I am always stunned that even highly intelligent and educated people sometimes talk rubbish, that even as a well-meaning observer I get quite dizzy from all the shaking of my head.
In this case it is a quote from the renowned physicist John Polkinghorne:
"Theologians arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity after long and careful reflection on the facts that they observed, in a rather similar way to how physicists arrived at the Standard Model after sixty years of reflection on a whole series of remarkable discoveries and theoretical insights".
The only "facts" pointing to the idea of the Trinity are some ambiguous passages in an old book. If these facts could actually be distilled into something scientists call "evidence", why are Christians unable to convince the other monotheists - Jews and Muslims - who consider the doctrine of the Trinity to be a dangerous delusion close to polytheism, of their "theory"? (Just as now all physicists accept the Standard Model, because it fits perfectly to all known facts)
There is an interesting Wikipedia article on Polkinghorne, who, besides being a renowned physicist, is also an Anglican priest.
While I certainly do not support or agree with Christian Church dogma, there is a way of looking at the so-called trinity that makes at least a little bit of sense. It is really an exercise in futility to try to describe ultimate reality, which can not be described adequately within the framework of our illusory human model of reality. Nevertheless I will present my thoughts.
Ultimate reality, called God by some, is all that there is. All separate “things” are separate in thought only, being actually extensions of the whole. We do not normally see that because, for survival, we evolved to divide reality into separate objects. We categorize and rank our perceptions according to survivability. (See The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman)
Calling ultimate reality a “trinity” is not saying there are three gods, or even three gods in one. All it means is that on a human level there are two ways of thinking about ultimate reality. There is the “son” which is us collectively—actually deep conscious awareness or universal consciousness. We do not normally, in our daily lives, think about reality that way because for survival we are having to sort out and categorize sensory input according to its level of good vs bad.
Within our selves is our subconscious, brain-based mind, ever busy making sense of reality through symbolic associations. It is our interface with true reality that, like a computer interface, converts the abstract into readable print or images, etc. We could dramatically label that as the “Holy Ghost”, though I shudder to do so on an atheist web site. The Holy Ghost doesn’t amount to much. If we could experience ultimate reality directly we wouldn’t need that way of thinking.
So we can choose to experience reality through conscious awareness, often enhanced by meditation, or we can study and contemplate reality in our thoughts. That’s two, and reality itself makes three. To label that as “The Trinity” is an exercise in pomposity and is misleading in the extreme. On my computer I can watch a video or I can read a book—big deal.
Religious thinking makes facts relative. Things are true because they feel right.