On The Trinity

This article is for those who want to attempt to understand the Trinity on a more tangible level, rather than as a seemingly contradictory conceptualization. Perhaps it is well enough to say the Trinity is true because we perceive it in our being, and I agree, but this text is for those who do not want to know simply what is true, but why and how it can be true. It’s also important to have some tangible talking points when you are inevitably annoyed by athiests on this topic. 

Nobody can define what the Trinity is, but the same inability to say what is, is true of all advanced sciences – we must use a model, that allows us to conceptualize that which does not operate only within the context of our narrow senses. Science and religion are in agreement that our senses cannot perceive the vast majority of reality – science refers routinely to the 10 dimensions of string theory amid countless other models, whereas we all are confined to our 3D world, and our limited senses can only perceive a small part of that narrow slice of reality. The exception is expanding our model of our reality through inference.

I cannot emphasis this enough – the way we visualize the Trinity working should not be confused with the Trinity itself. The map is not the territory, and the various ways we will be demonstrating proof of concept should not be confused with musings as to how the Trinity actually works.

We will begin with three proof of concepts, wherein we show how different emanations can be uniquely distinct and defined while still being the exact same.

Proof of Concept One: Any 3D object entering 2D space.

Even though our senses are limited to three dimensions, String Theory holds that there are ten dimensions, and virtually every model of our reality that is upheld by the most respected scientists hold that there are more than three.

We cannot understand how a being who can perceive a four dimensional reality would intrude on a three dimensional reality, but we can understand how a three dimensional being, ourselves, would intrude upon a two dimensional one.

We will, as three dimensional beings, create three separate entities that are part of the same being, intrinsic to the whole, in a two dimensional reality with absolute ease, to demonstrate how the limitations placed on any higher being, let alone God, are paper tigers.

First imagine that there is a two dimensional being, and it lives in a two dimensional world. It can exist horizontally only, but not vertically, on a two dimensional plane. We can visualise the two dimensional plane as a piece of paper, with 0 depth. So image a two dimensional being, let’s say your mouse cursor, lives on a two dimensional plane right above your computer screen, and it moves across it’s two dimensional plane like your mouse cursor moves across a computer screen. Move your mouse cursor around – you can see how this 2D being moves, across one plane.

Put your thumb, index and middle finger through this theoretical 2D piece of paper. You have now created three separate apparitions in a lower dimension, yet each apparition is a part of a larger part, that is to say, your hand. From the perspective of a two dimensional being, it would be hard to understand how these three separate apparitions are actually just one entity, the hand.

Proof of Concept Two: Light being perceived as various colors.

Rainbows have long been a Christian symbol, being the sign God gave Noah after the flood, as a symbol of his promise that he would never again flood the world.

As recounted in Genesis 9:

And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

Ezekial 1:28

As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

Take for example how a scientist would describe the colour blue. A pre-school teacher might say blue is a colour, whereas a scientist would say that blue is your brains way of conceptualising the wavelength of light detected by your eye, and associating it with the object that the light was reflected from. All colours are conceptualisations, and do not exist objectively. Yet, they exist to humans. The symbolism inherent in the Rainbow demonstrates God’s multiplicity.

When light hits a raindrop, it splits into the three primary colours, red, green, and blue, various blends of which make up the infinite range of colours. The light hitting the raindrop is light, and all the colours emanating from the raindrop are light. The same light is perceived as three separate lights, and can rejoin again into the same light.

God’s manifestations don’t stay separated, because God is both the light and the prism.

Proof of Concept Three: Quantum entanglement.

You won’t need to know quantum physics to understand this analogy, only to trust in the descriptions from actual quantum physicists. Although there are certainly quantum physicists who use their in-depth knowledge to understand their relationship with God better, such as William Pollard of the Manhattan Project who thought that God acts through quantum indeterminacy, we certainly have no such understanding, and are deferring to the experience of experts.

Quantum entanglement is one of those core concepts that unravelled previous scientific understanding about how the world worked. The discovery, first proposed around 1935 and proven via many experiments since then, is that when two Quantum particles or objects interact, they become entangled in a way we do not understand. After this connection, their behavior is entangled, with action or changes in one particle affecting the other, and the changes in one are replicated in the other in real time, faster than the speed of light could travel between them. In one experiment, the particles changed in unison over 10,000 times faster than the speed of light could travel between them. Since our prior understanding of the universe was that no signal, object or connection could travel faster than the speed of light, there is no physical connection that we can detect between the two with our current state of understanding. At present, they are simply acting in unison, despite no possible link in the manner in which we understand it, because no object can travel faster than light. Since our current understanding of the world is that no object can travel faster than the speed of light, this is a great example of how much we don’t know about the world.

Science is an ever evolving tool to understand our physical world. Our understanding of higher physics are too basic to speculate beyond the truths which physicists have brought us, to deny the possibility of religion is to deny physics.

On the off chance any atheist is reading this, and you’re more than welcome here by the way, just try to imagine a Christian trying to convince you that he himself did not exist. You would be dumbfounded, because based on your perception, him existing is required for him to argue he does not exist. So too does it seem illogical to Christians, who do have religious experiences, to question the existence of what makes up part of their objective reality. What has been directly experienced cannot be talked away by those who have not had this direct experience.

Christianity and science are separate areas of inquiry – they relate to two separate types of experience. Atheists excluding Christians from scientific events and research are spitting on the graves of Issac Newton, Max Planck, Georges Lemaître, Francis Bacon, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Galileo Galilei, Louis Pasteur, George Washington Carver, Nicolaus Copernicus, and countless more. In discouraging Christian participation in science they are emulating the worst impulses of the churches they criticise.

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

– Proverbs 26:12

As Max Planck, father of Quantum Physics, said:

“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.”

Max Planck has brought up another biased but true observation. If atheists are really so impartial, so free from the constraints that religious belief imposes, why is it that they have not outcompeted Christians, and not just in science?

Accepting the belief of the average secular scientist, Christianity would be such a handicap that atheists would make far more major discoveries, whereas the Big Bang Theory, the splitting of the atom, the development of quantum physics, the discovery of genes and genetic traits, the concept of sterilizing equipment before surgery, pasteurization, germ theory, and more were all invented by Christians. This just scratches the surface of extremely devout Christian scientists, many of whom were priests themselves – Nicolaus Copernicus was even on a shortlist to be a Bishop – who stated that their discoveries were inspired by God or in service to God.

Even the major discoveries that can be ascribed to an atheist or agnostic, tend to be made during their period of Christianity, and before adopting the mental barrier of athiesm. Evolution was discovered by a Christian, Charles Darwin, who chaired his Church’s committee for decades, and broke off his relationship with the Church 20 odd years after completing the Origin of Species, and he ceased discovering.

Even in the most direct aspect in which a “scientifically minded” person without any “competing” beliefs would be expected to succeed – in the realm of science itself – atheists find themselves with a minority of major discoveries, despite being the majority, certainly a vast majority of research scientists in this current year. The fact that the majority of scientists are secular, yet religious scientists make the vast majority of discoveries, speaks for itself. Especially in the hostile environment of athiest controlled institutions. 

Surely ahiests, having their "chains broken," would jump higher than anyone ever has in all sectors, their children, being raised on logic alone, becoming even better, until atheists outcompeted the Christians, whose illogical beliefs only hurt and not help them….

Yet, where is that in reality? I look around, at objective statistics from objective data, such as census data from the US government. Christians give far more to charity, and that is even when you exclude religious charities and only count donations to secular charities. That must be because the Atheists, being logical and less emotional, are busy outcompeting and crafting the new reality we Christians will have to adjust to, but…

According to the same US government data which shows average incomes per religious affiliation, Atheists are ranked 12^th in average income in the USA, behind 11 religious affiliations. I cannot even name 11 religious affiliations in the USA from memory. The most basic distillation of logic fundamental to every logical systems is that effectiveness is the measure of truth, 1 + 1 = 2 because 1 + 1 always equals 2. It seems like Christians are always better than athiests, according to reality.

So why aren’t atheists even a little bit better, by virtually any metric, based on objective data? Should athiests ignore the objective data in favor of their emotions, as they always accuse Christians of?

I'm not saying the religious are better, I'm referring to objective data that says religious people are better. 

A coursury glance at history shows that the filter of time has removed flimsy athiest structures and feeble institutions but left immaculate symbols of Christianity such as Notre Dame and institutions operating today that existed a thousand years ago in the same form.

You know when Notre Dame was being built, there were athiests complaining the money could have been better spent on some trivial pursuit. Someone needs to think long-term, and it appears to be the religious who are burdened with this responsibility. There are many athiests today who bemoan the tax exempt status of Churches, forgetting that if the religious were not tax exempt, and thus able to participate in politics, they would inevitably take complete control of the country. The president would be Catholic every year and Scientology would run your local council. The tax exempt benefit is a trade-off, and one to the enormous advantage of athiests.

Athietsts are less intelligent than religious people. As time goes on, the rate of invention usually increases. It was hundreds of thousands of years from shoes to the invention of the wheel and it's utilization via animals, 1,900 years from that until the invention of the first chariot, 1,100 years from that until the invention of roads, 1,000 years from that until the bicycle was made, 100 years from that until the first plane was flown and the first Ford car was invented, and 49 years after that, in 1957, we were navigating spaceships through space. The rate of discovery increased exponentially and not linearly because the more data points there are, the more capacity there is for invention, a new fact usually being the combination of existing data points. 

Yet, the rate of major invention seems to have slowed down over the past few decades, when it should have taken us to utopia. What happened? What happened was the spread of athiesm, and the cap on IQ that comes along with it. 

With that, said, at Eagle Temple we respect everyone and their beliefs, or lack thereof. We respect all religions and cultures, because we understand that there are many paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal saviour.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

– Galatians 3:28

I hope this article makes the Trinity more tangible for you, or was at least interesting.