Modern Outmoded Science

The system of Newtonian Materialism that replaced the early christian and Medieval organistic view of the universe lasted from about the years 1600 to 1900. Today, in the fields of quantum physics, there are indications that a force beyond space-time influences the behaviour of objects. For instance, numerous experiments have shown particles can materialize (exist) in multiple locations at once. This discovery challenges physical laws but is nothing new to Christianity.

Several Christian saints have experienced bilocation, including Holy Mary, Catherine de’ Ricci, Saint Drogo, Anthony of Padua, Francis of Paola, Francis Xavier, Martin de Porres, María of Ágreda, María de León Bello y Delgado, Alphonsus Liguori, Gerard Majella, and, in the 20th century, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and Maria Teresa Carloni. Numerous eyewitnesses of bilocation claimed to have experienced the distinct “odor of sanctity,” often described as the scent of roses.

Science must also revisit the Book of Job, where he remarks,

“He hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7)

Since 1933, astronomers have noted that if what we see is all there is, the orbital motion of galaxies would collapse and the Earth’s surface would disintegrate. As Fritz Zwicky pointed out, “Galaxies are moving so quickly they should have been flung away into space, yet they remained gravitationally bound to the cluster” (Nasa, Zwicky). This observation is further supported by the fact that as a galaxy spins, it should be torn apart, but this does not occur, indicating the presence of “an invisible entity” holding the galaxy together.

In short, quantum physics, at its core, contradict the very notions of materialism.

Max Plank, father of quantum physics and one of the most significant physicists of all time, said that the laws of nature ascended to a Mind beyond material reality. In 1944, he explains:

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind.”

As science abandons its philosophical thesis of a “mechanistic” world, it returns to medieval “organistic” physics,  where the universe was explained as a kind of artistic creation. To avoid false ideas about reality, St. Padre Pio, in a quote attributed to him, said that we must return to the fathers of the Church.

So, here is a text of christian writer Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (c. 155 – c. 220 AD). He teaches that philosophy or science blinds the soul. Tertullian believes that the soul possesses a natural intelligence endowed by God, which allows it to discern truth and understand the existence of God. However, he argues that philosophy has taken hold of this intelligence and distorted it for its own purposes. Philosophy’s focus on persuasive speech and the building up and tearing down of ideas, according to Tertullian, hinders true teaching and understanding.

In his work, On the testimony of the soul, Tertullianus brings forward a witness, familiar to all. It is man’s soul. He dismisses the vain disputes about its nature and summons the pure soul : not fashioned in the schools, trained in libraries, or belching wisdom from the Athenian Academy and Stoa, but plain and unadorned, uncorrupted by learning. It is the soul of the common people whom one finds in the street or in workshops.

He wrote:

Even the unbeliever, by his swear-words and his ordinary modes of speech, gives expression to a natural knowledge of God, to belief in His existence and unity, the reality of malevolent spirits, and a life beyond the grave. All this corresponds admirably with the teachings of the Christians, rather than the teachings the unbeliever says that he lives by. So didn’t you ought to stop fooling yourself?

The testimony of the soul is true, simple, popular, universal, natural and therefore divine. The majesty of nature precludes its being frivolous or absurd. The soul is a primordial and primeval witness : it is universal and must be believed.

By whom has truth ever been discovered without God? By whom has God ever been found without Christ? By whom has Christ ever been explored without the Holy Spirit? By whom has the Holy Spirit ever been attained without the mysterious gift of faith?

Socrates, as none can doubt, was actuated by a different spirit. For they say that a demon clave to him from his boyhood — the very worst teacher certainly, notwithstanding the high place assigned to it by poets and philosophers — even next to, (nay, along with) the gods themselves.

The teachings of the power of Christ had not yet been given — (that power) which alone can confute this most pernicious influence of evil that has nothing good in it, but is rather the author of all error, and the seducer from all truth.

Now if Socrates was pronounced the wisest of men by the oracle of the Pythian demon, which, you may be sure, neatly managed the business for his friend, of how much greater dignity and constancy is the assertion of the Christian wisdom, before the very breath of which the whole host of demons is scattered!

This wisdom of the school of heaven frankly and without reserve denies the gods of this world, and shows no such inconsistency as to order a “cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius:” no new gods and demons does it introduce, but expels the old ones; it corrupts not youth, but instructs them in all goodness and moderation; and so it bears the unjust condemnation not of one city only, but of all the world, in the cause of that truth which incurs indeed the greater hatred in proportion to its fullness: so that it tastes death not out of a (poisoned) cup almost in the way of jollity; but it exhausts it in every kind of bitter cruelty, on gibbets and in holocausts.

Meanwhile, in the still gloomier prison of the world amongst your Cebeses and Phædos, in every investigation concerning (man’s) soul, it directs its inquiry according to the rules of God. At all events, you can show us no more powerful expounder of the soul than the Author thereof. From God you may learn about that which you hold of God; but from none else will you get this knowledge, if you get it not from God.

For who is to reveal that which God has hidden? To that quarter must we resort in our inquiries whence we are most safe even in deriving our ignorance. For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because He has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man’s wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.

Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought the same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth is the issue thereof.

It sometimes happens even in a storm, when the boundaries of sky and sea are lost in confusion, that some harbour is stumbled on (by the labouring ship) by some happy chance; and sometimes in the very shades of night, through blind luck alone, one finds access to a spot, or egress from it.

In nature, however, most conclusions are suggested, as it were, by that common intelligence wherewith God has been pleased to endow the soul of man. This intelligence has been caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of glorifying her own art, has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that I use this language) with straining after that facility of language which is practised in the building up and pulling down of everything, and which has greater aptitude for persuading men by speaking than by teaching.

She assigns to things their forms and conditions; sometimes makes them common and public, sometimes appropriates them to private use; on certainties she capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty; she appeals to precedents, as if all things are capable of being compared together; she describes all things by rule and definition, allotting diverse properties even to similar objects; she attributes nothing to the divine permission, but assumes as her principles the laws of nature.

I could bear with her pretensions, if only she were herself true to nature, and would prove to me that she had a mastery over nature as being associated with its creation.

She thought, no doubt, that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred sources, as men deem them, because in ancient times most authors were supposed to be (I will not say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for instance, the Egyptian Mercury, to whom Plato paid very great deference; and the Phrygian Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears, when the shepherds brought him to him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good people of Clazomenæ built a temple after his death; and Orpheus; and Musæus; and Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras.

But why need we care, since these philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age; because we do not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge of this (philosophic) cast?

It is, indeed, not incredible that any man who is in quest of wisdom may have gone so far, as a matter of curiosity, as to consult the very prophets; (but be this as it may), if you take the philosophers, you would find in them more diversity than agreement, since even in their agreement their diversity is discoverable. Whatever things are true in their systems, and agreeable to prophetic wisdom, they either recommend as emanating from some other source, or else perversely apply in some other sense.

The truth has, at this rate, been well-nigh excluded by the philosophers, through the poisons with which they have infected it; and thus, if we regard both the modes of coalition which we have now mentioned, and which are equally hostile to the truth, we feel the urgent necessity of freeing, on the one hand, the sentiments held by us in common with them from the arguments of the philosophers, and of separating, on the other hand, the arguments which both parties employ from the opinions of the same philosophers.

For extending their several researches on the soul, Philosophy, on the one hand, has enjoyed the full scope of her genius; while Medicine, on the other hand, has possessed the stringent demands of her art and practice. Wide are men’s inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about conjectures.

To the Christian, however, but few words are necessary for the clear understanding of the whole subject. But in the few words there always arises certainty to him; nor is he permitted to give his inquiries a wider range than is compatible with their solution; for “endless questions” the apostle forbids.[ 1 Timothy 1:4.] It must, however, be added, that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is learned from God; and that which is learned of God is the sum and substance of the whole thing.

Would to God that no “heresies had been ever necessary, in order that they which are approved may be made manifest!” [ 1 Corinthians 10:19] We should then be never required to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers, those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called. The apostle, so far back as his own time, foresaw, indeed, that philosophy would do violent injury to the truth.

See also: 4th-Century St. Macrima knew of 20th-century Quantum Physics