Non Nobis, Domine: Religion, Spirituality, Mathematics and Physics in the Light of the Postulate of Faith

By Manuel S. Marin

Non Nobis, Domine, from the author of The Axioms of Being and the Renaissance of the Templars

Religion and spirituality have been portrayed as products of superstition and fear of the unknown. The tenets of religion are considered to be the antithesis of science. Science, on the other hand, is knowledge verified in experience, i.e. knowledge that passed the rigid test of the scientific method.

But both science and religion rely on faith. Science bases its inquiry on fundamental axioms considered to be self-evident, which are, therefore, statements of faith. And religion relies almost exclusively on faith; its dogmas are eternal truths of the spirit that must be accepted, even if they cant be verified in experience.

This book is about the Postulate of Faith and its application in science and spirituality. Science and religion no longer have to be mortal enemies as long as they hold on to their respective methods of searching for the truth

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469124193

Manuel S. Marin

The author, Manuel S. Marin, as a child, lived for a short time in the Oratorio San Juan Bosco, where he met Father Rafael María Fabretto, who lighted up in him the notion of the continuum, for which he didn’t have a name until he met Bob Jones at Williams Brothers Construction Co.

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Copyright © 2006 by Manuel S. Marin.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2006900656

ISBN:   Hardcover      1-4257-0851-X

            Softcover        1-4257-0850-1

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Contents

Prolegomena To The Postulate Of Faith

Purpose

Acknowledgements And Dedicatory

Agradecimientos Y Dedicatoria

Introduction

About The Postulate Of Faith

Fermat’s Unproved Theorem

Consequences Of Fermat’s Unproved Theorem

Golbach Conjecture

The Postulate Of Faith

Ether Or The Space- Time Continuum?

Zeno’s Paradoxes: A Theory Of Space And Time

Is There A Spirit Or Immortal Soul?

Conclusion

Appendix I

Appendix Ii

Endnotes

In relation to whether or not ether exists, we must be able to settle this inquiry by giving an answer to the following question: if air rushes to fill in any man-made vacuum, how do we explain that the earth’s atmosphere does not rush to fill in the vast and almost perfect interstellar vacuum? Even more, we know that gases lighter than air (helium, ammonia, carbon monoxide, etc.) go up in the atmosphere, against the gravitational attraction of the earth, and some settle in the upper limits of it, forming layers, without continuing into empty space. Why is that? If the earth’s gravity did not hold them close to the surface of the earth, what’s holding them in the outer limits of the atmosphere?

There is a story about the last two individuals on the road to Salvation (literally a road) who arrived at a crossroads where there was a cottage inhabited by a hermit. They entered the cottage and asked the hermit about the road to Salvation. The hermit told them, You are on it, except that now you have to make a choice. He pointed to the place where the road splits. One branch of the road, he continued, "will lead you to a person who, as of today, and from time immemorial, has never spoken the truth, the hermit paused for a little while, and lifted his index finger to add,  . . . mind you, this person is perfectly able, and perfectly willing to tell the truth. It just happens that, as of today, the person has chosen to lie. Then the hermit continued, The other branch of the road will take you to a person who has always spoken the truth. As of today, and from time immemorial this individual has never lied. Then the hermit continued, Beware of this other person… because he is also perfectly able, and perfectly willing to tell a lie, should he choose to do so. The hermit finally stressed one more recommendation. Remember, either road, but only one of them, will lead to Salvation. Just ask the proper person, and she will tell you." One traveler decided to interview the liar and the other traveler decided to interview the truthful person. Which one of the travelers got saved?.—Jesus Escobar (my great-grandfather)

* * *

In the village of Cosmapa lived an entity that could go back and forth from the world of the living to the world of the dead. People knew this entity with the name of the Teaser Spirit, because it was highly unreliable. One day, the village’s fool, known as Gullible, met the Teaser Spirit. I bring you bad news, the Teaser told Gullible, I just came back from the world of the dead, and there is no such thing as an immortal soul. But, I also have you good news, the Teaser added, you can do whatever you want on earth, and don’t have to worry about payback time, because no punishment will await you after you die. Gullible looked up at Teaser, and said, "But how can I believe you, if you are always playing tricks on people? The Teaser Spirit answered, You’ll just have to believe me… Otherwise, you’ll find out by yourself, once you die. Gullible immediately retorted, I am not as foolish as you think. If I die, and my soul dissolves into nothingness, like you say, how can I ever know that my soul is mortal? The Teaser was taken aback for such an unexpected answer and said, No wonder you are the village’s fool. If your soul is indeed immortal, after you die, how are you going to know? Gullible answered, I’ll find out in due time."—Anonymous Tale

* * *

After several feverish nights reading about quantum mechanics and modern Physics, with its numerous paradoxes, a man finally lost his mind—like Don Alonso Quijano in Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote—and he decided to test the paradox of the cat in the box. So, he got himself into a tightly sealed box and dropped a vial of cyanide with him inside, perishing almost instantly. Without realizing what had happened, our man found himself in the afterlife among a group of curious people, who had another paradox to resolve. It was about a man who got inside a tightly sealed box and had dropped a vial of cyanide in it. They were wondering whether the man was dead or alive, or even dead-alive, so they didn’t dare to open the box and check.—Manuel Marin

* * *

If anything can go wrong, it will.—Murphy’s Law

PROLEGOMENA TO THE

POSTULATE OF FAITH

In my book entitled The Axioms of Being and the Renaissance of the Templars, I talk about how we must constantly be aware of our being, within the limits of our existence. I did not make a difference between being and existence, though the implications crop up all throughout my book. Being has to do with spiritual entities, while existence is more related to material objects. Being and existence will be taken here to be undefined concepts, on the assumption that everybody understands their intuitive meaning, except that they are not, and they cannot be, synonymous words. Nevertheless, being is related to time consciousness, and existence is related to space consciousness—and these ideas are tied up in a single conceptual unit called spatio-temporal location, as defined in the Calculus of Existence of Appendix II of this book.

We first become aware of our being, and then we relate our being to our existence—within the boundaries of a physical body we claim to be ours. But this awareness of being and existence happen almost simultaneously, and the process is so fast, that very often we can’t separate one from the other, and we confuse them, make them interchangeable, when in reality the hierarchy goes from being to existence, in one direction, and not the other way around. Next, we notice the existence of other people, and since those other people act, think and speak like we do, we conclude that they also are (in the spiritual sense).

But I, as well as other people, exist thanks to the biological mechanism of reproduction and procreation, which leaves unexplained how we become to be (again, in the spiritual sense). And since being seems to have no logical connection with existence, our being and existence (as well as the existence of everything else) must be attributed to a Superior Entity, God, whom also must be. Therefore, God is (in the spiritual sense) and His being envelops and permeates the things that are and the things that exist, including ourselves. And yet, God cannot be identified with the material universe, because existence is not a necessary attribute of God—which is why it is impossible to prove that God exists—and we assert, by a sheer act of faith, that God must be beyond what we perceive, or are capable of perceiving.

That existence is not a necessary attribute of God is implied by the very definition of God as a strictly spiritual being. So, the atheist is right when affirming that God doesn’t exist, except that he confuses being with existence, and when he says that God doesn’t exist, he is also saying that God isn’t, and that’s where he is flatly wrong. In fact, the denial of God’s existence (meaning also the denial of God’s being) is a consequence of the atheist’s denial of his own being, which is a denial of his anima, and what’s left of the atheist is just his ego, and this entity knows absolutely nothing about spiritual things, including God. The ego is only capable of understanding the material things that constitute Nature, and is completely ignorant of the spiritual world; that’s why atheists will try to use only scientific and logical language to justify their beliefs, and will absolutely despise anything that has to do with mysticism and faith.

We choose the word anima, from here onwards, instead of soul, though they are synonymous, because the latter is a passive concept, while the former expresses dynamism and action. Anima gives the impression of something vital, active, and capable of moving and influencing the ego. The anima is our conscience, it is the keeper and upholder of the Moral Principle, and it is the restrainer and controller of the ego. The anima knows about the Principle of Love, while the ego tends to the gratification of the flesh and the sensual satisfaction of the pleasures of the body. The ego is the upholder of the Principle of Hedonism, the mover and accumulator of riches, and the seeker of the ‘things of this world.’ The word self will be used as a tag for the anima-ego combination, without being a separate entity, and without being either anima or ego, but both, so that it will serve as an identifier of the individual (the human). The term spirit will be another synonymous word for anima.

We need to elaborate a bit about our assertion that existence is not a necessary attribute of God. God’s being is a necessary attribute of God, but God’s existence is just a contingent attribute, contingent on God’s will; in other words, God can show his presence to humans, only if He wills it. The existence of material things, the existence of the whole universe is indeed a manifestation or expression of God’s being. We can only clarify this with a simple comparison. Suppose you see a bright light. The very source of this light is at its center and may be called a dimensionless point or a singularity, if you will. The important thing to understand is that a singularity is a dimensionless entity, and thus, doesn’t exist in space and time. Nevertheless, it is a reality, it is the source of the glow of light, and this aura of light does exist in space and time and is a manifestation or extension of the being of the singularity. So it is with God and the material things of the universe: matter is a manifestation or expression of God’s singularity.

All arguments to prove the existence of God are bound to fail, because existence is not a necessary attribute of God. Nevertheless, there has always been a sense, especially with medieval philosophers like Saint Augustine of Tagaste and Saint Thomas of Aquinas, that the proof of God’s existence has been very close at hand, and yet, the logical sequence of the proof always fails at a certain point of the argument. Even the argument by the Postulate of Faith is not completely convincing, because existence is assumed to be an attribute of God. Except that the argument for the existence of God using the Postulate of Faith, in the final analysis, brushes aside existence, and argues for a possible, if only in principle, manifestation of God’s being through existence, as long as God wills it.

Descartes struggled for years with this problem of being and existence, before he proposed his famous dictum cogito ergo sum (‘I think, therefore I am’ or ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’). Except that the French philosopher tried to establish a logical connection between two things that cannot be logically connected, because reason cannot link spiritual and material entities. Being and existence in the same individual can only be juxtaposed, they can only follow a parallel path in space and time (but mainly in time), and if there is any hierarchy between them, being gets the upper hand. Descartes could never establish that reason belongs almost exclusively to the world of material entities, and that spiritual discourse is regulated mainly by faith and mystic contemplation. I say mainly by faith and mystic contemplation, because in spiritual matters reason plays the role of moderator, rather than the final arbiter. We don’t just talk about and create spiritual entities at will—that’s the role of artistic imagination and irrational superstition—but examine the logical necessity, within a mystic framework, for their being.

The transition from our self-awareness, to the awareness of other selves, to the belief in a Supreme Creator of everything that is and exists, doesn’t follow a logical process of reasoning, and has nothing to do with logic, but everything to do with mystic intuition through the unconscious application of the Postulate of Faith. That’s the reason why I will make a differentiation between the axioms of science and the dogmas of spirituality and religion. Dogmas are to being what axioms are to existence. Science creates the whole edifice of scientific knowledge based on axioms, its tools are mainly reason and logic, and its subject matter is the material world of the senses. Religion and spirituality are based on belief, supported exclusively by faith, and their first principles are known as dogmas. The subject matter of religion and spirituality is the world of ideas, or the world of spiritual entities. Now, matter and spirit do not mix. We cannot use the methods of science to deal with spiritual realities any more than we can use the methods of religious belief to deal with the material world, which is why Darwin’s theory of evolution and the book of Genesis of the Bible do not talk to each other in agreement.

Are we to believe, then, that scientific knowledge is more important than religion? After all, religious beliefs are based on dogmas, while scientific knowledge is based on axioms, and the connotation of dogma to an irrational imposition of a belief implies that those that hold religious beliefs are nothing more than bigots and fanatics ready to burn at the stake anybody who doesn’t accept their dogmas or religious dictates. This may have been the case in the past, but in modern times we can establish that an axiom is no more true than a dogma. Furthermore, a ‘dogma’ imposed by force, the threat of force, or by coercion, is not the kind of dogma we are talking about in this book, nor are we talking about dogma that arises from superstition and fear of the unknown, because superstition and fear are just other forms of coercion.

The expression I am is a dogma, while the expression I exist is an axiom. Which one do you think is truer? When I say I exist, I can always verify my statement by looking at myself at a mirror, or by touching and looking at my body. But when I say that I am, there is nothing else I can do to verify my statement, except remain conscious of what I am saying; and yet, I am is as certain as I exist. Some people will insist that I am and I exist are equivalent statements, but they are missing the point we are trying to make here: the I of I am is conscious of the I of I exist, which in turn produces consciousness of the self. [In the chapter Is There a Spirit or Immortal Soul? I use the word self as a tag for the anima-ego combination, without being a separate entity, and without being either anima or ego, but both, so that it serves as an identifier of the individual (the human).] A dogma, as defined from here onwards, is a self-evident truth, just like an axiom, except that a dogma is a statement of spirituality, while an axiom is a statement of material fact(s). If a dogma, being a self-evident truth, is supported by faith, what is an axiom supported by? When I say that ‘the whole is greater than the part’, or that ‘the sum of the parts is equal to the whole’, we may think that those statements are self-evident, that we don’t need further evidence to prove them, i.e. that they are axioms. And we are justified to think of them as axioms, but they are nonetheless statements of faith.

The whole is greater than the part because we have never experienced anything to the contrary. If we had to live in a world where tossing a fair coin would always turn up tails, and we never experienced a toss turning up heads, nor would we expect to experience it in the future, we would have an axiom that would say that ‘tossing a fair coin always turns up tails’, and our brain would be so imbued with this axiom that it would be unthinkable to imagine a fair coin tossing turning up heads. Which means that axioms, just like dogmas, in the final analysis, are statements of faith.

But those simple axioms mentioned above are not the only kind of axioms of science. In fact, there are far more complex ones that scientists would never dare to call axioms. Take for instance the following paragraph:

The Sun’s core can reach 10 to 22.5 million°F. The surface temperature is approximately 9,900°F (5,500°C). The outer atmosphere of the Sun (which we can see during a solar eclipse) gets extremely hot again, up to 1.5 to 2 million degrees. At the center of big sunspots the temperature can be as low as 7300 °F (4300 K, 4000 °C). The temperature of the Sun is determined by measuring how much energy (both heat and light) it emits.

The very first axiom of that paragraph is The sun’s core can reach 10 to 22.5 million°F. It’s an axiom, not because it’s a self-evident truth, but because it’s a statement of faith. There is no way we can experience a temperature of 22.5 million°F, since that temperature falls far beyond the physiological range of temperatures that the human body can differentiate. Similarly, the statement The Absolute Zero temperature is -459 degrees Fahrenheit is an axiom, because it is a statement of faith. This means that science begins with statements of faith, progresses to statements that can be verified in experience, and continues far beyond, to statements not verified, or impossible to verify in experience, which are, thus, statements of faith. This, of course, is not meant to criticize the scientific endeavor of scientists, but to emphasize that statements of faith are made both in science and religion. Except that science—unwittingly and unknowingly, up to now—makes use of what I call the Postulate of Faith more often than what scientists would be willing to admit.

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