{"id":100026,"date":"2023-05-17T23:03:39","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T05:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=100026"},"modified":"2023-05-17T23:55:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T05:55:19","slug":"seeing-is-believing-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/05\/seeing-is-believing-right.html","title":{"rendered":"Seeing is believing, right?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The new Saratoga Springs Utah Temple by night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.\u201d\u00a0 (Psalm 27:4 KJV)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I love the temple, and I love temples.\u00a0 A few weeks ago, my wife and I drove out to take a nighttime look at the newly completed Saratoga Springs Utah Temple, across the water from our home and back a bit from the northwestern shore of Utah Lake.\u00a0 We\u2019d seen it before, but now it was much more impressive than I had previously realized.\u00a0 \u00a0(And, in my opinion, prettier than is shown in the photograph above.)\u00a0 And today, with a friend of my wife\u2019s, we attended the temple\u2019s open house (which continues through 8 July 2023, after which the temple will be dedicated on 13 August 2023 by President Henry B. Eyring).\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful building, with an interior emphasizing purples and blues and adorned with dozens of paintings.\u00a0 We thoroughly enjoyed our visit.\u00a0 I love the temple, and I loved this temple.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Red,<\/a>
I understand that the new Utah state flag will become official next year. But it\u2019s already beginning to show up on flag poles around the state.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read that there is vocal opposition to the new design of Utah\u2019s state flag \u2014 though evidently not enough to get a referendum on the ballot to overturn its adoption.<\/p>\n

So I want to go on public record as liking the new flag very much.\u00a0 I like the red, white, and blue colors.\u00a0 I like the imagery of red-rock deserts, snowy mountains, and blue sky.\u00a0 Moreover, the beehive is a fitting homage to the older state flag (which will apparently still be used) and, yes, to the state\u2019s Latter-day Saint pioneer heritage.\u00a0 Most of all, I like the flag\u2019s simple, bold, fresh, dramatic look.\u00a0 The old flag is staid and unmemorable and, well, old<\/em>, which isn\u2019t the look that I want for Utah (and, true confession, not a look that I want for its predominant faith, with which it history is so intimately tied up and which is famously headquartered here).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NGC<\/a>
A composite, public domain NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4414, which is 19.1 megaparsecs or about 60 million light-years from Earth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I share with you a few passages from Michael Guillen,\u00a0 Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith<\/em> (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021).\u00a0 \u00a0These are notes that I\u2019m filing away for use in my own projects, and I hope that some others out there will find them of interest.<\/p>\n

Dr. Guillen is reminiscing about his time as a non-religious graduate student at Cornell University:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One day, . . . a group of observational astronomers, led by Princeton\u2019s legendary P. J. E. Peebles, announced that galaxies are not scattered randomly throughout the universe, as we\u2019d always supposed.\u00a0 Rather, they form a pattern, like a magnificent 3D work of art.<\/p>\n

Where did this pattern come from?\u00a0 What did it signify?\u00a0 Was it just an accident?\u00a0 (7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Very quickly, I learned that galaxies rotate slowly, like enormous merry-go-rounds.\u00a0 According to a scientific law called the virial theorem, the more massive the galaxy, the faster it spins.<\/p>\n

I also learned that galaxies spin much faster than they should, in apparent violation of the virial theorem.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if they are far more massive than they appear \u2014 like they\u2019re bloated with some kind of unseen material that makes them spin abnormally fast.\u00a0 My astronomy professors called this mystery the missing-mass problem<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today, we call this hypothetical missing mass dark matter<\/em>.\u00a0 Based on what little we know, we speculate it could be an entirely new invisible form of matter, ruled by an entirely new kind of force.\u00a0 But honestly, we don\u2019t know what it is \u2014 or even if it really exists.\u00a0 (8)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

More recently, we\u2019ve discovered another oddity about the heavens that is also totally invisible: dark energy.\u00a0 From what we can tell (which is precious little), it behaves like a repulsive force that causes the universe to balloon out at an accelerating speed.<\/p>\n

And get this:\u00a0 Together, dark matter and dark energy seem to constitute 95 percent of the entire universe.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, scientists now believe that 95 percent of the universe is invisible to us.\u00a0 (8-9)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I first learned about the missing-mass problem and what we now call dark matter, it blew my mind, rocked my reality, and challenged my perception of everything<\/em>.\u00a0 (So did the discovery of dark energy, but that happened after I graduated, when I was teaching at Harvard.)<\/p>\n

As a pious scientific monk \u2014 a liberated, free-thinking Atheist \u2014 I lived by the trusty adage that seeing is believing<\/em>.\u00a0 I refused to believe in anything I couldn\u2019t actually see and that couldn\u2019t be proved.<\/p>\n

But that worldview was now out the window because science had discovered that what we are able to \u201csee\u201d \u2014 what we\u2019re able to prove the existence of \u2014 is only a small fraction of what\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n

The missing-mass problem made me realize that if I stuck with my hard-nosed, scientific worldview \u2014 if I insisted that \u201cseeing is believing\u201d \u2014 then I\u2019d be turning a blind eye to 95 percent of what\u2019s out there in the universe.\u00a0 Clearly, my worldview was too narrow-minded for the cosmos.<\/p>\n

It needed some expanding.\u00a0 It had to become big enough to include belief not only in what I could see and prove but in what I could not<\/em> see or prove \u2014 such as dark matter.\u00a0 Otherwise, I couldn\u2019t honestly continue calling myself a scientist.\u00a0 (9)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I learned that 95 percent of the \u201cobservable\u201d universe is invisible to us and that beyond it is an unobservable<\/em> universe that is 100 percent<\/em> invisible to us.\u00a0 (15)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the way, back on 13 August 2015 I published an article about dark matter in the Deseret News<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cMaterialism isn\u2019t what it used to be.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 But here\u2019s a bit more from Michael Guillen:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are there truths that cannot be proven?\u00a0 YES<\/p>\n

Both science and mathematics agree on this one, so I\u2019ll give you a quick example of each one.<\/p>\n

First, science.\u00a0 Consider Einstein\u2019s famous equation from his theory of special relativity:\u00a0 E=mc^2.\u00a0 We now have more than a century\u2019s worth of evidence that it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

Is that proof?\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

Why not?\u00a0 I\u2019ll let Einstein answer it for you:\u00a0 \u201cThe truth<\/em> of a theory can never be proven.\u00a0 For one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, Einstein\u2019s cogent observation has been paraphrased thusly:\u00a0 \u201cNo amount of experimentation can ever prove me right.\u00a0 A single experiment can prove me wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, then, even though special relativity appears to be true, science can\u2019t ever prove<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

Second, mathematics.\u00a0 Say hello to Kurt G\u00f6del.\u00a0 After Aristotle, he\u2019s the greatest logician who ever lived.<\/p>\n

In 1931, the young Austrian proved what\u2019s now called G\u00f6del\u2019s incompleteness theorem (GIT).\u00a0 The mathematics of it is a bit complicated, but its central message is not.<\/p>\n

According to GIT, there are many truths that can never be proved using conventional logic.\u00a0 Yes, you read that right.\u00a0 Ordinary Aristotelian logic simply isn\u2019t powerful enough to affirm the veracity of certain big, complicated truths.<\/p>\n

I like to summarize G\u00f6del\u2019s astonishing findings this way:\u00a0 Truth is bigger than proof<\/em>.\u00a0 (32)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cOne thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.\u201d\u00a0 (Psalm 27:4 KJV) \u00a0 I love the temple, and I love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":100038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[428,425,132,32766,243,18541],"class_list":["post-100026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dark-energy","tag-dark-matter","tag-einstein","tag-godel","tag-science","tag-special-relativity"],"yoast_head":"\nSeeing is believing, right?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    \u201cOne thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/05\/seeing-is-believing-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Seeing is believing, right?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"    \u201cOne thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; 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