A Young Scholar and His Tutor, c. 1629, Workshop of Rembrandt, Getty Research Institute’s Open Content Program
Where Science Meets the Book of Mormon: Come Follow Me Lesson: July 22-28; Alma 32-35
We are told in Alma 32:12, “I say unto you…that ye should learn wisdom…for ye are necessarily brought to be humble.” My favorite scripture is Proverbs 4:7, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” Furthermore, we are told in Alma 32:16, “Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.”
What is the faith that causes us to believeth in the word of God? Alma says, in Alma 32:21, “…faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” Then, in Alma 32:26-43, Alma teaches his famous lesson of the experiment on faith.
At this point, I will continue, and expand upon the discussion of the known and unknown universe from last week. I quote from my book, The Infinite Creation: Unifying Science and Latter-day Saint Theology:1
“Estimates of the ratios between normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy tend to vary from year to year, and person to person. Kevin Pimbblet presented a pie chart in a November 2017 review showing that normal matter accounts for less than 4% of the total, dark matter 23%, and dark energy 73%.2 Furthermore, Pimbblet broke down normal matter into free hydrogen and helium (3%), stars (0.5%), neutrinos (0.3%), and everything else in the universe, including our earth and everything on it (0.03%). Therefore, what we can actually see of the universe, including the stars and planets, accounts for only 0.53% of the total universe.”
“In his 2017 review, Pimbblet asked, as have others, is there an alternative to proposing dark matter and dark energy? After all, ‘Scientists only proposed dark matter to explain how galaxies and galaxy clusters move due to a gravitational pull.’ Pimbblet speculated, ‘Suppose for a moment that both dark energy and dark matter are too strange a pill to swallow. What would the alternatives be? One way out would be to suppose that our understanding of the universe is at fault. Perhaps gravity and general relativity do not work in quite the way that we think they do.’ Pimbblet stated that André Maeder, has proposed a concept called ‘scale invariance,’ which suggests that the scaled invariance of the universe itself may account for galactic motion, without the need to invoke dark matter. Some preliminary tests appear to agree with this proposal. Pimbblet cautions, ‘However, there are many more tests that need to be run, Maeder has only investigated two galaxy clusters. And let’s not forget the huge body of work suggesting that dark matter and dark energy do exist.’”3
Because of the data we have accumulated, we have come to understand that more than 96% of the universe is unknown and that nearly 99.5% of the universe is invisible. If that information is not humbling, I don’t know what is.
What is wisdom? Wisdom is the humility to be taught. Wisdom is the humility to realize that there is a vast amount of knowledge of the universe that we cannot at present grasp. Wisdom is the ability to leave room for faith in addition to knowledge.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Stephens, Trent Dee, The Infinite Creation: Unifying Science and Latter-day Saint Theology, Cedar Fort, Springville, UT, 2020
2. Pimbblet, Kevin, Study finds dark matter and dark energy may not exist, here’s what to make of it, theconversation.com, 30 November 2017
3. Ibid
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