Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Trinity & Doctor Who

For my Doctor Who fans:

I have thought of two ways to explain the Trinity based on the popular British television show Doctor Who. For those of you who are not fans, become fans, because the show is awesome.

Now now explanation of the Trinity is all-encompassing. The Trinity will remain, to some degree, a mystery. But we can at least reduce the logical problems by building helpful models. In truth, there are physical objects that we cannot fully model, but that doesn't mean that modeling  them 'to the best of our abilities' isn't worth anything.

So one way to think about the Trinity is to think about the Doctor's regenerations. Every so often, the Doctor actually dies, and he comes back again with the same memories, but a different body and a vastly different attitude. He becomes a whole other person. Fans of the show will be VERY familiar with the concept. For those of you who are not, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(Doctor_Who)

Now, sometimes, very rarely, a couple of the versions of the Doctor will time travel so they can adventure together. This has happened three or four times in the history of the television show. Now it seems to me that there is at least a great illustration of the Trinity here. You really do have one Doctor who is three different persons at that point. I know this doesn't solve all the logical problems, but for fans of the show the picture should be instructive.

Another way of thinking about the Trinity: the TARDIS is a box that acts like a moving portal for a pocket dimension. The box leads to a giant facility. People often remark in amazement, "it's bigger on the inside". What if we thought of the Trinity as multiple TARDIS-es that all lead to the same pocket dimension. You'd have three boxes that are all really the same place. Anyways, some fun thoughts here, using my favorite show to talk about one of my favorite subjects.

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