Knowing God’s thoughts: Einstein’s unfinished dream.

On fermilab there was a a video called
“Knowing God’s thoughts: Einstein’s unfinished dream – Public lecture by Dr. Don Lincoln”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frzNNazfJsY&t=3555s

Here are my comments to it.

How to get to know God’s meaning?

In the end of his famous book «A brief history of time» Hawking wrote that until now scientists have been concerned about new theories about what the universe is, while the question why has been for philosophers. But on the 19-20 century, science became so technical and mathematical advanced, that according to the philosopher Wittgenstein, what is left for the philosophers is to analyse the language. What a regression from the great philosophical tradition from Aristoteles and Kant.

But if we really find a theory of everything, it’s general idea ought to become much understandable by everyone, so that everyone can take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist. If we find that answer, it will be the final triumph for the human sense, because we will know God’s meaning.

Later he commented this last statement as if he was not quite serious about it, it was not so important to him compared to what else he wrote, but it became important in the mass media and for the readers, so he meant it made his book sell far better. It was a philosophical statement and he also was allowed to be philosophical about science.

But on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we all have the right to try to find answer to these questions and we better find it here first of all. Because God created everything with his Word, so he already has a theory of everything. Jesus is God’s Word, everyone who received him he gave right to become children of God. The God loves us and cares for us and teaches us as his children.

Does God throw dices?

Einstein wouldn’t quite accept quantum mechanics and put it this way, that God does not throw dices. Stephan Hawking answered in one of his books that he is a big gambler. And I think he was right. The six days of creation went like this, God said his Word and it happened. Then he saw it was good. Of course these “days” are long periods of time. God created everything with his Word, so he already has a theory of everything. But he also looked after it, why? Surely because there is a matter of chance in it, even for him. He is good and he looked after that it became good.

In quantum mechanics we realized that the matter of chance is fundamental in mass, particles and space. Any elementary particle has random motion, so we become concerned about position and momentum and I see it this way, that it is fundamental for life also. God has mercy with what he has created and let it have it’s random choice. It must have it to exist, this becomes apparent in life, it has the property that it moves, at least as it grows.

A world government, but with what kind of policy?

Einstein separated science from politics, social affairs and religion. He said he did not believe in a personal God, even though he said he wanted to know God’s thoughts.

After second world war Einstein wanted a world government, but what kind of policy should it have? UN was formed and nowadays there appears to be a lot of interest in defining a global policy to it, where the climate policy is central. But it seems to bring more trouble to Israel and the Jews. So this was surely not what Einstein looked forward to.

Greek philosophy started as nature philosophy, then moral and political philosophy took over and poetry of their gods turned into dictatorship.

 

The first Greek nature philosophers came up with many good ideas of nature, but did not find methods to find out what was right. Moral and political philosophy took over. As a reaction against the democracy in Athen, the soldier and poet Aiskhylos said that Zevs was god over all gods and ruled with an universal moral, so dictatorial that all that happened was his work. So this was “a theory of everything”. But how could one of those gods that sprang out of chaos get so much power as if there were no more chaos?

It was poetry that became the Greeks answer to Israel’s God and about 300 years later Antiokus 4. Epiphanes (175-164 BC) decided that everyone in his Syrian kingdom should worship Zevs and no other god. It is strange that poetry should result in so much dictatorship and pain, there is still a lot of it in this world. Jews were persecuted and got a hard time revolting against it. This was prophesied 3-400 years earlier (Daniel.11 Zechariah 11).

But Israel’s God was not like this. The ten commandments told them what they should not do, only two of them told them what they should do, they should honor God for what he had done by keeping the sabbath holy an honor their parents for what they were for them and had done for them.

What should they do then? They should believe in God, turn to him and listen to him. And so they should cultivate their land so that it became fruitful to them.

Zevs and climate-policy or Israel’s God and his gospel.

The climate policy seems to jump out of chaos like the ancient Greek gods, even to try to rule to control chaos more like Zevs. The CO2-fee can be compared to the indulgence trade in the catholic Church. At the time of the climate-negotiations in Paris toward the Paris agreement, there was draught disaster in east Africa, the Norwegian human aid-organization “Redd barna” (Save the Children) worked in the area and a female representative of them reported from Ethiopia and said they partly explained it by global warming, so it urgence to get climate regulatory measures.

Traditionally the native africans use rain-dance in their praying to god or the gods for rain. But now it seems like they are encouraged to pray to the governments for rain instead?

But what did the missionaries teach them or what should they at least have thought them? After the fall of sin God said to Adam that the earth should be coursed because of him, thorn and thistle should grow, with sweat in face he should eat his bread until he returned to the soil, for soil he was.

Human’s problems were that sin separated them from God like this. But with one offer for sin, Jesus took away the sin once and for all. God reconciled the world with himself this way. So by faith in Jesus we get the living water for free, without any claim of doing anything for it. The water in Genesis.2 is symbol for this, it gives life to our heart and soul so it will become like a watery garden. The it shall also result in us cultivating the ground to make it fertile to ourselves, like we see was told to the Jews in the Old Testament.

How? Everyone who received Christ he gave right to become children of God. Jesus said it is quite natural that they will get what they need like other natural creatures on earth, so it is for God (Matt.6). It’s just to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then they will get it all in addition. As his children we can come to him with all our needs.

Since it is quite natural, real scientific thinking might very well support this. How? A social economist would say there is lot of groundwater, it’s just to drill down and mount pipelines and pumps, there is lot of sunlight, so it’s just to mount sun-cell panels to give power to the pumps. To give water to the people, their crops and livestock.

And anyone knows that the vegetation binds CO2 from the air and give it to the soil so that it becomes more fertile. Quite naturally CO2 is good for the plants and then for the soil, of course it is.

https://www.nrk.no/urix/torkekatastrofe-truer-etiopia-1.12691602

APS’s climate decision.

The Norwegian-American physicist Ivar Giæver (nobel laureate in physics 1973) criticised the American Physical Society (APS) for it’s climate decision.

It appeared like this also when APS made the climate decision. It was not discussed among the members like other scientific topics. This also shows in their climate statement.

APS: The global warming is incontrovertible.

Ivar Giæver: This shows that climate policy has become religion.

Average temperature of the earth has gone up 0,8 degree C from 1860 until 2000.

APS: Global warming is occurring, if not immediate action is taken, significant disruption to physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occure.

Ivar Giæver: But through these 150 years all this has become better. Why is it suddenly changing and getting worse? It is a mystery.

The climate policy has become an attack on democracy. Computer-calulations with their climate models compete with human thinking and that appears to be the main point. What they call science is dictatorship. What they call science gets this meaning, that you shall leave it for somebody else to think for you. In this case the use computers to try to tell you that you are not qualified because the scientists have so much more systematic information and advanced computer to do the calculations, that you with your own thinking gets nothing to say.

How to know that the Bible’s God is the only god?

God told his people through his prophets that the stars, the moon and the sun were not gods, those gods that did not create heaven and earth were not gods. The gods made of sticks and stone were not god, there was no spirit in them, they didn’t think, see, hear or talk. They did nothing. How could they know he was God then? He talked to them and told them what should happen before it happened. He saved people. He did wonders none other can do.

Jesus came to our world and spoke God’s Word and did God’s work, God did it through him. And now he still does so through his Church. For many decades I have visited Churches where I realize that Jesus talks to me through the speech and through the translation of speech in tongues. In such Churches it also happens that peoples are healed from sickness by prayer. It is not repeatable in the sense that nobody can do like he does. Still this serves as witness and evidence that the true and living God exists and that he rose his Son from the dead, he lives and talks with us and makes wonders among us.

What about the Many Universe Theory and the Many Worlds Theory? It’s interesting as theory, but we don’t have any evidence for it and it seems to be impossible to get. But we have evidence that the true and living God exists, he talks, he creates, he heals from sickness and he saves.

Any physician can get to experience this just like we do, the method is given us by the gospel of Jesus Christ, he is God’s Word, it’s just to listen to him and believe in him.

Jesus paid for us with his blood, to free us from slavery.

Prophet Zechariah prophesied about the incompetent shepherd that pastured the flock marked for slaughter, those who sold them became rich from it and even praised the Lord for it (Zechariah11 & Daniel 11). The Lord was sold for 30 pieces of silver, so it happened when Jesus was killed. Then someone should take again the equipment of a foolish shepherd. That became apparent in the indulgence trade. So the prophesy stretches over many century, even up to our time.

In the Bible the gods made of sticks and stone are called the Lie. Contrary to that Jesus is the truth that frees us form the slavery under sin and the false gods. When he died on the cross, he paid the price for us, to by us back to God, so that we shall belong to him. By faith in Christ we get the Holy Spirit of mere grace, without doing anything for it. It is like a seal that shows that we belong to him and it is the pant of our heritage.

God already had a theory of everything and we experience it.

God does his work with us with his Spirit and his Word, he builds us up inside and build us like living stones to become a temple for him in the Spirit. Building means order, so we experience that God creates order.

We got the Holy Spirit by faith in Christ, of mere grace, and it does wonders among us. It reveals Jesus for us, so we get to know him and the power of his resurrection in our life, we get to know the power of the coming world (Phil.3,10 Heb.6,5). So we experience at least a “two world theory”.

God saves us and creates us “in Christ”, that’s to say just because he died for us and rose from the dead and is alive. So we experience God’s creative power and saving power in our lives.

We experience that God creates order, so this does not come as a result of more total disorder in the universe according to the second law of thermodynamics, that comes naturally in addition to this. God is one and it may sound like his power of creation is the same as his power of salvation, he creates something that lasts for ever, so it will not fall apart according to the entropy law. That’s the point with the salvation.

So we can say that the power of God is the most fundamental force, since he is one, his power is one. Yes, God created everything with his Word, so he already has a theory of everything and we experience it.

The Enlightenment was not the light that came, but the light that nearly disappeared. That’s how it still is. How?

Sabina Hossenfelder: Today I want to tell you why I had to stop reading news about climate science, because it pisses me off. Every. Single. Time. There’s all these left-wing do-gooders who think their readers are too fucking dumb to draw their own conclusions …..

There’s this implied link: Science says this, therefore you should do that. Follow the science. ….. Follow the science and glue yourself to a bus, because that’s the logical conclusion to draw from the observed weakening of the Atlantic meridional circulation. When I was your age, we learned science does not say anything about what we should do. What we should do is a matter of opinion, science is a matter of fact. ……….

The Norwegian philosopher Gunnar Skirbekk wrote in his book “Political Philosophy 2” that the Enlightenment was not the light that came, but rather the light that nearly disappeared. How? I’ll put it my way.

Aristoteles is called the father of logics, but he did the mistake that he applied it on the visual nature instead of ideas. 1200 AC Aristotelianism came into the Catholic Church  by making an synthesis with Christianity that became the philosophy of the Catholic Church, that’s what came in conflict with the emerging modern science.

Liberalism and empiricism became a catastrophe to the pietist Immanuel Kant, so he concluded that the Church’s rationality did not exist. What is rationality? It is to understand ideas by using mathematical logics. The modern science had both empiricism and rationality, it was hypothetical-deductive, but it took time before science got this self-understanding. In this way Aristoteles’ mistake by using logics on visible things is left behind.

But this kind of logical mistake is brought further in the philosophical direction Kant, Hegel, Marx …. It was demonstrated in the Lysenko blunder in Soviet Union under Stalin. And nowadays it seems to have escalated in much policy, obviously in “women-policy” and “sex-policy”, much of it is called liberation, but is not, in environment-policy and in climate-policy.

Then it is time to ask what is the point in denying rationality this way? Rationality means understanding. We learn to understand and it makes us able to think more independently. This is fundamental for anyone in any society and especially to make democracy function properly. Enlightenment by proper science function that way.

But this turns out not to be proper science and does not function this way. What is behind it appears to be political and economical interests of getting power at the expense of enlightenment by proper science to make people able to think independently and take part in the democratic process of making decisions.

God cares for his children and his creation.

Jesus told the people not to worry about what the body need, God cares for it like he cares for what the birds and the lilies needs (Matt.6,25….). Nowadays we will say that it is quite naturally that the vegetation, animals and birds get what they naturally need, similarly we get what the body need. Jesus also said that this is how God has made it, so it is just to thrust him. Therefore seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, then this will be given to you as well.

He blessed the children and said to his disciples that they should let them come to him, for the kingdom of heaven belong to such ones. The grown ups have to become like children to come into it. He praised the heavenly Father for what he had hidden for the wise and learned, he had revealed to little children. Everyone who are weary and burdened he called to come to him to get rest. To take his yoke and learn from him, for he is gentle and humble in heart, then you will find rest for your souls. For his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt.11,25-30). We should just believe in him and love him and love each others, then he would reveal himself for us, he and our heavenly Father would come and live among us (Joh.14,21&23).

He knew he was going to be killed and told his disciples, but he would not leave them like fatherless children. He rose from the dead and was taken up to heaven, but he sent them the Holy Spirit. It reveals God’s Word for us, Jesus is God’s Word, he is the truth that sets us free. It reveals and glorifies him for us as our savior and Lord. He cares for us this way, in this way we experience that our heavenly Father loves us and cares for us this way. So this is the main point with the revelation.

Christ is the image of God, God creates us in Christ, then he creates us in his image and in accordance with the second creation history, in Genesis 2, but now Christ is the last Adam, who is from heaven and for us has become a life-giving Spirit. He is the head of the man and the man is the head of the woman and in this way Christ is the head of his Church, which is his bride. I understand Genesis2 this way, that a whole people, all mankind, is talked about as one man and his wife, one point in this is to explain the personal relation with God. Later in the Bible different peoples is talked about in a similar way, as a man and/or a woman. So the gospel of Christ is a good message both to individual people and to whole peoples.

The letter of the law kills, but the Spirit makes alive.

Apostle Paul said that the letter (of the law) kills, but the Spirit makes alive. So he warned the church not to be fooled like Eve in the garden of Eden, 2.Corint.11,2-3: “ I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

The result of the fall of sin was death, thorn and thistle should grow, man was soil and should return to soil. So this deceiving is enmity to life. I mean this is also showed in the enmity against CO2 in the atmosphere, because it is lifegiving food for the plants and they are food for birds, animals and humans.

Jesus is God’s Word, in him is life and the life is the light for humans. So this is how we get the Enlightenment.  It gives us rationality and makes us sensible. By modern science the rationality was developed further and by the Reformation education was for all the people, so the Enlightenment should come to all the people, giving them the rationality and making them sensible. Then it’s very strange that Kant could conclude that the rationality of the Church did not exist. The philosophical thread Kant, Hegel, Marx …. became a reaction against the Enlightenment.

Nowadays it seems to turn out like revolting against this Enlightenment and rationality, you may call it post-modernism. Why? Because by this Enlightenment ordinary people became enlightened and sensible, so that they managed to think independently. But “the Foolish Shepherd” (Zecharia.11) didn’t like this, he better like the people to be foolish, so that he can rule over them in his foolishness.

God talked to Adam and it was for Eve also, in this way he draw their attention. But then the serpent talked to Eve and draw her attention to what they were not allowed to do, then that’s what they did. Then they looked at themselves and became ashamed and hided away from God. So I think this is how they started to use logics on visible things instead of using it on ideas.

Jesus pulled me out of the mud and set my feet on a solid Rock.

From the ancient Greek there is a tradition of connecting moral and political philosophy to mathematics. So also in the Christian apologetics, but it turned out to be more like a nature philosophy claiming that nothing creates itself and calculating that it would be very unlikely that life developed on earth without God creating it.

As I was thinking about this and went to a living Christian Church as usual, Jesus talked to me through the translation of a speech in tongues and said that I should not go bow down and carry him, he shall carry me. Yes, like king David I can say that he pulled me out of the mud an set my feet on solid rock. This Rock is the gospel of Christ, he is the rock and he carries me. In this way he supports my mathematical logical thinking also.

We don’t manage to think and understand with our heart like we do with our brain. But like we start with axioms in mathematics we can believe in God’s Word with our heart and then start to reason from it. God lives in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite (Isaiah57,15). This is the point when we bow down for Christ and receive him in faith, he is the eternal life that is planted in us by God’s Word and it shall grow. It is important for us to seek the Christ with all our heart, love him and believe in him with all our heart, so that we experience that God does his work in us with his Word and his Spirit. In this way we learn to understand by heart. Some people gets a revolutionary change in their lives in this way, else is this growth a slowly process. We don’t manage to think as quick and complex with our heart as we do with our brain. It’s two ways of thinking, so it may arise conflict between what I understand with my heart and what I reason with my brain. Then what I know with God’s Word, Spirit and love in my heart is right. His love and glorious peace surpasses what I understand with my brain.

Mathematics, the rationality in real sciences and all the scientific theories are not visible to our physical eyes. But God, God’s Word and his kingdom is also not visible to our physical eyes. But God is Spirit and his kingdom is a spiritual reality. By faith we understand that God created everything by his Word, so that what is visible was made of what is not visible. This supports the rationality in real sciences. Jesus Christ is the rock that carries me, so it supports me in my rational thinking. In this way I think similarly to Pascal and Descartes. So when I study real sciences I thank God for what he has created, I also thank him for having created us in his image, so that we are able to understand it. I also thank him for the salvation he has revealed for us in Christ, he saves us for eternity and gives us eternal life. Jesus gives us spirit and life from heaven at it makes us able to live for him and gives meaning to our lives in an eternal perspective.

Jesus has said he will add a new praise to my praise. I hope and believe he will give me a wife that is a biologist like this, in accordance with the second creation history in Genesis 2. Biologists and some other real sciences don’t need so much mathematics as physicists and chemists, many of them want as little as possible of it. But they have their rationality and can get the rationality in God’s Word to support the rationality in their subjects too. Biologists need the gospel of Christ just like anyone else, but their subject also need it, for nowadays it is under hard attack from moral, political and religious interests.