Travelling through from the west to the east, and travelling through the realms of quantum physics the metaphysical, the religion, the space, the validity of time. Sure there comes a time in everyone’s lives when you sit back and question faith, sure there comes a time when you question the teachings of your teachers, the time when you are being shot down in class simply because you ask the questions that should not be, but the essential question here is “What is faith?”, “What is time?”.
Reading through, Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy” and Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”. Also bought other books “Guide to make millions in poker”, “Crowdsourcing” and “The Genesis Secret”. More about the latter books some other day. Today its all about religion and science. I am not going to repeat whats in the book here, but the questions that stick to my mind are “What is time?”.
If the universe is expanding and billions of light years in radius, there surely must be a point in the universe, who are witnessing the big bang as we speak? They being so far away that if d is their distance and c is the speed of light and t is the estimated time (years for us since big bang), then there must be a point in the universe c*t light years away from us, where the light created from the big bang just reached. For this to be true, of course, the universe has to be expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. For the universe to be expanding at a speed greater than the speed of light, there must be enough energy to propel this mass outward, thus implying the universe must be undergoing mass energy conversion of about (m/c) for every m mass propelled at the speed of light. Consuming energy at this rate, would consume m every light year and thus lead to the collapse of the m. Thus we can safely assume this is not happening. We can probably safely thus conclude, that the universe is probably expanding at a speed much lesser than the speed of light.
This conclusion is important, since this would mean, there is a time Tb which represents a time for us (earth) for us in this universe from which point, for this given universe, there would be a point in time in the past, no matter how fast we travel within the universe, that we will not be able to travel back in time. It is only within this time Tb that the universe can be essentially theoretically co-existing.
What does this mean for faith and religion? Beyond that time Tb in the past or future there is incredible uncertainty. Hasnt faith and religion always been a measure and method to mentally pacify the uncertain? Kiekagard, a devout Christian, rightly mentioned, religions have a factor of unknown and necessitated the “leap of faith” for religions to have any reasonable sense whatsoever. This phychological factor, possibly through upbringing, that has embedded within your subconcious is the basis of religion. Man’s dependence on “the supernatural” as way of consoling your own self that there is an entity that will help him out or will watch over him or will get his rewards, presents if he is “good”, pretty much like our childhood stories of santa claus or the tooth fairy. As we grow up the stories just get more and more believable (according to the level of your knowledge i.e.).
There are some stories in religion that we can directly discount right away are the story of genesis, (the creation) thats common between Islam and Christianity and Judaism (probably it was originally some folk lore among the desert dwellers). These have been proven false by Science. There are some others that are waiting proof, like Jesus respawning, a virgin (Mary) getting pregnant, prophet Mohammed curing people, Moses splitting the sea etc.
I am sure we will have scientific discoveries that will imbue faith in the real truth within our lifetime itself and I cant wait, till then what is needed by both the believers and the non-believers (or believers in science) is understanding. Understanding that the generation that has been brought up with these faiths need to know that there is a supernatural, because their sub-conscious cannot survive the challenges of this life without that mentally stabilizing factor. The younger generation that is not having to go through the etching of the dependance of the supernatural into their subconsious are actually emotionally, mentally a lot self-dependant and thus a more stronger. This could be just another stage in evolution or maybe science will verify what stories, knowledge and writings over 2000 years old (and may i add partially compiled by the men in power) to have ground. So until we know for sure, it is not like for us scientifically inclined to reject any hypothesis and thus we must be open and understanding. The believers thus must also understand that this is a natural process. Man learns and accepts what makes most sense to him logically. Giving man the ability to make this choice is what defines a free society.
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