“We simply do not understand”
A little non-political item from the NY Post:
The universe shouldn’t technically exist, according to top scientists who have spent their careers trying to figure out how the beginning of everything didn’t immediately destroy itself.
I believe they actually mean “Technically, the universe shouldn’t exist” rather than “The universe shouldn’t technically exist.” But let’s not worry too much about that; bigger things are at issue [emphasis mine]:
The current model for the birth of the universe predicts that equal parts of matter and antimatter were produced by the Big Bang.
But, since matter and antimatter are identical except for their opposite electrical charges, they annihilate each other…
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research have been looking for any type of variation between matter and antimatter that would have allowed matter to dominate and explain how you’re reading this right now.
“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” Christian Smorra, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is. What is the source of the symmetry break?”
Good luck with that.
I have long thought that our knowledge of these things is highly incomplete and perhaps even deeply flawed. There are plenty of things “we simply do not understand.” I’m not knocking cosmologists—I couldn’t do what they do—but the built-in limitations seem to me to be permanent, at least on this mortal coil.
Science is one way to approach it. Mystics approach it another way. There’s this, for example, which has become a sort of cliche but is actually profoundly mysterious:
Then we have things like this:
For kabbalists, Ayin became the word to describe the most ancient stage of creation and was therefore somewhat paradoxical, as it was not completely compatible with “creation from nothing”. Ayin became for kabbalists a symbol of “supreme existence” and “the mystical secret of being and non-being became united in the profound and powerful symbol of the Ayin”. There is also a paradoxical relationship between the meaning of Ayin and Yesh from kabbalistic point of view. Rachel Elior, professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes that for kabbalists Ayin (nothingness) “clothes itself” in Yesh (everything there is) as “concealed Torah clothes itself in revealed Torah”.
And this, one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“We simply do not understand”
That is a galaxy sized understatement. I am an agonstic simply because I do not understand. Perhaps I will get a glimpse of big picture when I die. Until them I adhere to the Popeye philosophy.
“Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.” Robert Anson Heinlein, SciFi Grandmaster
Anyone wishing for confirmation of Heinlein’s assertion, need only consider “climate science” predictions, the ping pong assertions that coffee, wine, etc, etc. are bad-good-bad-good for you and pharmaceutical commercials that all too frequently end with warnings to the effect that… this stuff is great but… it might have fatal complications… Russian roulette anyone?
“The “current’ model for the birth of the universe predicts that equal parts of matter and antimatter were produced by the Big Bang.
All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist… An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is. ” Christian Smorra, the study’s lead author
I guess its too much for them to conclude that their “current model” is fundamentally flawed. As the universe in fact does exist… hello? It doesn’t compute guys! Hello… is anyone home?
“One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits… To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.” Robert Anson Heinlein
Heaven forbid they junk their current model…
Too many supposed “scientists” think that everything should be explainable. My degree in Engineering Physics is enough to tell me that there’s a LOT that we just don’t have enough information to figure out yet. The answers may, in fact, be “out there”, beyond any distance that we’ve experienced yet.
Keep an open mind, folks. Much of what “science” proclaims is because they think that everything out there is just like it is here. And we CANNOT know that.
Heinlein wrote fiction, some good some not so. Literature and the arts are important but then most authors are just hacks to use Heinlein’s thought.
om,
Ah… the logical fallacy known as “an argument from authority”. Heinlein’s occupation was and is irrelevant to the truth of his observation.
“The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.” R.A. Heinlein
GB, no one is saying the models (for the universe creation, NOT climate science) are not flawed, they are just the best we have at present. I doubt you could find any physicist who would ever claim that we now know everything.
What do we know? We know with a pretty good certainty, how planets orbit, how baseballs behave, and how airplanes fly…Newtonian mechanics. We know with about the same confidence how atoms and molecules behave and how nuclei are put together….Quantum Mechanics.
What we don’t know very well is how QM works at the subnuclear level. And we know even less about how QM works (if it even does!) with General Relativity. That question touches on both the subnuclear and the cosmological questions. But that is the excitement! Science wouldn’t be worth pursuing if we had all the answers. As Feyman said, “A scientist continually tries to prove himself wrong, that’s where the excitement and new knowledge lies”
Geoffrey:
Heinlein’s “argument” about science is jus at valid as my argument about writers of fiction. You aren’t the authority, either.
GB is, from what I can understand (though I simply don’t understand) is very set in his mindset. But the same is true of om.
I am also set in my Popeye world. But I can peacefully, without rancor agree to disagree….. well, except for the moonbats.
So, here we go: We dont fully understand the antimater problem, therefore, god.
The science once again becomes settled for one particular religious crowd whose bias is confirmed.
Next up: It was a particularly warm day for an October Friday. Unmistakable proof the world will come to an end soon if we dont adopt socialism now.
My first thought…
“God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” — Ecclesiastes 3:11
On the whole I prefer the words of Genesis.
These wee people who don’t see why something’s missing from their created Big Bang dynamics do not understand they are on a ladder some considerable number of rungs below God, the source of the “symmetry break”.
Versions of the simulation hypothesis posit that the known universe is either a deliberately constructed sophisticated computer simulation, or at least operates like one regardless of origin.
Patanjali’s observation that “the seen is only for the sake of the seer” implies consciousness having played a role in creation. The observer effect on phenomena also supports consciousness having played a role. The possibility of matter and antimatter annihilating each other may indicate a mechanism whereby withdrawing consciousness (the observer) could cause “the seen” to disappear.
The fact that consciousness effects reality at the subatomic level is well documented. How it does so is not conventionally known – only that (at least for now) the physical universe is sufficiently interesting to conscious awareness to be kept in existence.
Thank you for bringing this article to our attention, Neo.
(And not just because it doesn’t mention or carry a photo of poor old Bush 41 or one of his steadily growing number of “victims”).
It’s because of truths like those laid out in the article that I “hang in” there and continue my daily battle to maintain and, if at all possible, grow my faith.
Life itself and the order and logic of the universe is simply so inexplicable, and so profoundly incomprehensible and unknowable that the notion of an omniscient, omnippotent guiding intelligence can’t be dismissed.
The reason why the judeo-christian model of God so appeals to me is the way the jewish and christian texts describe him and report him as describing himself. These descriptions reflect the truth of the article you cite, it seems to me.
In Exodus, when Moses asks the name of God as a means to define or understand him the reply is no more than: “I am who am”, or a close variant of these 4 words.
This line conveys far more than just an all- pervasiveness/omnipresence when it comes to God’s nature as well as the suggestion that God and existence are the same – but also implies the truth that we simply could not comprehend his nature even if he were to describe it in more detail.
Likewise, in the book of John I have always been struck with the profundity, as well as the serene beauty, of the lines describing the creation of existence: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”.
Are these words not truly awesome in the literal meaning of provoking and conveying awe ?
This is why I could never subscribe to a belief system that rejects the notion of a personal god or even belong to a faith that purports to understand him in part, let alone in full.
As a cradle catholic and someone who can see about him and ponder and read the poetry of the bible I have no problem with faiths that acknowledge an ultimately unbridgeable distance between god and humanity. In fact it seems to me that an acceptance of the essential mysteriousness of god is a prerequisite to a faith being credible.
This is why I am quite comfortable with a faith that acknowledges that God’s motivations are and will – and must – always remain a mystery to us.
If God created the universe and the universe and its logic can’t be fathomed by us, then God cannot be fathomed either, no?
From a guy who has some claim to knowing about physics (although not this particular conundrum, perhaps):
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck
Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.
– As quoted in Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25 (1980), p. 3
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
– Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag (Leipzig 1948), p. 22, as translated in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp. 33—34 (as cited in T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.
– Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max Planck Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797;
Ken Mitchell and Stephen Ippolito, thank you for your thoughts. Jordan Peterson said much the same thing, we don’t really KNOW how the universe works.
Neo, that’s possibly my favorite Shakespeare quote. 500 years, nothing has changed.
Then there is this; The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not know from whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So are all things born of the spirit.
Enough profundity for now. I just can’t help it; “we simply do not understand”. The guy’s name is CHRISTIAN for Heaven’s sake. LOL!
Your post and the very intelligent and insightful observations of commenters have helped bring a biblical verse I love into sharper focus for me.
I often ponder the admonition in the Psalms: “Be still and know that I am God.”
I now understand why it does not read: “and know the truth” or “and know all the answers” or “and know my nature” , etc.
Because the truth and all the answers, as well as the nature of God, are all ultimately unknowable by us and that is as it is meant to be.
Technically the universe itself shouldn’t exist and yet it does; technically, the odds against eyesight developing spontaneously in living beings are prohibitive and yet we have eyes. And so on.
We can understand that profound mysteries do exist but never how they came to be. The best we can do is know that God exists – not how or why he does.
As an aside, has anyone else ever been struck by how that whole chapter of the psalms is structured?
Every line that goes before or after the line: “Be still and know that I am God” is in the third person, spoken by the writer about God.
Yet the line itself, which is the most significant of all, suddenly changes and is expressed in the first person as though God himself is speaking to us.
Dear Neo Neo,
This post, and the fascinating comments upon it, is a shining example of why we all love your site. I have often commented on your intellectual honesty, but I am more in awe (and, indeed, envy) of another quality of your posts – your intellectual tenderness. That is, your regard for the thoughts of others and your willingness (sometimes through gritted teeth) to part the verbal underbrush and examine the core of these thoughts. John Guilfoyle’s citation of Ecclesiastes 3:11 captures “the mystery” superbly, I think. But I believe the English Standard Version translation expresses the verse more faithfully (to the Hebrew) and completely:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
The words “find out” are from the Hebrew verb “matsa” and suggest discovering by diligent study. God welcomes and encourages our endless exploration of his universe, but with humility and, well, with intellectual tenderness – toward nature, and our fellow man. Again, Neo, thank you.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/4917/
I wrote a Theism vs Atheism post not that long ago. It’s mostly about metaphysics, since metaphysics and epistemology are the two key points in philosophy that humanists and humanism itself, finds itself in conflict with religious dogma. That is, in fact, the whole point of the conflict.
To elaborate, metaphysics is the concept and description of reality as we know it, or even meta reality, the reality over the reality. Plato’s cave wall was one way to describe the verse, but even scientific methodology has had multiple different variations. Bohr’s Model of the atom was only one in a series of atomic models. Consider what people call the “Electric Universe”. Or String theory in the 10-11th dimensions. Right now we have the Standard Model, which is one up from the Electron Cloud model. The Standard Model can be seen in the various non fiction concerning the existence of quarks, particle accelerators, and the Higgs-Boson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
They were recently able to figure out by dent of energy readings of a particle accelerator, the provable existence of the Higgs Boson, which was merely predicted by the Standard Model. It should have theoretically existed, yet 10 years ago, people couldn’t prove that it existed in quantum physics.
That is why some scientists, and especially mad scientists like you know who, tend to look down on political and cultural proclamations like “the Scientific Consensus has decreed” X or A. That is because you might be surprised to know that every one of the scientific breakthroughs in the history of science has been those like Tesla and Higgs going against modern consensus, and the scientific orthodoxy of their day. Even Hawking said that he bet that the Higgs Boson did not truly exist, and he lost that bet in 2010 against Higgs, when the CERN experiments proved it existed via energy trace. The person who Hawking radiation is named after, can’t predict quantum mechanics via mathematical equations? Of course not, that is not their scientific consensus and orthodoxy.
And Higgs is a mainstay member of the physics community. Imagine what it would have been like to be Ohms, the guy that had his name attached to the Omega symbol in electricity. Universities thought he was a crackpot for putting out the infamous Ohms Law of I R = V. As infamous in electrical circles as e=mc^2 to the masses and to physicists or F=MA.
This is the crazy crackpot that universities didn’t accept and that his peers ostracized. Yet we are taught, as a civilization, that these scientific breakthroughs were the result of the “consensus” of society pulling and supporting these eccentricities. That was, however, a deception or at least not the case as they presented it.
Foundational or basic scientific theoretical breakthroughs are almost “NEVER” accepted until somebody finds a way to make money off of it. It’s just too anti consensus, too non orthodox, too strange, too mad, or too scary.
Human organizations have a peculiar reaction to the studying of powers that they cannot see or observe, things like the “Field effect”, supposedly named because you could never see magnetic fields, you could only see their effects, the way wind can only be seen by how it affects a field of plants. Similar to the Spooky Action at a distance of Quantum Entanglement. Humans need to find a frame to harness this phenomenon, otherwise people would go insane pondering it.
There were even some rumors that quantum physicists committed suicide once some of them realized the true nature of the verse. An interesting story, even if inaccurate.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18822_5-famous-scientists-dismissed-as-morons-in-their-time.html
This is barely a list. There’s more scientists that were considered cracked, or mad, than there are anomalies in H20. which numbers over 70 vs other liquids. And not by the masses btw, but by their “peers” in the “peer publishing”. Academic respectability is much touted, but the moment someone gets in danger of threatening somebody’s pet theories or hobby horse, they get wiped out by “consensus”.
That is why when the Doctor Class here talk about the consensus of the doctors or the awards they get or their credentials, their credibility goes straight to zero and drops into the negative.
To get to the heart of the matter, it is far more likely find true breakthroughs in theoretical research amongst those who are ignored or called ignorant know nothings. The know nothings eventually produce a diamond. They don’t know enough of the consensus to be restrained in their theoretical research. Nor is their funding controlled by government or political groups that have ulterior motives. They often have ZERO funding, after all.
Throughout human history, there have been people who could advance the progress of the Race. But they died off, because their fellow humans wiped them out. It was not because science itself took thousands of years for people to “Figure out”. The worst problem of the humanists, are humans.
Search for
RIDICULED DISCOVERERS,
VINDICATED MAVERICKS by William Beaty, for a longer list of scientific mavericks and anti consensus builders.
Frog Says:
October 27th, 2017 at 10:10 pm
On the whole I prefer the words of Genesis.
These wee people who don’t see why something’s missing from their created Big Bang dynamics do not understand they are on a ladder some considerable number of rungs below God, the source of the “symmetry break”.
The theorists have the same confidence as you do Frog, because they spent 10-40 years doing their life’s work on it, while you did the same with “medicine” or being a “doctor”. That is why you go around declaring the truths of life, without also understanding the symmetry break. That’s a human problem, not a Big Bang problem.
This is often seen amongst scientists that ridicule people who are outside of their field, because their only expertise is inside their field. Hawkings, technically, was speaking out of turn when he told Higgs that the Higgs Boson was non existent. Quantum physics was not the mathematical purview of Hawkings, since mathematical calculation is barely usable there.
As for the existence of higher level entities, what people call “god” is a complicated subject since there are various different elohim, but generally when they title it God they refer to the Most High elohim. Elohim is a Hebrew transliteration of the term used for angels, spirits, and divine level entities. It is closer to a description of the nature of the entity, than a title or name. That means there are “gods”, as in the plural. Westerners just call them the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost Trinity, or angels, and so on. That’s plural entities, in case people hadn’t noticed.
What makes the Most High different from other entities is a matter of spiritual power, knowledge, ability, and wisdom. The ability of the Most High differs from other elohim in that other elohim cannot see the past and future as one circle. The Most High, along with the Second Power in Heaven, Yehovah or Jehovah, shares the same name as the Most High, can be seen as quantum entangled such that they share each other’s powers. The Alpha and Omega existed in the beginning and in the future, at the beginning and will continue to exist after the end. They are not constrained by space and time, since many people theorize that they created space and time…
Hyper dimension thinking is too much for most people’s IQ, so usually it can be rotated down to people’s level. A fifth or 4th dimensional entity behaves in 3 dimensions the same we behave to the pov of somebody that can only live in 2 dimensions. As a cube, we can do things that the entity living as a square on paper cannot. In two dimensions, the only way to break into another square is to cross the lines. But we can utilize the third dimension, step up over a line, and then down into a square. To the 2 dimensional entity, we 3 dimensional entities would appear to be using a superpower.
In the same fashion do Eastern immortals or Jesus of Nazareth, appear to be using superpowers such as walking on water or teleporting around disobeying the physics. Higher dimensional entities cannot cross the “Veil”, since much of their mass is prevented from entering our verse. In fact, we can only see a slice of a hyper volume, let alone energy masses of even greater orders of magnitude and dimensional complexity. Literally as the tip of the ice berg, much of the “origin” point is masked from our observation due to our own dimensional limits.
The fact that consciousness effects reality at the subatomic level is well documented. How it does so is not conventionally known — only that (at least for now) the physical universe is sufficiently interesting to conscious awareness to be kept in existence.
What people call human consciousness does not have its origin point in the human brain. The human brain is merely like a radio, it picks up the communications from the spiritual mind and entity that is “logged into” the mortal flesh and avatars that people use as bodies. If the existence of a soul, or to say the spiritual format of the soul, exists, then humans may not be 3 dimensional entities in full.
It may not be surprising for a 4th+ dimensional entity to cause disturbances and changes in 3 dimensional matter. Do humans understand what they are and where they come from? No. Still arguing against scientific consensus on that one, and it will continue probably until the Very End.
Quantum neuro science has recently discovered that the sum total of our quanta or data, cannot be contained in the flesh called the brain. There is not enough space… so whose external hard drive are we using here for a Cloud Device?
It is easier to visualize the universe of matter as a virtual reality somebody constructed, and we chose to play by creating characters or playing characters other people have created for us. Mortal avatars to experience life in this world. Something went wrong with the server, somebody sabotaged it or hacked it or cracked it, and now we are stuck with death until somebody “clears” the game and releases us…
That is an alternative parsing via materialistic framing of the theology complex over the divine. Or in other words, explaining what we are and how we got here, without mentioning Elohim in the context as necessary components.
Those who achieve power to affect matter with their observational quantum effect, has changed to “Gamemaster” status or been granted “console cheat codes”. It is far easier to affect matter by using matter, however. The energy expenditures of creating to uncreate reality, or what Plato called the shadows on the cave wall that is a mere overshadow of the True Source, might be prohibitively expensive for weak elohim.
The witches, warlocks, druids, of this world believe in an over reality or meta reality, from which they draw their powers and spells. And many people, even in Hollywood and DC, believe in and fear the users of such powers. It is not as simplistic as merely Lucifer vs Yehovah. That’s just two entities out of what, quadrillions? Trillions upon trillions x 10 to the 666 power? Hard to quantify since observation is limited.
Humans are very interested in this field of study. It is why we have concepts like uplifting, aliens creating human civilization ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL, or people trying to parse out Creation itself. The idea of superior alien entities out there with higher tech and capabilities than humanity, isn’t all that strange to most people in the West. When religion isn’t part of the culture, people just adopt a pseudo form since the instant desire to search for the unknown and the alien, is still there. They still want to see the Creator or the Designer, they just call it Aliens cause of History Channel. I’m not saying it is aliens, but they are saying it is aliens. So did Dawkings when Stein asked him who created us if he doesn’t know. Aliens.
What is an alien? A 3 dimensional matter entity that is bounded by the same limits as us, but has higher technological capability that can exceed the problems with light speed and biological termination that results from traveling those long space distances. ETs.
What is an Elohim? An entity that does not exist in the 3 dimensions that we observe or manipulate, with capabilities amounting to magic. Or as some have said, capabilities of a high enough tech appears as magic. I would add the corollary: the magic of an entity will appear as technology to us.
Humans can talk about religious dogma without quoting a single biblical verse or scripture. Not that they had verses back then when these religions were constructed… they didn’t even have monotheism, that was a Gentile Western construct created centuries later for political reasons.
Ralph Kinney Bennett:
Thank you.
What do we know? We know with a pretty good certainty, how planets orbit, how baseballs behave, and how airplanes fly…Newtonian mechanics.
That’s what I thought too, until the horizon problem came up.
There’s more mysteries yet to be solved on Earth before the heavens.
70 + anomalies in H20 too.
Ymar is (and has been) busy showing us in extensive, nay tedious, length how very smart and very well-informed he is.
“Universe Shouldn’t Technically Exist – Women, Minorities Hardest Hit”
“Ymar is (and has been) busy showing us in extensive, nay tedious, length how very smart and very well-informed he is.”
And I don’t care.
That’s how it should be.
It would be easier to teach in parables as Jesus of Nazareth did, in order blind the eyes and stop the ears, there’s only so many parables that I can come up with.
The jokes about Hussein and Trum never gets old. They simply do not understand, nor do their followers want to understand. Authority is not power and power is not respect.
Frog is a follower of someone titled the Christ, contradict me if I am wrong.
Suffering for Doing Good
8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For,
“Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil
and their lips from deceitful speech.
11 They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”[a]
13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats[b]; do not be frightened.”[c] 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive,[d] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits– 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also–not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand–with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
To Frog,
By which two witnesses do you have to corroborate your claim? And by what reason do you speak evil to the good?
1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,
To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for[a] Jesus Christ:
2 Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
The Sin and Doom of Ungodly People
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about[b] long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord[c] at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling–these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8 In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. 9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”[d] 10 Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct–as irrational animals do–will destroy them.
11 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.
12 These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm–shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted–twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”[e] 16 These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
A Call to Persevere
17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear–hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.[f]
It is not the doctors that decide matters of life or death. I wonder how many people understand that.