The MATH of GOD: Why arrogance is a calculation error
I had a conversation with a pastor today. We didn't get through everything—I really didn’t expect we would—but we touched on the thing that keeps me up at night: the absolute arrogance of certainty. The idea that "my way" is the only way, and everyone else is just wrong.
As an engineer, that doesn't sit right with me. And as it turns out, it doesn't sit right with the math, either.
You don’t need a nuclear degree to understand this, and to be clear I don’t hold any stock in my own degree but that’s another story. You just need to understand a tiny bit of calculus. We won’t go into the deep stuff, mathematically, only at about a 5th-grade level.
The Slope and The Curve
In math, there is a concept called a derivative. Think of it as a rule for how things change—like not just “how fast am I going” ?
But rather “how fast are we changing speed”? Let’s assume that the first graph means you’re on a train or something that doesn’t change speed, and we’re ignoring any starts or stops. That’s not real life; real life is messy. Let’s take it in steps, because this is a huge subject and this is only the first part. What does the curve look like when it’s real life?
This is an AI generated representation of a distance and time graph of a train ride from Busan to Seoul, which I did in 2008 with a Buddy. I’ve not fact-checked the exact numbers, but the general shape is right and that’s the point of this article. The overall line still goes in the same direction, but it’s not straight. We’re not even getting into whether there is a maintenance delay or the route needs to be changed and the distance is a negative value for a while and the curve goes in the downward direction. Regardless, I think that we can all agree that the above is not a straight line. Here’s where we keep it 5th grade: we can break the trip into pieces and never go beyond that level of math but the curve would look like this:
And we can go beyond that to define how much we’re changing our minds about how rapidly we change speeds. That’s for the second part of this blog, which won’t likely be the next one in sequence, because I’m not planning these out in advance unless I know I’m not going to be available. The second part goes beyond Alan Turing’s famous quote.
That is the Truth. That is the Divine Law. Love your neighbor. Do no harm. It’s the rule of the slope. Generally upward, and we’re all good in the end.
Now, if I ask you to draw a line that follows that rule, you can draw it. But here is the catch:
You might start your line at the bottom of the page.
I might start mine at the top.
Someone born in India might start theirs on the left; someone in Ohio might start on the right.
If you look at the graphs, those lines resemble each other. What about this one?
This one? What’s wrong with this one? Actually, that’s what most peoples’ graphs would look like, if it was something like “sum total of deeds” vs time instead. They look nothing alike. But overall? They are both positive. They are following the same general rule. They have similar sign slopes. The thing is, the exact curvature of that line is going to be much more difficult to figure out; much like some people are difficult to figure out.
Everyone doesn’t have to be that first simple line to be a valid equation. The above line is positive. It didn’t start at the bottom or at the top, and they didn’t actually make it all the way to Busan (most people don’t; it’s just about being positive overall). Life is just super messy. Good thing that we have smart people and supercomputers and AI and stuff, right? Every equation is valid, and not all of them are positive. When we move the boundaries, the real start position and the end time, it gets even more complicated.
In calculus, we call this the Constant of Integration (or simply "+ C").
The equation is the Universal Truth. Try to leave things better than you found them. This is the opposite of entropy. This is the balance of the universe.
The "+ C" is where you were born, your culture, your trauma, your parents, your oppressions; all of it.
My line is "Truth + OH + Life + Family + Joy + Grief."
Your line might be "Truth + SC + Life + Family + Seacoast Church + Joy + Grief."
The arrogance happens when people look at the vertical distance between us and say, "You're not on my line, so you must be broken." They confuse the Constant (the context) with the Equation (the God). The other part is they may look at your line and say that your equation is too difficult to figure out so we don’t even try.
The Turing Boundary
I’m not the first person to think this way. Alan Turing—the man who cracked the Enigma code and essentially invented the computer—said it in a very direct way:
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."
Science gives us the mechanics—the rules of how the universe moves and changes. But a differential equation cannot be solved specifically until you apply "boundary conditions"—the specific constraints of where you start and where you are going.
Religion isn't the physics of the universe; it's just a boundary condition. It is the specific "starting point" you were given to help you solve the problem of being human. The universal truth is that death is inevitable though we all know versions of bending that rule to the point of breaking it with the concept of an everlasting consciousness. To counteract that, we help each other. If any of you reading this thinks that if the moment after your umbilical cord was cut that everyone else could’ve just let you fend for yourself and you would’ve survived, then you can deny the existence of a higher purpose. For the rest of us, we learned from our first breath that we need to help each other.
The Solution
We spend so much time fighting over our boundary conditions. We kill each other over whether our constant is $+5$ or $-5$. We scream that someone else’s line is too low or too high.
But the Universe—or God, or the Great Equation—doesn't care where you start. It only cares about your slope. Are you moving up? Are you following the rule of Love?
If you are, then you are a valid solution.
We need to remove the arrogance that claims there is only one valid line on the graph. There are infinite lines. The only thing that matters is the direction they are heading.
The second part to this will probably be “We’re Not Just Turing” or some equally awful tongue-in-cheek title. I do apologize for getting this technically on Friday instead of Thursday, but that’s more my (circadian) rhythm.
