Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, January 27, 2014

Generational Poverty in America: Bootstraps, Safety Nets, and Dave Ramsey

Rachel's sister Amanda

Bootstraps and Safety Nets: Some thoughts on generational poverty in America
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/bootstraps-and-safety-nets-some-thoughts-on-generational-poverty-in-america

by Rachel Held Evans
January 27, 2014

You all are in for a treat today because my brilliant, compassionate, and wise little sister, Amanda Opelt, has contributed a guest post about generational poverty in America that is both powerful and practical. The post materialized after a long phone conversation between us in the wake of my controversial post about Dave Ramsey and poverty (see next article below), at which point I realized my sister knew way more about this topic than I did.

Amanda has spent most of her adult life working in the non-profit sector—first in India, then in inner-city Nashville, and now in Boone, North Carolina, as a field support coordinator for Samaritan’s Purse. But more than that, Amanda embodies more than anyone I know the principle of loving one’s neighbor. No matter where she finds herself, she is present and loving to the people around her, whether it’s an orphan suffering from TB in a slum in Hyderabad, India, or an elderly neighbor down the street from her home in Boone. When it comes to following Jesus, she’s the real deal. She's faithful in the little things.

I hope you learn as much from her post as I did!


* * * * * * * * * *

The biggest problem facing Christian theology is not translation but enactment...no clever
theological moves can be substituted for the necessity of a church being a community of 
people who embody our language about God, where talk about God is used without
apology because our life together does not mock our words.

- Hauerwas & Willimon

* * * * * * * * * *

Immediately after college, I packed my bags and moved to India because at age 22 I thought I "had a heart" for the poor.

I figured India was probably a pretty good place to find poor people, and I was right.  The poverty in that foreign land is pervasive, and in a country where corruption and ideological biases cultivate very little opportunity for upward mobility, it's not hard to see the orphans, beggars, and leprosy patients around you as one-dimensional victims of the sinful systems around them.  It is a fair assessment in some ways, and I must say, loving the people of India came easy. Though their stories were gut-wrenching, my heart felt no complication in its compulsion to serve them.

But after 6 months, I realized that my educational emphasis in philosophy made the relief and development work to which I aspired demanding on my skill sets.  I packed my bags again and came home to my moderately privileged lifestyle the US, confused about my calling and certain I was destined to live a life languishing apathetically in my middle-class routine.

A job search led me to a position as a ministry-based social worker for an organization that provided job skills, mentoring, childcare and Bible study for low income women in the inner city of Nashville.

I'll admit I was skeptical at first.  I didn't know the first thing about urban poverty. Like many Americans, I felt a certain sense of indifference towards poor in America, and there was maybe, buried deep in my subconscious, even a mild contempt.  I had this sneaking suspicion that the poor in my own country couldn't possibly be like the poor I had encountered in India.  This was the birthplace of the American Dream, a place where anyone who had a will to try and a strong work ethic could improve his or her lot in life.

Someone once told me that animal shelters have an easier time fundraising than homeless shelters, and sadly, I’m not surprised.  Animals aren't too complicated, and they are one-dimensional in their in-culpability. 

There is a more complex emotional reaction to the homeless in America.  There is the compulsion to wonder, "why can't they just get a job?!"  When one is born in the Land of Opportunity, it is easy to assume that the birthright of every American is to have and equal opportunity and a decent shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What is opportunity?  What does it mean to be poor?

Most middle class Americans are familiar with circumstantial poverty—one bad investment or the loss of a job leads to a period of financial difficulty.  What I learned in the inner city is that to be caught in the cycle of generational poverty is to experience a bankruptcy of spirit, a deficit of hope.  It is poverty of education, community, safety, health, and spiritual guidance.

I met a woman whose first memories were of being locked up in a closet while her mother, a prostitute, "entertained" her guests. I met a woman who, as a little girl, watched a cross burn in her front yard and endured teachers at her new school shouting racial slurs at her because the community around her was angry about integration.  I cried with women who remember in excruciatingly vivid detail, sexual and physical abuse suffered at the hands of relatives and friends, abuse that would go on for years unstopped. These were children, many with developmental and learning disabilities due to instability during their earliest years, that were pushed through failing schools with burned out teachers and deteriorating textbooks and facilities.

Abuse, racism, corruption; we all experience these hardships to a varying degree.  But for the low-income women I worked with, their lives were a perpetual house of cards.  They had no resources, no safety nets to keep them from going under.  One step forward, two steps back.  A broken down car means you can't get to work, and missing even one day of work means you can’t make rent that month. A sick child means you can get fired from a job that keeps you at "part time" status because they don't want to pay you for sick days and holidays.  Finally getting out of the welfare system means losing any childcare assistance, and childcare costs often break the bank.  I knew a woman who wouldn't break up with her abusive boyfriend because he was her only ride to work.  I'm not saying there is no such thing as bad decisions, but we all make bad decisions and only some of us have to face the full force of their consequences.

When we hear the term “safety net,” most of us think of social safety nets like food stamps or medicaid.  But when I think of safety nets in my own life, I think of parents who were willing to pitch in a bit to help me pay rent my first month in my own place.  I think of a successful elementary school and several teachers who really cared and invested some extra time to make sure I didn't fail algebra.  I think of a safe and secure community where I could run and play outside.  I think of a caring doctor who helped when I was going through a difficult mental and physical health challenge (and health insurance that enabled me to pay him).

This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's Declaration of the War on Poverty.  While we have come a long way since Johnson made that historic speech [in 1967], in 2011 the U.S Bureau of Labor conducted a study and found that 46.2 million Americans (roughly 15% of the population) lived at or below the poverty line. Many of those individuals are children (Poverty defined is a family of four making $23,021). And for anyone who ever wondered "why can't they just get a job?" you'll be interested to know that 10.4 million of these Americans are considered the working poor.  In fact, the working poor made up 7 % of the work force in the US.  Most of these were workers stuck in part time jobs, and women were more likely to be among the working poor, as were blacks and Hispanics (www.bls.gov).

I did the math and found that someone working full time at the current minimum wage (assuming they had paid sick days) would only make $15,080 a year.  This was the painful reality of so many of my students in the inner city of Nashville.  Bottom line: it's just not as simple as "stop being lazy" or "just get a job." I wish I could provide some clear-cut resolution, a silver bullet solution that churches across America could implement to serve the needy. A few women I really respect have showed me that the only way to cultivate effective change in the lives of those in need is to become, yourself, a sort of safety net for them. The resource, the friend, the positive voice, the math tutor, the spiritual mentor they never had. It's complicated, and it can be messy. But Jesus never seemed to mind a mess, and no one he ever healed or scolded or cried for or embraced had a simple story.

The complexity of the need of the human heart is something only God can know.  But perhaps the first step is to begin the process of tweaking your understanding, to realize that the playing field is not always level and not everyone was born with bootstraps.  Before you judge the circumstances of those around you, consider the humbling reality of a sovereign God who "sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor" (1 Samuel 2:7-8).

* * * * * * * * * *

To learn more about the organization Amanda served in Nashville, check out the Christian Women’s Job Corps of Middle Tennessee. CWJC empowers individuals to break harmful cycles caused by poverty by providing education, mentoring and resources. Their vision is “to create a community where all individuals can experience transformation of body, mind, heart, and spirit.”



Financial advisor Dave Ramsey is also an evangelical Christian.


What Dave Ramsey gets wrong about poverty

Opinion by Rachel Held Evans, special to CNN
November 30, 2013

(CNN)– Dave Ramsey is rich. And he makes his living telling other evangelical Christians how they can get rich, too.

Host of a nationally syndicated radio program and author of multiple best-selling books, Ramsey targets evangelical Christians with what he calls a “biblical” approach to financial planning, one that focuses primarily on the elimination of consumer debt. His for-profit Financial Peace University is billed as “a biblically based curriculum that teaches people how to handle money God's ways."

Much of what Ramsey teaches is sound, helpful advice, particularly for middle-class Americans struggling with mounting credit card bills. I have celebrated with friends as they’ve marked their first day of debt-free living, thanks in part to Dave Ramsey’s teachings and all those white envelopes of cash he urges his students to use instead of credit cards.

But while Ramsey may be a fine source of information on how to eliminate debt, his views on poverty are neither informed nor biblical.

Take, for example, a recent article by Tim Corley posted to Ramsey’s website. Entitled “20 Things the Rich Do Every Day,” the article presents some dubious statistics comparing the habits of the rich with the habits of the poor, including:
  • “70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day.”
  • “76% of wealthy exercise aerobically four days a week. 23% of poor do this.”
  • “63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% of poor people.”
One need not be a student of logic to observe that Corley and Ramsey have confused correlation with causation here by suggesting that these habits make people rich or poor.

For example, a poor person might not exercise four days a week because, unlike a rich person, she cannot afford a gym membership. Or perhaps she has to work two jobs to earn a living wage, which leaves her little time and energy for jogging around the park.

A poor family may eat more junk food, not because they are lazy and undisciplined, but because they live in an economically disadvantaged, urban setting where health food stores are not as available: a so-called “food desert.”

Critics were swift to point out these discrepancies and among the critics were some of Ramsey’s fellow evangelical Christians who also noted that, though the book of Proverbs certainly heralds success as a common return on faithful labor, nowhere does the Bible guarantee that good habits lead to wealth.

The writer of Ecclesiastes observed that "under the sun the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent,
nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all."

And far from having contempt for the poor, Jesus surrounded himself with the needy and challenged the excesses of the rich:

“Blessed are you who are poor,” he said, “for yours is the kingdom of God.
… But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6:24).

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle," Jesus famously said, "than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

It’s hard for the wealthy to flourish in the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated because the economy of that kingdom runs so contrary to the economies of the world. It rewards the peacemakers over the powerful, the humble over the proud, the kind over the cruel, and those who hunger to do the right thing over those whose wealth has convinced them they already are.

Ramsey responded to the pushback with an addendum to the original post calling his critics “ignorant” and “immature” and instructing them to “grow up.”

“This list simply says your choices cause results,” he said, again committing the false cause fallacy. “You reap what you sow.”

The list, he said, applies only to people living in “first world” countries, where Ramsey believes economic injustices are essentially nonexistent. While the poor in developing countries are so as a result of external circumstances beyond their control, the poor in the United States have no one to blame but themselves.

“If you are broke or poor in the U.S. or a first-world economy, the only variable in the discussion you can personally control is YOU,” Ramsey says. “You can make better choices and have better results.”

America, he argues, has prospered as a direct result of its “understanding and application of biblical truths” which have led to “life-changing industry, inventions and a standard of living never known before on this planet.”

“There is a direct correlation,” he concludes, “between your habits, choices and character in Christ and your propensity to build wealth.”

For Christians, Ramsey’s perceived “direct correlation” between faith and wealth should be more troubling than his other confused correlations, for it flirts with what Christians refer to as the prosperity gospel, the teaching that God rewards faithfulness with wealth.

Ramsey’s particular brand of prosperity gospel elevates the American dream as God’s reward for America’s faithfulness, the spoils of which are readily available to anyone who works hard enough to receive them.

But such a view glosses over the reality that America was not, in fact, founded upon purely Christian principles (unless one counts slavery, ethnic cleansing, gender inequity, and Jim Crow as Christian principles), so we should be careful of assuming our relative wealth reflects God’s favor. (The Roman Empire was wealthy, too, after all.)

It also glosses over the reality that economic injustice is not, in fact, limited to the developing world but plagues our own country as well.
  • When medical bills are the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the United States, there are systemic injustices at work.
  • When people working 40-hour weeks at minimum wage jobs still can’t earn enough to support their families, there are systemic injustices at work.
  • When approximately 1% of Americans hold 40% of the nation’s wealth, there are systemic injustices at work.
  • When the black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as the white unemployment rate for the past 50 years, there are systemic injustices at work.
  • And throughout Scripture, people of faith are called not simply to donate to charity, but to address such systemic injustices in substantive ways.
The 17-year-old girl who lives in a depressed neighborhood zoned for a failing school system who probably won’t graduate because her grades are suffering because she has to work part-time to help support her family needs more than a few audio books to turn things around.

People are poor for a lot of reasons, and choice is certainly a factor, but categorically blaming poverty on lack of faith or lack of initiative is not only un-informed, it’s un-biblical.

God does not divide the world into the deserving rich and the undeserving poor. In fact, the brother of Jesus wrote that God has “chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him” (James 2:5).

God does not bless people with money; God blesses people with the good and perfect gift of God’s presence, which is available to rich and poor alike.

And that’s good news.


Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.

 - CNN Belief Blog



When Christians Love Theology More Than People


Holding hands, Mats Bergström / Shutterstock.com

When Christians Love Theology More Than People
http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/01/22/when-christians-love-theology-more-people

January 22, 2014

Beyond the realm of churches, religious blogs, and bible colleges, nobody really cares about theology. What does matter is the way you treat other people.

Within Christendom, we’re often taught the exact opposite: that doctrines, traditions, theologies, and distinct beliefs are the only things that do matter. It’s what separates churches, denominations, theologians, and those who are “saved” and “unsaved.”

Historically, Christians have been tempted to categorize the Bible into numerous sets of beliefs that are either inspired or heretical, good or bad, right or wrong — with no room for doubt or questioning or uncertainty.

It’s easy to get caught up in theorizing about God, but within our everyday lives reality is what matters most to the people around us. Theorizing only becomes important once it becomes relevant and practical and applicable to our lives.

When I'm sick, and you bring me a meal, I don't care whether you're a Calvinist or Arminian.

When I'm poor, and you give me some food and money, I don't care if you're pre-millennial or post-millennial.

When I'm in the hospital, and you send me a get-well basket, I don't care what your church denomination is.

When you visit my grandparents in the nursing home, I don't care what style of worship music you listen to.

When you're kind enough to shovel my parent's driveway, I don't care what translation of the Bible you read.

When you give my friend a lift when their car breaks down, I don't care if you’re Baptist or Catholic.

When you help my grandmother carry a heavy load of groceries, I don't care what you believe about evolution.

When you protect my kids from getting hit by a car when they're running across the street, I don't care who your favorite theologian is.

When you’re celebrating my birthday with me, I don’t care about your views related to baptism.

When you grieve alongside me during the death of a family member, I don’t care if you tithe or not.

When you love me in deep and meaningful and authentic ways — nothing else really matters.

But when you idolize belief systems and turn theology into an agenda, it poisons the very idea of selfless love. 

The gospel message turns into propaganda, friends turn into customers, and your relationship with God turns into a religion.

You may have the most intellectually sound theology, but if it's not delivered with love, respect, and kindness — it's worthless.

The practical application of your love is just as important as the theology behind it. Our faith is evidenced by how we treat others. Does the reality of your life reflect the theory behind your spiritual beliefs?

We should never give up on theology, academic study, or the pursuit of understanding God, the Bible, and the history and traditions of the church, but these things should inspire us to emulate Christ — to selflessly, sacrificially, and holistically love others. Theology should reinforce our motivation for doing things to make the world a better place — not serve as platforms to berate, criticize, and attack others.

But too often, we’re guilty of failing to practically apply our beliefs in tangible ways that actually help others. 

In the end, this is what matters most to the world around us: that we simply love as Christ loved.


Stephen Mattson has contributed for Relevant Magazine and the Burnside Writer's Collective,and studied Youth Ministry at the Moody Bible Institute. He is now on staff at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn. Follow him on Twitter @mikta.

Image: Holding hands, Mats Bergström / Shutterstock.com


Friday, January 24, 2014

WinterJam 2014 Tour Spectacular - Select Videos


WinterJam 2014



WinterJam 2014 Tour Spectacular



Lecrae - Tell The World (Passion 2013) [HD - 720p] @lecrae




Lecrae - I'm Turnt - #CC2




Derek Minor - Dear Mr Christian, Ft. Dee-1 & Lecrae (@thederekminor)




Lecrae - Don't Waste Your Life [Techno Intro] (Passion 2013) @lecrae




Lecrae - TELL THE WORLD Feat. Mali Music (@lecrae @reachrecords)





Lecrae - Just Like You - OFFICIAL VIDEO (@Lecrae @ReachRecords)




Lecrae - Confessions (@lecrae @reachrecords)




Lecrae To Headline WinterJam 2014 On ONE ONE 7




Lecrae - Lord Have Mercy Ft. Tedashii (@Lecrae @Tedashii)




Newsboys - Miracles




Newsboys - Live With Abandon




Newsboys - God's Not Dead




Tenth Avenue North - You Are More












Tenth Avenue North "The Struggle" LIVE - K-LOVE




BEAUTIFUL by Plumb (2013)




NEED YOU NOW (How Many Times) by Plumb (LIVE)




K-LOVE - Plumb "One Drop" LIVE




I WANT YOU HERE by PLUMB (live w/ intro) (2013)





Colton Dixon in performance, Grand Rapids, MI
WinterJam 2014



Colton Dixon - Never Gone





Colton Dixon - Our Time Starts Now (Live)





WinterJam 2014, Raleigh, NC





Air1 - Colton Dixon "You Are" LIVE





Thousand Foot Krutch in performance,
Grand Rapids, MI, WinterJam 2014



Thousand Foot Krutch- "Welcome To the Masquerade (Live)"




Thousand Foot Krutch- "Fire It Up (LIVE)"




Official War of Change Music Video by Thousand Foot Krutch




Thousand Foot Krutch - Bring Me To Life (Live At the Masquerade




Thousand Foot Krutch - "Shook" (Official Lyric Video)





Everfound - God of the Impossible (Official Video)




Everfound - Making The Song: Never Beyond Repair




Someone by Everfound Music video




Everfound-What Love Means (Lyrics)






Miscellaneous pictures - WinterJam 2014
Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

Colton Dixon - WinterJam 2014, Grand Rapids, MI




Thursday, January 23, 2014

Book Review: Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe" - A Taxonomy of Multiverses, Levels I - IV


Does the idea of parallel universes really describe reality? (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy
Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)

When does multiverse speculation cross into fantasy?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129520.900-when-does-multiverse-speculation-cross-into-fantasy.html?full=true#.UuEFVSko69J

by Mark Buchanan
January 21, 2014

Book information
Our Mathematical Universe: My quest for
the ultimate nature of reality, by Max Tegmark
Published by: Allen Lane
Price: £25

In Our Mathematical Universe, Max Tegmark tries hard to make the seemingly outlandish theories of multiverses sound almost obvious and unavoidable.

SOME years ago, the philosopher David Hull wrote a book entitled Science as a Process, in which he argued that science works through an evolutionary process. Imaginative scientists toss out ideas and hypotheses, creating and maintaining the equivalent of natural variation in biological populations. Then other scientists test those ideas, using evidence and logic to select out and eliminate the ones that don't measure up. Variation and selection, repeated: that's a form of evolution.

But there is a condition. This only works properly with a diversity of personalities and specialisms among scientists. Research would get nowhere if it were driven solely by the dour, hard-boiled sceptics who only believe on the basis of solid evidence. The sceptics feed off the raw creative material of the speculators, who imagine what might be possible and never stop dreaming about "what if". The speculators produce the diversity of ideas on which selection can act, and they require, in turn, the discipline of sceptics to stop them from running away into fantasy.

And yet fantasy is the very word that occurs to many – including some physicists – when they hear some of the ideas popular in cosmology, a discipline which aims to answer the big questions about the origins of the universe.

The fantasy trajectory started off gently enough when physicist Alan Guth proposed that many puzzling features of the observable universe – such as the extremely homogeneous distribution of matter within it – would be explained if the universe had undergone a short, early period of rapid expansion, termed inflation. Extremely rapid, as in expanding in volume by a factor of 1078 in a time of 10-30 seconds.

Since then, other inflationary cosmologists have opened the speculative throttle so fully that physicists now talk routinely of such things as an infinitude of parallel universes, or a "multiverse". In the multiverse, every conceivable world exists, and individuals identical to you and I live out parallel lives in places we cannot have access to.

Is this still science? Or has inflationary cosmology veered towards something akin to religion? Some physicists wonder. The enthusiasts, of course, see it very differently. Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, certainly does. His new book, Our Mathematical Universe, is an impassioned defence of the theory, especially its implications for parallel universes.

The book is an excellent guide to recent developments in quantum cosmology and the ongoing debate over theories of parallel universes. Tegmark tries hard to make the seemingly outlandish sound almost obvious and unavoidable, and offers a taxonomy to help organise a zoo of imagined parallel universes.

As it turns out, the terms parallel universes and multiverse mean many things to different people. But Tegmark's taxonomy of parallel universes are all, he argues, implied by observed evidence and the laws of physics.

His first set, the Level I Multiverse, refers to an idea that many cosmologists already accept. Rapid early inflation would have created what Tegmark describes as "universe-sized parts of space so far away from us that light from them hasn't had time to reach us". These other domains – or "universes" – could well exist, although we currently have no observational evidence for them.

Tegmark's Level II Multiverse refers to a bolder idea, championed by physicist Alexander Vilenkin and others. There may be other domains of space also created by inflation that are too far away to see. These will forever remain out of our reach because continuing inflation drives them from us faster than the speed of light. This idea refers to real, distinct, physical universes that cannot ever be observed.

At this point in the taxonomy, however, Tegmark leaves cosmology behind. In reading, I began to feel that his aim is to see parallel universes in as many places as he can. Enter the Level III Multiverse. This turns out to be a language for talking about the mathematics of quantum theory using the many worlds interpretation of that theory, first proposed by physicist Hugh Everett in the 1950s.

This interpretation describes all physical processes as part of an ongoing, perpetual branching of the universe into many other universes. It is indeed possible to interpret quantum theory this way, but readers should know that many other interpretations, equally in tune with observations, don't invoke the idea of parallel universes at all.

Then there is the Level IV Multiverse. Again, this has nothing to do with cosmology, but is an ambitious thought about mathematics. Tegmark argues that reality isn't simply described by mathematics, as most physicists readily accept, but that it is, in fact, mathematical.

Furthermore, he believes that the mathematics of our universe is just one of an infinity of conceivable mathematical structures. He goes on to wonder: if this mathematical structure is a universe, why not all the others? And so he makes a bold claim – that all other mathematical structures should also exist physically as further parallel universes.

Of course, we don't really know. The history of science ought to have taught us that just because something sounds unbelievable, it doesn't mean it is. Human history, after all, is one long progression of people being surprised by what they previously thought was impossible. Isolated tribes learned of other islands and continents, and of the other peoples living there, for example. In modern times we learned of other planets, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and so on. Why not universes? It might even feel quite natural for our universe to just be one of many, especially in the sense of the Level I Multiverse [where the revealing lights from other universes haven yet to catch up to us].

Even so, there does seem to be something a little questionable with this vast multiplication of multiverses. While the notion of the Level I Multiverse at least makes contact with real physics and possible evidence, it isn't clear that any of these other ideas ever could. Multiverse champions seem quite happy, even eager, to invoke infinite numbers of other universes as mechanisms for explaining things we see in our own universe. In a sense, multiverse enthusiasts take a "leap of faith" every bit as big as the leap to believing in a Creator, as physicist Paul Davies put it in an article in The New York Times.

In the end, this isn't science so much as philosophy using the language of science. "Inflation", Tegmark notes, "is the gift that keeps on giving, because every time you think it can't possibly predict something more radical than it already has, it does."

This quote is a good example of Tegmark as a creative, speculating scientist, churning out radical ideas as rapidly as possible. It suggests that prediction alone is the point and measure of science, whether or not those predictions turn out to be true.

But all writers overstate their position on occasion, and uninhibited speculation is only one side of Tegmark's brand of science. Much of his early work, which built his reputation as a physicist, wasn't of this kind at all. It was hard, empirical stuff, developing methods for analysing data from large-scale telescope projects to measuring fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

Perhaps this book is proof that the two personalities needed for science – the speculative and sceptic – can readily exist in one individual.

Mark Buchanan is a visiting professor at the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy





---

Tegmark's Multiverse Taxonomy*

Level 1 - Light from more distant universes has yet to reach us in ours

Level 2 - Light from more distant universes will never reach us

Level 3 - Our present universe is part of a larger continuing process birthing more and more universes
                 both familiar and other-worldly

Level 4 - What we can imagine in our mathematics is not simply the discipline of mathematics,
                 but an infinity of nether-world universes imaginable and unimaginable

*Assuming multiverses cannot be explained in any other way
under the science of quantum cosmology.
- R.E. Slater






continue to -