Random Thought #95

There are a number of great quotes from this latest book that I just read and I'd like to share them with you. They are all attributed to Henry Eyring, a famous LDS scientist and are quoted from his biography called "Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring" 1. If you insist on knowing Pi squared exactly, you are asking for the impossible, since the series never ends. Thus you can know the answer to as many places as you please and therefore to any desired degree of accuracy, but the question, "what is the exact value?" would take an eternity to answer. The statement that we can never know everything about the Gospel is thus a mathematical certainty, since here is one truth which has no answer in finite terms. There is an endless number of such questions without an exact answer. "What is the value of the square root of 3?" is another example. Still another is the question, "How much exactly will you ultimately know?" Some questions take literally forever to answer. We recognize an essential truth from these simple examples in mathematics. By diligent study-in the example above by using a computer-we can get a better and better idea of the true picture. But to ask for the whole picture is meaningless-we can't get it in a finite time. 2. This religion that we have is only truth. It is not anything else. So don't get nervous. Don't get worried about anything that you learn. Go and study geology and biology and organic evolution and anthropology and everything else that you like. The more the merrier. If there is anything I have told you that will not stand up, it is not the gospel. We do not want it anyway. Let it go. The truth is all we are standing for. 3. There is probably no better way to deepen faith in the Gospel than to try to think out how this magnificently complicated world came about. Only a profound scholar of the physical sciences is able to calculate the utter improbability of any universe arising by chance. There is, however, a deep meaning running through all that touches our lives. The gospel is to be found not only in the scriptures but in every detail of the world, if we can but read it. 4. An interesting calculation illustrates the complete improbability of a hot sun arising by chance. We suppose that in order again to become hot the sun must accumulate an amount of heat equal to that it gives off in its lifetime. This must be accumulated from its surroundings, which we shall assume in the heat death drop to a temperature of 700 degrees Centigrade. Then, using the straightforward theory of chemical reaction, we find that the length of time in years equal to a least one with a hundred thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion zeroes must elapse before a hot sun has a "fifty-fifty" probability of occurring again by chance. This is almost no chance at all! Surely our hot sun did not arise by such a chance fluctuation. The Creator accomplishes His purposes by much more subtle means. Every piece of information of this kind reveals new facets of the cosmic design and increases our awe of the Supreme Intelligence operating through the universal reign of law. 5. Actually, you do not ever prove anything that makes a difference in science or religion. You set up some basic postulates from your experience or your experiments and then from that you start making deductions, but everything that matters is based upon things you accept as true. When a man says he will believe in religion if you prove it, it is like asking you to prove there are electrons. Proof depends upon your premises. In Euclidean geometry, you learn that three angles of a triangle total 180 degrees and that two parallel lines never meet; the whole argument proceeds very logically. But there are other kinds of geometry. In elliptical geometry, parallel lines do meet. If you go up to the North Pole and draw two parallels of longitude, they will hit the equatorial plane at right angles. That makes 180 degrees, plus the angle at the pole. And the lines are perfectly parallel at the equator, and the fellow that does not know they are curving will find that two parallel lines meet. It is perfectly good geometry. It is two dimensional on the surface, but it is curving in a third dimension. Analogously, we do not know whether or not this three dimensional space we live in is curving in a fourth dimension. You can build your logic perfectly, but whether your postulates apply to the world you live in is something you have to get out of either experiment or experience. Every proof in science depends on the postulates one accepts. The same is true of religion. The certitude one has about the existence of God ultimately comes from personal experience, the experience of others, or logical deductions fro the postulates one accepts. People sometimes get the idea that science and religion are different, but they are not different at all. There is nothing in science that does not hinge on some primitive constructs you take for granted. What is an electron? I can tell you some things about the electron we have learned from experiment, and if you accept these things, you will be able to make predictions. But ultimately you will always get back to postulates. I am certain in my own mind of the truthfulness of the gospel, but I can only communicate that assurance to you if you accept my postulates. 6. The more I try to unravel the mysteries of the world in which we live, the more I come to the conception of a single overruling power-God. The conception of a God ruling the universe and concerned with how it works is impossible for me without the corollary that He should be interested in man, the most remarkable phenomenon in the world. Being interested in man, it is natural that He would provide a plan for man's development and welfare. This plan is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.