Physics > Theology

Hooray! It's my turn to choose a topic again. Since The Old Man and I started this blog a couple of months ago, we have discussed "the end of capitalism", "the water torture", and Obama's "stinkulus bill". It's time to address the omnipotent elephant in the room: God.

No, I am not talking about Genesha, the Hindu Lord of Success, although I suppose he is an omnipotent elephant. Nor am I talking about the ancient gods, like Thor, Zeus, or Rah. While I don't dismiss these as possibilities a priori, approximately half the world's population does--the Christian/Islamic segment, with a tiny Jewish minority. So, on this blog in general, I may as well focus on Yahweh, the god of Abraham and PreachingToday.com 's 2005 Person of the Year.

Even thusly narrowed, this remains an impossibly broad topic. So in this single post I'd just like to just share some disparate personal thoughts, and hear what people have to say in response.

I used to be Christian. In fact, when I first enrolled at Archbishop Alter high school, I looked forward to the mandatory theology class. To me, questions about how God works and how Jesus wants us to live our lives were the ultimate questions in life. I loved the class. The topic was the New Testament as viewed from scholarly-historical and faith perspectives. The trouble was, I found the scholarly-historical perspective rather compelling! I still appreciated many of the ethics espoused in the New Testament, like the Golden Rule (although Confucius advocated the same principle thousands of years before Jesus). But I didn't buy the miracles. (I have not read it, but Thomas Jefferson attempted to rectify this problem by removing all supernatural content from what is now known as the Jefferson Bible.) This led me to a sort of natural progression to physics and a set of philosophical values which, I found out, fit the description of a secular humanist.

I have come to believe that the universe as we understand it through science is bigger, more mysterious, more awesome and in some ways more terrifying than any description of God that has been dreamed up. As a bonus, there also happens to be a lot of evidence for it. In regard to "how it all started", the two separate creation myths of Genesis are overmatched in poetry and profundity--not to mention accuracy--by modern cosmology. Consider the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, which magnfied a tiny speck of the night sky in a random direction. Every fleck of light in that image is an entire galaxy (except those few large balls of light with spikes sticking out--those are foreground stars); each galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars like our Sun. Based on this image and other data, it has been estimated that there are many hundreds of billions of large galaxies in the observable universe. And if the inflation model of big bang theory is correct, the size of the entire universe compared to the size of the observable universe is like comparing the observable universe to a single proton.

Now, I have heard it seriously suggested that nothing is meaningful, beautiful, etc. if Yahweh did not create it. But go stare at the Hubble Deep Field for a few minutes. Then tell me how "meaningful" it would be if all that was merely leftovers from the special creation of one particular speck, on which woman came from a rib and a talking snake made her realize she was naked.

The science of physics, in particular, overtook its religious predecessor and counterpart--theology--and left it in the dust long ago, in my opinion. This shouldn't be surprising, since the methods of physics involve questioning, calculating, experimenting, and ruling out hypotheses; theology in general does not, and cannot, do any of those things, since no known measurement device can distinguish divine revelation from the voices produced in one's own head. This is why we remember Isaac Newton for his lasting contributions to fundamental physics; not his large volume of work in Bible numerology, or the fact that he succeeded in pleasing God by dying a virgin. It is also why Albert Einstein is often claimed by the religious as a God-fearing man, even though he rejected the idea of a personal God and thought religion "childish".

Stephen Hawking freely uses the metaphor of God, as do a few of my physics textbooks, on occasion. But this is a consequence of the physicist's annoying habit of encroaching on, and conquering, the theologian's turf.

A case in point:

When Benjamin Franklin invented the "lightning attractor" in the 18th century, the priests, reverends, and many other self-appointed spokesmen for God had understandable reservations. The lightning rod, as it came to be known, seemed to interfere with the Divine order. The Harvard-educated Reverend Thomas Prince (after whom Princeton, Massachusetts is named) believed these abominable "points of Iron" would force God to take more drastic measures. In 1755, he published an addendum to his sermon "Earthquakes the Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure" saying, in part:

"the more points of Iron are erected round the Earth, to draw the Electrical Substance out of the Air, the more the Earth must needs be charged The Reverend Thomas Prince with it. And therefore it seems worthy of Consideration whether any part of the Earth, being fuller of this terrible Substance, may not be exposed to more shocking Earthquakes. In Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadfully Shaken, - 0, there is no getting out of the mighty Hand of God. If we still think to avoid it in the Air we cannot in the Earth; yea, it may grow more fatal."

(I believe he refers to the 1755 Boston earthquake.) Presumably, the good Reverend used the Standard Method of the Theologian in Reaching his Conclusions: he Closed his eyes, let his Imagination run wild, and yea, he Wrote down the Results.

Of course, it's easy for us to dismiss his argument as silly today, after hundreds of years of success using lightning rods. But imagine living in 1755. There was no such thing as shifting tectonic plates or a Richter scale back then, no unified theory of electricity and magnetism; there were simply Earthquakes and Volcanoes, and that eerie glowing Substance responsible for Lightning. Their origins were not of this world; they were the awesome manifestations of Heaven's will.

So, in my opinion Rev. Prince's logic was pretty sound; it was simply based on bad premises. Remember that most people back then, including well-educated reverends, truly believed lightning and earthquakes were under divine control. Given that assumption, erecting a lightning rod is sort of like running away from a divine spanking; the Heavenly Parents will simply chase you down, shouting "You're only making it worse for yourself!"

So why don't we buy the good Reverend's argument today? Because we reject his premise. Most of us no longer believe destructive phenomena are instruments of Divine Judgment. And the reason we came to reject it, the reason countless lives have been saved, has nothing to do with breakthroughs in theology.

Your thoughts?

-Freyguy