Worshipping in Nature’s Cathedral: Before the beginning all was void. The creative force that formed nature over billions of years of evolutionary time is the God we worship. According to our understanding, the laws of physics started to operate following the big bang, expanding the universe through space and over time to become the galactic cosmos we know of today. By our own hypothesis ‘God particles’ are everywhere.
praying meditation in nature’s cathedral
The big bang, laws of physics, time and space are words we use to describe our best functioning hypothesis for the beginning of the material world that attempts to explain the framework within which we came to exist. We describe phenomena using words in order to attach meaning to them and then we use these words to develop hypotheses.
A hypothesis is a tentative explanation for phenomena, such as the physical universe and biological organisms, that can be tested by further investigation. It is something taken as true for the purpose of an argument or explanation. Although hypotheses are vital enablers in our life experience, explanations based on hypotheses are nonetheless man-made. This is not a statement to support relativism, but a cautionary remark, as being too attached to a hypothesis may be a barrier to truth.
In order to have a proper understanding of a hypothesis one needs to appreciate its limitations as well as its pragmatic attributes.
For example, we might ask ourselves how the universe came into being. The big bang and the expanding universe hypothesis may be good candidate to give a generic answer to this question. The further hypotheses of time and space expansion, gravity, laws of physics, thermodynamics, atoms neutrons, electrons and protons are a few from an array of hypotheses, within a hierarchy of hypotheses, that provide more detailed explanations that can then be validated against observable phenomena in the real world. A hypothesis should be tested by observing real world situations through our senses – touch, taste, hearing, vision, smell, rational, logical and creative thought, emotions, intuition and our interactions with all other species and habitats.
The greater the correlation that exists between a hypothesis and perceived reality, the more useful and reliable the hypothesis becomes. For example the hypothesis that something exists because we can see it is a reasonably good hypothesis. However, although true most of the time it is not always absolutely true. Something may still exist even though some people have not seen it and people looking at the same situation or thing will invariably describe it in ways that sometimes differ dramatically, as if there was more than one situation or thing.
We also need to be open minded about hypotheses. When we come across a new hypothesis that appears to be a better fit with the real world as perceived through our senses, we should be ready to explore its validity. After extensive real world observation and debate, we may decide to adjust the old hypothesis to some degree or even replace it completely with the new one. We not only accept hypothetical explanations in order to understand the greater world but we also adopt them as a platform for most, if not all, of our personal decisions and actions.
praying meditation in nature’s cathedral
The volume and speed at which digital technology operates has deluded some of us into believing that a hypothesis can be usefully tested and accepted as fact by using computer modelling techniques. Computer modelling reduces life to mathematical formulas and then uses technology to compute complex mathematical equations in an attempt to replicate real life situations or futures. As most of science is based on hypotheses and assumptions such computer modelling techniques are, at best, producing results that are divorced from reality or, at worst, used to propagate untruths. Reality is what we perceive through our senses and therefore real validation of assumptions can only be achieved using our own human perceptions. Importantly, God does not speak to us in binary code.
If we wish to commune with the higher moral order to which we are all beholden, we should avoid the man-made distractions of assumptions and hypotheses, we should go to the cathedral that is the natural world, where we can experience directly the manifestation of the sacred.
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