Inadequate Words

v

From The Luminous Web by Barbara Taylor Brown

No one has ever seen a quark, for instance. These particles within particles were invested by Murray Gell-Mann in 1961 because he needed them to make one of his theories work. The word itself alludes to a line from James Joyce ("Three quarks for Muster Mark") in Finnegan's Wake. According to Gell-Mann, quarks exhibit such things as "flavor" and "color," There are "up" and d"down" quarks. There were once "truth and "beauty" quarks as well, but according to my friends Louis Jensen, "this was a little much for the physics community, so they changed 'beauty' and 'truth to 'down' and 'up'". But a quark remains a theoretical construct, leading Niels Bohr to say that "we must be clear, when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry."

Behr's point is that our language is not adequate to describe things we cannot see, much less understand.

We cannot see God. We certainly cannot understand God, and yet do you think that we presume to be able to use our language to describe God? To not only describe God, but to arrogantly state that our descriptions are complete and error-free, To say, "This is how God is!" 

Even when we state that our faith is based on what we read in the Bible, can the language of the Bible accurately and completely describe God? And that our understanding of what we read would also be error free and complete? 

 I think we would be wrong if we did.

Truth

I read book The Luminous Web by Barbara Brown Taylor.  It's a small book that she wrote to address the connections and disconnections (my words) between science and theology.  My kind of stuff. I'm sure I'll share more.  

But for today, I wanted to share a quote from the book.  This is the life-guiding principle of one of Taylor's friends:  "When truth and belief come into conflict, it is better to change on'es belief to fit the truth that to change the turht to fit one's belief."

That quote struck me as so "spot on" that I got up from my desk and walked into a co-worker's office to read it to her.  

I think we do sometimes try to change the truth to fit our beliefs.  Don't you think there is a futility in that?  We can't really change the truth - it is the truth.  So by trying to change it, we instead ignore it.

At the same time I was reading this quote, I had an article from the magazine Rotarian on my desk, open to an article called "How to tell fact from fiction and truth the news again."  I'll link the article here.   

It's an article about how professional fact checkers do their work.  Most of us aren't professionals, but in a world where so many lies are spread via social media, I think we have a responsilbity to check the facts of what we post.  We need to stop spreading memes and posts that support our beliefs without checking their veracity.

Here are the articles three easy stops to stop fake news:

1. Gut-check.  Did the headline or image you just saw make you feel a strong emotion?  Misinformation is designed do to that.  I would add that we should ask ourselves if the "fact" presented really makes any logical sense.  Is it so designed to create in us a strong emotion that the "fact," when we think about, just couldn't be true.  
2. Fact-check.  What is the original source of the information? Have you heard it from other, reputable sources? You can do a reverse image search to see if an image could have been created from other images - put together to tell a false story.  What do independent, nonpartisan fact-checking sources like Snopes, PolitFact, or FactCheck.org have to say?
3. Read real news.  News institutions that reported on events like Watergate are still producing top-quality journalism.  Subscribe to a variety of reputable publications and get your information directly from those sources - not from social media.  We both know that certain cable news outlets broadcast opinion more than facts.  Don't rely on only them for your news. What are other people saying?

Those who connect with you on social media are your friends.  Don't spread what is untrue to your friends.  And if you are brave, fact-check their posts and share the truth. Let's not be used - let's be beacons of the truth so that we are not trying to ignore the truth to fit our beliefs.

Book Review: The Luminous Web

Information about the book

Title: The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion

Author: Barbara Brown Taylor

Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

Copywrite date: 2000

Links:  I purchased this book from Amazon.

Summary

On the back cover: "In these essays on the dialogue between science and Christian faith, Barbara Brown Taylor describes her journey as a preacher learning what the insights of quantum physics, the new biology and chaos theory can teach a person of faith."

Taylor's purpose in this book isn't to meld science and theology.  She also isn't willing to allow each of them to stand alone, separate from each other.  She doesn't lesson either one - each stands on its own, but she does bring them along side by side so that we can see how they complement each other.  

Impressions

I chose this book for two reasons.  I have read a book of sermons by Barbara Brown Taylor and was SO IMPRESSED by her writing.  Secondly, my background is in science and my career in is faith.  I'm often thinking about how the two are related and not in opposition.

I often measure a book by the number of "ah ha" moments.  This had many.  Taylor quotes scientists and theologians - both bring revelation to the party.  She doesn't try to mesh the two, or try to use science to explain religion (or religion to refute science).  Instead, she describes her journey as a person of faith into the land of science.  I think too often, in a quest to protect God, we trash science.  God doesn't need our protection, and if we think we have everything figured out because we've read the Bible, we are very much mistaken.

I enjoyed the book, and it opened my mind to a field of study I haven't ventured into before - quantum physics and chaos theory - and how these speak to my faith.

I recommend the book.  I haven't written any posts about it yet - I hope to do so.  Much of my copy of the book is highlighted!  

(To find future posts once they are written, search for Taylor Web in the search bar of my blog).