Why I believe in God: Objections and responses

To close out this topic, I'd like to respond to further objections to the existence of God.  I've discussed a couple already (the lack of evidence and the existence of scientific counterexamples of creationist teachings), and there's one more that I'd like to address.  In doing this, I hope that it doesn't appear that I'm simply setting up a strawman argument and beating it to pieces.  Atheists and agnostics have real and legitimate concerns about God's existence and what has been taught concerning Him.  The religious community often does not have complete or even partial answers to these questions.  For example, the problem of evil is something both religious and non-religious people struggle with (although I won't address that topic here).  I'd like to be as complete as possible, so if any readers feel that other relevant questions are important to address, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it.

What if you weren't raised religious?

Since this is hypothetical, there's no way for me to be fully accurate in my response.  Also, this seems like more of a statement than a question to me, the statement being "the only reason you believe in God is because that's how you were raised".  But I'll do my best.  The short answer is that, all other things being equal, I don't know if I would have found God if religion wasn't in my upbringing.  Now for the longer answer.

Let's assume that as many other things as possible about my life, my experiences, and my personality are preserved.  Perhaps I am raised in a family of atheists who encourage me to excel academically and follow my dreams, whatever those may be.  They are good, moral people who help others and volunteer in the community.  They do not believe in God, but have no problem with people who do.  I have friends who are religious, and thus I am familiar with the idea of God and with mainstream Christianity.  I devote much of my time to doing well in school, since that is what I am good at and I want to get into a good college.

Somewhere along the way, during my teen years, several of my religious friends notice that I am not involved in religion and, with varying degrees of persistence, seek to help me see the reality of God's existence.  At this point I have not thought about whether their "god" really exists or not.  After some time, I decide to read some of their religious texts, mainly out of curiosity.  Much of it I find boring and devoid of meaning, but every now and then I find a story that teaches good principles.  I resist invitations to church services to all except the most persistent, since I don't want to appear as if I am planning on being a member of their church.  I resist invitations to pray for a long time, since it feels weird talking to nothing.  The first few times I try, I begin speaking briefly and then withdraw due to awkwardness.  During times of great happiness or distress, I sometimes reach out in my mind to see if anything is there to respond.

My impression of their doctrine and theology evolves along with my cognitive skills.  At first, I am likely to reject a belief or teaching if it seems too "weird".  Such teachings include stories of miracles, prophets receiving revelation, angels, and the atonement of Christ.  Later on, as I become more familiar with religious teachings, my interest might be hindered by discovery of intellectual discrepancies in their doctrine.  I bring these discrepancies up to my friends, and they try their hardest to answer them.  Some answers satisfy me, some don't.  The more my personality becomes analytical and intellectually based, the less likely I am to entertain much of their teachings.

I tried to mentally construct a hypothetical sketch of how I might feel during such a situation.  I don't think I know enough to make it conceivably accurate, and I think that depends a lot on whether God exists.  Surely God has to make Himself known somehow, and in my experience, much of that has been through thoughts and feelings (as I explained in the last post).  But I think the important thing to mention here is that God's existence is not dependent upon our acceptance of theism.  If God is real, it is completely possible for many people to disregard, disbelieve, or supposedly disprove His existence, but it is equally plausible that a belief in a nonexistent God can be widespread.

Why I believe in God: Evidence

Why I believe God is a reality, not just a plausibility

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in the Holy Ghost as a God along with Jesus Christ and God the Father.  To me, the Holy Ghost is a being who lacks physical form, and is able to communicate to each of us what God would have us know.  In addition, the Holy Ghost (commonly referred to as the spirit) can help us feel when something is true and motivate us to do good.  Mormon doctrine teaches that the influence of the spirit is subtle and usually can only be detected if one is looking for it.

Thus, I try to make my life and myself an environment in which the influence of the spirit can be most easily felt and received.  In the past, I have had a variety of what I call spiritual experiences, in which I believe the Holy Ghost was present to some degree or another.  The vast majority of these have been simple and at a low level of intensity, often small enough that I am unable to distinguish between the effects of the spirit and my own feelings or thoughts.  However, several experiences have occurred in my life which I consider to be much more conspicuous manifestations of the spirit, to the point that I can no longer accept that they were produced by my own mental or emotional processes.  I will describe three such experiences.

The first occurred when I was around 12.  Like many Mormons raised in the church (especially in Utah), I had grown up learning church doctrine, history, and principles.  For the preceding couple of years, I had been giving a lot of thought to what I believed and realized that I didn't really know if it was the truth.  I worried about the possibility of entering the afterlife only to realize that I should have been a member of a different religion.  I had been taught at least a few times before this period that each person should strive to find the truth for themselves, and not have a certain belief system just because their friends, parents, or leaders professed the same.  This is often referred to as "getting your own testimony" in Mormon culture, and this was what I was trying to do for a couple years.  I remember feeling like my case was a minority, that there were not many Mormons who spent a significant amount of time wondering if their doctrine was true.  Because of this, I almost completely kept my doubts to myself.

I put plenty of time into prayer and study of the scriptures, seeking to have some sort of spiritual impression or manifestation that would confirm my faith.  There were times when it seemed as if my doubt was alleviated, but it would later return.  I felt much like Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Mormon church who also spent much of his youth wondering and searching for the truth (further information about Joseph Smith is available here).  I had a friend at that time who seemed spiritually in tune and someone I could share my thoughts with, so I decided that I would talk with him about it.

I decided to do so at a boy scout campout some time later.  After everyone else had gone to bed, I explained my plight to him and asked if he had had any similar experiences.  I don't remember him giving a direct answer to my question, but I remember the experience he related to me.  He told me about a dream he had in which he was alive during the second coming of Christ (Mormons, and many other Christians, believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth as a resurrected, immortal being).  In the dream, angels were singing a common Christian hymn, "God be with you 'til we meet again".  He continued relating the story, but at that point my mind focused on the lyrics of the hymn.  At that moment, I felt an incredibly strong wave of emotion come over me.  I cannot describe it as any particular emotion, just strong.  I felt reassurance about my doubts and the wordless communication that my beliefs were true.

The second occurred during my time as an LDS missionary in Alabama.  Since my previous experience years ago, I had never doubted the truth of the church.  I did my best as a missionary to do what I knew I was "supposed" to do, but there came a time when being a missionary out of a sense of obligation wasn't enough, even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do.  I wanted to be motivated by desire, not just duty.  I felt that the missionary I was serving with (Mormon missionaries always live and work in pairs) was an excellent example of who I wanted to be.  He gave me a copy of a talk (Mormon jargon for "speech") he had read earlier on his mission that was given to missionaries by a leader in the Mormon church (the talk is here).  The focus of this talk was the difference between desire and obligation as motivating factors for missionaries, and the speaker described how to gain the intrinsic motivation to serve.

Over a period of several weeks, I studied this talk, as well as scriptures from the Book of Mormon that I felt were related to the issue.  I prayed many times for the true desire to do what was right, and to be happy and content in doing missionary work.  Unlike the other two experiences I describe here, no part of this experience for me was instantaneous.  I cannot pinpoint a time when any monumental change occurred.  But I do know that before this period, I was motivated primarily by obligation.  After this period and ever since then, I have been motivated primarily by a desire to please God.  Something changed in me that I had tried and failed to change in myself before.  It has never permanently left.  I do not believe it came from myself, or from any other person.  It came from the purifying influence of the Holy Ghost.

The third experience was also as a missionary.  I was in a different area with a different missionary at this time, and we were teaching someone we had met quite recently.  I enjoyed teaching this person because he was close to our age and someone we could relate to.  He seemed open-minded and willing to explore and find out if what we were teaching was true.  He had been raised as a Christian, and on this particular visit he asked us what was different about our faith.  We had a good discussion about a few of our unique beliefs, and he was once again accepting and willing to ask questions and learn.  At the close of our visit we asked him if he would pray, and he complied.  We closed our eyes and waited for him to speak, but for a good while he said nothing.  Finally he looked up and said, "Wow.  That has never happened to me before."

My first assumption was that he had prayed silently and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that what we had taught was true.  But he then explained that he was trying to speak and no words were coming out of his mouth.  He wasn't distressed, but wondered why such a thing would happen.  The other missionary and I were surprised to hear him say this, because Joseph Smith's account of his praying to know which church was true includes a description of a similar experience.  My companion urged him to try again to pray.  I don't remember the words he said during the prayer.  I may not have even been paying attention at the time, because at the moment he began to pray, I had the most amazing and powerful feeling of joy that I had ever experienced before.  When he finished the prayer, I looked up at him and the other missionary, and their expression suggested that the same thing had happened for them.  Nobody said anything for a while.  We didn't really know what to say.  We all knew what we had felt, and we all knew it was from God.  We stayed for a couple more minutes.  Nobody wanted to leave and disrupt the moment.  But we eventually departed, and thanked God for what we had experienced that day.

Why I believe in God: Empiricism and human chauvinism

The phrase "human chauvinism" is taken from an idea that Douglas Hofstadter describes in "Godel, Escher, Bach" (although he calls it "earth chauvinism").  I'm extrapolating Hofstadter's ideas into my own thesis here, but let me define human chauvinism as "the notion that humans have a monopoly on information-gathering".  To give you some background, I'll explain what Hofstadter means by earth chauvinism.

Hofstadter prefaces earth chauvinism with an extended analogy of messages, meanings, and how messages are interpreted by intelligence.  A message is compared to a record, the meaning is compared to the music isomorphically encoded within the record, and the interpreting intelligence is compared to a jukebox.  Hofstadter explains that different records could be played differently by different jukeboxes; thus, a single record would not have the same music (meaning) everywhere.  Likewise, the meaning encoded in a message is not invariable; it is not an intrinsic, unalterable property of the object.

In our minds, Hofstadter explains, "the ascribing of meaning to a message comes from the invariance of the processing of the messages by intelligences distributed anywhere in the universe".  We could say that a message's meaning is completely intrinsic if and only if every single intelligence in the universe interpreted it in exactly the same way (which is highly improbable).  Humans, of course, are used to the way that humans interpret messages, although a fair degree of variance does exist between cultures, languages, perspectives, etc.  Human chauvinism, or earth chauvinism, occurs when we assume that our method of interpretation is universal, simultaneously excluding the possibility of messages or meanings that cannot be interpreted using our method.

Breaking free of chauvinism is done by "imagin[ing] that there could exist other kinds of 'jukeboxes'--intelligences--which communicate among each other via messages which we would never recognize as messages".  Such speculation opens our minds to other methods of interpretation beyond those which we are accustomed to using.  The most simple level of "meaning-interpretation" for us is done involuntarily by the sensory nervous system, the five "jukeboxes" we refer to as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  From this basic input, through the millennia, we have created additional, more complex jukeboxes such as science, philosophy, mathematics, and every other academic discipline known to man.

What does this all have to do with my belief in God?  For one, I think it highlights the irrationality of empiricism, the idea that knowledge comes completely from sensory experience.  To say that all information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other ways of interpreting meaning or gathering information.  In a less extreme sense, to say that all worthwhile information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other worthwhile ways of interpreting meaning.  It is to discredit the existence of countless plausible forms of information and truth simply because they are inaccessible to us.

To those who haven't figured out where I'm going with this, here it is:  a supreme being (or any intelligence for that matter) does not have to conform to our system of information-gathering in order to communicate with us.  The idea that no one has found any sensory evidence of a supreme being does not and cannot imply that such a being is nonexistent.  The only way that this conclusion could logically stand is if our sensory system was, in fact, the embodiment of all possible forms of information-gathering.  I find this extremely improbable.

At this point, one might ask, "If God doesn't have to communicate through the five senses, how will we know of his existence?"  My reply is that we need to break away from chauvinism and entertain the possibility of other forms of information transmission in the past and the present.  As a Mormon, I consider the most important of these to be the Holy Ghost, but I certainly am not limiting it to that.  I intend to give a sampling of some examples of alternative information transmission (that which I consider to be communication from God) from my own life, which leads me into my next post.

Why I believe in God: Evolution vs. creation

I recently finished watching the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham regarding the logical soundness of the creation model vs. the evolution model.  It gave me an opportunity to think about how I really feel regarding science and religion (although I have done so many times in the past), and this time I felt that I could share a few ideas I have relating to the subject of the existence of a higher power.  I will first describe how I believe that the existence of a higher power is not only possible but plausible, and then I will discuss why I personally believe in a supreme being.

Why God is "allowed" to exist

Evolution vs. creation:  How did life and matter come into being?

I don't want to spend too much time discussing the Nye vs. Ham debate (if you're interested, here it is).  There were several subjects, however, that Ham had a difficult time reconciling with Nye's points, and Nye requested elaboration on several topics multiple times that Ham never provided.  I feel that a lot of Ham's difficulty in the discussion came from the fact that he posits a literal interpretation of the Genesis text.  Ham, and all of the creationist scientists he cites, believes that the events of the creation took place in six 24-hour periods and that the earth, as well as the universe, does not far exceed an age of 6,000 years.  Much of Nye's evidence was pretty glaring in its challenge to the credulity of Ham's claims.

Having been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), I admit that a good portion of my thought process during the debate was what it would have been like for Ham if he had approached the issue from the perspective of Mormon theology.  I am not implying that a debate between Bill Nye and a Mormon would be devoid of intellectual inconsistency on the part of LDS theology, but several specifically LDS teachings regarding the creation are, in my opinion, more in agreement with scientific evidence than those of mainstream Christianity (at least as set forth by Ham).

I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon theology, and much of what I say may be merely my own interpretation of LDS doctrine.  Take it with a grain of salt.  But here are some ideas I find plausible (meaning I am not presenting them as fact), some only loosely based on LDS theology, that may explain some of the events behind the creation:

1. God has created "worlds without number" (Moses 1:33), and they were not necessarily all created at the same time; in fact, they probably were not.  Thousands of planets could have been created before our world ever even began.
2. The six periods of time during which God created the earth are symbolically given the appellation of "days", and do not refer to 24-hour periods of time.  Thus, the creation could theoretically have taken thousands, millions, or billions of years by our time standards.
3. Adam and Eve were the first two human beings to inhabit the planet, but they may not have been the only two human or human-like beings on the earth by the time the Fall occurred and they were cast from the garden.  We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, and I find it reasonable that if the garden was separated from the rest of the world in the spiritual sense, it could plausibly be sequestered in an evolutionary biological sense.  The process of evolution of various life forms could have happened exactly as modern science describes it, including the evolution of primates to humans or human-like beings, while Adam and Eve remained in the garden.  (If this is the case, I don't have an opinion about how long any pre-Adamic human races remained, or if they intermixed with Adam and Eve's posterity.  I haven't really been exposed to enough evidence to formulate an opinion about either of these ideas.)

I don't pretend that these ideas reconcile all the difficulties between the evolution model and the creation model.  For example, I don't know how to reconcile the Biblical or LDS teachings regarding Noah's flood with several pieces of evidence Bill Nye mentioned during the debate, though I do not feel that there is no explanation.  But what I've learned about the factual process of evolution has not disturbed my perception of how the creation could have happened.  As far as the Big Bang and the creation of the universe in general, I am not enough a student of physics or astronomy to know much of the theory behind this, but I do find it plausible that the Big Bang or something like it could have been wrought by a supreme creator as well.

Prison break

Since mid-summer of 2013, I have been watching a show that aired from 2005-2008 known as "Prison Break".  Many of you may be familiar with it, and although I am not a TV watcher (even watching shows I enjoy only sporadically), Prison Break has been very entertaining for me.  The main appeal of the show for me is the protagonist, Michael Scofield, who is an extremely intelligent structural engineer who uses his talents to break his wrongfully convicted brother out of prison.  It soon evolves into much more than that, of course, but I enjoy the show because the characters use creative and intelligent ways to get out of difficult situations.  From this and other creative works I have read/watched, I have come to the conclusion that many of the works I enjoy the most share this same quality:  the characters prosper because of their intelligence.

But I'm getting besides the point.  The reason I wanted to write about this is to gather and possibly share my thoughts about some of the themes and ideas that Prison Break presents.  Prison Break does contain more mature themes and ideas, which is why I'm glad I watched it after my mission rather than before, because I am able to deal with and respond to them in a mature way.  Many of the minor events along the course of the story have been disturbing for me, but what troubles me more is the general themes of what the show seems to teach, although it's almost never explicitly shown.  I don't know if the producers/creators were attempting to send these messages through the show, but here is some of what I feel Prison Break is attempting to "teach":

1.  There is no way to absolutely know the truth about anything.

Later in the show, we become aware of a corrupt governmental entity known as "The Company", who has infiltrated essentially every aspect of society in a very realistic, believable way (the realism, I believe, is what makes the messages more powerful).  We find that the protagonist's brother, Lincoln Burrows, was convicted off of doctored evidence that was fabricated so meticulously by the Company that upon escaping prison, the brothers are completely unable to prove that Lincoln is innocent of any crime, even after finding that the man who Lincoln is purported to have killed is still alive.

The point the show seems to make is this:  in this day and age, information can be technologically corrupted to the point that nothing is reliable anymore.  Everything from the surveillance camera feed to the DNA information of the supposed murder victim was altered irreversibly by the Company and could not be accessed in its original form anymore.  Because of the realistic nature of the plotline, I have admittedly been affected by this idea.  For instance, in the political sphere (which I have a hard time with anyway), I have a hard time deciding who to vote for in part because I have no way of knowing whether a given party, candidate, or group has gone to a great deal of effort to make themselves appear outstanding and create "evidence" and "statistics" to go along with it, when in fact they do not intend to support the interests they claim.  This idea has far less power in the religious context for me, however, because I believe there are alternate methods of finding truth than any form of person-to-person communication.

2.  You can't trust anyone but yourself.

Throughout the show, but especially in the last season, the main characters find people they think they can trust, and are betrayed again and again.  Those they trust end up either getting killed, turning out to be from the Company, or decide to act for their own interests and not for those of the group.  This idea is a social embodiment of the first idea I described.  Just as any form of information can be altered, all semblances of personality can also be fabricated with a sufficient amount of skill.  Several Company agents construct extremely believable representations of innocent and benign citizens, only to instantaneously shed the facade as soon as they are able.

I feel that this point is somewhat overexaggerated in Prison Break.  Part of this, of course, is the fact that not everyone is trying to dismantle a multi-national group that has power over several world governments, so obviously they would not be endlessly tailed by extremely skilled individuals who were out to get them.  But even if the show doesn't convince you to become paranoid schizophrenic, it's hard to look at people the same way after you see something like that.  I don't dwell on the issue too long, but I can see this show causing a lot of other people to reconsider the integrity of the people they know well.  Maybe in some cases that's a good thing, but I feel that in most cases people are pretty close to who they appear to be, and the differences that do exist aren't going to be harmful for the people they know.

3.  Evil and corruption are ultimately inescapable and undefeatable.

The Company is extremely powerful.  Michael and his friends must work tirelessly and use all of their resources in their efforts to bring down the Company, and even then it doesn't seem like enough.  Every obstacle they overcome is met by another, still greater, one in its place, and throughout the show there is the lingering idea that even if they end up bringing down the Company, who's to say something like it won't just spring up into existence immediately afterwards?

I have to say at this point that I haven't finished the show, so I don't know if Michael and the others end up bringing down the Company or not.  They do get out of countless amounts of tight situations, which of course is important to the suspense quality of the show, but each time they seem to get a little closer into falling into the hands of the Company.  Even if they end up successful in their attempts by the time the show ends, I still think this message is continuously communicated to Prison Break viewers.  Those who invest a lot of time into thinking about this show might begin to wonder if they or anyone can ever overcome evil, chaos, corruption, or anything like it.  It's certainly because of my religious beliefs, but I know that this idea is just not true.

4.  Given sufficient motivation, every good person can always be corrupted.

This has a lot to do with point #2 I made, although the majority of the people who betray the protagonists are found to have been dishonest all along.  But in the last season, when the protagonists are trying to acquire necessary intel to bring down the company. several people working with them begin to want it for its monetary value, and several others get into positions where they must choose between fighting the Company and protecting those they love.  I do agree that money is one of the most universally corrupting forces known to mankind, and I feel that few people are free of that risk.  But I also believe that nobody is without help, as long as they desire to do good.  The success of the show, of course, is largely dependent upon a lack of religious material in order to appeal to a wider range of people.  God can help any man to overcome a temptation that would otherwise destroy him, if his desire is truly to avoid what corrupts.


These ideas have changed my perspective to some extent from watching the show, and I recognize that not all of that is good.  There have been several times when I seriously considered continuing to watch the show because of how it was affecting me, but I've found it pretty addictive (which is why I am extremely hesitant anytime someone tells me about a long-running TV show, even if it's not like this because I don't want to have to invest a lot of time into it if I get hooked).  I'm pretty close to being done with the series, and probably will finish it.  But I wanted to write this because I feel like collecting my thoughts will help me deal with these issues better.  I think the best thing for me is to remember that it's not real (despite how realistically it's depicted), and these ideas are just coming from people who are trying to express something that may be right or wrong.

Creation

This is a departure from the series of posts I began a couple weeks ago.

Creativity is something that hasn't ever seemed like part of my personality.  And for the most part, I've never had a problem with that.  I get plenty of pleasure out of simply experiencing the creative works of others.  And, since I am fairly proficient in music, I do enjoy performing creative works using the instruments I am familiar with.  The way I see it, creativity is a win-win situation.  Those who create and those who experience both benefit.  For most of my life, I have been content to sit back and let other people be creative.

But for the past few months, I've started feeling a desire to create things.  I've had several opportunities recently to develop my talent of singing, and some of my friends are attempting to form an a cappella group.  I'd like to try writing some things that we could perform together.  They probably wouldn't be very complex; mostly just some hymn arrangements.  I have an idea of something I could use to write an original piece, but I won't elaborate on that until I have a better idea of what form that's even going to take.  I'm definitely going to start small if I'm going to try creating anything.

Not that I haven't created anything before.  I mean, I've written my fair share of book reports, essays, and (to use an example that wasn't mandated by education) blog posts.  But in most of those cases, I felt more like I was transcribing something that was already there into a visible form.  Especially with the blog posts.  The vast majority of them (including this one) are about topics that have come into my mind lately, or things that have happened in my life, and I just put my thoughts and experiences on paper (or online).  I rarely feel like it was something that I just brought into existence.  But that's exactly how Dieter F. Uchtdorf describes creation:

"Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before."

It's talks like these that open my eyes to the concept that God wants us to create.  And I've been aware of that for a while, but lately I've been feeling like now is the time for me to start really trying to create something.  Specifically, a musical something.

But here's the deal.  I've casually thought about that several isolated times in the past, and every time, I have this general feeling that almost everything musical that can be created has been created.  And I know that Boyd K. Packer said that there is still plenty of good music that remains to be written.  But even if I was to create something new, would it sound so much like an existing song that it wouldn't really even be worth it?

And here's another deal.  Uchtdorf says that creation is bringing something new into existence, but he also teaches that crucial to creation is relying on and trusting in the Spirit.  And I wouldn't be surprised if every work of creation was directly or indirectly influenced by the Spirit, even in a small way.  But if I rely totally and completely rely on the Spirit for any work of creation that I do (which I don't think is a problem), can I really justify calling it creation anymore?  Or, at least, can I call it mine?

I do believe that the act of creation consists largely of the ability to transform an idea that's already there into another form.  And maybe that's all it is.  After all, the creation of the universe by God was not bringing matter into existence that didn't exist before.  It was the organization of already-existing matter into a usable form.  I don't really know where the ideas for creation come from, and I don't know if I will ever know, or if anybody will ever know.  I don't know if there's a single hypothetical "source of creativity" that simply manifests itself in different forms, or if every conscious mind is (or can be) a source of creativity in itself.  But I think before I get to the point where I feel like I can create, I'm going to have to uncover more of that mystery.

Capturing meaning with isomorphisms

One of the main themes of Godel, Escher, Bach (GEB) is the process of transmitting meaning through different forms.  This is one of the reasons formal systems were created; to structurally organize interpreted meaning into a usable form.  Mathematics itself can be thought of as a huge collection of formal systems, some of which are meant to express abstract principles (pure mathematics), and some that are tools that assist us with making calculations of real-world situations (applied mathematics).  Hofstadter includes a formal system of his own making that operates the same way as addition, though he uses different symbols.

The existence of isomorphisms is necessary to the creation of a formal system, or at least one that is meant to have an interpretation or application in the real world.  Hofstadter defines isomorphisms as information-preserving transformations.  I like to think of them as almost a sort of transportation device that moves information from one form to another.

Isomorphisms are almost constantly present in our lives without our conscious realization of them.  All of our five senses can be thought of as isomorphisms.  The eyes receive the input of visible light, then transduce the electromagnetic radiation into neural signals to be sent to the brain.  The ears transform vibrations in the air into our experience of sound.  The nose and tongue use different mechanisms to receive the properties and configuration of various chemicals, then preserve that information in the form of a neural network of signals.  And sensory receptors throughout our bodies receive pressure and heat stimuli, which they use to communicate to the brain what is happening in the outside world.

Beyond that, we use isomorphisms as tools to accomplish innumerable tasks.  As you read these words, the cognitive networks in your brain are converting the otherwise meaningless figures known as letters into the experience of understanding concepts real and abstract.  You may be listening to a CD, whose microscopic convoluted substructure is being read by an audio player and transformed into the sonic vibrations of a speaker unit, which in turn is being translated by the brain into the physical and emotional perception of music.  And ever since the day you were conceived, an army of RNA polymerase and ribosomes has grown and multiplied and worked tirelessly to translate DNA into RNA and then into protein to build the complete, complex, complicated biological organism that houses your consciousness (since the part of you that matters wasn't made by any simple nucleic acid or enzyme).  Isomorphisms are inescapable.

The above picture, Liberation by artist M.C. Escher, illustrates a transformation of one form to another.  The title suggests that it's meant to be viewed from bottom to top, as if the birds above are being freed from their restrictive form below.  But what if we made a slight alteration to this work?  If we renamed it Capture, would it be interpreted differently?  From freedom to bondage?

Capture is exactly what much of modern applied science has done and will do until everything is known.  The natural phenomena that became interpreted as Newton's laws of motion, Le Chatelier's principle of dynamic equilibrium, the laws of thermodynamics, the central dogma of molecular biology, Kepler's conjectures of planetary motion, Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief, the Darwinian perspective of evolution, and thousands more were all "captured" to some extent from their free position in the universe to the human's world of pen and paper.  But how well were they captured?  How much information was accurately preserved?  Looking back at Escher's Liberation, how far down can you go before the birds aren't really birds anymore?

In reality, the workings of the universe are so much bigger than any theorem, conjecture, or law that we try to use for capture.  It's going to be a long time before we understand everything; much less express or use that knowledge intelligently.  Few isomorphisms are perfect.  Information is almost always lost in translation.  But even if the birds are more beautiful than the triangular prisons we hold them in, the snares allow us to use the rigidity of form while retaining our appreciation for the unlimited.