perceive our world, doxa, Plato imagined the population of the universe sitting in rows looking at shadows flickering on the wall of the cave they inhabit. A fire burns behind them to supply the light necessary for the effect. They are chained so tightly that they cannot turn around. However, the wisest of them one day breaks loose from his chains, and he begins to explore in earnest. He even makes his way to the opening of the cave during daytime. There he finds a glorious new world, radically different from the bowels of the cave, a world of light and amazing beauty. He represents the philosopher who seeks truth, and, in this instance, he finds it “in spades.” He returns to his fellows and tells them what he has discovered, but they think he is crazy. He is subsequently so ridiculed that he begins to doubt his own ability to test reality. In any case, the only alternative possibility to termination here is transition (or something just as good or better that is essentially equivalent), just as the fetus who left the company of the other fetus underwent transition. Now, if death is not termination, it must be a matter of transition or something equivalent. If that is the case, we are well advised to look at the possible kinds of transition and see which of these we favor as the one that is most likely to represent reality in this setting. These are passage to (or access of) a timeless realm, reincarnation, transition to another universe, and passage to a realm where there are additional dimensions of time, where we could go backward and/or sideways in it, whereas, in our present lives, we have at our disposal only a half dimension of time because we can

only pass through it in linear fashion and, even then, we cannot stop, start, or exercise any additional control over our temporal state. I can envision reincarnation only as a fanciful idea that is not supported by objective evidence and does not stand up to an apologetic approach or to any other approach that involves reason. No substantial evidence exists that it is true. One of the two religions that entails reincarnation is so tolerant of differences in belief that one can believe almost anything and be a votary thereof, and both are belief systems that advocate annihilation as an ideal goal toward which we should strive.19 As I cannot in any way accept the latter idea, I cannot accept any religion that venerates it.20 I also cannot accept it because it does not connect with our development into unique beings that are separate from God, and I am convinced that C. S. Lewis was right when he said, in The Problem of Pain, that we will be, in heaven, all that we have experienced, said, and done in time. Additionally, since no one has any memory of past lives, I question whether there could be any use at all in reincarnation in terms of avoiding death because, if I do not remember, in my new life, that I am me, the original “I” is essentially dead. Furthermore, nirvana, closely associated with reincarnation in religious faiths, is not a place of prospective pleasure or even genuine living. It is a “place” of absorption, where individual souls are terminated in favor of some kind of group consciousness or nonconsciousness, and that sounds like death to me. Only an individual thinking person can have a real, a meaningful, life. I particularly want nothing to do with reincarnation because I desire growth in my identity. I see no use whatsoever in being put in a place where I can more and more become the person that I am only to lose everything I have gained with death. As I cannot accept the latter idea, I cannot accept any religion that incorporates it. To put it succinctly, reincarnation amounts to death, and I want to live. Our earthly lives are valuable only in terms of potential, that which can emanate from them. I, a becomer, wish to become a being, a permanent

individual with the fullest identity possible. (I believe that, the fuller life we live in time, the “larger spirit” we will enjoy in heaven.) Reincarnation and nirvana do not lead to such an existence, and the existence they do lead to appears to me meaningless. The concept of passage to another universe at the time of death is unsupported by any kind of evidence, and, as we have noted in another context, we will probably never find any evidence in favor of the existence of a multiverse. Such may exist; if so, I believe its reality connects with Jesus’s saying that He has other flocks to whom to minister. With regard to a multiverse, we have no logical reason to believe that any such thing exists. It may, but, even if it does, we need a number of universes that approaches infinity in order to account for all the fine-tunings that we readily observe in our world. In addition, there is no evidence in favor of the existence of such a thing. Ross believes that heaven is a realm of augmented dimensions of time and that the possibility of our living forever resides in the ability of heavenly inhabitants to move in temporal directions additional to that of our earthly experience. We have only a half dimension of time in our present lives, since we can move in only one direction on a single time-line; actually, we have, in a sense, less than that, since we have no control over that movement. Lewis agreed that there is some kind of time in heaven. If either or both of these gentlemen are correct, it might interfere with some of my reasoning and/or conclusions, but I think it exceedingly unlikely that this is the case. However, in spite of my respect for Lewis and Ross, it is much easier for me to imagine a realm of timelessness than it is for me to imagine time of any nature or quantity that goes on forever. Therefore, I choose to believe that, in death, we transition to timelessness. If we do that, we are immortal.

More Reasons to Believe That We Live Forever Let us now consider the contents of the universe other than space-time and see whether there is anything about their not being as they seem that can

affect our concept of death. Here we have matter, and we have force, but we can simplify things if we disregard force, and we shall not lose anything important from our scenario if we do so. We must leave out dark matter because we do not know enough about it to put it in, and the same goes for dark energy. According to string theory, well reputed these days, there is no more difference between an elemental particle of force and one of matter than there is between two matter particles, and, according to superstrings, every matter particle has a force particle with which it is paired. Thus, on the quantum level, the difference between matter and force seems almost inconsequential. Additionally, our concept of force is so vague that it is questionable whether we understand it sufficiently to be able to deal with it in any depth. We do not understand the underpinnings of attraction at a distance, and we do not know anything about the mathematics of fitting gravity and the other three forces into the same universe.21 Therefore, we will deal only with atoms and their components here. We dealt much earlier in this writing with matter as mathematics, and I will not repeat the derivation of that concept here. If matter reduces to math, as C. S. Lewis said, it essentially is math, and math is a particular kind of thought, such that matter is also thought. Now, I have previously come from another direction in claiming that matter is thought because the entire universe is the thought of God, and I believe we have now found a second path that leads to this same conclusion. This is a particularly happy situation because two paths are probably exponentially more confirmatory than is one. Now, if the Arche is indeed a mathematical thinker, as Sir James Jeans believed, the consequences are as follows. The Arche thinks with the result that matter exists in terms of math—as mathematical organization. As thought, it is an abstraction that is perceived as something tangible by cognitive organisms who this same Arche has created to be able to perceive matter as such. Thus do we humans draw conclusions scientifically and metaphysically that fit precisely with the story of creation that we find in Genesis.

Note what David Foster had to say in the first few pages of The Philosophical Scientists that seamlessly fits our deliberations here: “Given the assumption of solid substance, we then make a further assumption that it could be divided into smaller and smaller parts all of the same nature; this aspect we call Matter. Thus solid substance is supposed to be made of an aggregate of matter just as the seashore is made of grains of sand. Now this is true only down to a certain level of smallness, represented by crystals and molecules. But when one looks for the fine-structure of molecules as to their atoms, one enters a region dominated by void or emptiness, and ultimate fine-structure is not structure at all but consists of electrical and gravitational fields cavorting in the void. At the fine- structure level, and just when one might expect to find ultimate particles of matter, the matter has vanished! … So matter is not a thing, but it is a state of organization which at a certain level of integrated organization reveals properties such as solidity according to the experience of appropriate creatures. It is all very subjective and relative, and we have noted that ‘solid’ ground, water and air are equally ‘solid substance’ according to whether one is a human being, a fish, or a fly.” Thus, again, the universe is made of “mind-stuff” according to the thought of Sir Arthur Eddington, which means it is the thought of God, and his colleague, Sir James Jeans saw it as the thought of a mathematical thinker. In other words, he saw it as abstraction proceeding from the Mind of God. His concept fits beautifully with Newtonian physics, which is virtually a branch of mathematics. God thought of matter in various forms (e.g., a sphere we call earth, trees, people, etc.), and these entities exist simply because He imagined them and did so in a vein of desiring their existence. Sir James Jeans saw the Arche, his God, as a mathematical thinker, and the findings of physicists, those who investigate the structure and mechanics of the world, have always been enunciated in terms of math. Now, our view of death in terms of doxa can be described as deterioration of matter, and, if we look at such deterioration as the disorganization of mathematical order, it seems less ominous than it did at first. In other words, death in terms of logos, which is the correct way of looking at everything, seems less worrisome than death in terms of doxa. Our bodies, including our brains, are abstractions, and, as such, they are timeless.

Therefore, we may be as spiritual as we can be right now, and spirits are immune from death as we know it.22 Our bodies are sort of like a bunch of “dots” that are relatively dense in some areas and rather sparse in others, and these dots are imaginary, as they proceed from the imagination of God. Can the dispersion of these bits of thought be as awful as we ordinarily consider death to be, especially if an all- powerful Being is in charge of the dots? Things are nothing like what they seem to be. All of the evidence we have supports the subordination of matter (broadest sense of the word) to mind and the contention that we do not need matter in order to have mind/thought. Having seen that matter reduces to a product of mind (mathematics) in our world and that space-time has been shown to be an illusion and something vague, nebulous and elusive, I begin to feel that I can mentally grip mind more easily than I can understand my world as the summation of sensory perception. Thus, the idea of a mind without a body becomes progressively easier for me to assimilate. When I then also remember that mind with its thought is necessary for perspective, which is important enough to be on our list of the entities that either compose the universe according to logos or closely and directly pertain to it, I complete my mind’s eye’s impression of the ultimate nature of physical reality.

The Universe as Logos When we regard the universe as doxa, we see it—we hear its sounds, we smell and taste it, and we feel it. With our five senses, we feel we are learning a lot about it. Then, however, we consult Einstein and the seers of quantum physics, and we find out that we do not perceive either space or time correctly and that even matter is not as it seems. Our senses deceive us. The universe according to doxa—the universe as doxa— emphasizes spacetime, matter (narrow sense of the word), and force, and it sees mind as the result of a complex arrangement of matter (narrow sense) and force. The universe as logos, on the other hand, is the consideration of our world in terms of light-speed, mind, mathematics, logos and other thought, and perspective. While we engage in this mental maneuver, we perceive our

environs in much greater depth, such that its basic components, its qualities, and its workings come into view in a way and to a degree that we never imagined with the use of our senses alone. To put it as succinctly as possible, in that instance, everything in our universe reduces to mind. Perspective, thought, and math are all products of mind (i.e., thought), and light-speed appears to be a barrier that prevents our leaving this world (in one piece at least). The best thinkers and seekers, intellectuals, of all ages have always, as we have noted, seen rational accounting as superior to doxa as the way to ultimate truths, such that, whether they knew it or not, they believed that mind is primary in the universe. Most, if not all, of these have also believed in absolute truth, as that concept is closely associated with logos. Now, if everything in our world proceeds from mind, especially if it comes from the Mind of God, then we would expect it to be as permanent as is God’s Mind itself; we would not expect it to be truly transient. Therefore, again, we are permanent—we are immortal—and, interestingly, our world is not at all as Heraclitus saw it. It is forever real, though not in the form that we seem to perceive with our physical senses. Our world is not so much different from heaven as we are used to thinking. It is like heaven with some additions (e.g., space-time and evil). If we could overcome evil and achieve timelessness in our present lives, we would have heaven on earth. Now please recall that matter and force are not clearly separate entities, that matter reduces to math, and that space and time are of course quantized, such that the universe is easily seen as the mind-stuff of a mathematical Thinker, the true God of all. Light-speed, as aspect of the universe as logos, remains special in this instance, and it is also a bit mysterious. All of this goes along well with Wheeler’s concept of the universe as information, and we see that one cannot readily distinguish between thought and information. If then the world is thought, it is not surprising that exploration of it with our minds, via our mind’s eyes, yields for us the most accurate picture of it that we can possibly obtain, while trusting our senses tends to lead to error. We do not have access to all of God’s thought in our present form, and it appears to be light-speed that bars us from most of it. Light-speed is, of course, itself a thought because it is a concept, one that originates in the

Mind of God. The world and we are in and on God’s mind, but God’s Mind is not in our world, just as an artist is not in his painting. I do not think our minds are in it either. They are freer than that; they soar beyond it. From God’s perspective, there are two categories of reality, Himself and the products of His thought. If and as we allow, in our state of possessing free will—we are or at least can be intimate with God, and this is what He desires. He does not want any boundary to interfere with this. The universe as doxa, thought of in terms of forever, is a study in emptiness. It serves us well as a construct in which we can develop and individualize, but as anything beyond that it is at best supremely anemic. It is what we get if we are content to think of our minds as emanating from matter, which, as we have noted, would be a matter of consciousness and cognition deriving from dead chemicals that themselves were without origin or purpose. Such a state of affairs would be no life at all, a shade-like existence, zombielike, without true cognition.

More Thoughts Related to the True Nature of Death We have seen how Parmenides, perhaps the ultimate champion of logos, challenged the wisdom of drawing profound conclusions from the observation of doxa. He also essentially said that something must be. For him there were three basic options: “Being is,” “non-Being is,” and both. The second and third options make no sense because “nothing cannot be.” Therefore, according to Parmenides, it is more logical to think of something than it is of nothing; it makes more sense to think of existence than it does to think in terms of nonexistence. That being the case, it makes more sense yet to think of the thought of God as reality because we cannot find a better way to the existence of anything, and lack of existence is stranger than existence—the former is in fact unimaginable. Parmenides also said that our observation of things coming into and going out of existence is false, that our senses erroneously inform us with regard to this issue. He claimed that, if we would ignore our senses and pay attention to cognition instead, we would see that the changes we seem to perceive with our senses are, as a rule, ultimately false. Most basically, he

said that, given that becoming requires both Being and non-Being and given that non-Being is unintelligible, becoming also is unintelligible.23 He was not speaking here of becoming in terms of development. He was speaking of it in terms of deterioration and resulting death, and he thought of this as illusion. Thus, to Parmenides, passing out of existence didn’t make sense; death was unreal, and he therefore believed us to be immortal. He said that the ultimate state of things is eternal being, as all true being is eternal.24 Ultimately, he saw us as beings. It seems as though nonexistence and nonbeing are losing out everywhere we look, because things are not as they seem. That is a particularly good thing because nothing is meaningful without cognitive and eternal life. If the universe is the thought of God, we are part of that thought, and we are information. Information, according to information theory, cannot be destroyed. Again, we are immortal.

Notes 1. J. B. Phillips, The Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (Weatoon, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1981). In this little book, the Bible translator shows how the New Testament sounds intuitively true. 2. By “experience” here, he means supposed information supplied by our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. 3. Eugene Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2005). If you prefer a different version, the King James has this passage as “Now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face.” 4. During several decades that followed his death in 632, Mohammed’s followers formed the largest empire in the world, occupying primarily the Middle East and northern Africa. 5. Rebirth. 6. Psychoanalysis is more therapeutic than diagnostic, though it is both. It is nothing mysterious, consisting merely of relaxing the subject and enhancing his ability to remember by inserting words, phrases, and

sentences into a discussion that seeks to find experiences in his past life that may yet lie in his subconscious and periodically rise up to torment him, either by themselves or in conjunction with other memories. This form of treatment would probably be more prevalent today if practitioners had more time to spend with patients, but economic factors make it impractical. Freud felt that buried memories of a sexual nature were the most important ones in terms of the causation of aftereffects. 7. This discovery finished off the steady state theory of the non-Beginning, of which the late Sir Fred Hoyle was the last champion of note. It pictured a universe that had always existed and entailed continuous creation of matter within it. Hoyle’s version of this concept also contained the idea of “panspermia,” which had DNA flying through space from millions or billions of light years away from us and seeding Earth with the double helix molecules from which essentially all of life on Earth emanates. Where this genetic material came from and how it came to be was is something he never tried to explain. (This idea is really fantastic, far more so than anything [conventional] Christians have to say.) 8. Smoot has recounted the adventures he had in making his discovery in Wrinkles in Time. 9. Francis S. Collins, MD, The Language of God. 10. David Foster, The Philosophical Scientists. Foster mentions Fred Hoyle as the chief example of this phenomenon and cites Hoyle’s book, Evolution from Space: a Theory of Cosmic Creation, especially the last chapter thereof, as an excellent description of the theist that he became. 11. Professor David Roochnik of Boston University, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy. This fine course is available through the Teaching Company, an excellent source of postgraduate education that comes from the best professors in America by way of CDs and DVDs. The website of this enlightened organization is www.teach12.com. 12. Frank Lynn Meshberger, MD, “An Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam Based on Neuroanatomy,” Journal of the American Medical Association, October 10, 1990.

13. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926, revised edition 1933). 14. Dr. Wheeler was the mentor of multiple generations of physicists, including Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett III of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Early in his career, this Princeton University researcher and teacher worked with both Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. 15. This is from the writings of James Jeans. 16. Considering all of the trouble that is constantly occurring in our world, we might postulate that numerous gods are working in and on it with very little cooperation among them. However, the rest of this book contains much evidence that God is one. 17. The physics of immortality is an original idea of Frank J. Tipler, PhD, as described in his book of that title. 18. The most basic aspect of the special theory, and the most radical, relative to the beliefs of the day according to Newton, is that time and space are relative, not absolute. This means that the length of an inch for you may not always be the same as the length of an inch for me. 19. The other is Buddhism. 20. Though there are no doubt factions of Hinduism that donot exercise the concept of assimilation of our minds by nirvana, with the result that we lose identity in the end, most Hinduism either entails this idea or is vague with regard to it. My feelings are that we strive all of our earthly lives to develop identity and that such individualism is way too precious to even consider giving up. I am forever fully subordinate to my God, but I think He wants in me a child and/or a friend with whom He can communicate and share, and lack of identity militates against the existence of such a situation. 21. We can say “the other two forces” here if we see the electromagnetic force and the weak force as different manifestations of the same force, which they are.

22. If we imagined ourselves physically transported to the quantum world, presumably the level that reflects ultimate reality most accurately, where we would probably see ourselves and others as bunches of particles, with broad spaces in between our various bodies where few particles would be found, we would perceive deleterious events involving our bodies as, so to speak, perturbations of dots. These might be, on our level of size, occurrences such as bleeding, drop in blood pressure, maybe a rash, perhaps abnormal sounds made by our lungs, and sometimes irregular or abnormally fast heart rates. Again, our senses can deceive us, and death is probably not as it seems. 23. Parmenides was not thinking of “becoming” as development; he was thinking of it as aging. I do believe we are in a state of becoming while we are in time and will be in a state of being after we have left it, such that we are becomers who are becoming beings. I am not thinking in this instance of becoming as deterioration, however. I am thinking of it as something that is good for us. 24. Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy.

Chapter 10 Quantum Physics and Ultimate Truth: Quantum Observation Abstract: This chapter is about how quantum physicists have found God on the quantum level. They have discovered that, the more observed is an elemental object, the more it tends to be in its particulate state, whereas, the less observation is taking place, the more it tends to be in wave form. Now, events on the quantum level are reflected on our level of size, such that we have the phenomenon of quantum observation, the finding that nothing exists or happens unless and until it is observed by a thinking person. Thus we have potential existence, ordered by God, and we have actualization, which can also be ordered by God, but can also be ordered by humans, such that our Lord shares His creative ability with us. This twofold creation is reminiscent of the creation story in Genesis. He initiated with “Let there be …” and completed creation with “. . . and He saw that it was good.” This speaks greatly of our intimacy with God, infinitely greater when we recognize His Christ. His statements of approval at the time of creation were, therefore, part of creation itself. As no other god is known to have created in this manner, we then have before us a large helping of evidence that the biblical God is the true God. Again, only the biblical God is verifiable because only He created in this manner.

Crisis in Academia In 1875, University of Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised the young Max Planck against pursuing a career in physics, saying, “In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.” Early in the next century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher thereof, said that the sole remaining task of philosophy was the analysis of language. Thus, von Jolly and Wittgenstein reflected severe pessimism in the ranks of their respective disciplines, and everyone

in these fields must have yearned for a remedy. At the same time, some of these scholarly types were faced with another problem, which they shared with a very large number of those who were not of intellectual bent.

A Crisis of Faith In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD, the Scientific Revolution, with its tremendous advancements in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and cosmology, had not adversely affected the way Europeans and Americans thought about God, Jesus, or the Bible, as the discoveries that had been made in the sphere of physical science seemed to direct order, exuberance, and glory from heaven to earth. In addition, the geniuses of these times, especially Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, were devoted Christians. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment, however, with its outspoken humanism, questioned all things divine and set the stage for the claims of the life scientists Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, whose zoological and psychological discoveries, respectively, engendered a negative response toward religion in the next century, partly because these encouraged no one in religiosity. For many, their findings made God seem unnecessary. This led to skepticism with diminished faith, which reinforced fear of death, with the result that pessimism settled over much of the world, and the citizens of the United States, still recovering from the six hundred thousand deaths that were the cost of its Civil War, were even more distressed. Yet, the remedy was to come, the same remedy that cured the academic crises, and it was to emanate from both science and philosophy. Its basic nature was scientific, but it had philosophical implications, and it ameliorated the crisis of faith because it was theologically meaningful as well. The nature of this cure was thoroughly unexpected. Its discoverers had forebears (e.g., Michael Faraday and Hendrik Lorenz), and these pioneers in the field of electricity happened to be bearing posthumous fruit around the end of the nineteenth century by literally lighting up the world. No one, however, saw them as having anything to do with those who would enlighten the world and correct the disquietude of academia and the rest of society. Physical science was about to have its second and most important

say in matters of profound truth concerning the universe and, by implication, matters of ultimate reality. In spite of the Enlightenment, evolution, psychoanalysis, and pessimism with regard to intellectual opportunity and the existence of deity, the human race was about to be given the opportunity to feel good again. The remedy would consist of discoveries in the sphere of physics of such fundamental nature that even the discoverers would not understand all of them. Science was about to rescue itself from boredom and, in doing so, relieve philosophy of its dilemma and reassure all whose religious faith had been disturbed by the scientists of life.

The Common Remedy The twentieth century dawned in the dim light of frail hope. The shining knights of modern physics were barely short of the horizon. No doubt those of great faith, inborn or the result of many years of friendship with the true God, perceived that something was afoot, but, for most, a great surprise was in store. The first of the two heroes who were to revolutionize science and even theology was the same Max Planck who von Jolly had discouraged. Fortunately for all of us, he had not accepted the gloomy assessment of his professor- to-be, and, in 1900, he began humanity’s inquiry into the realm of the quantum by enunciating the dual nature of the fundamental building blocks of matter. Five years later, Einstein, that second champion of innovation and imagination, completed the salvation of academia and the rescue of the faithful with his special theory of Relativity. Planck needed and soon found help, but Einstein brought us Relativity single-handedly and contributed to quantum physics as well, particularly with his explanation of the photoelectric effect, in which he proved that the elemental components of energy and therefore of force have the same dual nature as matter. This great man is the central figure in modern physics, which is the deepest scientific foray into the mysteries of ultimate reality ever achieved by humankind.

Max Planck kick-started quantum physics in 1900, Einstein initiated his theories of Relativity in 1905 and 1915, and, in 1927, Werner von Heisenberg presented his uncertainty principle to the world. That same year, Eddington proclaimed, “The stuff of the universe is mind- stuff,” summarizing in the most succinct way possible the philosophical and theological analysis of the work of Einstein and Planck that he and others at Cambridge University had developed. Later in the 1900s, quantum observation, a concept of similar nature to Heisenberg’s, came to the fore, connecting with biblical Scripture and completing the scientific pillar that has made atheism indefensible, such that nowadays the learned gravitate, as did Einstein, to theism with hardly a thought about it. One can defend the concept of a godless world in 2013 AD only with the lame assertion that it is ridiculous to believe in living things without bodies and in anything else beyond the confines of our universe. No longer can one reason his way to any truth in atheism. One can only try to drown out all opposition from the first with loud and otherwise vigorous proclamations and then pretend to have said something rational.

The New Christian Apologetics: Preparing to Draw Conclusions Apologetics does not appear in all dictionaries, and most people have no concept of what it means. It derives from the Greek apologia, which is the word for defense and vindication. The Christian apologist above all seeks objective evidence from any scholarly discipline that will yield it up and looks for it in all other scenarios of life as well. The new Christian apologetics is mostly the old with the addition of the items of support bequeathed by modern (theoretical) physics, which are numerous. My own version thereof adds philosophy because Platonic philosophy indirectly supports the validity of the Gospel and does so in particularly intriguing ways. History adds flavor as well as support to the mix, especially in its revelation of Jesus as the most influential person ever. In preparation for the enunciation of my favorite item of apologetics, to be followed by the concluding remarks of part 3 of this work, I shall now

attempt a bit of clarification of the material with which we have thus far dealt. First, we shall recall and reiterate.

Recall and Reiteration It is not often that we find a scientist who includes God in his research, and we are fortunate to have one of renown who did this with regard to Relativity and quantum physics. Arthur Eddington was a philosophical scientist of the early twentieth century who interpreted Relativity and quantum mechanics in terms of philosophy and, to a degree, theology. In his work at Cambridge, he came to believe that the universe is the thought of God, and he believed that it and we are not the result of His thought, but His thought per se. His “the stuff of the universe is mind- stuff” represented his conclusion regarding his research on modern physics, which gave rise to something like an unscientific theory of everything. His quintessential quip proved to be of enormous proportions, the culmination of a successful search for the nature of the ultimate state of humankind and its support system. One can hardly imagine a more fundamental or otherwise important inquiry. Sir James Jeans was a colleague of Eddington at Cambridge and a close associate of Edwin Hubble, whose discovery that the universe is expanding generated the concept of the big bang, which looks so much like biblical creation that it has caused the conversion of many atheists and agnostics. He agreed with Eddington’s take on the nature of the universe, beginning with mind as primary in our world: “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds.” The last phrase of this declaration shows the intimacy that Jeans saw in our relationship—at least our potential relationship—with God, and we perceive a similar thought in Cecil B. DeMille’s assertion concerning prayer, “Let the divine mind flow through your mind, and you will be

happier.” In expressing his agreement with Eddington’s concept of the nature of the universe, Jeans referred to closeness with God that we can achieve and which we would do well to pursue. Jeans extended the concept of the universe as “mind- stuff” in pointing out that and why his God has to be the greatest of mathematicians: “Our efforts to interpret nature in terms of the concepts of pure mathematics have, so far, proved brilliantly successful … from the intrinsic evidence of the creation, the Great Architect of the universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.” He cast his lot with Eddington most conclusively, however, when he concluded as follows: “The universe can be best pictured, although still very imperfectly and inadequately, as consisting of pure thought. If the universe is one of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought. Modern scientific theory compels us to think of the creator as working outside of time and space which are part of his creation, just as an artist is outside his canvas.” Bertrand Russell, who was a professor at Cambridge during the same period Eddington and Jeans were there, claimed that logic and mathematics are identical, which, if true, means that Eddington’s and Jeans’s views of the ultimate nature of physical reality are also identical. Russell backed up his view in this respect with at least four volumes of verbiage, three of which he wrote with Alfred North Whitehead, another professor at Cambridge who was in the group that David Foster, in The Philosophical Scientists, called “The Cambridge Club.” These men— Eddington, Jeans, Russell, and Whitehead—worked independently but left behind thoughts of bright minds that we can merge to create powerful evidence in favor of mind as primary in the universe and the universe as the thought of God. That each of these contentions confirms the other further enhances the quality of the evidence we have that both premises are true. When a second path exists that leads to the same conclusion as a first, the likelihood of the conclusion’s being correct is markedly heightened, and, when there are three ways to the same end, support for the premise is exponentially enhanced. For the subordination of matter to mind, we have at least three paths of confirmation.

Chapter 9 shows how Relativity supports the concept that matter is subordinate to mind. The present chapter will do the same where quantum physics is concerned. It would seem that mind-stuff would not be tangible; yet we feel that the ground beneath our feet and our desktops are “solid as rocks.” However, we must remember that stretching one’s mind mightily, as is necessary for this exercise, takes one into such an unfamiliar realm that palpation of an abstraction is a mere item of trivia. Our whole time-bound realm is illusory, and reality is something radically different that is so foreign to us that we cannot imagine it any better than we can comprehend the shrinkage of space or the slowing of the passage of time. As we have previously noted, when we stand on a “solid” floor, we are kept in contact with it only via gravitational force, and our situation has nothing to do with up or down. In addition, the floor is enormously more than 99 percent space, and the quality of solidity has nothing to do with density of material; it has to do with electromagnetic force that opposes that of gravity, preventing our slipping through it to the ground below. Matter is an abstraction, a thought under the direction of math; it is even reasonable to say that matter is mathematics, and, if math is the same thing as logic, as Russell maintained, then matter is logic. Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World, joined his three colleagues by essentially abolishing matter. Briefly, he replaced it, according to David Foster in The Philosophical Scientists, with organization and organism. Foster explained this process by illustrating a table leg that one kicks. He has us begin on the quantum level of the leg and gradually ascend through the atomic level to the level of cellulose and beyond, trying to decide at what point we are kicking a table leg and not merely a conglomeration of the substructural components thereof. Whitehead’s conclusion, clarified, is that organization of elemental particles, atoms, and molecules forms the “organism” of the leg, using the latter word in a loose sense. He wrote that there is no known way of determining where, on the particle to table leg hierarchy one can say there is a leg to kick; he thereby left the concept of matter in limbo and therefore able to be thought of as thought. (Whitehead also contended that all of philosophy since Plato is nothing other than

footnotes on his work, and I am inclined to agree. Plato is especially important in Christian apologetics if for no other reason than the fact that St. Augustine said he would never have converted to Christianity without him.) There is more one can say in defense of the claim that our universe and we are mind-stuff (i.e., thought). The late Princeton professor Dr. John Archibald Wheeler, mentor of more important theoretical physicists than anyone else, saw the universe as information and initiated a trend among many others in his field of study to think in like manner. Though he did not introduce this theory in order to promote anything supernatural, his belief implies the existence of an Informer who is a Person and One of stupendous Mind. Therefore, we have yet another reason to think of the contents of the universe as abstractions and the thought of God, mind-stuff.

The Preeminence of Mind and the Thought of God When Einstein told the widow of a friend who had just died that time is an illusion, “even if a stubborn one,” he implicitly meant that space is illusory as well. Now, if we perceive—if we believe—that something is not what it seems to be, we have immediately entered the domain of mind because the dichotomy of “seeming” vs. “being” is a concept, and concepts can emanate only from mind. Moreover, if space-time is an illusion and illusion proceeds from mind, then space-time is a product of mind. Dr. Einstein therefore teaches us that space-time is mind- stuff, the thought of God. Obviously, Einstein was telling the widow that he felt her husband had experienced his death much more pleasantly than she had and that he probably remained alive in some realm. Those who have little in their personalities that is opposed to The Truth, such that relatively little of their en bloc selves requires excision as they access heaven, seem to have particularly peaceful deaths, as in the following example. I had a good friend (who died in 2004) whose wife, a particularly godly lady, died in 1991. When he called to tell me of her passing, I remember his saying something like, “And then it got more peaceful, then it got more peaceful yet, then it got even more peaceful, and then she died.” (I find that highly comforting.)

Demented people tend to die peacefully as well, because they essentially die by degrees and usually have no concept of death by the time they expire. They gradually lose their concepts of time, eventually not realizing how old they are. Slowly, they in fact turn into what is virtually a nonentity, as their minds are entirely elsewhere before their bodies wear out, and their serial presents of this life become of less and less significance; this I believe to be the mercy of God in action, largely dispensed to those who fear death the most. In any case, Relativity is chock-full of clear, albeit not direct, statements that mind is primary in our world, not the least of which is its support of the universe as logos. Einstein was clearly not a doxa person. Thus, both divisions of modern physics—Relativity with regard to space-time and quantum physics regarding the atom and its components—support the concept of mind’s primacy in our world. Isaac Newton stated that space was the sensorium of God. Presaging the views of “The Cambridge Club” of two centuries later and quantum observation as well, Bishop Berkeley saw mind as primary, matter as nebulous, and our senses as undependable with regard to the revelation of ultimate reality. He saw reality as in the mind’s eye of the beholder, that what we perceive exists for us only in that perception and not necessarily as something that is “out there” for everyone else to be able to detect. He thereby and therefore supported the validity of the universe as logos, the universe as illusory, and the universe as residing in the minds of beholders. If the universe resides in our minds, how much more does it reside in the mind of its Creator, whose Mind will flow through ours as we pray, if we so allow? And if the universe resides in the Mind of God and in our minds as well, how intimate are we with God? We have here the ultimate illustration of the position we occupy in our world, in the world beyond, in the Mind of God, and as manifestations of The Truth. When, therefore, we use our free will to disdain The Truth by speaking or behaving in a manner that is in opposition to It, we are corroding the very foundation of everything that is except for God. Thus, God imagines us and our world, and we perceive Him through our minds’ eyes. When we do that, we find a God who wants us to be “little

Christs,” little brothers of Jesus and, therefore, little children of the Father. Sadly, we have used our God-given free will to succumb to evil, and God has had to come to us and die for us at our hands in order that we might be the perfect offspring of a perfect God. Even with everything else that he “put on his plate” to occupy his mind and his thinking (e.g., all of nature), the affairs of humankind, and Alexander’s (the Great) professorial needs, Aristotle believed in a God who was similar to One I am describing. I do suspect, however, that both he and Xenophanes believed creation was the result of thought and not God’s thought per se. The universe as the thought of God provides us a connection between Relativity and quantum physics, but, alas, it is not the holy grail that physicists seek. That connection entails math, and mine is one of philosophy and theology.

Quantum Observation Quantum observation is, in my mind, the “clincher” with regard to the connection between God’s Mind and ours. This term represents something that humans are able to do, and it is probably the most important such capability ever discovered because it represents God’s sharing His creative ability with us. Of course, such a thing might not seem so fantastic if we let our minds wander back to pre- fallen times, before we reaped the consequences of our abuse of free will by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (That this story is allegorical makes it no less meaningful.) All dogs go to heaven because they do not know right from wrong, and they can therefore not be held responsible for their actions. We were in that enviable state, but it did not last for even a generation. In any case, God had given us charge of all lower forms of life, but we frittered it away. In the Christ, we now have a second chance, and quantum observation provides us with evidence that we do. Bernard Haisch verbalizes the nature of quantum observation in his The Purpose-Guided Universe: “Quantum theory states that it is the act of observing an object to be at a certain place that actually causes it to be there. This has been verified in laboratories. But we ourselves and the world around us are comprised of atoms that are governed by quantum laws. If

consciousness is at the heart of quantum physics (and it is), that puts it at the basis of everything.” Dr. Haisch essentially says here that reality is in the eye of the beholder. I insert “a state of cognition” where he writes “consciousness” because quantum observation is a meaningful phenomenon, and there is no significance to anything without thought and the existence of thinkers. My first thought upon reading this excerpt is that, in the light of Berkeley’s teaching, it may be that whatever we perceive with our physical senses may not exist at all, other than potentially, until we regard it. (At that point, it exists for us, but not necessarily for anyone else.) If this is so, we are little creators, assistants to God. Listening again to Cecil B. DeMille, we may obtain a clue as to how we can function in this regard; if we are to do so, we must let God’s mind flow through ours. Now, God allows us the same privacy of mind that He retains for Himself, such that nothing will enter our minds unless we allow it, and this includes the callings of God Himself. If we, however, let Him in and intertwine our minds with His as He allows, we profit beyond the imagination. Since everything we are able to perceive is mind-stuff, it is quite appropriate that we explore it with our minds. (We have here a good example of our ability to expand our individual imaginations and in that way to explore with our minds to the end that we enhance our abilities to discern reality, in the manner of Einstein.) Quantum observation is easily demonstrable in experiments that are highly familiar to quantum physicists and in fact fundamental in their repertoires of research methods. These investigators of the esoteric have succeeded in demonstrating that elemental particles of matter and force, such as electrons, appear as packets—quanta—when these are under observation, and as waves when they are not. Now you might ask how we can know such things, and the answer is that experimenters observe with the use of instruments. These devices can even be adjusted to provide a spectrum of observation from little too much, and the quanta follow suit in this instance by existing for the observer to a great degree when observation is intense and to a lesser degree when it is not. These experiments have also been performed with entities larger and more complex than elemental particles; with bodies as large as buckyballs, which

are clusters of about fifty atoms each, quantum observation is exponentially more difficult to detect as the experimental objects are of increasing magnitude. It is easy to see why this is so. If you are in charge of four soldiers and command them to march in order, you are much more likely to be 100 percent obeyed than if you try to tell 1,015 soldiers to do the same thing. Another example of the same principle is that, in order to cause a mountain to move by way of quantum observation, one must observe a stupendous number of elemental particles simultaneously. I believe Jesus could do this, but I do not expect anyone else to. (Quantum physicists also declare that walking on water and through walls, both of which Jesus did, are scientifically sound phenomena. I refer you to the Gospel; it is more scientific than was thought a hundred years ago.) It is fascinating that we now have before us a situation that is analogous to that in Relativity wherein we have a phenomenon that is exponentially imperceptible as the magnitude of a variable changes. Just as time dilatation and space contracture are increasingly noticeable in an exponential manner, according as the velocity of one body relative to another increases, we find that our ability to direct matter with our minds is exponentially and decreasingly apparent as the body of matter increases in mass. There is no speed in a relativistic situation and no magnitude of mass in a quantum situation that is excluded from the phenomena; it is just that, with increasing velocity/mass, our ability to detect the phenomenon becomes unimaginably small.

Scientists as Theists and Philosophers Because of developments in his own field, the atheistic scientist has come to the point of stymie in his efforts to rationally maintain the paradigm of chance (i.e., “the universe just happened to happen”). The chancist scientist must try to discredit cosmology or sweep it securely under some rug in some far corner of some forsaken edifice, perhaps hidden by a figurative smoke screen, maybe some kind of bluff. Sometimes, he falls back on an a priori rejection of theism, as I have previously noted, as in “Religion is an idea so ridiculous that refuting it is not necessary. It is wrong, and everyone,

if they were honest, would admit it!” This, however, sets him up as “easy pickings,” refutable without even resort to reason, with a wonderful quote, by “anonymous,” as far as I know: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” The quantum physicist cannot understand most of the propositions that he ponders, and there is nothing less clearly perceived in Judeo-Christian Scripture. It is common for the members of any branch of science to produce wonders based on know-how without understanding the fundamental mechanisms that underlie their accomplishments, but the investigators of quantum mechanics do this as a matter of course. Therefore, if these scientists claim that religion is irrational mumbo jumbo and try to debate the issue with any perceptive opponent, they are easily drawn into a position of reductio ad absurdum, since they, in that instance, apply the label of fantasy to something that is less fantastic than that which they claim to represent reality. The quantum physicist deals with concepts and phenomena that are, by consensus, as close to impossibility as it is possible to be without having arrived at that point. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is the religious faith of about two billion people, such that, from the first, it is reasonable to assume that it consists of something besides fantasy. Furthermore, all science is essentially a matter of faith because, other than mathematics and various ethical axioms, there is nothing that is known; all else is a matter of belief and therefore of faith. Jastrow, an agnostic, strongly supported, as we have seen, the contention that science is about faith, and the support of those who are or easily could be against one’s claims is particularly valuable. For practical purposes, the final line of defense of those who ascribe to pure science consists of the combination of the strong and the final anthropic principles (SAP and FAP, respectively). The SAP is the concept that so many universes exist that at least one, obviously the one we are in, must contain all of the prerequisites for the initiation of life as we know it. If an infinite number of universes exists, chance would depart this scenario, and

“probably exists” would become “exists,” but we do not know that is the case and, in all probability, can never know. Even if the unbelieving scientist were ever able to show that the SAP is true, he would then have to employ the FAP as well, in order to complete his argument. This is the contention that, in the far future, humankind will become so advanced as to be able to create in the past, and this is something that cannot be outdone as the claim that seems most outlandish and impossible. The FAP does not tell us how we might accomplish that creation, and the special theory of Relativity disallows tinkering in or with the past. Beyond these facts, there is such a thing as intuition, and, if any claim ever seemed to be ridiculous, that of the FAP is the one. The SAP may have some integrity to it, but the FAP is far too imaginative for me! The steady state theory of universal existence, championed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle, British astronomer and mathematician, became obsolete when Hubble’s grand discovery established the big bang as the nature of the Beginning. The only other route the scientifically oriented atheist has to put forward is the Hartle-Hartle theory, and I hardly believe it is of enough moment that I should add it to our discussion. It is clever, revolving around the claim that the ultimately early universe is timeless, such that it makes no sense to talk about a Beginning, and this thought is similar to or identical with the idea that nothing that begins in a void, in a timeless and spaceless condition of nothingness, needs a beginning in order to exist. However, one of its originators, Stephen Hawking, very possibly the finest theoretical physicist in the world in our day, has stated it does not exclude the existence of God and that it is based on imaginary numbers, which are in turn based on the square root of minus one. I am not certain of any significance of the involvement of imaginary numbers here, but, as we humans cannot understand them at all, and since they appear to be pure fantasy, anything that is based on them would seem to be fantasy as well. Hawking further gave his opinion that, “in real time, the universe has a beginning.” The scientifically oriented apologist, on the other hand, confidently informs that there have been cognitive individuals on earth for only about 0.05 percent of the time that life has existed thereon. He then asks how the

dinosaurs, the reality of the existence of which is virtually unquestioned, could have existed, as we can perceive no provision for their quantum observation. Hearing no response, he answers his own question with the following limerick: “There once was a man who said, ‘God must think it exceedingly odd if He finds that this tree continues to be when there’s no one about in the Quad.’ Reply: Dear Sir: ‘Your astonishment’s odd. I am always about in the Quad. And that’s why the tree will continue to be, since observed by, yours faithfully, God.’” For good measure, however, let us consider the following. Science now supports the existence of God, most strongly in terms of quantum physics, which plunges us to the deepest depths and soars us to the greatest heights in studying our world, while its practitioners testify more than anyone that one must either believe in God or sacrifice reason. Moreover, they find themselves in this position because their explanations of the Beginning and how the universe and we can be maintained are all complex, dubious, ineloquent, pluralistic, and fantastic, while biblical Scripture explains these matters in a way that is clear, simple, eloquent, plausible, and less fantastic. Strictly scientific answers to the most profound and important questions we can ask are square pegs in round holes; ultimate truth has corners that science alone cannot resolve. Science emanated from philosophy, and it must never fully disconnect from it. It would make no sense at all for it to do so, particularly as modern physics is emphatically reversing its separatist tendencies. Wise scientists go further yet and accept the involvement of deity, a wise idea especially because deity is necessary for origin. Their usual conclusion is like that of Sir Fred Hoyle, who, striving as best he could to maintain his agnosticism, finally arrived at the point of giving up his lengthy effort and even writing about his change of heart. Hoyle had christened in ridicule the theory of universal origin engendered by Hubble’s grand discovery in coining the term, “big bang,” but the effect on his reasoning of a single fine-tuning of our universe ultimately destroyed his atheism. He was struck by the tremendous numbers involved in the possible settings of nuclear resonance of carbon atoms, and this led him to the view that it was enormously unlikely to have occurred without purpose.

He quaintly enunciated the reason for his change of heart as follows: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” He went on to say that there are “no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” It is also worth pondering at length the ongoing project of astronomer and Christian apologist Hugh Ross, author of numerous books (e.g., The Creator and the Cosmos) concerning fine-tunings in our world. He has, as of about twelve years ago, compiled over 125 exact settings of similar nature to that of carbon resonance. As far as he can figure, the chance that all these parameters could have occurred within the bounds of a single universe without cognitive direction—without planning, purpose, desire, and intent—is about one out of 10166. Proceeding to biology, that life science we initially found to be highly troublesome, we now find substantial support for the opinion of the theist. Foster states, in the same book that I previously referenced, that the chance the hemoglobin molecule could have come into being by accident is one out of 10650 and that the same opportunity in the case of the gigantic molecule of desoxyribonucleic acid—DNA—is 1078000. Thus science supports theism directly, particularly with its discovery of the big bang and the big molding, and indirectly by its tendency to lead us to the beginning of a road of reason that ends in support of the existence of God. Again, scientists must admit to their dependence upon faith. Without it, they would be in a state of constant despair and helplessness, just as Jews and Christians would be without theirs. Admittedly, converting scientists have not always chosen Christianity or even biblical faith; for example, many are deists. However, a familiar God acclaimed by earthlings for about four thousand years, and One who also fits our description of the ideal Quantum Observer, would seem to be more likely valid than would one whom we could only seek in relative darkness. We should search in other directions only if the God of the Bible does not possess the characteristics we would expect to see in the ideal Arche of our imagination, and we shall see in the second book of this series that the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus is entirely characterized by such qualities.

The Biblical God as the True God One certainly finds reason in most religion, just as one finds faith in science. Science emphasizes reason, and theology emphasizes faith. Philosophy is more about reason than is any other field of human endeavor, and all three of these thought systems of humankind, when closely examined together, point toward the reality of a Supreme Being, as we have discussed. The part of theology that pertains primarily to reason is apologetics.

Notes 1. Einstein indeed believed in God as per his description of this higher power as “an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.” In Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists, we read, on page 172, “So Hoyle (the late Sir Fred Hoyle, famous British astrophysicists) at this point has to introduce God” (into his thinking—my addition here). “In my extensive reading, I have found few, from Einstein to Schrodinger, who at some stage or another did not have to introduce God. The critical moment is when one finds proofs of an intelligence which exceeds human intelligence, and in this the critical point was the realization of biological (improbable) specificity. Presumably the most elegant scientist is the one who can go farthest down the scientific road until at last he has to declare: ‘I give up. GOD EXISTS.’” The person who believes evolution happened without any supernatural intelligent direction must in fact provide sound evidence that this is so if he wishes to convince anyone of his opinion. In fact, to claim that anything could have happened spontaneously with no cause and for no reason is a most radical and reckless statement that no one can defend. Biological specificity is exemplified by calculations that show that the possibility that DNA could have developed by chance is only about one

out of 1078,000, one out of a number which is one with 78,000 zeros after it. This finding shows us that it is essentially impossible that DNA could have developed by accident. No one can wrap his mind around such a thing. To do so would be infinitely more difficult than consideration of deity. In addition, humans have traits of which there is no discernible evolutionary advantage. Modern physicists have now arrived at the point in their thinking of being unable to deny God’s existence and that his existence is hugely less fantastic than godless explanations of ultimate origin, though some do not realize it. It may be amazing that Hoyle, not a person to make changes in his thinking about important issues without truly excellent reasons, left his atheism behind on account of only a single fine-tuning that he observed in his world— one out of the 125+ that Hugh Ross has compiled. This demonstrates nicely that our evidence in favor of theism is far greater than sufficient to show that God is. In conjunction with a colleague, Hoyle wrote a book called Convergence to God, emphasizing his new belief. It has become obscure, but this should not have happened. It is a turning point in the history of science, a monumental milestone, carved from objective scientific research, and it should be dramatically affecting the thinking of all objective scientists from now on.

Chapter 11 Quantum Observation and Genesis: Beginning to Draw Conclusions In perusing his weaponry, the biblical apologist can find an item derived from quantum physics that stands out as likely the most important one that he has with which he can show that this science points us toward Him of the Bible as the one true God. It is the similarity between the creation story in Genesis and the phenomenon of quantum observation. In order to understand this advantage, let us look at the first chapter of Genesis. “Let there be,” proclaimed God in this first book of the Old Testament, and the author of that book gives us His next words as “God saw that it was good.” We generally take His statement of approval as just that and nothing more, but I am convinced it is something more. It reminds me of the dictates of quantum observation, and I in fact believe there is essentially no difference between God’s observation in original creation and the quantum observation that physicists have discovered is necessary if anything is to happen. God’s initiation of the universe was (again) a two-step, a twofold, process in which He first “set the stage” and then confirmed the existence of each thing He had made, thereby completing its creation. He first established the potential for the existence of that which He wanted to create, and He then observed His “blueprint” in order to actualize it. Note that we humans do not possess any ability with regard to step one; it is enough that he has shared step two with us. To allow us, on our level of existence, to establish potential would no doubt be very dangerous. Even God’s particular words in this seem as though they could be of significance. As He saw that what He had created was good, He confirmed that it was recognizable as part of The Truth, which, one recalls, is allGoodness. More important yet, however, is that there is no other religious figure that is said to create in this twofold manner. Yahweh God is the One. He is the true God, and Jesus is His Christ.

PART 3 Final Observations

Chapter 12 Conclusions I have supported the major contentions of this treatise with evidence derived in a way that is similar to the methods of science, which are primarily based on inductive reasoning. The Reverend Sir John Polkinghorne, who has produced twenty-six books on the relationship between science and religion to go with his five on physics, is the most important proponent of this principle of thinking of theological research in similar manner as one thinks of any other investigation. Dr. Polkinghorne was a professor of mathematical physics for twenty-five years, after which he attended seminary and subsequently served in the capacity of an Anglican priest. He later became president of Queens College, Cambridge. He is also a Templeton Prize laureate, the winner of a million dollars for exceptional contributions to the affirmation of life’s spiritual dimension. Dr. Polkinghorne has likened research in the two disciplines as being like rhinoceros vs. giraffe (choice of animals mine); these animals look a lot different on the outside, but, in dissection specimens, they can be very similar. In other words, the whole animals are dissimilar, but they both have the same parts and bodily organization. It is my goal to follow in Dr. Polkinghorne’s as well as Eddington’s footsteps. Quantum observation is heavily involved with the concept of form and substance, something that greatly interested Plato. On our level of size, we can discern these two aspects of material objects; substance is the matter itself, which presents in a particular form, which is the shape of a specific object. These two characteristics are always connected on the human level of size; at first blush, any alternate situation seems ridiculous—macroscopic objects invariably have both form and substance, as far as our senses take

us. On the bizarre quantum level, however, elemental entities can exist as form alone or as substance alone. When these are in the state of form, they are waves, and, when they assume the mode of substance, they exist as discrete packets, distinct bodies of substance (provided we can call energy and thought substance). Now since waves lack substance, they lack location, and both of these negative characteristics are instrumental in their ability to exist in more than one place simultaneously, such that, in the double slit experiment, they can go through both slits at once.1 Plato’s forms weigh nicely into this line of thought, as they are form without substance, and they are able to exist in this way by virtue of their existence beyond space-time.2 Form and substance are also separate in the timeless realm, allowing the existence of spirits, minds without substance, of which Judeo- Christianity recognizes the existence. This precept clarifies the difficulty one has in discerning how soul and body can separate at the time of death. The answer here is that they do not separate at all because they are never connected to begin with in the way that we think of connection. Our minds develop outside of time and are never confined by it. Our bodies, including our brains, are the product of (directed) evolution, but our minds develop in heaven during our earthly lives if we are committed to the Christ. After all, nothing and no one, not even light-speed, can bind the mind. (The disconnection of soul from body at the time of death is of Greek, not Christian, origin.) The ubiquitous property of perspective in our world is heavily involved in death. This event is the termination of a person to those who watch him die, but, to the dying person himself, it may well be something entirely different. Perhaps the person, at the point of death, encounters the Christ and receives reassurance from Him, as though he were awakening from a bad dream (provided he is to go to heaven). The dying person, who is in fact the most involved person in this event, has, in my view, the best perspective on it. Therefore, I would favor his version as valid if it were different from that of observers, and I believe it is radically different. The

way in which Einstein comforted the widow shows us that he did not see death as the end. Quantum physics finds us a God who is clearly not the kind that deists worship—the kind who “creates and runs” like a reptilian parent. Because science’s God goes to such extremes as to share the ability to perform step two of creation, we see that He desires intimacy with us, just as the God of the Bible does, who wants us to share His joy and, most likely, to participate in plans of His that we have not yet imagined. He apparently wants companions, children, new and individual minds (e.g., those of humans)—He knows the proper word or words here—to live with Him and probably to work and even, in a sense, play with Him. In conjunction with God’s desire for intimacy with us, Jesus called us friends and said we can do greater works than He. Amazing. We are to live close to Him, as He is close to the Father—so close, in fact, that He is God. Following His resurrection, the Father gave Him everything, and He gave it all back. The Father gave it back in turn, such that they are in an eternal relationship of “After you”; “No, after you”; “No, after you,” and on and on. The Father shares all with the Son, and the Son shares all with humans who give Him their all; we are to treat each other in similar fashion. Christianity is about loving and giving, unconditionally and to the maximum degree possible, and for humanity it all begins with Jesus. He reflected the extreme goodness of God, especially His tenderness, mercy, and caring; thus, He illustrated The Truth from which all things come. His omnipotent and omniscient Father is a God of such magnitude and of such goodness that He, a rational Person of extreme wisdom, purpose, and love, would be bound to come to us in order to walk a mile in our moccasins, as He of the Bible has done. Of the major religions, only Christianity and Islam clearly offer eternal life, and Islam is legalistic and founded on empire established through war. Napoleon, though well versed in battle, admiringly described Jesus as follows: “I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force.

Jesus Christ founded His Empire upon love, and at this hour millions of men would die for him.” And note that he speaks of Jesus in the present tense. There are numerous apologetic items that are so compelling that I almost wonder whether there is real need to go further after enunciating them. A good example is the “Lord, lunatic, or liar” consideration. Jesus said He is God. Now ordinarily we consider a person who says such a thing to be a lunatic, or, perhaps, a liar. Never do we consider that he might be correct. However, in order to be entirely objective, one must consider that possibility. One might not need to consider it long if the person has substantial other characteristics that warrant the diagnosis of psychosis, but what if the claimant leads a perfect life of goodness, is selfless, and is more loving than anyone has ever been before him. And what if he is able to do things that are impossible for anyone else? In this instance, considering that He might be God is quite normal, rational, and necessary if one is to be objective and nonprejudicial. There is absolutely no evidence that Jesus was a lunatic or a liar, but there is substantial evidence that He is God. I submit that He deserves at least a fair hearing from each of us. No other faith is anything like His. Many people say that there are numerous religions, all with a part of the truth in them. That may be the case, but I submit that Christianity has all of The Truth in it and that it is radically different from all other faiths. Thank you so very much for your attention.

Notes 1. The double-slit experiment, as fantastic as it sounds, is an ordinary laboratory procedure that proves that matter and energy can display characteristics of both waves and particles. Parallel slits, a particular distance apart, are cut into a plate, which is set in front of a screen. A coherent light source (e.g., a laser beam) is then directed through them. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two

slits to interfere with each other (the waves are out of phase with one another, at least partially), producing bright and dark bands on the screen, a result that would not be expected if light consisted strictly of particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles, not waves, the interference pattern’s appearing via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen (material from Wikipedia). 2. Plato’s forms: Plato envisioned the existence of universals on a higher level than ours, which embodied the qualities essential to being this or that object or concept, but nothing further. For whatever reason, the example he always gave in this instance was that of a bed. Thus, the basic form of “bedness” consisted of a platform supported by four posts. On the next level down in this paradigm—the level occupied by humanity—are, of course, found innumerable variations of the basic form of beds. Plato imagined then a third level, which consisted of shadows, paintings, and such of beds. These variations, paintings, etc., are particulars.

Glossary Steven Goldman, by way of Science Wars, a course given through the Teaching Company, has afforded me much of the material in this glossary.

Words Answer (capitalized). The combined answers to our most profound and basic questions (e.g., our Origin, our Beginning, the ultimate nature of physical reality, whether we are purposeful, whether we will live forever, and whether we can affect our state in eternity by what we do in time. (See “unified theory” entry.) a priori. Beforehand, prior to all other considerations. Arche. The ruling principle, the Origin of all entities. Arche has given rise to words in English that relate to the lofty and the ancient (e.g., archbishop and archaeology). astrobiologist. A scientist who studies the possibility of life on other planets, which may be outside of our solar system or even our galaxy. Avogadro’s number. A mathematical constant that is the number of atoms in a mole of any substance. “mole” is defined as the number of grams of an element that equals its atomic number. (The atomic number of an element is equal to the number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms.) axiom. An irrefutable truth (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4 or “Love is a good thing”). Beginner (capitalized). Synonymous with the Arche and the true God; term coined by Dr. Hugh Ross and used by him to indicate the Prime Mover, whom he believes is the God of the Bible. Beginning (capitalized). The beginning of the universe. Buddhism. A philosophy with no god, established by Siddhartha Gautama, who lived from about 563 until about 483 BC and considered himself to be profoundly enlightened. As the Buddha was entirely and only human, Buddhism is a form of humanism resembling Protagoras’s Sophism. His birth marks the beginning of the “Axial” period of history, which lasted

until the death of Socrates and marks the formation of much of the corporate spiritual development of humanity. cogitation. Thinking. cognitive. Adjective form of cogitation. determinism. The philosophical doctrine that everything, including one’s choice of action, is the necessary result of a sequence of causes. This concept involves the belief that what is to happen to all persons is predestined and cannot be escaped. dimension. When we use the expression, “five miles,” we know that we are measuring the length (or width or thickness) of something and that a mile is the dimension we are employing in order to be able to express the distance —the linear amount of space—with which we are dealing. For the dimensions of time, we of course use terms such as seconds, hours, and days. Thus, talking about how long something is or how much time went by is relatively simple, but dimensions can be more complicated than this. The dimensions for velocity, for example, are distance per period. (The word per in mathematics is synonymous with the line that separates the two numbers that constitute a fraction. It can also be defined by citing the following examples: “five miles per hour” means that, during each hour, an object travels five miles, and five miles per hour per hour means that, in each hour, a body travels five more miles than it did in the previous hour; in either case, the quantity is called the “numerical modifier” of the expression.) The dimensions of the speed of light can, of course, be expressed in miles per second or by any other combination of distance traveled per length of time. Of course, when fractions are multiplied, one multiplies numerator by numerator and denominator by denominator. At the same time, one multiples the dimension of the numerical modifier in the same way, in order to get the dimension of the product of the two fractions. Thus, ten miles per second times twenty miles per second equals two hundred miles squared per second squared. (In doing this calculation, I express ten and twenty as fractions [i.e., 10/1 and 20/1, respectively].) Fortunately, it is not necessary to understand this math very well in order to understand the theses that I am putting forward in this work.

discipline. An area of scholarly study, such as sociology or physics. doxa. Everything, including our own bodies, that we can perceive with our physical senses. electromagnetic waves. Streams of photons existing and traveling in wave form. These exist in a spectrum of lengths, and light occupies a small spectrum within the larger one. At the borders of the spectrum of color we find, on one end, red, interpreted as such by our visual apparatuses when they are stimulated by relatively long electromagnetic waves, and on the other end, where the waves are relatively short, we find violet. When, in describing the special theory of Relativity, we speak of the speed of light as absolute, we are actually talking about all electromagnetic waves. Most commonly, however, according to tradition, we talk about light-speed when we are talking about the phenomena of Relativity. elemental particle. A particle of matter (narrow sense of the word) or force that cannot be further reduced. It probably consists of energy; we do not, however, know what energy is. Fertile Crescent. A geographical term that denotes a crescent-shaped area of the Middle East that extends from the head of the Persian Gulf northwest through Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) to the location of the ancient land of Assyria, near the eastern-most part of Asia Minor (Turkey), thence southwest through the former location of Phoenicia, through Palestine, and on into Egypt. At the eastern end of it is the former land of Sumer, where civilization first arose, and, at the other end lies the land of the Nile, the second-earliest civilization of all. As the name of it implies, this area favors crop growing, while the land to the south of it, within the crescent, is desert. Abraham traveled almost the length of this land, stopping short of Egypt in the land that God promised him for his progeny. Later, his grandson and his family went on to Egypt because of a famine. They were enslaved, their progeny remained in captivity for about four hundred years, afterward traveling through wilderness to the west side of the Promised Land and entering it by crossing the Jordan River. final anthropic principle (FAP). The theory that humans become so advanced in the future that we become able to create in the past, such that

we are the Prime Mover. give-give (human) relationship. This pertains to agape love and to the highest and best possible relationship among persons. For example, a givegive marriage is one in which each partner loves the other unconditionally and works for his or her welfare and happiness without thought of what he or she will get in return. godhead. God, with the connotation of His existence as the Trinity, with three aspects, though He is forever One. grand unified theory (GUT). See “unified theory” entry. gumption. United States slang: the urge to do something; ambition. heaven. A paradisiacal realm separate from the one we currently inhabit. I see it as without space or time, such that it is no distance from us. It is the realm of being, as opposed to the sphere of becoming in which we now live. “There,” all is permanent, and there are no shades of gray with regard to what is good and right. (I place quotes around “there” in this instance because, in the absence of space, there actually is no “there” that pertains to heaven or its location relative to ours. Also, though I have spoken here of all matters in heaven as black and white, it would be more accurate to say that they are all white, as there is no evil there.) Homo sapiens. The single genus, species, and variety of the humans that are currently on earth. humanist. Person who believes that there is no higher source of information than humans. Kingdom (capitalized). The Kingdom of God, essentially synonymous with heaven. Kingdom of God. This is essentially synonymous with heaven and “the Kingdom.” If we could see it with the mind’s eye right now, it might look, at least superficially, like the world in which we presently live. We would soon discover, however, that there is no time or space “there” or that space and/or time is much different in that realm from what it is in the world we presently inhabit. I think most likely it is timeless, however. Joy is the job,

occupation, and vocation of everyone in that sphere, and, to the inhabitants’ most particular joy, the personality of Jesus is foundation of everything. levels of size and existence. There are various levels of size, and similar phenomena occur on each; for example, only a few live salmon emanate from hundreds of salmon eggs, and there are relatively few planets among the billions of billions of them that probably in our universe—possibly just one—harbor life. In addition, reality is organized into levels of existence, which include heaven; the time-bound level, of which our universe is at least part; the level of nonresponsible life, which can relate to humans a little like we are to relate to God; and the level without life. Situations develop and events occur on one level that have the same basic pattern as do those on others. In addition, what is a miracle on a lower level may be an “everyday event” on a different level. If I rescue a minnow from a puddle beside a river, that is a miracle insofar as the minnow is concerned, and, if it could think, I would probably seem like a god. Often, if not always, miracles are nothing more than events that we have simply not seen happen before. life science. The division of science that deals with living creatures, both zoological and botanical. Particularly for purposes of the material covered in this book, its two major subcategories are biology and psychology. light-speed. The border of space-time. Nothing can go faster. However, the speed of light decreases when it goes through matter. logos. That which we perceive with the mind’s eye and not with our physical senses; that which we perceive by way of thought. Logos (capitalized). This is synonymous with Word, which is a synonym of the Word of God. Logos can also be defined as the image of God (i.e., Jesus). matter (narrow sense of the word, as used in this writing). Material, matter with the exclusion of force. matter (broad sense, as used in this writing). Matter plus force (all of the four forces of the universe).

matter (broadest sense, for purposes of this writing—used least of all). Everything that exists in our universe—all of its components except for its framework, space-time. militant scientist. One who believes that science is the only possible source of dependable information and who is an activist in attempting to convince all others of the truth of his contention. mind. An abstraction that pervades all cognitive beings and becomers. It is the essence of significant life, inseparable from it, and perhaps the basis of it. It is possessed by all who inhabit the top two levels of existence. It is, of course, the origin of thought. Mind is the universal that encompasses all individual minds, the abstraction that pertains to each. It is the mutual basis of individual personalities, of unique identities. Mind is a component of The Truth. (See “The Truth” entry.) and the abstract source of thought and emotion. mind (individual). The essence, the personality, the thinking apparatus of a specific individual person. In space-time, minds reside in brains in order that their development may be facilitated; outside of space-time, they exist without the need for matter, which is nothing but incomprehensible energy. Outside of space-time, minds are spirits that can also be called souls if they have previously inhabited bodies in time (according to the way I prefer to use the term). Spirits are immaterial living entities that are conscious, emotional, and cognitive. They see with the mind’s eye, hear with the mind’s ear, feel with the mind’s tactile apparatus, etc. These can, in my view, imagine personal bodies that are at least as complex, detailed, and real as the bodies that we humans have in space-time. There is no mind without thought and no thought without mind. Mind (capitalized). The Mind of God. mind’s eye. An abstract version of vision, through which we see with our minds through thought, imagination, and faith. modern physics. The combination of Relativity and quantum mechanics. This term is essentially synonymous with “theoretical physics.” molecule. The smallest particle of a substance that can exist without violation of the identity of that substance.

multiverse. A group of universes, ranging from two to infinity in number. These would apparently have to exist no distance from each other provided that all space is within universes, as seems to be the case. mystical. Supernatural. narcissism. A state of complete devotion to self, wherein other people are treated as though they do not exist; a state of isolation. natural. Pertaining to the realm of space-time that is our universe. natural philosophy. What science was called before it was called science. nihilism. The belief that we do not actually exist. It may also be defined as a theoretical state of nonexistence. order of magnitude. Multiples of ten. The first order of magnitude is designated 101, which means 10 times 1. The second order of magnitude of 10 is 102, which is 10 times 10, which equals 100. The third order of magnitude of ten is 103, which is 10 times 10 times 10, which equals 1,000. One can go on like this indefinitely. These are also called “powers of ten.” One could use any other number on which to base a system; we use 10 by convention, not because there is anything innately special about 10. This is exponential mathematical progression. We can use the same notation to describe exponential decrease: 100 is 1, 10-1 is one-tenth, 10-2 is onehundredth, etc., indefinitely. These exponents—the small raised numbers— are also called logarithms, which are used to simplify calculations (because the adding of exponents is the same as multiplying standard numbers, and it is easier to add than it is to multiply). Between powers of ten, we use coefficients to designate quantities in terms of logarithms (logs). For example, the number, 99, equals .99 times 102. Here, .99 is the “coefficient.” Origin. The Cause of the Beginning, that which set in motion the Beginning—the First Cause, the Prime Mover, the Arche. Palestine. This is a geographical area that has been inhabited by various peoples during the past four thousand years. Most recently, most of it is occupied by modern-day Israel. Arabs that dispute Israel with regard to

ownership of this land nowadays call themselves “Palestineans.” To a large extent, they live in peace with the Israelis, but to some extent they exist as bitter enemies. The term originates with the Philistines, major enemies of the land of Israel in the time of Kings Saul and David. particular. This is an example of a universal concept. (See “universal” entry.) perspective. Point of view, particularly in the visual sense and especially pertaining to the opinion that is correct. I tend to use this term in the most profound sense, in which case it refers to the true, the ultimate, the real nature of entities and essence of situations, even though these may vary according to one’s level of existence and one’s velocity in relativistic situations. Another example of perspective is that Jesus primarily represents joy from the perspective of the inhabitants of heaven and primarily hope (expectation) from the perspective of persons living on Earth. (Some of us, such as I, believe that He essentially represents joy in both settings.) Perspective can vary according to location in space, location in time, degree of education, familiarity with subject matter, what one is accustomed to, and other factors. photon. A quantum that is the smallest possible increment of light and other electromagnetic waves. It also has another function, which is that it is the smallest possible increment of electromagnetic force. physical science. The part of science that deals with matters more basic than chemistry, nonliving entities. It includes physics, astronomy, and cosmology. pre-Socratic philosophers. Greek philosophers of before the time of Socrates. Promised Land. The real estate that God promised his chosen people, the Jews. The first person to receive this promise was Abraham, and God renewed it with Isaac and Jacob, son and grandson of Abraham, respectively. It was the land of the Canaanites, which people the Hebrews partly drove out after they crossed the Jordan after many years in the wilderness following their escape from captivity in Egypt around the year

1300 BC. This land is roughly equivalent to the modern-day geographical setting of Palestine. pure science. The belief of one who believes that science is the only dependable source of information; these individuals may be called “pure scientists.” quantized. In a particulate state. If something is quantized, it exists as miniscule particles rather than as continuous matter. These particles, called “quanta,” are irreducible amounts or packets of the entity in question. If their size is further reduced, they become members of a different substance from the one of which they were originally a part. quantum. An elemental particle, the smallest possible packet of matter (narrow sense of the word) or energy. Examples are the quark, the electron, and the photon. This term is also used as an adjective to denote the “world” of the smallest of the small. quantum mechanics. A term that may be used as synonymous with quantum physics. “Mechanics” has the connotation of motion, however, such that it is most appropriate to use this word when one is primarily speaking of the movement of quanta. It happens that most of the characteristics of quanta have to do with their motion. quantum physics. Study of characteristics and behavior of the smallest of particles, especially those that are elemental and indivisible. quantum system. An organized or potentially organized group of quantum/elemental particles at the quantum level of size and existence. quantum world. The realm of the existence of the smallest of the small (i.e., where the very smallest of entities reside). Here one finds objects that are Planck-size and somewhat larger. Here, strangeness prevails; here, where objects are fifteen to twenty orders of magnitude smaller than a proton, we have learned through the wonders of advanced mathematics that mind is primary where our universe is concerned. reductio ad absurdum. This trap, into the jaws of which Socrates led most of those who attempted to best him in argument, consists of leading opponents into a state of having made at least two statements that are

contradictory without realizing they have done so until it is too late. At that point, their credibility disappears, and they have lost. Relativity (the concept). The concept of one entity’s being or doing something “relative to” another as opposed to that of behaving independently. Let us say, for example, that a star is closing directly on our sun at a rate of seven miles per second. In this instance, we can only say that the invading body is moving at a rate of seven miles per second relative to the velocity of the sun. If the body is coming at the sun at a speed of eight miles per second while the sun is receding from it at the rate of one mile per second, for example, then the velocity of the object relative to the sun is seven miles per second. As I note below, we could have a situation where the sun or the other body is stationary, just as either or both could be moving, but we can know nothing more about the rate at which they are closing on each other than that it is the sum of or the difference between, and, in the case of recession, one or both of the velocities may be a negative, a minus, figure. The basic point here is that space is relative, never absolute, and the same goes for time. Space connects with time just as one spatial dimension connects with another. (Of course, there is that one exception to the relativity of space-time, the strange behavior of the photons of electromagnetic waves, the velocity of which in a vacuum cannot be exceeded by any entity. Their absolute nature has the most profound implications.) Relativity (the word). Pertaining to the theory of Relativity. (I capitalize this word when I use it in this context because of my profound respect for Albert Einstein and his theory of Relativity.) salvation. Protection from the wages of sin, which can be received only through total commitment to, preferably belief in, the Christ. It is the assurance of comfort, contentment, and joy in the eternal realm. Many Christians believe that it is not possible for a Christian to backslide, to fall away from the state of salvation. This is a difficult theological question, but I think they are probably right. seeker. One who seeks information of a profound nature. This kind of person delves into the thought of God and tries to interpret what he finds in the best possible.

shade. Something that seems to live as a cognitive individual but does not live at all. This word is linguistically related to “shadow.” singularity. A line or a point with boundless density, having but a single dimension or no dimensions at all, respectively. The best way of thinking of one of these is to consider the black holes that astronomers believe exist in our universe. They have immeasurably strong gravity but contain no perceptible material, at least any that appears to take up space. They consist of a star that has shrunk to an infinitely small volume without losing any mass. The gravity of a black hole is so great that not even light can escape from it. (Thus are they black.) If one imagines a black hole that stretches from one place to another in a line with no transverse dimensions, he/she can best envision a linear singularity. As nothing can escape from a black hole, and the depth of one of these is immeasurably great, it is easy to imagine that these monsters could represent exits from our universe that have a kind of white spout on the other end representing the entrance of material into another universe. If there are more than two universes, however, I would have to wonder how it is “decided” what universe the “white spout” would be in. I doubt it can be a matter of proximity because it seems to me that universes do not exist anywhere; they contain space—they are not in space. Sophism. The creed of Sophists, itinerant teachers of ancient Greece, who taught young men how to persuade, primarily in the manner of lawyers. For a fee, they enhanced the abilities of their students to make an impact on whoever they wanted to impress, most often a judge or a legislative body. Their concern was for winning, and truth was a side issue of little if any importance to them. Sophist. A traveling professional teacher of rhetoric in ancient Greece. Sophists believed that what was important was not the truth, but who is able to prevail. They were persuaders who trained others, usually young men, in their skill, which was most useful to those who aspired to be attorneys or politicians. soul. Synonymous with “mind” with the stipulation that it is in or has been in a body. (This at least is the way I use the term.)

spirit. Insofar as this book is concerned, a mind that is not and never has been in a body. There seems to be, in the dictionary that I am using, a shade of difference between this word and “soul,” in that the latter is a term that seems most commonly to be used to designate a mind that is or has been in a body, whereas “spirit” is more likely to indicate a mind that is not and never has been incarnate. steady state theory. A theory, now obsolete, that imagined the universe as having always existed and, at least according to Fred Hoyle, to have included the concept of panspermia, seeding of earth with DNA from outer space. In this instance, DNA would not have had to evolve on earth “from scratch,” and that scenario made the concept of Darwinism much more palatable. The major problem in Hoyle’s version of steady state is, of course, the origin of the DNA. strong anthropic principle. The concept that there are huge numbers of universes, perhaps infinite in number, such that there is bound to be at least one that has all the fine-tunings that are necessary for life as we know it to develop and thrive. It is often invoked by pure scientists as part of their supposed evidence that we do not need God for the Beginning and/or that there is plenty of time for evolution to have occurred to the degree that it could have produced all life on our planet without any input from God. There is, however, no evidence at all that the SAP is realistic. (As per above, one needs the final anthropic principle in addition to the SAP to conceivably be able to get the universe going without a God, and it is so utterly fantastic as to be entirely unbelievable.) I believe in evolution that has input from God to speed and otherwise enhance it, but the chances of its having occurred without intelligent direction are negligible, mainly due to the time factor. supernatural. Outside of space and time. This word, at least insofar as my usage of it is concerned, has no spooky connotations. It just means “outside of our universe,” which cannot be left behind by traveling any distance. theodicy. A work of literature that defends God from the charge of being responsible for evil and the bad things that can happen in our world.

theory of everything (TOE). The mathematical and conceptual combination of the GUT with gravity. thought. That which minds produce. thought experiment. An experiment one does by way of pure thought without the use of any implements, devices, or substances. Einstein was famous for doing these. He was able to set up a set of conditions in his mind and see to what conclusion these led him. Thought experiments point up very impressively the value of logos, and they tend to be quite dependable. time-bound. Pertaining to the realm of space-time that characterizes the universe in which we live. Trinity. The God of the Bible as a Three-in-One Being. He is single, solitary, but has three aspects: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We may perhaps look upon the Father as legislative, as the policy maker of the Three. The Son would then be the executive aspect, the Word of the Father, He who puts the purposes and plans of the Father into action. He came to earth, to humanity, as a man, demonstrating the Father’s qualities to us first hand. The Holy Spirit, also called the Holy Ghost, can be sent by Father or Son to live in any of us who will accept Him. He represents the way in which God can be maximally intimate with us. truth. That which is correct, the opposite of a lie. The truth is reality, that which philosophers have always sought. ultimate matters. The most fundamental, the most basic matters with which we can deal. These include the Answer and all axioms; they are matters of fundamental importance, particularly to humans. ultimate theory. The combination of the TOE and the Answer. ultimate truth. A basic truth or fundamental truths, which cannot be denied. uncertainty principle. See “Werner von Heisenberg” entry. unified theory. Synonymous with the “grand unified theory.” The conceptual combination of the electro- weak force with the strong force. This could be called the “minor holy grail” of theoretical physics; physicists hope to achieve this by setting up a situation of extremely high energy, comparable to that of the beginning of the universe. Originally, there were

five known universal forces—the strong force, the weak force, electrical force, magnetic force, and gravity. Physicists first succeeded in showing that electrical force and magnetic force are the same force; they then showed that electromagnetic force is conceptually the same as the weak force. Now, they hope to achieve the “unified theory” by showing that the strong force is, at high energy levels, identical with the electro-weak force. The “major holy grail” (my own coinage) would be the combination of the united force with gravity. This major discovery would be the “theory of everything.” I do not care for this terminology because the latter term has only to do with forces. To me, the “TOE” would include the “Answer,” which is the answers to our ultimate questions (e.g., “Where did we come from?” “Do we have any purpose?” and “Can we live forever?”). However, I am content to utilize “the ultimate theory” to refer to such a premise. universal. Philosophically, this is a concept or principle, exemplified by particulars, usually many of them. The best example of universals is Plato’s forms, as enunciated in his Republic. The thoroughbred horse, a particular kind of horse, is one of many examples of horseness; in this instance, “horse” is the universal, and “thoroughbred”is the particular. Universals have to do with what makes a horse a horse, and especially if we agree with Plato with regard to his forms and with Ockham regarding his principle of simplicity, these are “bare bones,” “bottom line” characteristics. A good additional example here is “John Jones,” a particular man, vs. “man,” a corresponding universal of a particular man. (We see here that a particular can come under the heading of more than one universal, as Mr. Jones is also a particular example of a “Jones.”) Universals are perceived only by way of the mind with its logos, whereas particulars can be perceived by way of our physical senses as well; thus, universals are abstract, whereas particulars are not. Both Plato and Aristotle were monotheists, in spite of their living in a polytheistic society. Though Aristotle was taken with particulars, he was, at the end of the day, of a similar mind with his teacher. He called the perception of universals intelligible, indicating that they are found only by way of mental processes and not through observations in our world. He thus implied that they are more important than particulars, and they are. Certainly in legal and moral analyses, as well as in scientific pursuits, we

need to proceed as Isaiah recommended when he wrote that the Messiah would judge not by what He saw or heard, but through His mental processes. Principles are universals, and they are indeed more important than examples. Anything that is ultimate is a universal. veil. The word I use for the division between our time- bound world and the realm of timelessness. A thick veil hung in the temple at Jerusalem separating the holiest room, which contained the Arc of the Covenant, from the rest of the building. When Jesus died, it spontaneously tore in half, but, figuratively speaking, the two pieces still hang, obscuring our view of heaven. When those who are committed to The Truth die, they access the inner chamber on the other side of the torn veil. Word (capitalized). Synonymous with Logos. Jesus is the Logos, and He is God’s Word. Hearing the question, “Have you gotten the word?” wherein “the word” is the most important communication ever delivered, we get a sense of what is meant by the capitalized version of “word” used in the arena of Christianity. For our sakes, the Word of God was snuffed out so that all evil in us might be excised. We could not otherwise stand before the Father and therefore could not otherwise ever go to heaven. worldview. one’s religion or other belief-system, perhaps a philosophy, which deals with ultimate questions that I have previously listed. zombie. A shade, with the connotation of spookiness and/or something bizarre.

Proper Names Aristotle. Plato’s keenest student. He was both a doxa person and a logos person. When all was said and done, however, he stuck with his mentor’s belief that things are not as they seem. Aristotle used the term “unmoved Mover” to denote his Arche. He as well as his intellectual forebears sat and walked and talked to students and others so very long ago that they may seem to us to reside in a misty past of epic heroes, but they were “regular guys,” as real as anyone and in no way mythical. Plato’s dialogues do not include Aristotle in their characters, but, in reading these gems, wherein Socrates is usually the source of all wisdom, one almost feels as though he is joining these great men in conversation. Plato transports us back to ancient Athens and makes at least the more imaginative of us integral parts of scenarios that seem as ordinary as modern-day poker games but are at the same time examples of the most sublime debates and other intellectual conversation that ever took place. Bacon, Francis. A high British governmental official of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, who brought education to the masses but is most famous as, with René Descartes, one of the two fathers of modern science. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Nineteenth-century poetess, wife of poet Robert Browning. Copernicus, Nicolaus. A Polish Catholic priest who refuted the earthcentered version of the universe and claimed that the planets revolve, in circular orbits, around the sun. Dalai Lama. A Buddhist leader of religious officials of the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The present Dalai Lama is exiled in India, whence he fled in 1959 in order to escape the Chinese Communists who now dominate his country. He established a government in exile, though he has never officially been the leader of the Tibetan government. According to Professor Malcolm D. Eckel of Boston University, as stated in his course made for the Teaching Company, the Dalai Lama does not believe that he or anyone else actually exists; he believes that he is a shade, in some sense a sort of zombie. He is a believer

in relative ethics; this is puzzling because basic Buddhist doctrine contains clear statements concerning details of good behavior. He is the fourteenth of a line of Dalai Lamas and was found to be such at age six by way of omens. Davies, Paul. Formerly a professor of natural philosophy (science) at the University of Adelaide in Australia, he is currently a physicist, writer, broadcaster, and professor of physics at Arizona State University in Phoenix. He has authored many books and has been the recipient of the Templeton Prize ($1,000,000, awarded yearly) for expertise in correlating religion with science. He was a postdoctoral fellow of Sir Fred Hoyle. In The Mind of God, Davies speaks of materials in our body’s having originated in stardust, reminding one of the passage in the biblical book of Genesis that refers to Adam’s having been made from dust. He believes that our minds are more than just the result of complexity of matter. He believes this for the same reason Einstein did, as quoted above. Our linkage does remain something of a mystery, but the prospect of God’s controlling the universe of His creation in the most minute detail, by directing the behavior of its tiniest entities, could not possibly indicate a greater degree of His intimacy with it. In addition, Davies seems to wax biblical when he writes at the end of The Mind of God, “What is man that we might be party to such privilege?” These words are highly similar to those of Psalm 8:4 (KJV): “What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him?” Here is the entire text of the last paragraph of this tour de force. “The central theme that I have explored in this book is that, through science, we human beings are able to grasp at least some of nature’s secrets. We have cracked part of the cosmic code … We, who are children of the universe— animated stardust—can nevertheless reflect on the nature of that same universe, even to the extent of glimpsing the rules on which it runs. How we have become linked into this cosmic dimension is a mystery. Yet the linkage cannot be denied … What is man that we might be party to such privilege? I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate … the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This

can be no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.” Decartes, René. A great and famous mathematician, scientist, and philosopher of the sixteenth century, who is most famous for proving his own existence and therefore the existence of other humans by way of his statement, “Je crois; donc, je suis,” French for the Latin, “Cogito, ergo sum,” and the English, “I think; therefore, I am.” (He uses “I am” as synonymous with “I exist.”) We recall that “I AM” is the closest that God can come to producing a name for Himself. Essentially, when Moses asked Him His name, He responded, “I AM.” Descartes, with Sir Francis Bacon, is generally considered to be one of the two fathers of modern science. He was a consummate rationalist. Eddington, Arthur. An astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in the early twentieth century who proved Einstein’s general theory of Relativity. Einstein, Albert. This man is well-known, and we have considered him at length in the text of this book. Thus, I will speak only of his religious convictions here, which were extensive and which are important to anyone who is interested in apologetics. He clearly believed in God. His friend, Max Born, said, “He had no belief in the Church, but did not think that religious faith was a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign of intelligence.” David Ben-Gurion once said about him, “I once talked to Einstein. Even he, with his great formula about energy and mass, agreed that there must be something behind the energy.” Prince Hubertus of Lowenstein quoted him thus, “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” The New York Times once quoted Einstein as saying, “I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research” and “. . . the only deeply religious people of our largely materialistic age are the earnest men of research.” Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: the Life and Times (New York: Avon Books, 1972). Euclid. A Greek mathematician who lived around 300 BC and devised a system of geometry that was deemed complete and taught as such in all Western schools until Einstein improved upon it.

Galilei, Galileo. An Italian astronomer of the 1600s, the first to use a telescope on the heavens. He discovered four moons of Jupiter and Saturn’s rings. He agreed with Copernicus that the sun is the center of the solar system and was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, which insisted for doctrinal purposes that the Earth must be central. He died under house arrest. Gorgias. The best student of Protagoras and the most enthusiastic and dedicated Sophist. He believed he did not exist. Haisch, Bernard. Professor of Astrophysics and author of The God Theory and The Purpose-Guided Universe. Hawking, Stephen. The most famous theoretical physicist of today. He occupies the professorial chair at Cambridge University once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton. He collaborated with James Hartle on the HartleHawking theory of the beginning of the universe and is probably best known among other scientists for his study of the radiation of black holes. Helen of Troy. Part history, part legend, Helen was the wife of a Greek king around the year 1200 BC. The younger son, Paris, of the king of Troy stole her away, and the Greeks came after her. They besieged Troy for years, finally breaking through its walls and sacking it, killing all of the royal family. Helen was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and hers was “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Heraclitus. A Greek philosopher who lived two or three generations before Socrates. He denied that there is any state of being and claimed instead that becoming was all there was, except that one became nothing except dead. He disavowed any absolute standard of behavior. From his thinking evolved that of the Sophists, Socrates’s mortal enemies, who were relative ethicists. Heraclitus was an advocate of doxa as all there was; his worldview was transience, change, and uncertainty. He disdained any thought of permanence or eternity and was most famous for his saying, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” This sounds like the Buddhist aphorism that no one of us is the same person from moment to moment. Heraclitus was such a believer in flux as reality that he venerated contradiction. He was like Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, who

insisted that 2 + 2 was 5 if he said so. Thus, the sayings of Heraclitus, which have come down to us in highly fragmentary fashion, are so confusing that one may wonder whether they are worth reading. Put into practice, they lead to narcissism, contention, and, therefore, to the most base of human relationships, that of “take-take,” which amounts to fighting verbally or physically in order to determine who is “right” about any disagreement. Hence, the way of Heraclitus is that of amorality. The nihilism of Heraclitus and his intellectual descendants leads us to the notion that a state of nothingness is more normal and natural that one of the existence of anything. The error of this way of thinking connects with the belief that mind is subordinate to matter. This concept began with the scientific revolution and is ending nowadays because Relativity and quantum physics are providing us with such a glimpse of ultimate reality that the deepest thinkers among us are beginning to realize that mind in the form of Mind, God, is primary in our world. Hertz, Heinrich. German physicist who wrote Principles of Mechanics, which contains his opinion that scientific theories are not uniquely true pictures of reality. Hoyle, Sir Fred. An English astronomer and mathematician who believed in the steady state theory as explanation of the existence of the universe. He coined in derision the term, “big bang.” Hoyle was an atheist until he was convinced by the fine-tuning of the universe that a Super- Intellect must be in charge of it. His students included Paul Davies. He died in 2001. Hubble, Edwin. Discoverer of the expansion of the universe by means of noting the “red-shift” of distant stars. He noted that, the farther stars and galaxies are away from us, the faster they are moving away from us. He did so by way of studying the spectra of light from individual heavenly bodies and noting that the redder the light from a distant object is, the farther away it is. This is a manifestation of the Doppler effect, which most of us are more familiar with in terms of sound than we are of light. As a noisy object comes toward us, its sound becomes progressively higher in pitch; as it recedes, the pitch becomes lower. Essentially the same thing happens with

regard to light waves, as these are compressed as the object approaches and decompressed as it departs, but this effect is much harder to perceive than it is in the case of sound. The changing pitch of sound and the changing color of light pertain to the length of waves of sound and light, respectively, and the changing color is exactly equivalent to the changing pitch of the sound waves. Because of this effect, physicists are able to measure how far away are the various heavenly bodies of our universe. Hume, David. A Scottish philosopher who wrote a treatise that refuted the concept that the characteristics of nature support the existence of God. He disdained, in other words, so called natural religion. In the process of his writing thus, he stated that negative evidence is stronger than positive evidence. I daresay he “shot himself in the foot” in doing so. Hume tried to prevent the public from fully understanding how skeptical he was of deity, lest his legacy be impaired. Jeans, Sir James. Colleague of Eddington at Cambridge who supported Eddington’s claim that mind is primary in our world and that the universe is the thought of God. Kelvin, Lord (William Thomson). Aristocrat for whom the scale of absolute temperatures was named. He argued that we cannot understand any physical phenomenon unless we can produce a mechanical model of it, and such construction is at best difficult to do. Kepler, Johannes. German astronomer of the beginning of the seventeenth century who discovered that the orbits of the planets are elliptical. Krauss, Lawrence M. Formerly Ambrose Swasey professor and director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University, now in residence at Arizona State University. Mach, Ernst. A Czech physicist, 1838–1916, whose name has become a designation of velocity relative to that of sound (Mach I = the speed of sound, Mach II = double the speed of sound, Mach 3 is triple, etc.). Newton, Sir Isaac. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cambridge University physicist and mathematician who invented the calculus. (There is one other historical contender for this accomplishment.) Newton

discovered more laws of nature than anyone else but wrote more theology than he did physics. Nietzsche, Friedrich. A nineteenth-century philosopher who admired Heraclitus and believed that what is important is not truth but who can win, who can dominate others. Hitler admired him. Ockham, of Occam, William of Ockham (or Occam), 1287–1347. His precept, Ockham’s Razor, is that of parsimony, that the simplest explanation for anything is probably the most likely to be correct. Among scientists, this principle is almost as dependable as eloquence in determining correctness. Parmenides. A Greek philosopher who lived about a half generation before Socrates. He was a champion of Being and was the greatest rival of Heraclitus. Paul. The first and most important Christian missionary, appointed by the resurrected Jesus who changed his name from Saul. Paul spread the Word of God in Christ from Judea to Rome, and possibly to Spain. He was a tentmaker by trade. Though a Roman citizen, he was executed while under house arrest in Rome, probably by the state. Because of his enhanced status in the empire, he was beheaded; otherwise, he would have been crucified. Planck, Max. The father of quantum mechanics. In 1900, he declared that elemental particles exist in two states, in quantum (packet, particle) form and in wave form. From that beginning, all of quantum physics derives. Protagoras. The founder of the Sophists, famous for saying, “Man is the measure of all things.” He was the first humanist. He recognized no morality except that of who can prevail, preferably by means of good rhetoric. He was a traveling professional teacher of public speaking and persuasion. He was the most prominent and important antagonist of Socrates. Pythagoras. He was a contemporary of Xenophanes. (See “Xenophanes” entry.) who founded a religious cult based on numbers and mathematics. He saw that the order of the universe is based on math, and he realized that musical intervals could be explained mathematically. He is credited with having derived the Pythagorean theorem, through which we see that the sum of the squares of the lengths of the sides of a right angle are equal to

the square of the length of a line drawn from the end of one of these sides to the other. Realizing that numbers are stable and permanent and that they relate not to the senses but to the mind, he could discern no greater candidate for Being or the Arche than number. (Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy.) Saul. Paul. See “Paul” entry. There is also Saul the first king of the Jews. Schroedinger, Erwin. One of the early and most important researchers in quantum physics. He is famous for an experiment he devised called Schoedinger’s cat, wherein he imagined a cat in a box with no windows and with a locked door. Also inside is a device that reacts to radioactivity, even to the decay of a single atom. Now, there is a 50 percent chance that at least one atom will decay, and, if it does, it will trigger a hammer’s falling on a bottle, breaking it and releasing a lethal gas. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that, after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead, awaiting the end of the experiment. When one then looks in the box at the end, one finds the cat in one state or another. (Reference: Wikipedia.) Thomas, “Doubting.” One of Jesus’s disciples, who, upon being told that He had risen from the dead, said that he would not believe it unless he saw the wounds of Jesus’s hands and put his hand in His side where a soldier had pierced Him with a spear. Jesus subsequently appeared to Thomas and granted these wishes. Tipler, Frank J. A professor of theoretical physics at Tulane in New Orleans. Veneziano, Gabriele. Originated string theory in 1968. This attempt to show that quantum mechanics is compatible with Relativity was initially welcomed as the discovery that would lead us to the TOE. It underwent, however, a period of disrespect. That has now ended, and string theory is presently the leading concept with regard to the explanation of how Relativity and quantum physics can reconcile with each other. Von Heisenberg, Werner. Prominent historical figure in theoretical physics. He originated the “uncertainty principle,” which states that one cannot simultaneously determine the velocity and the location of an elemental

particle. Von Heisenberg was the best-known physicist who worked with the Nazis. American and British physicists, knowing of his abilities, feared that he would lead Germany to the discovery of how to build an atomic bomb. After the war was over, however, they discovered that little progress had been made in Germany in this regard. Hitler had been so busy trying to conquer the world and rid it of Jews that he had not planned very far ahead. If the Allies had not defeated him when they did, Germany would have become an atomic bomb target. Wheeler, John Archibald. Until his death in 2008, the dean of American theoretical physicists. He was professor of physics at Princeton University from 1938 until 1976. His postdoctorate fellows included Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett. He worked with Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and Albert Einstein. Xenophanes. An ancient Greek monotheist, born about twenty years before Anaximenes and about thirty years before Heraclitus. His unique Arche was a god who was able to move all things by his mind alone. He saw it as the creator of everything and believed that this deity, permanent and immovable, was able to create by mere thought. (Roochnik, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy.) We do not know whether he was familiar with Hebrew writings; living in the extreme southwest of what is now Turkey placed him only a short way from their origin, but any travel in ancient times was slow and dangerous.