Dear Gramps,
Could you explain how quantum theory can interface with Heavenly Father’s plan or is our knowledge so limited in that realm that understanding or trying to explain might be too hard. I’ve often wondered about this and how Heavenly Father KNOWS what will happen even with free agency involved.
Richard, from Nevada, Missouri
Dear Richard,
One thing you must consider is that we live in a telestial world–the lowest of the three degrees of glory. Without the aid of the Holy Spirit mankind can access only telestial knowledge. Nothing in the scientific laboratory can ever explain any terrestrial or celestial phenomena. Further, no scientific knowledge is secure as an explanation of absolute truth. In every disciple of science every theory begins with a priori postulates. An a priori postulate is a statement accepted to be true without proof; and it forms the basis of every theory in every discipline. An example–in Euclidean Geometry, the a priori postulates are three– 1) two parallel lines never cross; 2) two non-parallel lines cross at one and only one point; 3) the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. These postulates are never tested nor questioned. They are assumed to be true. By their very nature, they appear to be true. All Euclidean geometry is derived from these three statements.
In the middle 1800s, Georg Riemann,1826-1866, invented another geometry. The a priori postulates of this geometry are two– 1) two parallel lines cross at infinity, and 2) the shortest distance between two points is a curve. Albert Einstein, used Riemannian geometry to develop his theory of relativity.
So scientific truth has nothing to do with absolute truth. It can only be said to be consistent with it’s own a priori assumptions. So here are two different scientific disciplines examining the same phenomena with completely different a priori postulates. Is one true and the other false? Is one more true than the other? They both explain observed phenomena. Einstein’s theory appears to predict velocity near the speed of light more accurately, but runs into other very serious problems in this realm.
Light can be observed (not measured) in the laboratory. Light is a celestial phenomenon. It cannot be understood by telestial means. Further, the speed of light has never been measured. What scientists call the speed of light, and the quantity which they measure is always the proportionality constant in Maxwell’s equation. Since they are measuring a proportionality constant rather than a velocity, they have concluded that the speed of light is independent of the velocity of the source and also independent of the velocity of the observer. P.W. Bridgeman said it well in his Logic of Modern Physics, the Macmillan Company, New York, 1948, p 151—
“Practically all our thinking about optical phenomena is done in terms of an invention, by means of which these phenomena are assimilated to those of ordinary experience, and so made easier to think about. To realize that invention has been active here, we must think ourselves back into that naive frame of mind in which experience is given directly in terms of sensation. The most elementary examination of what light means in terms of direct experience shows that we never experience light itself, but our experience deals only with things lighted. This fundamental fact is never modified by the most complicated or refined physical experiments that have ever been devised; from the point of view of operations, light means nothing more than things lighted.”
We should never try to apply the scientific method to religious phenomena, nor the religious method th scientific phenomena. They are simply not compatible.
Gramps
