Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Great Conundrum

My affinity for numbers, time, space and everything in between have always led me to believe that man's conundrum wasn't really Science vs. Religion but rather Mathematics vs. Religion. Math as the real nemesis of Religion with mathematics (being the so-called universal language) as the great unifier and religion as the great divider.
As I think of this, my thoughts turn to quantum theories and cosmology - in the vicinity of a Black Hole, once past the event horizon, traditional ideas of time and space skew and warp exponentially to an almost incomprehensible level. However, to an extent, everything is still mathematically calculable even with the enormous rate of change. But that is only to an extent.
There is a point within a black hole called the Singularity, conventionally thought of as being in the middle of it, where the black hole begins (or ends, depending on your school of thought). It is at this point where all known mathematical formulas fail, certainty no longer exists, even probability as a concept is questionable, the normal is abnormal or is both, truth and fallacy exist at the same time. In essence, at this singularity, everything is unexplainable.
Some mathematicians believe that we should think of it as beyond the human brain's comprehension (or a hardware limitation for that matter) and that we were not meant to understand it in the first place.
Perhaps, this is where religion and faith parallels itself with the credence of the universal acceptance of mathematics. There is always a point where understanding something is not a prerequisite of its existence.
Perhaps.