Yesterday, I was tossing and turning all night long, so I just couldn’t sleep at all. As my dorm walls are really thin, sometimes, one can hear annoying noises from people next door. This time, the sound was kind of a strange snore, I couldn’t identify the source but really wanted to shout at the top of my lungs “arrêtez de ronfler! ” (stop snoring!). As I didn’t succeed in shouting him down (I didn’t even know where the snorer was), I eventually decided to get up from bed to listen to some relaxing music and stop hearing that disturbing noise.So while listening to some music I started writing into my diary which I very much enjoy. I find it so interesting to write what goes on in my life, this way I can give myself a positive feedback on my behavior and my attitude toward life. Seeing how things change through time makes us grow in many ways. Once I realized how important every single detail is, details that I usually forget, it really made me wonder for a while about life which is kind of a huge puzzle where each of our thoughts and emotions is just a piece of this puzzle. Each of us has a puzzle to play with, mostly we just move the pieces without realizing it, though. So I, myself, think that writing all these movements on a piece of paper allows us to create a kind of strategy to avoid committing the same mistakes over and over again. That’s why I keep a record of my life.While writing down some of the ideas I had in my head, I wondered about the nature of space and time for a while. So I eventually put into words all the thoughts that crossed my mind over the night concerning my own perception of both space and time, I actually filled up 24 pages of my diary. I was a little inspired from the Stephen Hawking’s book “A brief history of time” which I read a couple of years ago. It’s interesting to know how space and time behave in the Universe. According to the Newton’s space and time perception, they’re both absolute and infinite parameters. That’s the way they were thought of before 1915; For instance, the concept of time was thought of as a straight line in which events take place as a continuous sequence of different points on the line which is not modified at all; A time that moves forward without repeating itself. In other words, past, present and future are different and always occur in that order. That’s actually been the common perception of time ‘from ancient times till our days’. Nevertheless, Albert Einstein conceptualized and conceived space and time so differently; Contrary to what Newton believed, for Einstein, both space and time are separately finite and relative parameters. However, when they’re both seen as a single mathematical object called ’space-time’, this object is no longer relative but absolute. The odd is that ’space-time’ is represented by a four dimension geometry which has nothing to do with the Euclidean geometry where the distances between two different points can be easily calculated and represented by a straight line. This three dimension geometry, known as Euclidean geometry, is exactly our space perception ‘in the real world’.
However, in a four dimension geometry (three space dimensions and one time dimension), the flat space becomes a curved space which is affected by time at all times. So the shortest distance between two different points is no longer a straight line but a geodesic which is kind of a weird curved line (if you’re a Riemann fan you must know what it is). Anyways, that’s the nature of ’space-time’, according to the Einstein’s General Relativity theory. So everything in the Universe, especially the mass-energy (seen as a single mathematical object too), can modify the ’space-time’ and vice versa; In other words, the mass (mass-energy) tell the space (space-time) how its geometry must be modified and the space tell the mass the way it must move (through the curved space). That’s actually the true nature of gravity which is not a strength as Newton thought of it, but just a manifestation of this geometry (space-time). All the objects in the Universe like planets just move through geodesics (well known as orbits) in ’space-time’.
You may say that Newton’s Gravity theory is much easier than Einstein’s, I agree, in either case, the final calculations are almost always similar actually, so that’s why we still use the Newton’s theory. Why don’t I study Physics instead of Mathematics ? Just kidding…
So what exactly do I mean with all of this? What I do mean is that neither space nor time has a concrete reality, their true nature is actually a mystery, for the moment at least. According to the human perception, they are just intellectual concepts created by an illusion of the mind. The true nature of space and time has nothing to do with the way that most of us conceive these dimensions.
One of my favorite theories, the well known Quantum Mechanics theory whose fundamental assumptions are all about probabilities since it only uses probability models to describe the space and time at the smallest scale possible. It basically says that particles have no time direction. In other words, past, present and future don’t exist in that order. So why does the human mind perceive things in the way it does ? I just don’t know.
I was also wondering if the reality and human perception of it were intelligently designed in that way or just the product of a coincidence, an existence probability (in the Quantum Physics world). The second possibility really scares me, I just can’t see intelligence as a coincidence (an existence probability), if my consciousness is just the product of a coincidence, by induction, all my thoughts must be the product of a coincidence as well; Instead, I do think that everything in the Universe has a purpose, every single object is an important component of a sophisticated system called Universe. For me, our consciousness, especially our intelligence and therefore our way of thinking, are not a coincidence at all. As Albert Einstein once said: ‘God doesn’t play dice with the Universe’. Yet if we don’t fully understand the true nature of reality which has a ’strange behavior’ at its fundamental level, the Universe is understandable, we’ll always be able to find order in it, even in chaotic scenarios. We all live in an ordered Universe where intelligence reveals itself in the orderly harmony of what exists, it can always be understood through rigorous mathematics and deep reasoning. However, I, myself, think that yielding place to mystery is one of the most beautiful things in life. Just imagine knowing absolutely everything, there would be no longer any surprise, any wonder and, most importantly, any emotion. That’s not the way I want to see life. I’m not trying to justify scientifically the existence of a supreme being, I just have neither evidence nor a universally accepted definition of God to use the evidence-based scientific method properly. Those who try to give ’scientific proofs’ that God doesn’t exist just don’t have the faintest idea on what science is all about since there’s no evidence to prove it either (at the moment at least).
Maybe the human mind perceives reality in such a way for us to be able to feel emotions such as love whose existence cannot be proved scientifically either, however, we all can feel it. If we could change our space and time perception, for instance, all human emotions wouldn’t exist anymore. Our perception of reality allows us to appreciate our environment through our emotions, we couldn’t otherwise see the beauty of life itself. I do think that’s a great gift we all received from God. That’s why I truly believe in God, let me point out that I’m not a blind believer, I’m a technologist who loves science.
Does the fact of believing religiously in God contradict what I think scientifically with my intellect? I’m not sure, I don’t have enough empirical data to say they contradict one another; Just as an example, the most accepted theories of modern physics are the Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, however, even when both of them have been proved empirically, they are completely contradictory with each other at their fundamental assumptions. But are they really contradictory? There are three possibilities: 1. one of them is fake, 2. both of them are fake, 3. both of them are true but there’s a missing piece of information somewhere that makes them compatible with each other.
Actually, before being a Mormon, I considered myself an agnostic highly influenced by the Spinoza’s philosophy (I never was an atheist). Even if I don’t agree with some of his doctrines, I still consider him a great philosopher. For Spinoza, Nature and God are two different names for the same reality (substance) governed by only one set of rules where everything must necessarily happen the way it does (therefore there’s no free will), God is the natural world which determines the existence of things and their complex chain of cause and effect.
I truly believed in his philosophical doctrines, nevertheless, I was always convinced I needed something more ‘human’ to believe in. Something that makes me feel love, something more adequate to my human condition. So that’s why I liked the Mormon theology and decided to convert myself to Mormonism. In life, there are more things than just math and code. I see Mormonism not just as my religion but also as a way of life which makes me feel fulfilled since it makes me grow as a person in very many different ways.
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