Opus 2023-042: Boggled Minds

There are certain concepts that we can express and even work with but never really understand.  I am not sure what they are called in science but in theology are often called mysteries.  Some of the concepts are common to both.

For instance take the scientific theory the Big Bang.  The moment, if you can use such a term before time began, before the explosion was made up of nothing.  There is a lot of sloppy thinking about this “nothing”.  It does not mean the vacuum of space.  Even in the expanse between stars there are atoms and molecules floating around.  The “empty” areas are full of energies and waves that are not well understood but exist.  It is not the nothing that the scientists are talking about.  They mean truly nothing.

In the same way theologians talk about God creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing.  It has a Latin phrase, creato ex nihilo.  God is outside this material universe and called it into being with His word.  Just as we have a hard time understanding the time before the Big Bang we can’t grasp what was before “in the beginning.”

I don’t know if it is considered a math or science concept but infinity is another idea that we cannot grasp in our mind.  There is no final number.  You can always add one, or even another infinity.  Yet it is useful in formulas and theories.

Christians talk about eternity and the attributes of God such as omnipresent.  This comes home to me when I think about what it will be like existing forever.  Add the that the idea that it will be just as glorious after a million years as it was the first.  That is far beyond my imagination but I can work with it.

How about the square root of minus one?  I know I have mentioned it before.  The square root of a number is a number you multiply by itself to get the first.  For example, the square root of 4 is 2.  2 times 2 equals 4, except in 1984.  The square root of 9 is 3.  Another rule of mathematics is that when you multiply a negative number by a positive number you get a negative number, thus 1 x -1=-1.  When you multiply a negative times a negative you get a positive, -1x-1=1.  A little thinking will tell you that you can’t get a square root of -1 and yet it is used in math formulas.  I have not figured out how this would apply to theology unless it has something to do with the incarnation or the trinity.

Keep in mind that the answer, “I don’t know” is nothing to fear or be ashamed of.  If you don’t know what you don’t know you will have a hard time learning new things.

Let us keep thinking.

homo unius libri