Mind of Genius: The Astonishing Life and Works of Bryan Belrad

I first became aware of his existence when a friend gave me a copy of his debut fantasy novel, Rage of Night, which is now one of the best selling self-published novels of all time. I was so enthralled by this amazing work of literature that, after writing a review, I found myself wanting more.

Where other books advertise some of the author's other titles, Rage features only a web address: www.BelradUniverse.com I visited the site, searching for more fiction, only to discover a veritable feast of science, philosophy, spiritualism, and other ideas.

As it turns out, Belrad, a 27 year-old resident of Fulton, NY, is already one of the most accomplished individuals ever to walk the Earth, despite his young age. In his brief span, he's racked up some hefty credentials, including six doctorates (Advanced Theoretical Physics, Psychology, Religion, Metaphysics, Humanity, and Divinity [honorary]), an MBA, and a host of other degrees and honorary certificates. He was ordained as a Minister shortly after his 19^th birthday, and was later canonized as a Saint by his church.

In the last year alone, he authored a notorious science text that changed the face of the universe (Testing the Big Bang), penned his literary opus (Rage of Night), crafted world-famous poetry (Do Unto Others, Laus de Lumen), and hosted an Internet-based talk show, now on hiatus, that captured an audience of 250,000 listeners in only eleven weeks, among many other things.

His radical religious ideas are changing the course of Christianity, while his deep analytical thinking is carving a broad swath across the scientific realm. From revising Einstein's General Relativity (Zero Sum Theory, 2008) to breaking new ground in cancer research (Use of Engineered Retroviral Strains to Counteract the Production of Telomerase in Cancerous Cells, 1995), it seems no discipline is safe from his influence.

So what does one call such a person? Father? Doctor? Holiness?

"Bryan is fine," he's often said. But don't let his gentle modesty fool you into underestimating him. He can bring his towering intellect to bear at a moment's notice.

I learned as much the hard way, when I contacted him for an interview. After exchanging pleasantries, we got down to business.

I asked: "How do you reconcile your ministry with your scientific exploits? How can anybody hold deep scientific views without compromising spirituality?"

He said: "One of my predecessors, George LeMaitre, faced a similar paradox. He was a Catholic Priest as well as a physicist, and he once said something to the effect of 'Learning the laws of the universe is synonymous with reading God's blueprints.' I happen to be a minister with scientific practices, which puts me in a much less contradictory position than a scientist with religious practices."

What Belrad is talking about here is a concept called "Confirmationism". As he explains in Echo of Creation (2007), it is the fallacious practice in science of "assumptive correctness - seeing 'proof' where there is none" and arbitrarily ignoring evidence that contradicts a favored conclusion. He calls these scientists who have abandoned all notions of questioning, the essence of the scientific method, "priests in labcoat vestments." These scientists, who today dominate many fields, accept as legitimate only those results that confirm their own beliefs "which are based on faith, not knowledge."

His favorite example is, of course, in the field of Cosmology, the study of the universe. As he points out in Testing the Big Bang (2007), there is a veritable mountain of incontrovertible evidence that even 50 years ago should have told us that the Big Bang never happened. But, instead of going where the facts led, scientists, having faith in the theory of the Big Bang, tried to keep it alive in the face of unyielding reality.

"Edwin Hubble himself," Belrad said, "The man credited with providing the first confirmation of the Big Bang, worked for years trying to show people that it just wasn't plausible. People chose, even to this day, to believe in an idea that was blatantly wrong rather than listen to a man who literally had all the credibility in the universe. It was Copernicus vs. Ptolemy all over again, except this time, we kept on believing that the Earth is flat and the sun orbits us."

In his words, "The irony is that people still hold to the Big Bang because of General Relativity, which tells us that if our universe is finite, it should be collapsing. If we reverse the direction of time, admittedly without any good reason to do so, we can imagine that the universe is expanding. But, even though the CMB (the microwave background) doesn't confirm the Big Bang as we are commanded to believe, it does show us something very interesting: that the universe is flat, without spatial curvature. This cannot be the case in a finite universe, so our universe need not - can not - be either expanding or contracting. We have it entirely backwards."

"But," I asked him, "what about redshift?" Redshift is a phenomenon that affects light from distant galaxies, stretching out the waves, shifting them toward the red end of the spectrum. It is commonly believed to be due to the expansion of the universe. If Belrad is right, and the universe isn't expanding, then we are left with an effect without a cause.

"Just because we don't have an answer to a question," he replied, "Does not mean that an answer that we know to be wrong somehow becomes right. In science, 'I don't know' is a perfectly acceptable answer, and it's a lot better than making things up, like Inflation (the theory that the universe somehow expanded faster than light for a time for no reason but to save the Big Bang from being discredited billions of years later). That kind of ad hoc garbage, where we invent fairy tales to keep our favorite creation myth alive, is the epitome of what's wrong with science. Taking Inflation seriously is the soul of Confirmationism."

He has equally radical views on religion. His published works along those lines paint an abstract portrait, both rebelling against what he perceives to be ideological control of free thought, while simultaneously reaffirming a profound belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I mean to get to the bottom of what exactly Saint Belrad believes, so I made arrangements to interview him again on this highly controversial topic. And what kinds of life experiences have helped shape his uniquely inquisitive view of the world? Watch for these follow-ups to this article, as I continue to take you on a journey to explore this remarkable mind of genius.