Miracles

A conversation between Dr. Enzmann & Dr. Funk as related to the editor.

Mathematician: Do you believe in miracles?

Reverend: Yes. For me, it’s an article of Faith.

Mathematician: Faith is where I started; however, I can offer some conclusions from mathematics and signature theory that support the occurrence of real miracles, as opposed to perceived miracles which are consequent to wishful thinking. Mathematically real miracles can be reasonably defined.

Reverend: Miracles are spoken of in the Scriptures. Acts 8:6 tells us, “The people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in that city.”

Mathematician: The notion that there might be something measurable about miracles came to me in a most curious way. I can’t claim originality. Over a half-century ago I often sailed off the New England Coasts with an extraordinarily mathematically gifted child. Both of us subject to sunburn would take the nighttime dogwatches during these magnificent blue-water expeditions. There in the night, leaving a phosphorescent wake, we would talk and talk and talk.

We talked about the letter pi, then similar computations. Here is how I remember our conversation.

Child: I have an ‘outside number.’

Me:  What’s an outside number?

Child: A number outside what’s real – it’s so large that there’s no information in it.

Me: Tell me more.

Child: You showed me the sizes of molecules and atoms. I calculated circles. At the molecular level, there’s no circles.

Me: There is a wave function. Mathematicians use pi, but pi isn’t for each of your orders – at a certain resolution, your ruler fails. You can talk about divisions on the ruler but can’t use the ruler.

Child: Like a food ruler. Or, you can’t measure the width of grease on a hair, it’s likely you can’t measure the hair either.

Me: Yes. After using every mathematical trick, averaging and whatnot, numbers reach a limit – a reality limit.

From this, we derived an E-Number. That is a number so large that nothing in the knowable universe could be related to it. For example, in this year of 2000, over a half-century later, String Theorists using measurements of gravity, perhaps correct to a part-in-a million, contrive theories expressing gravitational actions correct to 84 orders of magnitude and more; that’s a millionth of a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth.

Reverend: The E-Number is a mathematical expression of Divinity. The God who can be fully known is not God. Therefore, God may act in our world in such a way that we perceive it as miraculous. No wonder Nobel Laureate Weinberg has indicated that today’s high priests of cosmology, working without any observables, are much like the Medieval Scholastics – and I add, about as credible or understandable.

Mathematician: In mathematics and physics surjective (onto-maps, often with unobserved implications) and bijective maps (one-to-one onto maps without any implications) are recognized.

Reverend: From which you conclude what?

Mathematician: That there are numbers so large that they can’t relate to any possible observation and yet, beneath any possible measurement there is a consistency.

Reverend: This consistency being the mathematical foundation for miracles?

Mathematician: Yes.

Now I bring to our attention some words which individually and collectively have parametric meaning, and therefore – like miracles – may be measured. And, likely they have metric value: Prefer, hope, wish, long, yearn, chance, like, gamble, and faith.

What is faith? Faith is believing that things will be consistent; the sun will rise tomorrow, and if I sit down to watch it, the chair that held me yesterday will hold me today. The writer to the Hebrews wrote: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1.

Faith is more fundamental than reason because I must believe that what I think is true. I have faith that you will receive this in the same vein that I wrote it. Can I trust you?