It's late, but i will answer you (against my better judgment), because otherwise I will be thinking about it and not get much sleep.
No physicist has ever “seen” an atom, let alone a sub-atomic particle. Yet there is evidence that there are such things
Sort of. Our models are an expression of our limited perceptions. Ptolemy's navigational system contains "epicycles" and he would have told you that, based on his scientific work, they exist even though we can't see them.
But they exist (in fact, by necessity) only in his model. As long as his model is assumed to represent reality, the epicycles are real as well.
The epicycles are of course the result of his observational position over a period of time. The data show planets moving in such a way that they slow down, stop, loop and continue. The "reality" of these epicycles are such that they can be"detected" and predicted with utmost precision (repeatability, precision, predictability), which also serves as "proof" that the model is "real."
After all, the system (based on the geocentric model), still "works," so it "must" be real. Ptolemy's work contains scientific method that we use to this day to "prove" various working models as "real."
Your complementary theory, besides being based on human perceptions and logic, only indicates that we cannot grasp the Creation.
We can only think of a wave or a particle, one at a time; saying that energy is (radiant) and bound (matter, particle) at the same time is a paradox for our finite intellect, very likely to lead to insanity.
It really doesn't matter what we grasp, for none of it is of any consequence to the Creation. We are a bunch of primates with souls, wholly incapable of intellectually absorbing what we are faced with, with or without Spirit.
The Spirit doesn't give us facts that we can use to make a "working model." The Spirit tells us that love is not of this world, that we can know God in our hearts but never intellectually. That knowledge is without words or "working models." :)
Thank you. PS A scientific "working model" or theory is like a game of Monopoly: a simplistic, indeed bad, imitation of what the real world, known and discernible only to God, is really like.
I agree with you basically but not specifically..
The Holy Spirit does visit with "visions".. which are not actual facts.. They are more personal and long lasting than a fact.. Because that is WHY Jesus' left the Holy Spirit with us.. As a/the paraclete(a helper, one that comes alongside to help.. a comforter)..
Oh I certainly agree with you there, kosta50! Indeed, it turns out you and I really don't disagree about much.
But this "closure" business: I am pretty sure there is none to be had! First of all, there is no "certainty" in a contingent world. Secondly, and of vastly greater importance, is the seeming fact that religion and theology address precisely those questions that must ever remain "open": That is, the relations that obtain between God and man, world and society, which comprehend the eternal questions that man has asked since the dawn of humanity. Science and unaided reason are no helps in this domain.
I am a devoted student of Eric Voegelin, who says that truth is never a final possession of mankind, but always an open, on-going quest in which all the generations of man -- past, present, and future -- participate.
Ptolemy in his day represented a very great advance. With the advent of improved observational tools, his work has subsequently been built upon, with revisions, with the result of greater precision and accuracy of scientific measurement. Yet in all likelihood, there will be other advances in the future, built on the stage of the present scientific accomplishments. Just as was the case with Ptolemy, who was after all a leading scientist of his time....
You wrote: "Your complementary theory, besides being based on human perceptions and logic, only indicates that we cannot grasp the Creation." We cannot grasp it "once and for all," as if it were already "completed" in time. It is not: the Creation plays out in a temporal process, which is to say it has a future about which we presently know little if anything.
But the credit for the complementary theory goes to Bohr. That's his brainchild! Though I have taken it very much to heart, and look for complementarities everywhere these days. :^) It's actually been quite liberating -- as Bohr's and Einstein's great biographer, Abraham Pais said it was ("Personally I have found the complementary way of thinking liberating.") Hey, it sure beats having to think like a digital machine! ("Yes/No, true/false, black/white, 0/1.")
All complementarity really says is although you can know the state of two apparently mutually-exclusive things that together form a system, you cannot know them both at one and the same time. In physics, this plays out into Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (or as Bohr preferred to call it, the indeterminacy principle). Following Bohr, I do not believe that the complementarity relations apply only to physics, but are actually quite general in nature. Indeed, Bohr saw applications in psychology, biology, and anthropology (for starters).
You wrote:
It really doesn't matter what we grasp, for none of it is of any consequence to the Creation. We are a bunch of primates with souls, wholly incapable of intellectually absorbing what we are faced with, with or without Spirit.I do disagree with you here, kosta!!! Just because we can't see the whole ball of wax entire, doesn't mean we can't know anything about the whole ball of wax (which is actually a work in progress, so to speak). And I imagine that what and how we think is amazingly consequential to the unfoldment of divine reality....
It would take a book to explain that. But then, my very dear friend Alamo-Girl and I are working on one, working title: "God and the Observer problem." God willing, we'll finish it some day. :^)
It's been delightful chatting with you, kosta! Thank you so much for writing!