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Can Scientists Find God?
Warning: I am not a quantum physicist, nor do I play one on TV!!!!!!
I have always been a strong believer in the scientific search for the origins of the universe. While I fully understand that many scientists do not believe that their scientific quest has anything to do with God, I trust that any honest endeavors in this matter will eventually end up with God. As the creator of the universe, God established “the science” of this world and how it works — biology, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, and physics. Today, I want to look at some basic physics. While I am the farthest thing from being a physicist, I have come to understand some very basic physics concepts that may help unravel the mysteries of creation and, at the same time, help us better understand our Bibles.
Many times, students of the Bible get bogged down with theology as they read. Theology comes with its own restrictive paradigms that limit us in truly understanding God. I am going to try to make a small attempt to set us all free from theology and help us understand the word in terms of science, namely quantum physics.
Quantum physics is a fundamental theory that describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels. Basically, it is a theory about things we can’t see. Quantum physicists believe that there is something that brought everything into existence and sustains everything in the universe, but it is unseen. They are constantly in search of that unseen instigator of all things.
Being the consummate quantum physicist, God tells us that we are to always consider the unseen world.
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. – 2 Corinthians 4:18
By faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are seen. – Hebrews 11:3
Clearly, the Bible supports that idea that there are things that we cannot see but do exist, nonetheless. And even more, these unseen things are the originating source for those things we do see.
Determined physicists are looking for these unseen things.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is a research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. From the CERN website: “Physicists and engineers at CERN use the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter — fundamental particles. Subatomic particles are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives us clues about how the particles interact and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. We want to advance the boundaries of human knowledge by delving into the smallest building blocks of our universe.”
Physicists have long speculated about the existence of an unseen energy field that permeates the universe and gives mass to everything. In other words, this field “creates” things in the universe. For years, scientists at CERN searched for a sign of this field. On July 12, 2012, they found it: the Higgs boson, or Higgs force. The Higgs boson particle (named after physicist Peter Higgs) is important because it signals the existence of the Higgs field, an invisible energy field present throughout the universe that interacts with matter particles and gives them mass. After an interaction, the field leaves behind a telltale sign: the Higgs boson particle. In 2012, CERN scientists found evidence of this particle.
Do you know what the scientists’ nickname is for this Higgs boson particle? The God particle.
According to these scientists, if the Higgs field didn’t exist, particles would not have any mass. For those of us who believe in God, I will translate this into Bible-eze: Without this energy field (I’ll call this field God), creation would not exist.
In a previous article posted to Ricochet titled “Did God Really Say That?”, I wrote about the science of waves, frequencies, and vibrations and how God spoke into existence everything in the universe and that it is the continued vibrations of this cosmic speech that keep the universe from collapsing.
Did the CERN scientists confirm that God’s word (known to them as the Higgs field) created and sustains the universe? They may not admit it yet. But I’m patient. I’ll just wait for them to catch up with the premier quantum physicist.
Check out my blog, my podcast “Torah Talk Podcast,” and my books @ www.torahtalk21.com.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Don’t mistake an analogy for an equivalence.
And interestingly, life is the only think that goes from disorder to order. It essentially defies all experimental experience. Life is counter-cultural in the world of physics.
A few decades ago I said to a physicist, and I still believe today — vaguely — that there is an interactive substrate to the universe that is moral (or more vaguely spiritual) in nature. He said, You mean like an ether? That’s been exploded.
I said well, it’s there.
I think our understanding (or philosophy) of the fundamental nature of the universe has changed in significant ways since then, but it only seems to further demonstrate a cause and effect connection between all things no matter what, or how small, or how far distant.
I don’t say this is God, though it may be, but very likely an intermediate characteristic that is non-measurable.
I love Eric M, but never knew about him covering this topic. Thank you.
Have not.
1, 2, and 3 were correct. I don’t know what “magical being” anyone relies on, so I don’t know what to make of 4.
I am very, very unsure about a great many things.
What do you think the word “faith” means?
Of course G-d transcends our evidence. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the evidence if we happen to have it.
You’re presuming that the arguments these people are making are arguments from ignorance. They aren’t. I’ve learned that you cannot understand me when I talk about this, but you’re still wrong.
That’s the same as saying G-d is the Boson field. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with G-d, and the Word was G-d.”
These all seem to be somewhat factual statements. #4 reminds me of some people I have met who, (what’s a polite way to say it), are not allowed to walk amongst us.
Scientists, non-scientists, and just about every other group of people have those that have some pretty strange ideas. Why can’t religious people have some pretty strange ideas? This thought gives me a thought I’ll add in another comment.
How does it go from disorder to order? Not contradicting, just going over my head.
That’s what’s special about life as it was created by God. Some say on the one hand that life hadn’t the time to evolve into existence, and others on the other hand say that life is here and is the obvious result of random events and random motion all subject to the prevailing laws of the universe.
I say it was created. And God says He IS Life. And these two seem to indicate that God created life from Himself.
Or they worship themselves as if they are the only things they are sure exist and have intelligence and will. It must be lonely being god.
You mean like dinosaurs?
I’ve seen that before but great to see again. Thanks.
Oh I see. I was focused on an individual’s life. You meant life in general. Got it.
But that would be a very interesting point to put succinctly.
I was thinking an individual’s life goes from order to disorder,,,from regal to pot…lol. Actually as I age my body does feel like it’s falling apart.
Well, entropy still reigns except in the first 21 years of life [when the body is still growing and forming]. But I was thinking about spiritual order increasing in the lives of believers. To make a joke out of it, My knees believe but still grow weak.
I’ve always thought that life or intelligence is the opposite of entropy. If we continue to advance, hopefully we will learn to delay the end of the universe. I’d settle for a lot less than that for now, though. Curing aging would be nice. I hope we get there in a couple generations.
But in answer to your question in the OP, and somewhat contra Lemaitre, I think Dr. Thomas Schimmel (Institut für Angewandte Physik, Universität Karlsruhe), put it very well: That which is in the foreground (natural laws, nature) points to that which is in the back ground (God) and their relationship is understandable as that between the painter and the painting. It would be a mistake to posit a strange tension between the painter and his work.
I recommend it. It’s long, though. About 13 hours total.
I recommend it. It’s long, though. About 13 hours total.
This is an example of what I’ve been talking about.
Life defies neither experimental experience nor our understanding of thermodynamics. Life increases disorder — increases entropy — and does so quite well. What thermodynamics says is that, in a closed system, disorder will increase. What it doesn’t say is that pockets of order within that closed system can not come and go, so long as the total disorder (entropy) of the system does not decrease.
Life creates pockets of order by creating more disorder elsewhere. Physics allows that, and there are both living and inanimate examples of such pockets of order forming and dispersing. Life isn’t unique in this respect, merely the most complex and awe-inspiring example of the temporary concentration of order in one place at the expense of greater disorder somewhere else.
Nature is full of beautiful aspects in which anyone of faith might find evidence of a creator’s glory and majesty. The more we learn about the world, the more awesome and even fantastic it seems.
But I think it most prudent to keep this a poetic endeavor. Yes, the Higgs field does — we think — confer mass to all things that have mass. But it doesn’t confer mass to everything: some things don’t have mass, and so don’t (again, we think) interact at all with the Higgs field.
And, back to entropy for a second, in the very (very, very) long run, nothing is likely to “hold it together”: the universe will, per science, gradually disassemble into a cold featureless void — the Higgs field notwithstanding.
I encourage people of faith to not let God be limited by science.
Life is in itself order from disorder.
You put this very well.
And nature may be beautiful but a sterile dry land is not nearly so beautiful.
But you take seeds for corn and grass (which are in the category of life) and you grow corn for the woman to eat, and grass for cows to eat and to provide milk to drink. And the woman conceives and the baby in her begins to grow, the dirt and the water that the seeds used to grow, and to feed the cattle, to feed the mother, and to nurture the baby, is all bringing magnificent, marvelous and intricate order to disorder, that non-life simply cannot do.
If you want to speak grandly about the nature of the universe, you have to count God as the creator of the natural order. But I’m not talking about the net balance or order and disorder but the order from disorder. Nothing but life does this.
That may be true in some poetic sense. It isn’t true in a literal, physical sense. That is, it isn’t true in a scientific sense.
Life doesn’t really create order from disorder, but rather temporarily concentrates order at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. And life isn’t the only thing that does that. For example, crystallization does the same thing — as, for instance, when water freezes.
It’s not poetic, it’s true. There is order that you must recognize being added to the world within the womb, and as a child grows up, that wasn’t there before. Very highly, incomprehensibly ordered. And yes, I thought about igneous rocks and accretion of gold, and formation of diamonds and so forth, but that’s nothing compared to the very nature of the ordered reproduction and growth of the living being.
To say that life is just a random chemical change, denies its intrinsic life.
Flick, life isn’t “denied” when it is described in terms of the natural processes that we think bring it about and sustain it. Nor is the value of life denied when it is so explicated.
This is the kind of fusion of faith and science that I think is counter-productive. When one asserts that scientific revelation regarding the nature of life somehow colors our sense of the value of that life, on the inherent worth of that life, then two things end up happening. First, one fights to deny what science relentlessly reveals about the nature of life. Secondly, each subsequent revelation undermines the sense of the importance and value of life in the eyes of those who require a scientific basis for that value.
I suspect that life is a purely natural phenomenon, entirely consistent with the laws of physics that orchestrate the grand pageant of our universe. That doesn’t mean I either deny life or value it less than does one who believes in a creator. Science does not speak to values and human worth, and can neither elevate nor diminish the worth of a human life. Those valuations are, like philosophy and religion, extra-scientific, outside the realm of the physical sciences. And that’s where they should stay, in my opinion.
Yes, I understand your material view. But within an entropic universe, I can’t understand you saying that a living child growing in the womb, and once born being fed the product of the corn that is composed of the dirt, and which grows the cow that supplies milk and then the meat on a plate, to grow a child to adulthood, one of the most complex things in creation, is not organizing the dirt, does not bring organization to disorganized matter.