The Power of Prayer

Earlier we introduced our readers to a new development in physics that may have earth shaking significance for philosophy and theology. I am referring to the 2025 discovery of a ‘Rondeau Time Crystal’ (RTC), aka ‘Time Rondeau Crystal’, by Leo Joon Il Moon, et al. 

Recap: An ordinary Crystal (think diamond, quartz, et al.) is a configuration of matter that repeats a particular pattern indefinitely in space. A Time Crystal is a configuration that repeats a pattern indefinitely in time. An RTC is a specific flavor of Time Crystal with its own unique, and surprising, internal structure. 

An RTC consists of three phases which I’ve labeled: Alpha, Delta, and Omega. There is a causal (deterministic) link between Alpha and Omega. Delta is an indeterminate (aka chaotic) region separating the two. 

The introduction of indeterminate elements does not disrupt in any way the hard-wired causal connection between Alpha and Omega… which raises another question: What role does the Delta phase play in overall evolution of the crystal? Stay tuned for that, but in the meantime…

Resolved: “That Free Will and Causality can co-exist in a single entity.” Up to now, this was a fit topic for high school debate club. No more! The Moon Team just built a working, physical model that combines determined and indeterminate behavior in a single entity.  

We know the world through propositions, i.e. patterned relationships among disparate elements. We do not see a figure; we only see a figure in the context of a ground. We see patterns, the juxtaposition of elements. “It’s cloud illusions I recall; I really don’t know clouds at all.” (Joni Mitchell)

Propositions (patterns) may be physical (the juxtaposition of objects) or conceptual (the juxtaposition of symbols). 

Caveat: We must resist the temptation to think of ‘propositions’ merely in terms of words organized into sentences. A sentence is a proposition, but so is a melody, an image, a recipe, or the tower my toddler just built with her blocks. 

Propositions are patterns and patterns resonate. Patterns in Alpha resonate in lock step with patterns in Omega, uniting the two. Patterns that emerge indeterminately in Delta may (or may not) resonate with patterns in Alpha and Omega. But whenever patterns resonate, they are one! One pattern, multiple manifestations; but the pattern is the thing.

Sidebar: Subatomic particles that interact with one another become ‘entangled’ so that the behavior of one is immediately correlated with the behavior of the other, even if they are separated by vast distances. Similarly, when patterns resonate, they become entangled; the many become one. Same process? Or merely analogous?

Spend an evening at the symphony: dozens of musicians playing dozens of instruments yet no cacophony, just soaring melodies. When the tones of different instruments resonate, they fuse into a single, albeit complex, sound. Likewise, patterns in Alpha, Delta, and Omega can resonate. 

What makes this extraordinary is that the ‘raw material’ of each phase differs from the other two. Patterns are apparently ‘medium agnostic’.

Sidebar: Being combines appetition and satisfaction. We are motivated by qualia, i.e. values, and we seek to realize those values in a real event, i.e. to make a difference. It is convenient for our purposes to allocate qualia to the Alpha phase and outcomes to Omega. However, there is no suggestion that this reflects anything we currently know about the internal constitution of Moon’s RTCs. 

So Alpha is home to values, the qualities that make the cosmos cook. Omega consists of outcomes, potential matters-of-fact. Delta is the realm of indeterminate acts, free or random, conceptual as well as physical. In an analogy from Quantum Mechanics, Delta = decoherence.

Events in Omega are eternal but potential; events in Delta are actual but transient. If only we could somehow merge these two worlds! Prayer: May what is potential become actual and what is transient, eternal.

Because of the hard wired causal connection between Alpha and Omega, potential outcomes in Omega include only those matters-of-fact that are consistent with the values resident in Alpha. The patterns that emerge in Delta are subject to no such filter. 

However, a pattern in Delta resonating with a pattern in Omega is one and the same pattern: what was potential is now actual, what was transient is now eternal. We are left with a single pattern co-located in Delta and in Omega. 

The wave function collapses in Delta; it is atemporal, i.e. eternal, in Omega. That is the function of the Delta phase (above): to make the potential actual.

Here is where some ‘religionists’ go wrong: they deprive God of novelty, adventure, creativity and intensity of experience. They assume that Omega consists of settled matters-of-fact. As a result, they define the human project as conforming behavior in Delta to specific, set patterns in Omega. 

If these Preachers of the Narrow Way were right, then absent God’s infinite mercy, only Jesus would be saved. He is the grain; we are the chaff. But on the contrary, Omega consists of every potential matter-of-fact that is consistent with the Alpha values.

Everything, to the extent that it is consistent with Alpha, pre-exists potentially but eternally in Omega. It is our job is to conflate selected possibles resident in Omega into specific actual events in Delta. 

Excuse me! Wasn’t this article supposed to be about prayer? So it is! A prayer is a conceptual proposition in the form of a petition. It proposes a specific matter-of-fact: “May what is potential become actual and what is transient, eternal.” And when the pattern that is our petition resonates with a potential matter-of-fact in Omega, we say that our prayer has been ‘answered’. 

“If you dwell in me and my words (Alpha values) dwell in you, ask what you will and you will have it.” (John 15: 7) “…If you ask the Father for anything in my name, he will give it to you.” (16: 23) “Ask and it will be given to you.” (Matthew 7:7) It’s just that simple.

The way is not narrow after all; in fact, it is exceedingly broad. Whatever we do in Delta is redeemed, saved, eternalized in Omega – only so long as it does not contravene the divine values (Alpha). So live life to the fullest, always keeping Beauty, Truth, Justice et al. top of mind, joyously and gratefully embracing the promise eternal life, for “in my father’s house there are many mansions.” (John 14:2)

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Caravaggio’s The Conversion on the Way to Damascus captures the instant of Saul’s spiritual transformation, showing him fallen, blinded, and utterly vulnerable as divine light interrupts his former life. The composition shifts focus away from spectacle to inner change, emphasizing humility and surrender rather than heroic action. Prayer here is implied not through gesture but through total dependence, marking a radical turning point from persecution to faith.