Australia and New Zealand are currently in a race with other countries to secure the opportunity to host the world’s largest and most powerful telescope. Thousands of antennas linked electronically across 3,000 kilometers of the curve of the earth would allow scientists to see 10 times further into the universe than ever before. According to the BBC, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is a global collaboration of 20 countries with the aim of “providing answers to fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of the Universe.”.

The capacity of the supporting communications network and computer processors will exceed that of current global Internet traffic. There’s so much information ‘out there’ in the universe that we haven’t yet been able to capture and analyse. We are talking BIG numbers here, and it’s expected to be up and running by the year 2019.

What might the SKA reveal? The origins of the universe?; how matter is formed?; life outside of our solar system? 

As a Christian, and as a child growing up in a Christian family, I have often been challenged by science. Scientific discovery and its apparent confirmation of evolutionary theory has often seemed at odds with my understanding that God created the universe.

This need not be the case, however and as time has gone on, I’ve found it easy to reconcile in my own mind that mankind is merely discovering the detail of what the Bible describes very simply. There’s actually no real contradiction, just a different description.

Now comes the crunch. If the SKA or maybe the Hubble space telescope, or its successor identify a planet with life, perhaps with ‘humans’ on it, will my understanding and my faith in my own assumptions about God be under threat? Is it possible to reconcile a ‘parallel’ creation or one that goes way beyond the apparent scope of the Bible and God’s declared purpose.

Two billion dollars is an awful lot of money. Should we pay this much to find out ‘who knows what’? Is this additional knowledge really worth it? Could this be considered to be gambling with our faith? What if we find out something we wish we hadn’t?

Findings from this project might one day be compared to what happened after mankind discovered the world was round. Remember that people were persecuted (by Christians) for suggesting that the world wasn’t flat and for suggesting that the earth went round the sun. 

Now back to the BIG numbers. Two billion, 2,000,000,000, or two thousand million dollars is a massive amount of money.

What else would $2bn pay for?
- Nearly 17 million barrels of oil.
- One year’s salary for 31,000 Australians.
- 5,000 hospital beds for one year.
- 0.4% of the Greek national debt.
- An irrigation scheme for a small third-world country.
 
I could go on, but I’m keen to hear what you think….

Christmas List Lynx

Here’s this week’s list; remember to have your suggestions in by 8:00 PM on Mondays to make sure that they get considered.

• North Point Community Church’s “Be Rich” campaign breaks all previous records for giving to local charities as reported at CBS News Atlanta.
• For those of you who missed the last decade completely, the BBC re-traces the history of the WWJD slogan in light of its re-emergence in the Occupy Protests.
• This week’s top music video release introduces recent Nashville resident, singer-songwriter Jesse Santoyo.
  
• The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling means the end of churches meeting in schools in New York City and eventually, beyond.
  
• Vital question for worship leaders — and others — at Zac Hicks’ blog: Is the Lord’s Supper a Funeral or a Feast? s
  
• Churches in Santa Monica, California are almost completely shut out of the 21 spaces where they normally erect nativity scenes because of strategic planning by atheist groups.
  
• If you’re into Bible translation issues, here are three academic presentations on video by NIV, ESV and HCSB representatives, and a Q&A and response video with all three, from Liberty University’s Bible Translation Symposium.
  
• Lost files found: This has been bookmarked in my computer since February; it’s a short article by a Minneapolis author, Tyler Blanski who has a book with Zondervan forthcoming later in 2012.  This deals with rethinking sexuality or you could check out his blog.
  
• Lost files found #2: Another February flashback, Perry Noble asks if there’s anything you’re holding on to that God wants you to let go.
  
• From our Pastor True Confessions Department, Kevin Rogers gives his personal reasons for not practicing the spiritual discipline of fasting.
• Video recently posted, but apparently dating back to 1989, here’s a cultural artifact guaranteed to make you smile. Or something.
• A Kentucky pastor reports he has canceled a church vote banning interracial couples. But you get the impression this fight ain’t over.
• This video is from last year, and we may have linked to it then, but I needed something seasonal, right? Enjoy The Digital Story of the Nativity.
• Mark Galli says there’s a need right now for more chaplains and fewer leaders. Sample: “We find ourselves in an odd period of church history when many people have become so used to large, impersonal institutions that they want that in their church as well.” This discussion really swims against the current.
• Another Christianity Today item: Anthony D. Baker surveys what’s going on in church life, particularly as it affects our children, and finds us doing all manner of things except actually teaching the gospel.
• First there was Rachel Held Evans’ 2010 list of 13 things that make her “…A Lousy Evangelical,”  and now it’s Michael Camp’s 31 reasons why he “…Left Evangelicalism and Became a Progressive, Not a Liberal.”
  
• Big Bang Theory Department: Scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider believe they have confirmed the existence of The God Particle.
  
• Ever been in a group of people where someone outside the circle only asks the husbands the “What do you do for a living?” question? Michelle Garred guests at Eugene Cho‘s blog.
  
• Sadly for some, this time of year is just an excuse to drink, even if they do so in the name of remembering ‘the reason for the season’ as this advent calendar found at Ironic Catholic indicates:

But considering that all the elements that created the universe are present in a star, (and also on our own planet), could it be possible, if only theoretically, that the collapse of a star into a black hole is actually the formation of a universe at the other side of it?

Ergo, at the point of origin of the ‘Big Bang’ is the ‘exit’ of a black hole which we were ‘expelled’ from when a star collapsed in an alternate universe.

I’m sure there’s a scientific reason why this isn’t possible. Or, if it is, that someone has already thought of it.

Anyway, it’s just a thought.

The formation of a universe?

Ye Liu examines Meryl Streep's face for unsightly blemishes.

(2007) Drama (First Independent) Meryl Streep, Ye Liu, Peng Chi, Aidan Quinn, Blair Brown, Yonggui Wang, Lei Tsao, Jing Shan, He Yu, Bo Yi, Boris McGiver, Bill Irwin, Taylor Schilling. Directed by Chen Shi-Zheng

We struggle to understand the complex workings of the universe. Mostly the discoveries we make serve to illustrate that we are painfully ignorant and that the universe is a far more wondrous place than we could ever imagine. However, there is a dark side to the universe, one that resides in the matter that not only binds the universe together but touches the dark places in the human heart.

Liu Xeng (Liu) is a Chinese student studying for his doctorate at an unnamed Southwestern U.S. university. He is admonished by his family as he leaves for the great unknown that is America to make his family proud and bring no disgrace to the family name. No pressure, right?

He is brought into a world of academic politics, woefully unprepared. Brilliant in the science of cosmology (the study of the workings and origins of the universe), he is interned to Dr. Reiser (Quinn), one of the most respected scientists in the United States. At first, they get along very well – Xeng is brilliant which reflects positively on Dr. Reiser.

Xeng joins a number of other Chinese students sharing a house in the university community. Mostly, they like to hang out, drink beer, talk about chicks – and particle physics. Those wacky college students! Xeng even develops a crush on a comely barista (Schilling), although that turns out to be unrequited. He’s living the American dream, college nerd style.

The Chinese students stay in America is being facilitated by Joanna Silver (Streep), a wealthy patron with a keen interest in Chinese culture. She takes a special liking to the young Xeng, whose brilliance and shy sweetness intrigue her. Then one day, Xeng has a breakthrough – a theory about dark matter that might change the way we see the universe.

But the wheels start to fall off. His theory comes into direct conflict with Dr. Reiser’s own – which the arrogant and egocentric Reiser can’t allow. Reiser works behind the scenes to discredit Xeng, who loses an important prize to one of his roommates who has been making a point of kissing Dr. Reiser’s ass. Xeng is unable to land a job following his graduation and is forced to sell skin care products door to door to make ends meet. His mental state fractures and shatters, leading to tragedy.

This is loosely based on events at the University of Iowa in 1991 when a graduate student named Gang Lu opened fire on several professors and students, killing five before turning his gun on himself. The academic world depicted here is not necessarily the one that was encountered by Lu in his downward spiral, but it is pretty accurate as to some of the down side – dark side – of modern American universities. It is sadly true that politics usually trump performance when it comes to human endeavor.

The culture clash between the Chinese students and their American hosts is one of the most compelling things about the movie. The students are astonished to discover that Americans send their elderly to separate facilities; in China, caring for the elderly is part of a family’s responsibility and to not do so would be a serious loss of honor.

There are a lot of scientific ideas that are put across here that are necessary for the advancement of the plot. They could easily be dry and confusing to the audience, but Shi-Zheng manages to make them at least reasonably understandable with a liberal use of computer graphics to aid him.

Getting Streep was amazing; I don’t know how they convinced her to do this movie but she is typically wonderful, performing in a way that is effortless and authentic. She doesn’t exactly steal the movie but she is the most prominent reason to see the film. Liu as Xeng does a credible job, but his mental deterioration doesn’t feel authentic; he goes from frustrated to homicidal almost without any sort of transition. It’s a little bit jarring, even if you do know it’s coming.

The middle third drags a little bit, but the first and last parts of the movie are exceptionally paced. The feeling of impending tragedy hangs throughout the movie. Shi-Zheng has divided the film into five chapters, each pertaining to a specific element. He utilizes a Chinese children’s chorus singing standard American songs as a kind of linking device that foreshadows and forebodes.

I like many of the elements of the movie; it just doesn’t generate a movie that is a cohesive whole. The conceit of Dark Matter as an allegory for petty human emotions under the surface is a nice one, but a bit obscure. That may wind up losing some audience; still, anything with Meryl Streep is going to be worth a look.

WHY RENT THIS: Meryl Streep elevates the movie with yet another unforced performance. Shi-Zheng manages to present complex scientific ideas without sailing completely over the heads of the audience. The cultural clash between the students and their hosts are the best element of the film.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The middle third drags a bit and Liu Xeng’s mental breakdown doesn’t feel authentic.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a scene of intense violence, some sexual content and a modicum of bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Chen Shi-Zheng is best known in China for directing Chinese opera productions; this is his feature film directing debut.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $66,375 on an unreported production budget; the film lost money.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With

This week, for the first time, ions were smashed together inside the Large Hadron Collider along the French and Swiss border. Until now, only protons had been collided in the experiment.

The tiny particles’ lightning-fast collision promised to produce temperatures up to 100,000 times hotter than the sun, said Michael Tuts, a professor in experimental high-energy physics at New York’s Columbia University and one of hundreds of scientists involved in the project.

“What we’re doing is reproducing the conditions that existed at the very early universe, a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang,” said Tuts, referencing the cosmic explosion that many scientists believe spawned the universe from one minuscule particle.

And so we ultimately discover secrets we formerly thought were known only to God and then what?

• Will we then be able to ascertain the “why” of it all?
• Will we discover  the origin of that first ion?
• What life-threatening methodology will be uncovered in pushing back this frontier if  knowledge of creation is then known?
• Will WE create a new universe or life forms?
• What government or entity will claim this as proprietary knowledge?
• Can mere mortals handle this knowledge properly?
• Will Democrats and Republicans  fight over the results?

It just could be that there were multiple gods and that a couple of them were out for lunch eating large bowls of ions.  An ion dropped from a soup spoon and crashed into one lying on the floor and the rest was the beginning of  history.

Here I am in  the early morning hours trying to grasp the why and the wherefore of this experiment.  Now those scientists have me worried that one of their damn  ions will land in my kitchen and add to the mess here in ways unknown.  Well if there is an adverse outcome, count on a very irate homemaker landing in that mountain machine and colliding with whoever is responsible.  That should give those geniuses insight into the end of the universe as we know it!

©On My Watch…the writings of SamHenry.  Registration pending.

So now we are in the midst of the Middle East Peace Process – a process we evoke annually, and now we find there is not a God-created universe.  Does this mean that the Jews are not a chosen people but have been self-chosen?  How far do we go with this push the blame away game?

OK, Obama will fix this.  He will take credit for the creation of the Universe and he will ensure that Middle-East peace will be achieved but it may have to be self-created.  Actually, this may prove a convenient out for everybody.  No one’s God will get in the way of people coming together.  They are relieved of fighting over religion and are left fighting over money and land.

Yes, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man.  I wonder if he was self-created?

See the article on his new book here.

UPDATE:

Of course every man and woman of the cloth has come out to slam Stephen Hawking on his theory that the Universe was not created by God.  The UK’s Daily Mail quoted several on this topic that has united Jews, Christians, Muslims and all life forms near and far against this theory.

OK, so God may not be THE creator.  What if he were just some generous soul who loved to write rules to live by so Irma Bombeck could have a basis for her theories and to pass out seed packets kind of like a Jewish Johnny Appleseed?  Shouldn’t we still try to keep some of   his rules of the road and sayings?  And doesn’t everyone love a success story?  After all, in the view of some, he got his start as a tribal God working summers in the Catskills.  No small feat to end up globally recognized.  So it’s not an inter- galactic act.  Who cares. We here appreciate  his jokes and the biggest one yet could be on Stephen Hawking.

©On My Watch…the writings of SamHenry.  Registration pending.

The moment of impact in the CERN super-conductor

I’m no physics guy, but from what I gather, that was one hell of an explosion that occurred Tuesday 300 feet below the border of Switzerland and France. Infinitesimally small but immensely powerful.

Two subatomic particles travelling just below the speed of light on a collision path around a 17-mile super-conductor tunnel, successfully smashed into each other, creating 7 trillion electron volts worth of energy and conditions resembling the first fractions of a second after the birth of the universe.

The great hunt is on; researchers at 10,000 laboratories across the world will be looking at the results of this and dozens of subsequent explosions in the years ahead for mysterious subatomic particles that are only theorized to exist. Along the way, they may create tiny black holes and open the door to the discovery of other dimensions. This is pretty heavy stuff.

It’s been a neat and romantic supposition that the world of the very large and the world of the very small are very similar; that electrons orbiting a nucleus are like planets circling a sun. It doesn’t work like that. Electrons don’t orbit. They sort of appear and disappear and appear again at a different place in proximity to the nucleus; no one can predict where they are or where they’ll turn up next. This incongruity between the cosmological scale and the particle scale drove Albert Einstein nuts.

He figured all his theories that proved correct about time, gravity, light and the behavior of physics in the cosmos would be replicated in the small world of particle physics. He went to his grave hunting for the elusive “unified theory” that would have predicted how both worlds operate.

The two worlds are, indeed, very different and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has put a $9.4 billion bet on the table that through it’s massive super-collider, the small world may reveal startling answers to exactly what happened in the moments after the big bang brought everything into being.

The Associated Press quotes physicist, Michio Kaku as putting it this way:

This is a huge step toward unraveling Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1 — what happened in the beginning. This is a Genesis machine. It’ll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe.

Einstein may have found it ironic and perhaps irritating that particle physics might someday solve the puzzle of the origins of the larger world he pretty much figured out.

Steven Pinker points out that understanding the origin of the universe is not a terribly useful skill; it confers no reproductive advantage, so there’s no reason we should have evolved brains capable of thinking about such a question. Nature is too good an economist to invest in such frivolities.

-Steven Landsburg, More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, p.190.

I think there’s something to it. Though our ignorance of the answer to the question probably has more to do with its sheer magnitude.

When I mentioned to my parents that I was reading a book by Carl Sagan, they both immediately launched into their best “beel-yins and beel-yins of stars” impression.

“That guy?” they asked.

Yep, that guy. Sagan is remembered in the mainstream conciousness for pronouncing “billions” funny and for popularizing scientific thought about extra-terrestrials and the origins of the universe. He wrote Cosmos and Contact. A friend recently let me borrow The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, which is not actually a book written by Sagan, but more accurately a collection of a series of his lectures, edited later by his widow Ann Druyan.

I read the book faster than I’ve ever read any non-fiction. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I read it instead of watching TV, instead of checking my e-mail, instead of showering. It is the best summary of the God-Science question that I have ever encountered. Sagan clearly and unpretentiously outlines the way that science has been able to shed light on answers to questions historically reserved for the realm of religion.

Some highlights:

p. 35 So the history of science—especially physics—has in part been the tension between the natural tendency to project our everyday experience on the universe and the universe’s noncompliance with this human tendency.

p. 64 But what clearly has been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that’s no longer God’s realm.

p.151 So, considering this range of alternatives, one thing that comes to my mind is how striking it is that when someone has a religious-conversion experience, it is almost always to the religion or one of the religions that are mainly believed in his or her community.

p.164 It is argued that some pain is necessary for a greater good. But why, exactly? If God is omnipotent, why can’t He arrange it so there is no pain? It seems to me a very telling point.

p.188 By no means does it follow that religions thereby have no function, or no benign function. They can provide in a very significant way, and without many mystical trappings, ethical standards for adults, stories for children, social organization for adolescents, ceremonials and rites of passage, history, literature, music, solace in time of bereavement, continuity with the past, and faith in the future. But there are many other things that they do not provide.

p.214 Because surely we are not faster than all other species, or better camouflaged, or better diggers or swimmers or fliers. We are only smarter. And, at least until the invention of weapons of mass destruction, this intelligence has led to the steady—in fact exponential—increase in our numbers.

p.216 What we need is a honing of the skills of explication, of dialogue, of what used to be called logic and rhetoric and what used to be essential to every college education, a honing of the skills of compassion, which, just like intellectual abilities, need practice to be perfected. If we are to understand another’s belief, then we must also understand the deficiencies and inadequacies of our own.

p. 224 The answer depends very much on what we mean by God. The word “god” is used to cover a vast multitude of mutually exclusive ideas…. Let me give a sense of two poles of the definition of God. One is the view of say, Spinoza or Einstein, which is more or less God as the sum total of the laws of physics. Now it would be foolish to deny that there are laws of physics. If that’s what we mean by God, then surely God exists…. But now take the opposite pole: the concept of God as an out-size male with a long white beard, sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow. Now, for that kind of god I maintain there is no evidence. And while I’m open to suggestions of evidence for that kind of god, I personally am dubious that there will be powerful evidence for such a god not only in the near future but even in the distant future. And the two examples I’ve given you are hardly the full range of ideas that people mean when they use the word “god.”

Sagan’s greatest legacy may be that he was among the first to warn the public about environmental dangers and the threat of nuclear war. One of his last achievements was a campaign to unite religion and science in the battle against these problems.

Together, Night and Darkness created Aether (Air) and Hemera (Day), and Night alone became the mother of Thanatos (Death), Moros (Doom), Hypnos (Sleep), Nemesis (Retribution), and the Fates.

From herself, Gaea created Uranus (Sky), Ourea (Mountains), and Pontus (Sea). Subsequently, Uranus comes to be the ruler of the universe, and with Gaea, fathers the Titans, Cyclops, and Hecatoncheires. Favoring the Titans, Uranus imprisons his other children within the depths of Tartarus, which leads an infuriated Gaea to ask her Titan son Cronus to overthrow Uranus.

During the dark of night, Cronus surprises Uranus and castrates the him using an adamantite sickle, tossing the parts into the sea, from which arises Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. Cronus subsequently succeeds his father as the ruler of the universe but likewise refuses to release the Cyclops ans Hecatoncheires from Tartarus, again angering Gaea, who prophecizes that Cronus, like his father, will be overthrown by one of his sons.

Cronus actively works to avoid this fate and swallows his children as they are born. His wife Rhea, however, protects Zeus from being swallowed, swapping him with a stone wrapped in cloth. Her ruse succeeds and Zeus grows up safely, eventually able to release his swallowed siblings, leading to war between the Olympians and Titans.

Eventually, the Olympians prevail, leaving behind the Pantheon recognized by the ancient Greeks. The Titans are banished to Tartarus and its previous inhabitants released. The Hecatoncheires are left to guard the doors to Tartarus, and the Cyclops are released to work at the forge of Hephaestus.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

While both stories begin with darkness and void, the gods of Greek myth are not timeless. The universe begins empty until Chaos somehow brings himself into existence. What causes this self-creation is unexplained in Hesiod’s Theogeny. The Christian God, on the other hand, is presented as infinite and eternal. Although this God is but a single entity, he assumes a role that encompasses those of the collective Greek Pantheon.

There have been many that have called my attention to the fact that Atheism is a statement of non-belief, rather than a statement of belief and is therefore not a proper noun. It is merely a category, not the name of an organized group that would warrant a capitalization. It is like capitalizing Car instead of Oldsmobile. It is not a religion in itself and thus is not properly capitalized. To capitalize Atheism would be on par with capitalizing Theism, which is in no way correct because there is no Church of Theism.

The reason I capitalize Atheism is because I interpret it as a religion. Granted, there are Atheists and atheists, the former being proud of who they are and are doing their level best to spread the good word. The latter are just people who don’t think there is a god or gods but don’t see the need to wear the T-shirt. They may not be solidly convinced either way, but they think and act as if there is no god.

I equate Atheism with a religion because it looks like any other religion. Not every religion has a god. Some merely believe in an energy source. Some religions are actually compatible with Atheism in that they don’t claim a god per se. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article on religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Here is the first paragraph:

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner’s experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth.^[1] It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos, and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.

Atheism ticks enough boxes for me to call it a religion. It is organized (without a church structure), it defines its view of spirituality (there is none), it has a common narrative, beliefs, practices, apparently gives meaning to practitioner’s lives and it references science as its source of truth. It often focuses on moral claims about reality(the cosmos and human nature) which yields a set of ethics and a particular lifestyle. It also encompasses writings, history, and mythology (as provided by science ie fossil record, etcetera), as well as personal faith (that there is no god, that the universe started by itself, that there are no supernatural events). You don’t have to go to many different blogs with active Atheists to pick up on the common jargon, and if you don’t mind me asking why “flying spaghetti monster”? I know the point is that it’s supposed to sound ridiculous, but when everyone says it, it makes it pretty obvious everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. It doesn’t give much credence to the supposed ‘free thought’ of the movement.

I don’t use Wikipedia as my sole source of information, but it is handy enough and objective for the sake of this post. The Wikipedia article on religion ends with a critique on the idea of religion, that the term “religion” maybe an entirely unfortunate misnomer. The suggestion is to lump in anything previously defined as religion the category of an ideology. I think that would be a reasonable way to go, particularly as I don’t see myself as being that “religious”, but my view of God definitely impacts on my personal ideology.

Originally, there was only philosophy in pursuit of truth, with, without and sometimes against religion. Philosophy’s main question is “why?” For millennia philosophers have been asking this question. Typically the answer was in some way tied to a concept of God or gods, mostly because it is very difficult to answer the question of “why” without a concept of a higher power.

Eventually, a branch of philosophy called natural philosophy developed into what we now call science. The idea with natural philosophers is that they wanted to provide some evidence to back up or disprove the theories put forward by the philosophers about the nature of the universe, existence, etcetera, instead of just basing the philosophies on rational thought, circumstantial evidence, religious teaching or whatever. They wanted concrete proof for their beliefs. That in itself is admirable. Belief should be based on truth. Through experimentation, trial and error etcetera, evolved the  scientific method which was made the basis for what qualifies as a fact. Basically, if it can be proven in a laboratory experiment then it is true. If it can’t be proven in a lab then it is either not true or it is unprovable.

The other aspect of the scientific method is that a hypothesis is made and then everyone who has an interest tries to disprove it. Science became as much about what is not provable fact as it was about defining provable facts. Whatever is not provable fact gets discarded along with what is not true. Science does not distinguish between what is unprovable and what is false. Also, science has no way of discerning the value of unprovable facts.

One of these unprovable facts is the answer to, “why does the universe exist?” Science attempts to address how the universe exists but can not address the why.

Science is only about the “what?” and “how?” and has nothing to say about the “why”.

Science and philosophy used to be two branches on the same tree that served a common purpose, making sense of our place in the universe. Since then philosophy has withered, partly because modern society has put its faith in science and the why becomes whatever you make it.

Science will never answer all of our questions, even in its place of expertise, partly because of the methodology. The problem is there are facts to be discovered in near infinitum, while science is dutifully picking them off one by one. The facts are changing faster than we can define them. We will never know everything there is to know.

The other part of the problem is science limits itself to the physical universe. The theories have already outstripped science. String theory, while it may be true, is entirely impossible to prove with our current techniques.

Here is a prediction: science will not be able to make the leap to the next level, whatever that is, until it can be reunited with philosophy and address “why?”

Lately I’ve been obsessing about the nature of truth. In fact I’m putting more pressing projects aside in order to devote more time to obsessing about truth. It seems to me that truth has two main facets: absolute truth and perceptional truth. Arguably, we cannot know absolute truth. You can say “Well two plus two equals four always, that’s absolute truth.” For all we know, that’s only true in our reality, but in a neighboring dimension two plus two doesn’t equal four. It’s seems to me that all I can know is what I can understand from my place in the universe. I can gather as much information as possible, but the most I can hope for is a better perspective of absolute truth but I cannot hope to attain undeniable absolute truth.

With that in mind, for me there is a distinction between foundational truths or what many people consider “absolute” truth, operational truth and peripheral truth, the last two being varying degrees of perceptional truth as noted above. Our personal foundational truths would be the type of truth that would likely never change. One of my foundational truths is the belief in a creator or God if you like. Operational truth would be the type that informs the way we live our lives day to day, but would be open to revision by most people. An example would be “I think American cars are poorly built gas guzzlers so I bought Japanese.” Peripheral truth is truth that doesn’t affect our lives in any real way, but it is something we believe to be true such as news of a plane crash or something like that.

As far as I understand every belief system has at least one glaring foundational “unprovable”. For Christianity, Islam or other religions that believe in a creator would be that God pre exists creation. Critics will say “So where did God come from?”

If you ask Joe Average Scientist how the universe was created the answer is the big bang. What predated the big bang? Well there was an enormous, basically infinite amount of energy on a single point. So where did that point of infinite energy come from? ”We don’t know.” They cannot know. To me this is biggest of the gaping holes in the scientific consensus. There are the common theories about expanding and contracting universes which spawned our current universe, but this doesn’t explain how the first universe started. There is another common one that supposes there is another universe composed of antimatter so that at the moment of creation there was an equal amount of matter and antimatter, but that doesn’t address why such a thing would happen. What part of nothing would trigger nothing to create equal parts matter and antimatter?

I have heard many theories about how the universe began, but none of them address how we went from nothing to something and why we went from nothing to something. This doesn’t even begin to address other elements of reality that may have needed to be created between the gap of nothing to something, such as time and the laws of physics. If you have nothing, do you have time? No, you have nothing.

This also does not begin to address the question of life. What is the difference between a recently dead body and someone without a heartbeat? According to the film, “21 grams”, that’s the difference. What’s in those 21 grams? We don’t know. How did life begin? An assortment of amino acids and proteins were zapped by a lightning bolt and primitive life began. How did that first life form accidentally reproduce? How did that life form pass on its genetic information to its offspring? How did DNA evolve by accident? Why isn’t anybody asking these questions?

So where did God come from? I don’t know, but he pre existed our universe so he doesn’t have to conform to our understanding of space and time. I know that seems like a tidy stupid answer, but that’s all I can say. I have no understanding beyond that because I was created for a purpose and that is not part of the purpose. In fact, if I was smart enough to understand everything, that would defeat part of my intended purpose and that is the potential to exercise trust. Love does not exist without trust. Love does not exist without choice. I was created to love my creator, not be his intellectual equal. I choose to trust that he loves me and that he wants me to know him and love him despite my doubts.

We will undoubtedly be debating these foundational “unprovables”  for generations to come, so it comes down to a leap of faith at some level. Do I want to rely on other human beings to inform my understanding of my meaningless existence or am I willing to trust that the creator wants to know me and love me and be known by me?

As most of you probably know, an experiment was started today at CERN in Geneva which is attempting to recreate the aftermath of the Big Bang and the beginning of the universe. Apparently this has cost nearly £5 billion and 14 years to create and it involves some form of big tunnel underground with protons zooming round and colliding to create this aftermath.
There has been theories going round that when the experiment was started at 8:30am GMT that it would create a big hole which would swallow the earth causing the end of our world. Scientists taking part in the experiement have assured us that nothing like that would happen, but of course my silly little brain was slightly worried by it all!
Now I’ve heard that the particles haven’t even collided properly yet and so part of me is still slightly worried that something might happen – but surely nothing will (?), they wouldn’t allow it if that was the case!

Even if this ‘Big Bang’ experiment could cause impending doom or not, I do wonder if an experiement like this is worth it. It has cost billions of pounds, which could have been spent on other things badly needed like healthcare, but then again some people say that more money has been spent on things like the Olympics and wars which could be considered much less important than finding out the origins of the universe.
I’m hoping that if anything does come of this experiment, it will be able to prove that the beliefs of creationists are just a silly fantasy. It seems illogical to me that a supernatural being (who’s only evidence of existance comes from a book which is over a thousand years old) could have created this vast universe at all, let alone in 7 days!