Page #7
August 2008
Mother Abigail has a beautiful townhouse near the Governors' mansion in Nevada's capital city - Carson City. But it is her "cabin" at Lake Tahoe that she loves and nurtures. As I drove up to meet her for the first time there on that hot August day my thoughts were very scattered. I make my living with words - but I have no background as an interviewer and very little desire to be one. But "follow the story" had me driving up highway 50 with about 10 million other lost souls on that weekend - bumper to bumper.
Science writing is a gentle art. You learn as you write. The terminology, the doctrine and the search are all absorbed like cool water on a hot day. So I felt certain that I would be able to communicate at an educated level - even though I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Or so I though....
WORDS ARE THE SYMBOLS OF TRUTH:
In order for me to have this conversation with you (the reader) we have to share certain mindsets and presuppositions that will allow us frame our discussion in common terms. I did not share that Weltanschauung with Mother Abigail at first and because it is central to understanding her - I will attempt to teach you (the way she has taught me) to see things from a slightly different perspective.
THE FINGERPRINTS OF GOD
There is religion and there is science. There is creationism and there is evolution. Seems pretty clear cut to me but, as we often learn in life, the black and white choices can be terribly muddled in the middle.
To MA creation is an ongoing process. She smiles gently at those who argue for or against evolution/creationism. She explains that it is only our poor perceptual abilities that constantly force us into these dichotomous choices.
She explains it to me by using the following example:
Science vs/ God - no matter which side you start from you are destined to meet at a point that is defined by the number 4.66920160910299067185320382. (Sure and "thanks for all the fish".. I laugh to myself)
She relates that a young man named Mitchell Feigenbaum settled that entire question long ago. It seems that Mr. Feigenbaum (using science) discovered the fingerprints of God.
When you search for God you seek perfection and transcendence. In science you search for universal truths. So far so good… What young Mr. Feigenbaum did was discover that they are the same. Pick your favorite word to describe the results but here is the play by play.
The Feigenbaum Constant was discovered in 1975 by a whiz kid on pocket calculator. In this veil of tears we find two dynamic systems order and chaos - with a whole bunch of stuff in the middle moving between those two systems.
Well it appears (you can check it for yourself) that as any system moves from Order to Chaos there is a rhythm that is both perfect and transcendental. It is called the Feigenbaum Constant. It is so universal and so exact in its expression that it has been called the fingerprints of God.
