Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Flawed Human Logic

I have stated the verse from Isaiah 55:8 several times on this blog: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways – the Word of Hashem.  We cannot look at anything written in scriptures, especially in English and declare “I know exactly what Hashem is telling us.”  I have also stated that Torah is by far the most difficult subject in the world.  It would be much easier to discuss Quantum Physics, Business Law, Brain Surgery, Differential Equations, etc, etc, etc.  Why?  Because most of these subjects can be explained by human logic – or can they?  I thought I would take one example of a subject that everyone has heard about even though very few people have studied.   The topic is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

In 1905 this nice little Jewish boy, Albert Einstein, theorized certain concepts of the physical world that were so radical, so different that he introduced his work over a couple of decades and published the final version in the 1920’s.  It wasn’t just that it went against human logic; it also disagreed with the greatest scientist up to that time, Sir Isaac Newton, who had set the standard for study of the physical world.  Another conflict was that Newton, who was British, was being challenged by Einstein, who was German, even worse he was Jewish.  The important message here is that Einstein made statements about the physical world that were not logical and not even comprehendible.

So, what did Einstein say that was so disturbing to the scientific community?  He said that time was a variable.  Time is dependent upon the gravitational field that you experiencing, he called that General Relativity; and, time is dependent upon the velocity that you are traveling; he called that concept Special Relativity.  Well, that could be upsetting even to us a century later.  Of course he is talking about excessive gravity and speed that we human beings don’t have a clue whether we are experiencing or not.  As an example, let say that I was living on the Sun (I know, it is not possible to have enough air conditioning to be a resident there nor could I take the gravitational effect, but just play along).  Because of the size of the Sun the gravitational effect means that the Sun, according to General Relativity, is 72 minutes shorter a year than life on Earth.  I would not see any difference since all processes, cell division, thought processes, growth, etc would slow down but I wouldn’t notice any change. I would experience a full year as the people on Earth but I would return to Earth 72 minutes younger.

Let’s get really involved.  Don’t try this at home; but, what would happen if I went into a space ship and travelled close to the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) for about a year.  Of course, I would take along enough Cholent to cover the trip , but at that speed, I would return to Earth and find that the people on Earth lived maybe 10 years.  I would not notice any difference because, once again, the Special Relativistic effects would slow down all processes around me making everything seem normal, but allowing me to travel 9 years into the future.

Einstein also said “space is curved.”  When you see a star in the sky, it is not in the direction that you are looking since the light coming at you from that star was bending as it went through space.  If I could look into a telescope, looking out into the universe, and I could see infinity, I would see the back of my head.  I would have made a complete trip through the curved universe and returned to me.

Why am I bringing up these things?  Good question.  When you get into the deepest secrets of this world and explore the scientific proof, you will see that many, if not most, subjects are beyond comprehension.  It should be mentioned that Einstein’s Theory has been proven beyond any doubt (using atomic clocks, particle colliders, spacecraft, satellites, etc) and is no longer called a theory but in the scientific world it now is called the Law of Relativity.  The important message is that things are not what they seem and those who have studied science for many years may know all the facts, all the mathematics, but still have no comprehension of the reality.  Variable time, curved space, teleportation (being one place and instantly being somewhere else), the computerized structure of DNA in every cell (the instructions of how that living organism will grow), the chemical makeup of everything (everything is made up of the exact same particles just in different numbers), no real matter, the mind, the metaphysical realm, etc, etc, etc are all concepts that we experience everyday and have no comprehension of the reality.

Even something that may seem simple can be beyond our grasp, as an example (back to Einstein):

E=MC2

A simple formula that is so complicated that I thought I would show you an analysis of the development of the simple formula (this is not for the faint of heart considering to this day they are still evaluating the formula):


Enough for today.  Tomorrow, B”N, I will bring up a much more difficult subject – Torah.

3 comments:

  1. How we measure time and space depends on our state of motion relative to other observers.

    There is a deep meeting in that.
    Changing space on time by motion.

    Thank you for your wisdom!

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  2. More amazingly incomprehensible than (not just) the science and the deep meaning ... is the Genius, the Master Intellect who created it all!

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    1. Absolutely. It is the biggest mystery that scientists can say the everything happened "accidentally." (Not a total mystery since they would lose a lot of parnasah if they just read the answers from the Source Infinite Intelligence rather than pretend that they discovered it).

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