Metaphysical tautology
Judging the veracity of statements about how reality functions based on their simplicity may seem like a remarkable achievement. Who can be sure, with all our modern technologies, that the Universe is what we see in front of us? Applying the Pythagorean theorem or saying that God is omnipotent is like using a ruler to measure the curvature of the universe. This, of course, does not mean that we cannot understand how true these and other self-evident statements about the nature of reality are. The problem, however, is that the enormous vastness of the universe and the extremely complex processes that we observe can be so overwhelming that they prevent us from thinking about possible alternative possibilities. We may want to change our minds, change our understanding of the world, but changing our perception is difficult, since most of what we observe is impossible to know. There are probably a million elements, each with a trillion different properties. And we cannot know with certainty about their internal structure or their functional interaction with each other. This fact does not prevent us from noticing them, using our feelings and interacting with them, but makes us very suspicious of their origin and existence. When we find ourselves in such mysterious situations, we are disturbed by the feeling that something is wrong with our knowledge. We use words such as tautology and contradiction to describe situations in which there are seemingly mutually exclusive statements describing the same situation. This is similar to the tautological statement, «A rose is a rose is a rose,» which is obviously true, and yet can be used as proof of the absurdity of the entire biological kingdom. The many patterns of experience that we perceive make us realize that something is fundamentally wrong with our state of knowledge. And we are both puzzled and suspicious of this «mistake», as if we are in the position of an innocent person being questioned by the police. Why can’t we just understand reality as it is? Why does the laws of nature seem to be created for our own amusement? This is another reason for the lack of a rational connection between science and theology. Both disciplines require knowledge that we cannot acquire in this way.