Thoughts on Science and Faith

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Detailed Chapter Outline:

Chapter 1        What is Truth?
• Here I explain a few theories about truth.
• Correspondence theory of truth.
• Coherence theory of truth.
• But can we ever know the truth about physical reality?

 Chapter 2        To Define God
• The universe is logical in all detail.
• A short list of assumptions that scientists make is given.
• Everything is reasonable.
• Science and theistic faith share the same fundamental premise.
• God is the very reason that maintains the logical consistence of all the facts in reality, and here’s how.

 Chapter 3        Observable or Not
• A little bit about how the theories of science are supposed to work.
• Some examples of unfalsifiable theories.
• Can science state that something actually defies reason?
• Can there be brute facts in Nature without explanation?
• Can throwing dice be truly random?

 Chapter 4        Meaning of Life
• Does science provide any meaning to life?
• Science is only concerned about predicting experiments.
• You can’t experiment with meaning.
• From Galileo to Newton to Einstein.
• The laws of physics are provisional.
• We can’t know we have the final theory.
• Science does not address issues of purpose, meaning, or faith.
• The purpose of reality is to demonstrate the principles of logic.
• It is we humans who represent reason.
• Heaven and hell represent true and false.

 Chapter 5        The Purpose of it All
• How is the character of truth proven?
• Truth overcomes all attempts to negate it. This is used in many professions.
• Life demonstrates this character of truth.

 Chapter 6        An Afterlife
• Existence is our foremost concern.
• Some think there is an afterlife, other do not.
• The source that inspires virtues and vices.
• Posing that there is no afterlife is not a falsifiable theory.
• Practically falsifiable and inherently falsifiable theories.
• Posing no afterlife is inherently unobservable. But does this prove that the afterlife exists?
• Some have near-death-experiences.
• What about life before being born, or reincarnation, or being replicated?

 Chapter 7        What is the Soul
• How can the soul continue without the body?
• The soul is more than the brain.
• The spirit is that part that believes; the soul is what it is you believe.
• The soul is abstract, not concrete.
• The soul is what brainwaves are about.
• Some thoughts are better than others.

 Chapter 8        Entropy and the Soul
• A brief description about entropy, information, and the latest theories.
• Entropy may depend on the accuracy of the laws and the initial state.
• Many choices make for more entropy in the soul.
• Theorists say spacetime itself is a medium of information storage.
• The soul might be stored there after death.
• Could a shrinking cosmological event horizon require low entropy events to occur?

 Chapter 9        Paradigm Shifts
• When do scientists change their theories?
• Faith and deeds is like the scientific paradigm of theory and observation.
• The interpretation of life is a Rorschach test.
• Everything we do assumes an ultimate future state.
• Virtue and sin is defined by acts of the expectation of an ultimate future.
• The afterlife will bring a judgement on every single person.
• The afterlife can be compared to a dream.
• If the afterlife is real, then that spiritual reality can be accessed in this life as well.

 Chapter 10      Test the Paranormal
• Scientists want physical evidence that paranormal phenomena exist.
• But the science of the paranormal is problematic. We don’t even know how to scientifically define faith.
• Miracles are context dependent; you can’t repeat them.
• Shall we create the distress all over again so we can see the miraculous intervention again?
• So investigators study innocuous situations of no real importance.
• What then are miracles? Miracles would also have to be part of the ultimate laws of Nature.
• Thermodynamics and quantum theory both allow unusual events to occur.
• How are thoughts like a wave function of quantum theory?
• We are all connected through the background of virtual particles.
• When we die, our souls get transferred to this virtual background.

 Chapter 11      Resurrection
• There is no difference between living in the afterlife or the resurrection of the dead.
• Your faith will be vindicated by the resurrection.
• Life and death are like true and false; so we study the characteristics of truth.
• God’s judgment of human souls will be how the universe demonstrates the logic behind it.
• The only physical evidence of an immortal soul is the resurrection.
• You’ll have to be expecting a resurrection if you are going to receive it.
• Some history about the resurrection.

 Chapter 12     Christian Resurrection
• Christian scriptures go into some detail on how the resurrection will happen.
• So must a messiah come first and rise from the dead?
• The first to rise will have to be of a special character.
• The rest of us are just redeemed sinners compared to that.
• He is the standard by which we are judged.
• He is not like the supposed dying and rising gods of mythology.
• There is some hint of this in Jewish scriptures.

 Chapter 13      The History of Jesus
• A brief history of Jesus as found in the New Testament.
• He did miracles; he taught in parables, and he drew large crowds.
• But he ran into controversy with the religious leaders.
• He claimed to be the Messiah.
• So the religious leader accused him of blasphemy and threated to kill him.
• Yet he continued to heal people anyway.
• So the religious rulers paid someone to betray him.
• They captured him at night and tried him in secret.
• They handed him over to the Romans who crucified him.
• He was buried nearby, but three days later is rose from the grave and appeared to his disciples.
• His disciples began to preach about what they experienced.
• And now we have to discern what it all means.

 Chapter 14      His Intent
• The meaning of the gospels seems clear in summary.
• He predicted that they would kill him, yet he continued anyway.
• So he suffered for the cause of love and proved sincerely devoted to righteousness.
• And here are the verses in Scripture that prove it.
• Because he was so devoted to God, God raised him from the dead.
• What someone believes about Jesus say a lot about their intentions?

 Chapter 15      The Atonement
• How does Christian salvation work?
• We need an example to inspire us to believe.
• Love for Jesus becomes love for his cause and cleanses our hearts of evil intent.
• Other theories of atonement and evidence for them.
• The penal substitutionary atonement theory and its controversy.  
• These other theories seem to only be analogies.

 Chapter 16      Atheist Objections
• Atheists don’t believe in the miracles of Jesus, and some don’t believe he ever lived.
• Some say the gospels are 3rd century fabrications, but we have historical documents from the late first century.
• Some say the story changed over time, but the essential story was understood early on.
• If the gospels were a late fabrication, then it would have been impossible to correctly name people and places used 100’s of years earlier.
• The parallelomania of mythicists is a big conspiracy theory.
• God is not like the flying spaghetti monster in the sky.
• No alternative theory for the resurrection works.
• There was no motive for the disciples to lie.

 Chapter 17      Jewish Objections
• Most Jews reject Jesus as Messiah because not enough biblical predictions have been fulfilled.
• He can’t be Messiah until everyone follows him, and no one will follow him until he has first proven worthy of their honor.
• So does Scripture predict a suffering Messiah?
• They object to the Trinity, that God cannot be a man.
• But God appears many times as a man.
• There are many scriptures that refer to God as a Father, the Holy Spirit, and as the Son.
• Messiah is supposed to represent the highest authority, namely God.
• And we expect the rest of the predictions to be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ.

 Chapter 18      The Second Coming
• Jesus is worthy of honor, and one day he will come again in great glory.
• Everyone will be judged by comparison with him on that day.
• An antichrist is predicted to come first.
• The scriptures that will be fulfilled.
• Wouldn’t the one true religion affirm the most expedient expression of truth, the resurrection?
• The coming of Christ will completely exemplify the nature of truth.
• Will the Rapture happen before the tribulation?
• Why should anyone want to come back to life to live on earth again?
• What happens when the earth becomes overpopulated again?
• Why does God allow evil?

 Chapter 19      A New Heaven and Earth
• The new heaven and earth are a result of God’s final judgement.
• The afterlife will become materially manifested; heaven and hell will become real.
• How can a just God punish forever for finite sins?
• What about those who have never heard?
• It’s easier to believe when you know about Jesus as part of history.
• The new earth for his friends, the new heaven for his family?
• The universe started out smaller than an atom.
• It corresponded to truth distinguished from false, and that’s how it will end.
• Heaven and hell will represent true from false. And everything will be perfectly logical.

 Chapter 20      The Physics of Heaven
• What principles of Nature could God use to bring about the new heaven and earth?
• What does human certainty have to do with the certainty calculated in physics?
• God is the one collapsing the wave function.
• Our minds are like wave functions.
• Our souls exist in the virtual world, below the zero point energy level of the Uncertainty principle.
• Cosmic inflation was driven by a false vacuum energy that fell to the present vacuum energy.
• The new heaven and earth may result from another fall of the vacuum energy.
• This may be triggered by the complete defeat of all opposition.

 Chapter 21      What is Heaven Like
• What could we possibly do for eternity without getting bored?
• It will be like a constant miracle.
• And our beliefs will become immediately real.
• Supernatural abilities will become common place there.
• People will be organized according to their beliefs and intentions.
• We will live in the New Jerusalem, where we will all love each other and see God’s face.