I think it is probably fairly obvious from my few blog posts that I am a science nerd. The channel I watch the most is the Science channel. I grew up with a family that didn’t have extra money floating around and it wasn’t even a question I pondered if I was going to college to learn how to make money or to learn for the sake of learning. There were bills to pay. Learning to be a scientist just seemed like a luxury I couldn’t afford even if it sounded really fascinating. Looking back now, I would have to be honest and say that the math would have probably held me back if I had tried to go into the natural science track in college. Don’t ask me to explain:
I was just wrapping up a ton of Christmas presents and watching a 3 hour Science channel program on black holes. I am old enough to remember when there was still little consensus on the validity of black holes and the name was only settled on while I was a teenager.
I was mainly listening to the program as my eyes had to be on wrapping the presents (I can be a bit perfectionist about my wrapping). What the scientists were saying seemed to parallel the same words and phrases were being used that I have heard when I listen to people talking about their faith and struggles with their faith.
Towards the end of the program the narrator summarized with:
Black Holes are full of theoretical holes. Scientists say they are out there, but we can’t see them. Math says there is a singularity a black hole’s core, but in nature these don’t exist. The rules we use to understand the universe simply don’t seem to apply to black holes. We can’t see black holes, only find circumstantial evidence of them. They violate the laws of physics that predict them. When some of the scientists participating in the series are asked if they believe black holes are real. The answers are interesting and remind me of some beliefs on religion and god.
Because black holes are at the edge of what we understand about nature, they are a perfect illustration of what we don’t know about the universe. That is a lot.
So I will tell you now in modern physics we have no idea what is going inside the heart of a black hole. Whether black holes in the true sense exist at all. But the wonderful thing is the physics is now taking us down paths that we have never imagined before.
Lack of evidence of how black holes work is not evidence against the existence of black holes. It is evidence of the lack of understanding.
If you ask me what I believe, I would have to tell you I don’t believe in black holes. I believe in something that behaves like black holes.
I think they are the simplest explanation. Yep, they have lot of problems we have to resolve. But yep – I believe in black holes.
Although there is great evidence of black holes, we have to keep questioning rather they are real. As a scientist I would much rather have questions I can’t answer than answers I can’t question.
Do any of these scientists words sound similar to words regarding faith?
Do any of you find yourself in awe when you contemplate looking into the vast night sky?
Every time I look at the night sky, or contemplate the vastness of what’s “out there” or the vastness of what we don’t know, I feel very small, but in a good way.
I think one way to restate what the physicists are getting at is with a common saying in the field of statistics: all models are wrong, but some are useful.
I find this describes even the most accepted models in the hardest sciences very well. As far as I know, a thrown object doesn’t obey the laws of motion as they’re written. Nothing in nature calculates the object’s acceleration and velocity, or runs a differential equation solver to move it through space. Nature is indifferent to the idea of a distinguished object in the first place. But we confuse utility with truth and confuse accuracy with reality anyway.
I think black holes aren’t that special in this regard. They just expose an underappreciated dichotomy by being more on the edge of understanding.
Religion operates on that edge, too. I would sum up mature religious faith in the same way I would sum up mature scientific philosophy: “I know my idea of truth is wrong, but it’s useful.”
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” – George E. P. Box, British Statistician (1919-2003)
I like this post. And, The Right Trousers, I appreciate your comment.
I love science and space. I also greatly appreciate the difference between empirical evidence and explaining causality. For example, if we were to record all of your brain activity as empirical evidence, we would still have no idea that your consciousness existed – your being. It is not observable. I love the mystery.
I think of the Galaxy Andromeda; the Milky Way’s next-door neighbor, visible to the naked eye yet 2.5 million light-years away. And before this was known and measured by mankind, The Lord told Moses, as revealed to Joseph Smith “The heavens, they are many and they cannot be numbered unto man,” which I find very inspiring.
My son is a theoretical physicist, also a devout but free-thinking Mormon. He roles his eyes whenever I try to quote him. So read at your own risk (as usual with me). If one were to record all of my brain activity as empirical evidence it wouldn’t take much time or effort.
Trying to mimic my son: All religious systems and all but a few individual theologians have failed to understand comprehensively the religious implications of the sea changes of our understanding of reality brought about by the major advances of physics in the 20th century. Relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and (his area of greatest interest) non-linear dynamics. Religion is mired in a Newtonian world view which often works and is pretty useful.But not exactly true ultimately. Newton’s ideas changed religion while modern theologians dither with comprehending Einstein et. al.
Now don’t ask me what any of that means.
My daughter took a basic astronomy class for non math/science majors in college. I confiscated her text book after finals and read through it. That was one of the most inspiring and disturbing mind trips ever for me. If I recall correctly, the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with our milky way galaxy. There will be quite a bit of violent excitement and new star formations. This is to happen about the time our sun starts to burn out, give or take a billion or 2 years.
It reminds me of what a great pathologist said upon diagnosing his own metastatic lung cancer: I guess I won’t be around to do the autopsy on this one.
Thanks for the comments. My mind is blown away by a comment that was made on a show about galaxy’s “colliding.” It was that when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide, chances are that no stars or planets will collide, but rather fly near each other and gravity will be what keeps everything merging into one galaxy.
I definitely find myself in awe. This last week I enjoyed the Pleiades Cluster through a set of binoculars, trying in vain to find a comet nearby. Stargazing is a great source of humility and simultaneously creates for me an acute sense of how life is precious. These days I especially enjoy watching the International Space Station fly over. I wave even though they can’t see me.
The overlap in rhetoric is always interesting. I once read a biography of Johannes Kepler. In the spirit of this post, one could think of Kepler’s place in science as playing a John the Baptist role, preparing the way for Isaac Newton. Back in the 17th century there was a great deal of professional overlap between astrology and astronomy. To me it seems that overlap continues today in the farthest speculative realms of physics, where theory gives way to hypothesis, and scientists are grappling with ideas that seem compelling on paper, but lack any means to test physically. Lots of room for everyone to muse and be in the discussion in that realm.
Happy Hubby
You could have studied science. You really could have learned the necessary math.
I like this comparison of science and religion. Often I prefer science to religion because outcomes are not based on my own worthiness. There’s a GIGO factor. A “well, we predicted that wrong, let’s try again” element in science.
I find that more comforting than “god said no”, which feels like a giant loophole.