User blog:Timo The Translator/My Apologia

I rejected religion for the entirety of my adolescent life. Being fascinated by the mechanisms of the cosmos since the age of seven, I grew up to hold science interpreting reality as the complete explanation of the universe. Over the past couple of years however, I have gained a strong interest in stories made for eternity. 'I adopted a Christian geocentric worldview while still acknowledging the validity of scientific knowledge. This article serves as the explanation and defense of my position. I hope that the article can make the reader think deeper about some of the assumptions that I once held. '''

Why the natural world isn't the first degree of reality
Scientific knowledge is powerful. With its development came massive improvements of living standards in our society; it changed the way we travel, communicate, structure our society, and many other things. Thanks to technological advances, we have shed a light on a plethora of phenomenon ranging from photosynthesis in a plant to the workings of a supernova. It is unsurprising that the mechanistic model scientists work with is considered as the ultimate reality. This worldview, that is often referred to as materialism, atomism, or naturalism, claims that everything in reality can be split up into their parts, until an indivisible element is reached. Now this element is believed to be quantum particles, but a few decades ago it was thought to be atoms. Reality unfolds bottom-up. A cup of tea isn’t really a cup of tea, it’s a lot of atoms interacting with each other. With this model we can formulate theories about how the universe looked like right after the big bang, and how life evolves. The findings of the scientific method are solid and reproducible, and seemingly at odds with religious texts. But we should not confuse the materialistic worldview with the scientific method.

I do not hold this naturalistic world as the first degree of reality. For something to be the ultimate reality, it needs to contain everything. Naturalism can for example describe the molecules of a rose and its interaction with receptors in your body, it can describe the signal sent to your brain. However, it cannot contain what it’s like to smell a rose. It might be argued that this sensation is a mere trick of the brain. Such a reasoning will quickly find itself seeping into everything we experience. Free will becomes an illusion, as well as consciousness. It’s like we are part of one giant calculation, and every choice we make is predecided by the interaction with the arrangement of particles and these laws. In such a world, there is no blame on criminals, for ultimately, they have no responsibility for their actions. There is no "life" in this universe, we are all "dead" matter forced to obey nothing else but the laws of physics. The recognition of this slavery leads to nihilism. But the removal of meaning from our world leads to some bizarre consequences. For a scientist to do their work, they need to have a purpose and a frame for their experiment. They need to use their tools in a meaningful way, and use their words to convey their theory to their public. But if there’s no meaning, then there’s no way to talk about or do science.

Scientists use their mind to do science, they use it to combine their immaterial theory with the material facts and evidence they find. By doing this they unite heaven with earth and further creation with it. You could say brain instead, to latch on to the material. The theory of evolution says that the human brain is the product of a gazillion essentially random interactions between atoms. Can you trust that this instrument has access to some sort of truth? Can you trust a calculator to adhere to a coherent mathematical system when it is created by a series of random events only? Charles Darwin knew this, he said the following: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind.”

It’s also worth considering that conceptual categories, such as molecules, bacteria, and animals do not exist in the natural world. Neither do the scientific disciplines like chemistry or biology. Everything is to be reduced to the smallest parts. Biology, molecules, bacteria,... are lenses and categories that we create and apply. To group atoms together into an "entity" is the same kind of mystery to science as grouping ink marks together to form a word with meaning. What we call "life" is defined by human-set rules while the scientific world operates with or without this opinion of ours. There is no vital difference between a virus, which we categorise as "not alive", and a bacteria. It is us humans who make the distinction. Atoms do not care to which "body" they "belongs to". All there is are other atoms to interact with, doesn't matter if they are part of the group we put them in or not. It is a fun scientific trope that every seven years all the molecules of your body is replaced by new molecules. But yet you’d call it "your" body, as if this identity is in a way separate from these molecules. But where did this identity come from? If the natural world is dead, then it must come from life. Science can’t talk about identity, but our experience of the world can.

Humans do not follow the laws of science
I have always held onto free will, it was one of the first cracks in my old beliefs. Choices presented themselves continuously to me, I could choose what I wanted for breakfast, as well as in what direction my life should go in. With freedom of choice gone, I was being played, but I want to play the game! So I chose to have faith in free will. But that exposed my problem: There is no free will in the natural world, and I had been trying to rationalize it by believing that it "emerged" out of something, maybe quantum mechanics? But this word, "emerged" was just a substitute for magic. My faith in free will had just as much scientific support as the faith a scientist has in his mind. I had to find a different way to hold them.

The same goes for the existence of subjective values. The natural world is stripped of all values, so that these do not interfere with test results. For the scientific world there is no reason why I would attach sentimental value to the watch my mother bought me. But I don't live in such a world, and neither does anyone else! People are not just matter, they have an identity, which is not tangible. You cannot hold it in your hands, but it still is real. It's more like "air" or "spirit", I can't help but use religious language to describe this. This is really a part of what is meant with Adam being created out of the breath/air of God and the dust of the earth.

We can try to interpret the earth without identity or meaning with Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was "without form" and "void", and "darkness was upon the face of the deep". In the natural quantum world, quantum fluxes have no connections, they can't be grouped together as entities with form. It really is this "dark enigma". But when meaning connects these fluxes together, when the dots are connected, then the light shines on it, like the idea lightbulb in cartoons. The darkness goes away, and we see with clarity. As God said, let there be light, so too did we name the animals, to lift them up out of the dark, formless void of the jungle, so that we can start recognising them and their shape. So too are we lifted up out of this void to be more than just matter.

My father would sometimes talk about how his grandfather bred rabbits so that they could be eaten for dinner. The trick to keeping rabbits, he said, was to not name them! By giving them a name, an identity, they were lifted up and "James" the bunny was suddenly too cute to be slaughtered. In our age it is a crime against humanity to deprive someone of their name. In the 20th century it happened in many gulags and concentration camps that prisoners had a number instead. This loss of identity played a key role in the dehumanization of the prisoners.

What does the world of experience look like?
If you get me drunk enough, I might claim that the sun revolves around the earth. I don't believe in creationism, which forces the scientific lens onto biblical scripture in an attempt to save Christianity. Instead, I try to describe reality by how we experience it. This way I can say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and really mean it. Otherwise I'd have to deny the observation of my eyes by saying that it was an illusion and that the earth turns around the sun. The same kind of "illusion" as pain, consciousness, and meaning. So how does reality look like in the realm of experiences?

For me, reality is a cosmic mountain. The mountain is surrounded by walls, then there are plains, and surrounding these plains is a primordial ocean. So how do we experience climbing a mountain? First, we stand at the base, and we are surrounded by a lot of specifics: trees, flowers, rocks everywhere. When we climb up the mountain, we start seeing less specifics and more general things, instead of trees we now see forests. We get an overview of the general landscape, especially when we reach the peak. This is the basic structure of any human hierarchy, like an army with common soldiers and a general. It also applies to learning a new skill, such as learning a language. Only after mastering the specific sounds and grammar rules can abstract sentences be made.

So what lies beyond the wall of a language? Say that you live in Belgium and speak Flemish. What happens if you move away from the language, cross the border and go into the unknown? First, we get into the Netherlands, here we can communicate easily, although the accent is "funny", some words have different meanings, and there are some words we don't know. Now we'll cross the border into Germany. Words here still sound somewhat familiar. With an extra effort, you can still somewhat communicate, although the confusion increases. Let's cross into Denmark, now the speech is unintelligible but maybe you can still somewhat read text. Take the ferry to Finland, and now everything appears as a mixture of sounds, the only word you'll recognise is "sauna". Cross into Russia, and the alphabet starts to morph. Cross into China and they don't even have an alphabet. As we move away from the center, we end up more and more in an "ocean" of sounds and confusion.

In stories, this confusion of the strangers at the edge of the world was often characterized by a mixture of animals and men. It could be hybrids like werewolves, mermaids, centaurs, or trolls (nowadays existing at the edges of the internet). These stories give us some clues how people experience being at the edge. Some of these mixtures are guardians of humanity, like wolverine or batman. They are a buffer to protect us from the bigger monsters, a living wall. The edge is also a place of potential and promise, such as a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow with a pot of gold or a pirate's treasure on a desert island. This animal-man hybridity is also found in the ancient world. The Ancient Greeks called strangers “barbarians” because their speaking was like the barking of dogs. In an eastern church, the icon of a saint with the head of a dog is sometimes hung above the exit, right before the churchgoer crosses into the chaotic outside world. Deeper in the ocean of mixture are animal-animal hybrids such as the dragon guarding riches or seamonsters drawn at the edge of a medieval map.

Lastly, the edge of our world  is the home of humour. We laugh when someone didn't account for the banana peel on the floor, and falls. Good comedians are "edgy”. Similarly to medieval map makers, monks scribbled "marginalia" in the edges of their scriptures. These are subversive, humorous drawings, for example rabbits hunting people, or knights riding snails, putting the world "upside down" by making the hunted the hunter, or turning the fast into slow. In a deck of playing cards, the joker card exhibits the humorous, subversive element of the edge. It is the card that exist outside of the four categories of symbols on the card, and it is not a numbered card. It's the card that can turn a game on its head. It is one of the peculiarities of history that the "outsider" of the 2016 US elections was someone who could not be categorised by his opponents. He turned the elections on its head and it was hilarious. He was literally the "Trump card" but you can’t have the joker as a king.

With this cosmic mountain as an image of my experience of the world and what lies beyond it, there is little sense in making something beyond the walls to be the center of the world.

Is the sun the center of our lived world?
The further you move away from the center, the harder it is to participate in life. In this sense, the center is "life" and the primordial ocean beyond the wall is "death". This helps us understand how one can be reborn as a Christian through baptism, a return to the primordial waters of death, for one has to die before they can be reborn. One center of life can be your own house, where familiar rituals makes living your life as easy as possible. Your house is your coordinate system's origin point, without it you are lost, a wanderer.

A tall structure helps you find your way if you're lost, becoming a temporary center. If you're in Paris, and you are utterly lost there, seeing the Eiffel Tower will help you define your position in space. Climbing the tower will give you an overview of the city. When you get to know the area from above, like with a satellite map, it is far easier to orient yourself. In pre-modern villages and cities, the church is usually the tallest building, sometimes built on a hill, at the center of the village. Moreover, the church is usually the first building to be constructed, after which all other buildings get built around it.

For Christians, the church serves as the new Eden, the cosmic mountain that defines the world. In the core of the church is bread as the body of Christ, who is believed to be the source of life. In Genesis, Eden really is described as the highest cosmic mountain. It’s a walled garden from which the four main rivers of the world flow. Being banished from Eden is called "The Fall" so it implies a movement down the mountain. Away from the center, away from God. When Kain, the son of Adam, killed his brother Abel, he told him “Let us go down to the plains”. Sin is then everything which pulls you away from your identity. We can physically feel this when we misuse our desires and do something that we know isn't good for us.

Now my geocentrism can be explained. God is said to be in Heaven, but God cannot possibly be found in outer space. Outer space is a place of death. Our imagination projects creatures of mixture, aliens, into it. These aliens promise us either gifts of technology or destruction. To protect themselves from death, astronauts wear space suits. After the biblical fall, Adam and Eve got garments of skin to protect them against the outer world. You can compare these clothes to the wall surrounding the mountain, which is actually what it means in scripture. Outer space is more like the primordial waters than the peak of the mountain where we encounter the source of life.

I am therefore radically against heliocentrism, which has the sun in outer space as the center of the world. In fact, this theory cannot be proven by raw science to be superior. The center of gravity between the earth and the sun does not collide with the center of the sun! Although it is within our human-defined volume of the sun, if the earth had more mass it would shift outside of the sun. Associating this center of gravity with the center of the sun is a human leap not supported by naturalism, Naturalism doesn’t even recognise the existence of the sun! With the relativity of motion in mind, anything can be the center of such a model. We could make Saturn be the center of our cosmological model, and have every celestial object turn around it, it would be mathematically valid. And someone claims that the sun is the center, I could push them to say that actually the sun isn’t, it’s the black hole in the Milky Way. And after this admission we could push it even further and claim that even this motion around the Milky Way is superseded by the galaxies moving away from each other. Finding a center in outer space makes things go apart, but a center should keep things together.

This relativism is apparent in the theory of the big bang, wherewith it is so far impossible to locate the origin point of the universe in space. Space itself is continuously expanding, and the big bang seemed to have happened everywhere. Anything can be a center and an origin point, we have to decide for ourselves. And why would we not take a center that is relevant to us, because it is we who are making the decisions and observations in the first place! I choose to have the center of my world be close to me. On one level this is the earth, hence my defense of geocentrism. It is also the house I live in, but ultimately, it is the church at the center of the community, with Jesus at the core, who gives us eternal life.