For the past few years I've been looking into Certified Ethical Hacking positions, CEH for short, and am intrested in trying to get some certification. My skills need to be sharpened, but I think white/black hat work is quite exciting personally. One day I'll get further into it, but I've got my assignments to work on for now...
Physics and Christianity.
For several decades, the Holy Grail of physics has been the Grand Unified Theory, aka GUT. This theory seeks to reduce, among other things, two of the most complex issues facing human kind, gravity and subatomic activity, to clearly articulated, mathematical models. Sounds easy...when put into plain English. The irony is, and most physicists are either ignorant of this or choose to turn a blind eye, physics cannot truly produce a GUT.
Though hardly a scintilating dialogue of some Nobel laureate, I did find a concise, easily understandable description of the GUT at http://www.hep.yorku.ca/yhep/gut.html
One of the biggest goals in physics today is to unify the strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces into one unified force...
This paints a simplistic picture, so, physicists, have mercy. Nonetheless, the idea remains...trying to explain all of existence as the manifestion of one force cannot possibly occur. Here's why.
In simplistic terms, we have four basic relationships, from a human perspective: man to self, man to others, man to universe and man to God. Each of these relationships entails more complex interactions, but most of our experience deals with some single or overlapping pairing of these connections and how we act and react to them. Physics tends to focus on the man to universe relationship. It is not that the relationship of man to God does not exist; it simply ignores it. The result is that people have come to think in terms of three channels of understanding instead of four.
In 1984, Einstein's article "Religion and Science: Irreconcilable?" was published with this note,
As to science, we may well define it for our purpose as "methodical thinking directed toward finding regulative connections between our sensual experiences."
This approach to science limits itself to sensual experience as the boundary of knowledge. By doing so, it eliminates the realms of the theological by default. It is at this moment that no ultimate GUT could be allowed. By bounding the total realm of inquiry to the tangible, scientists made their Holy Grail an unattainable carrot. Only through theology, as science defines it, can all things be explained.
More specifically, the concepts of physical matter that remain inexplicable are the ones into which theology can speak most. What is gravity and why do atoms not dissolve into nothingness? These two questions are truly resolved with the same answer: the Word of God. When God created the universe it was sound (see yesterday's entry for more on the power of sound) that was the manifesting force which arranged creation.
Indeed, Gregor Vlastos, the famed Platonic philosophed notes of the term "kosmos", generally translated as a noun meaning "order", that this concept actually denotes a thing which is neither noun nor verb, but rather both, much like the idea of the unmoved mover. Without going into the realms of philosophy, this idea translates into the science versus theology debate by shining light on the fact that God created the world, i.e, the order/ordering force that is creation. It is a perpetually active power, maintaining the arrangement of things according to God's will, that is, the law of creation.
God's words were spoken into the universe and, at all dimensions of physical matter, organize things according to the essence of what God made that thing to be. Gravity, is a law of God, a metaphysical condition manifesting on a physical level. Sub-atomic particles remain in stable forms because the energy of those particles obeys the order of its creator. This is the simple truth about why physics cannot produce a GUT. It chooses, on a fundamental basis, to reject God-given, obvious answers.
Of course, an easy point of attack for this matter is the fact that this whole approach to viewing the relationship between physics and theology lies on the lynchpin of fact that it is framed in anthropocentric terms. Sure, we are a self-centered being, we see things only in human terms. But, I just have to ask, how else are we supposed to think about the human experience? I don't know what it's like to be a tree or a neutron or a dog. All humans can know is human experience, regardless of how idealistic a realistic is with their efforts to be "objective". In the end, scientists have to admit they are human and can only know as such.
I've always had an issue with the self-congratulating attitude of scientific methodolgy that pats itself on the back for inching closer and closer to discovering the undiscoverable because it always seems such a waste of God-given talent on impossible ends. So much more important matters surround us, day after day. Science has incredible things to offer, but pipe dreams often gain leverage in spheres where it truly has neither right nor authority and abuses the power it does properly have and spread truth outside of its appropriate frame of reference.
No comments:
Post a Comment