Our Lady, Queen of Science

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We are now into Advent and, with it, preparations of our hearts for Christmas. This time of year is a reminder that the Truth science seeks came to us in human flesh, entered into human history, and will enter it again. It challenges us to ask ourselves, “Are we ready?” If not, the time to get ready is now.

As part of our preparation for Christ’s coming, we must begin by examining who is the ultimate authority in our lives. For many people, science is that ultimate authority. They trust no one else. But as Catholics, there can be room for only one Truth: Jesus Christ.

It is a fitting moment, as part of this preparation, to reflect on the events of the Annunciation and what Our Lady shows us about how to handle this quest for truth. In this moment, Our Lady encounters an Angel who tells her something that defies her current understanding of reality and the possibilities that exist within it: She, a virgin, will become pregnant with a child.

Modeling Appropriate Scientific Inquiry

Mary did not scoff at the Angel, even though what the angel told her defied her current understanding of what was possible.

1.   Asking the Right Question

She didn’t deny that there were possibilities beyond her imagining, as modern science likes to do. She didn’t assume that the science of conception was “settled” and reject anything that challenged her understanding of it.

Instead, she opened up her mind to possibilities of things that went beyond her current understanding. She asked the ultimate scientific question, “How can this be?”

2.   Asking the Right Authority

If Mary went to her fellow human beings for answers, her question would have been thought strange, to say the least. The answer, to the minds of everyone else, was obvious: You’re betrothed. You’ve got a husband. You’re going to get a child in the usual way of things.

She knew that no ordinary human was going to be able to give her the right answer to her question. She asked the Angel, and the explanation was provided that made sense.

“And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon thee, and the power of the most High will overshadow thee. Thus this holy offspring of thine shall be known for the Son of God.” – Luke 1:35-36

So, an outside force will enter into her and through that outside force cause her to become pregnant with a child.

3.   Seeking Confirmation of the Truth

Mary was also given a means to confirm the truth of what was said to her.

“See, moreover, how it fares with thy cousin Elizabeth; she is old, yet she too has conceived a son; she who was reproached with barrenness is now in her sixth month, to prove that nothing can be impossible with God.” – Luke 1:36-37

And we know from Scripture that after the Angel left her, Mary rose up at once to go to visit her cousin Elizabeth to confirm the truth of the words spoken to her. Everything happened exactly as she was told, which allowed her to know for sure that she could depend on the Angel’s proclamation.

The Dangers of False Idolatry in Science

Right now, science puts itself in the awkward position of being a religion. Scientists don’t want to be questioned. They want to position themselves as all-knowing authorities, but this is a contradiction to science. The purpose of science is to ask questions and challenge assumptions.

Anyone who claims that science is in any way “settled” on any issue is not engaging in science. They are establishing a religious dogma. They are setting up a scientific authority as a god. Such gods will always demand human beings sacrifice their ability to think and reason to their unreasonable demands.

Science can never be settled. There will always be more to know about this universe and how it works than we know in the present. There will always be new layers of the Truth to unpack. We will always need to update our understanding of how things work as we grow in our knowledge and wisdom.

That’s because science, by its nature, approaches finding the truth through the lens of our perceptions. We don’t measure what the universe contains. We measure our perceptions of what the universe contains. As human beings, we can’t do anything else. Our biological senses impose natural limitations on our ability to experience the truth. We don’t see the full truth, but a distortion of it, and this leads to us trying to piece together the truth by sharing observations made during testing.

For scientists like Jim Baggott, author of Quantum Reality, who “would personally draw the line at seeking new ideas from religion, mythology, incompetents, and madmen,” because he believe there is no efficacy to such an approach (page 67 – “Sailing on the Sea of Representation”), his arrogance blinds him to learning from the perspectives of others. Madmen may seem mad only because they see what blind eyes can’t. They carry a portion of the truth about reality, and if one desires to find the truth, one can’t afford to discard any portion of those pieces.

Mythology imprints itself on human imagination for millennia for a reason. Important truths lie hidden in it. It contains the collective memory of humanity – and those who ignore it because they think themselves too wise to appreciate it reveal their folly in doing so.

The Catholic Church encourages thinking and reasoning. It shaped modern science as a way of coming to know and better understand God by coming to know and better understand His creation. Catholics formed its earliest tenets. Many of the greatest scientists came from the Catholic Church. There is no contradiction between true science and Catholicism.

Bypassing Our Assumptions with the Right Questions

When we engage in scientific inquiry, we must begin, as Mary did, by accepting the limitations of our humanity. We bring our biases, our past experiences, our ignorance, and our assumptions into our work. That’s inevitable.

Asking “how can this be?” helps us to bypass those biases, reconcile those past experiences with the reality of the present moment, overcome our ignorance with curiosity, and let go of our assumptions about the way things are to meet the truth as it is. It allows us to explore and find the truth that we might be overlooking due to the limitations of our perspective.

Assuming that we know everything stunts our intellectual growth. Labeling the incredible thing we find ourselves facing impossible because we do not understand how it could be stops us from making important discoveries.

The Truth can only be born in the mind of a person who asks, “How can this be?” when encountering the incredible.

Rather than scoffing in ridicule at the idea of a six-day creation, as most scientists and many Catholics do, imagine what we might uncover if we begin to ask, “How can this be?” instead of assuming that it is impossible.

Why Unlocking a Six-Day Creation Cycle Matters

If we operate on the premise that the creation of life and the development of a livable planet can only be done in thousands or millions of years, we’ve just doomed our hopes of planetary exploration. Or, at least, severely limited them.

We must find the closest goldilocks planet capable of sustaining human life for our first “jump.” Then, we must hope we can find others out there prepackaged for our convenience. We find those, seed them with life from here, and – poof – we’re done.

We need to then hope those goldilocks planets are close enough together that we can reach them in reasonable amounts of time – within one or two human generations – or the whole thing is useless to us. We don’t live thousands or millions of years.

If, however, we can unlock a six-day creation cycle for terraforming planets, it won’t matter if the nearest solar system offers us a habitable planet or not. We’ll be capable of turning it into a habitable planet in a time frame that human beings can enjoy within a single lifetime.

Procedural Generation Hints at the Possibilities

It was during a class on procedural terrain generation that I took while learning game development that sparked an idea for how a six-day creation was possible. With procedural generation, it’s possible to create a computer program that, with a click of a button, can generate an entire universe, complete with planets, solar systems, animals, plants, and people.

You can even create an algorithm that allows procedural weathering of the terrain so that all of creation appears to be millions of years old and yet is brand new.

If we, as finite and limited human beings, can do this – how much easier would it be for a God who is using photons, quarks, and gluons instead of electricity, circuitry, and monitors to create an entire universe with that same ease?

The steps of Genesis chapter 1 read like a developer’s log: Create each small stage that supports the next, test to be sure it is “good” before you build the next stage. Repeat that process until you get to the complex finished product. Then, rest from your work and enjoy your creation.

And the first step? Creating time. Time rules and controls all the other systems. That’s why it must be the first thing created.

You do this by creating a day and night toggle. You don’t need to create the heavenly bodies yet, that comes later in the process. Right now, you simply must make sure that your day state goes off when your night state comes on and that establishes the first level of time.

I show you how in this video: https://youtu.be/FJGR_D9MT5g?si=U3BuovOr1ihtBC9I

Then, like a good developer, you test what you created to be sure it’s working and declare it, “good,” before moving on to the next stage of development. When you’re done programming, you “rest” on that final day, enjoying the fruits of your labor.

The Value of Madmen, Incompetents, Mythology, and Religion

Madmen dare to dream what saner men can’t begin to imagine. One hundred years ago, madmen alone dared to dream that we could communicate across the globe without need for pen and paper. We take those mad thoughts for granted now that they represent parts of our reality, but it did seem like a mad idea at the time.

Incompetents created the chocolate chip cookie and the post-it note. These were accidents and failed experiments that proved their virtue. Incompetence doesn’t mean worthless. Humanity features plenty of moments where incompetence led to big discoveries that helped move us forward. Children and the simple minded often see truth more clearly than those whose cluttered minds are stuffed full of knowledge but lack the wisdom required to make it useful.

Many great and important scientific discoveries came from studying religious texts for the distilled wisdom of humanity. String theory being one of those. Many things, such as the City of Troy and the Milky Seas and the Kraken, once considered myth and legend proved to be facts passed down from generation to generation.

Humility: The Key to Discovery

Our Lady’s humility in acknowledging her limitations provided her the key to discovering new possibilities for humanity. It unlocked the doorway to the birth of the Truth made flesh and blood, in the person of Jesus Christ. If we want to know the Truth, we must humble ourselves and follow her example.

For those not convinced about Our Lady’s existence, I invite you to explore the Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Science can’t explain all the miraculous things about it – including how it survived centuries past the normal 30 year lifespan of the fibers or how it survived a bomb that went off at the base of its frame with just a little singing around the edges. You can listen to the sound of music found embedded among the stars on display on the Tilma. 

This item can be visited in Mexico, where it remains on display. It’s physical, tangible evidence of the Truth that exists beyond human comprehension, and an invitation to ask ourselves, “How can this be?”