Religion and science might be merely limit points of a broader third way of understanding.

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I do not believe that the simple picture that science is right and religion is false is correct. The overall picture is more nuanced and perhaps more beautiful than that.

For my ideas to be correct, there must be a third way to understand. Just as Newtonian physics is a limit of general relativity, both religion and science are limits of the third way to understand.

There can be a third way to understand that is inclusive of both religion and science, and also religion and science can continue to be studied when their relevant scopes are defined.

Truths science cannot address

Science works best when you can choose the parameters of your experiment and run as many experiments as you want. The statistics of those experiments can be understood very precisely, and this philosophy works down to the tiniest level, where quantum experiments are understood through a statistical framework.11A quantum state gives, for example, the statistics of infinitely many equal preparations.

Science works less well when there is only one or a few examples of the phenomenon you are trying to address. Science has a hard time explaining the precise origins of the universe because there is only one universe to understand.22I think cosmological physics has done very well despite these limitations. I, however, defer discussion of these successes (e.g. Big Bang theory) to the cosmologists, who can explain them much better than I.

Miracles

Miracles are events science cannot explain, perhaps ever. We might deny the existence of miracles if we strictly adhere to science.

But people will believe in miracles nonetheless, for the simple reason that people have actually seen miracles work in their own personal lives.

A philosophy that runs counter to a multitude of personal experiences cannot survive.

And the only reason that I am writing these words, that I am speculating of a third way, is that I am beginning to understand that a miracle is threading its way into my own life. This miracle defines my existence, and I cannot run away from writing this.

I want to help the world discover the “third way.” In Asimov’s terms: if there is a First Foundation of science, and a Second Foundation of emotion (and religion), can there not be a Third Foundation that unites the two and yet brings us further?

In the terms of Thomas Kuhn, can we not have a revolution that is more than a mere scientific revolution? If religion was the First Revolution, and science was the Second Revolution, can we not have a Third Revolution that subsumes both and yet goes beyond?

Daring to believe in Truth in religious ideas

“But religions tell of falsehoods!” the atheists and agnostics might decry.

I no longer believe religions tell of falsehoods. I don’t necessarily believe they speak of simple truths, however. I don’t believe the answer to what religions are really talking about is straightforward.

We are building the future of Truth

I am arguing something few dare to argue.

I am arguing that the ancient prophecies will come true because the force of the universe will make them become so.

And we, as humanity, are deeply entangled with that universal force. It wrote us into being and we will write its future into further being.

If the Bible tells of a Second Coming, there will be a second coming of something because all Christians who have read the Bible over thousands of years will it so.

If there is a Valhalla at the end of our journey, if there is a Kolob out there at the edge of the universe, if the ultimate of enlightenment can be achieved by figuring out the best way to sit under a tree, we will find a way for them.

Too many people believe for this not to be true. Too many miracles have been personally observed for this not to be true.

What we need to start doing is start to collect the miracles and start figuring out what is going on. This project goes beyond standard science, obviously.

Old Speculations

Retrocausality and Time Travel

The standard idea of time travel and retrocausality could be a fairly scientific solution to the problem, as movies like Tenet have tried to visually display. For the sake of brevity, I will skip over the numerous attempts to explore the physical implications of possible time travel and just note that paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox can emerge.

But why the fascination with time travel? I suspect we have a fascination with time travel because it either is to a degree true or at least could solve several problems.

For one, it provides a way to bootstrap religions. A historical figure who can perform miracles might really just be a secret agent from the far future where technology has advanced to the point where seemingly miraculous things are ordinary. (I will not dive into the literature that discusses this.)

Aliens

The existence of aliens is also a potentially scientific solution. Maybe there are just aliens doing alien stuff to us. That would explain miracles.

But I doubt this answer. The strangeness that happens seems too… personal? Maybe not precisely human, but very personal.

Also, if there are so many aliens out there, where are they? Crunch the numbers and it seems like if there is life on Earth there ought to be life elsewhere, but there is none that we have observed.

Is there another answer?

None of the above

The most radical solution is none of the above.

What if there are no aliens? What if there is no retrocausality?

And yet we all have experienced some aspect of God? And yet we are born into and understand a small part of our wondrous universe? And yet science works?

None of the above is the most radical answer I can think of. It, I suspect, is part of the third way to understand. None of the answers we gave before were quite right. Religion was not quite right. Science was not quite right. Perhaps the “third way to understand” won’t be quite right.

But we need to find it to heal the strong mental division in the space of human minds. We need to find it because it is more correct than prior ways to think, somehow.

As Rumi said, “whatever you are searching for is searching for you.”

I am searching for the third way, and I believe it is searching for me too.

The next paradigm is so close it’s blinding

Thomas Kuhn argues that a paradigm shift cannot occur unless there is another rival idea that has the possibility of succeeding the former ideas.

Our primary issue, then, is to think: what would be the basis idea that could probably rival the basis ideas of religion and science?

I do not want to be reductive to religion, science, or possible third-way ideas so I defer more detailed discussion to a later blog post.

However, I get the sense we are really close to the next paradigm. It’s so close and so many people on all fronts are reaching toward it. There is reason to why popular films are beginning to discuss quantum multiverses, time travel, and aliens.

And the reason might be because we are very close to discovering why none of those exist, or why all of them do, or both, in some strange unified way.