Science & Religion: Bridging the Gap
 Chapter One: Twilight of Faith
Millions of species share this planet. But only we humans have developed science and religion. Only we have tried to understand the world around us and looked for purpose in life. Only we ask who, why, what, when, where and how.
What sets us apart from all other species on earth is the awesome power of our minds. It drives us to want to know and to understand. That is why we build cathedrals, temples and churches. That is also why we peer through microscopes, build particle accelerators and send space probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system and beyond.
Our early ancestors recognized a basic symmetry and consistency in heaven and earth. The sun came up every morning. The moon waxed and waned. The stars and planets followed their courses through the heavens. Leaves changed color every autumn. New growth burst forth in the spring.
People saw this as evidence that they and their world were in the hands of God — or the gods — and all was well.
Out of the Shadows
Most people lived fairly simple, predictable lives. They planted their crops, or worked at the trade they had been taught and that they in turn would teach their children. The average person could not read or write, and knew little of the world outside the immediate community. Everyone had a place in society — the rich, the poor, even the servant or slave. That was the way it had always been, and the way they thought it would always be.
If they had questions, they could ask the priest, or the shaman or the witch doctor, who knew what was necessary about life, death and the purpose of existence. Religion was assumed to have the answers to the really important questions.
But a few have always thought more deeply and asked probing questions. Why is it this way? How does the universe work? What is the meaning of the creation — and of life itself?
For most of recorded history, scientists were viewed as rather eccentric figures on the fringes of normal society. They seemed to spend their time looking for the elixir of life, or trying to turn lead into gold, or doing unfathomable things with astronomical charts. Science, or what passed for science, didn’t have much to do with the average person.
In general, however, the early scientist-philosophers of the Western world were bound by a deep respect for tradition, especially sacred tradition. They went about their work in the spirit of investigating their Creator’s handiwork. Their humble efforts could only supplement — and certainly never challenge — the majestic revealed truths of the Bible, as interpreted by the authorities of the church.
Gradually, however, a gulf opened between science and religion in the West. About 300 years ago, scientists began to move out of the shadows and onto center stage. The influence of religion slowly, but decisively, decreased. Technology began to change the way we lived, but more significantly, it changed the way we thought about ourselves. We could now alter the environment. No longer were we nature’s pawn, and the dogmatic, often simplistic explanations of religion no longer satisfied.
The theologian gradually became the rather incongruous figure on the edge of society. His well-meaning efforts to help seemed less and less relevant with every passing decade of progress. Everything really important could apparently be explained without him. After centuries of groping in the dark, it was the scientists, not the theologians, who emerged with answers. They gave us new insights. They performed the miracles. They lightened our burdens and brought us new truths. There was less need to rely on the concept of God to explain the existence and functioning of the universe.
The thinking developed that everything could be studied and explained by science. Physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists confidently gave answers while the church seemed to become more and more out of touch with the needs of the real world.
A Strange New World
But then, about the end of the 19th century, scientists who were studying the deepest mysteries of matter and energy were confronted with a whole new way of looking at the world. As physicists probed the vastness of space and the heart of the atom, what they discovered was so different, so fantastic and utterly unexpected that it seemed to defy all common sense, all logic and all reason.
Most of us still see ourselves as living in a predictable three-dimensional world, surrounded by familiar, solid objects. Up is up, down is down, and we usually know what time it is. But the "new physics" is telling us that this may not be the way it is at all. Our everyday world may be, at the fundamental level, a very peculiar place. The most common object — a pen, a wooden spoon, or this brochure — may be in reality a pulsating, shimmering field of energy, held in check by mighty forces that prevent it from coming apart.
Today, those who work with high-energy physics, probing the beginning of time and the ultimate building blocks of the universe, are finding that they may be hitting barriers where practical experiments can go no further.
It is an interesting state of affairs. After several decades of astounding discoveries, some physicists in the high-energy field admit they may be reaching the end of their experimental rope. Research at the leading edge must be carried out in the laboratory of the mind, where the tools are those of the intellect (reinforced by horrendously complicated mathematics). But this has led some scientists into territory that has typically been the preserve of the philosopher and theologian, whose jobs have traditionally been to explain what cannot be adequately understood by experiment and observation.
Religion, however, seems to be on the defensive. And tragically, the Bible, once acknowledged as the revelation of God’s will, has been criticized, doubted and downgraded.
Yet, when properly understood, the Bible adds a vital dimension to the questions being raised by those who are pushing the frontiers of knowledge. We need to look at the Bible and see if its ancient light can illuminate the remarkable mysteries we ponder today.
But first, let’s take a brief look at the history of religion and science, and understand why a gulf opened up between them.
Chapter Two: Groping in the Dark
Astronomy was among the first of the sciences to be developed in the West. The early civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia made a diligent and careful study of the heavens. The people were essentially practical, so their investigations were centered around the problems of everyday life. They saw in the sun, moon and stars the manifestation of the gods who influenced every aspect of their lives. What would the weather be like for the harvest? When would the river flood? What would be the sex of the next child? Consequently, their understanding became mixed with deep superstition.
The ancient Greeks were the first people to approach scientific inquiry with a desire to learn for learning’s sake. Theirs was a remarkable civilization — considered one of the most productive learning periods in history.
The Greeks strove for perfection in mind and body, and saw evidence of it in the harmony of nature and the symmetry of the heavens. They were intensely curious about everything around them. They plotted the courses of the stars and planets. They collected fossils. They sorted birds and beetles into categories. They studied anatomy, art and architecture. They developed innovative theories of politics and government.
The most scholarly and systematic of the Greek philosophers was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). He organized and classified vast amounts of information about the world of his time. Many of his concepts in the areas of astronomy, anatomy and physics greatly influenced scientific thought for centuries.
This was a mixed blessing. Because he relied solely on observation and reason, Aristotle had remarkable insight in some areas. But in other areas he was at best inadequate and, at worst, hopelessly wrong.
Reason and observation are effective if one argues from a true premise. If the basis of an argument is false, anything deduced from it may also be false. It is like typing with your fingers not properly placed over the home keys. As any typist knows, the home keys are where you place your fingers before you start. With your fingers properly oriented, you can type quickly and accurately. If you don’t start on the home keys, the result will be confusion.
The Greek philosophers, when they based their arguments on incorrect assumptions, made some now obvious mistakes. In Aristotle’s case, he reasoned that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun and planets went around it. His earth-centered theory of the universe, further developed by the astronomer Ptolemy in the second century A.D., was the standard explanation until modern scientific methods proved their superiority. Aristotle’s methods and conclusions were accepted until the 16th century.
By the time the Greek civilization became dominated by the Romans, the Greeks had made a useful start on the systematic compilation of knowledge. They had asked a significant number of the right questions and diligently pursued the answers. Their great libraries became vast storehouses of information. In its heyday, the library at Alexandria may have held nearly half a million documents. Unfortunately, Greek civilization declined, and their treasure houses of information were eventually destroyed. The Romans, like the Egyptians and Babylonians, were an essentially practical people. Brilliant architects, builders and engineers, they were mainly concerned with putting knowledge to work.
The Romans built roads, bridges, aqueducts and amphitheaters, some still in use today, but they did little to advance the course of theoretical science.
The Lights Go Down
After the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century A.D., scientific progress virtually came to a standstill in the West. Christianity, by this time the state religion of the Roman Empire, focused on the afterlife more than on this life. The church began to view as a threat scientific discovery and anything else that challenged the established order.
But as the lights dimmed in the realm of Christendom, they went on in the Arab world. If the early Middle Ages were the Dark Ages in Europe, they became the golden age of Islamic science. The Arab peoples, unified in faith and language, continued to develop science. They preserved Greek learning and carefully translated works that might otherwise have been lost.
As their influence and their empire expanded, Islamic scholars had the opportunity to compare the learning of both East and West. From India, they learned the use of the zero in calculation. They also further developed a new numbering system that was much simpler than the cumbersome Roman method of assigning a numerical value to various letters of the alphabet.
In the eighth century, the Arabs learned from Chinese captives the technique of papermaking. With a steady supply of paper, books became more common. In the 10th century the great library at Cordoba, in Islamic Spain, probably had around half a million volumes. At that time there were probably no more than several thousand books in all the rest of Europe.
But the tide of history ebbs and flows. In the 12th century, knowledge of the Greek philosophers eventually began to filter slowly back into Europe, and with it came a reawakening of scientific curiosity.
Science began a difficult and painful rebirth. Difficult and painful because the church had become the supreme authority and was still suspicious of the influx of knowledge that challenged its traditional position.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the leading scholar of medieval theology, considered human reason an adequate instrument for attaining truth about the physical world. Thus, he generally accepted Aristotle’s ideas of physical phenomena as a foundation for physical science. If God could be known through his creation, that creation could be known by Aristotle. If Aristotle had reasoned that the earth was the center of the universe, that would also be the church’s official view. Scientific discovery that conflicted with Aristotle was suppressed.
Medieval theologians regarded salvation as the very reason why the earth and the heavens existed. So obviously, the earth was the center of the universe and the physical focus of God’s creation.
Any other concept of the universe did not sit well at all with the church. Did this not diminish the central role of Christ and his sacrifice, and thus strike deep at the foundations of the Christian faith? It was dangerous thinking that the church did its best to squelch.
Today, this resistance to scientific progress seems stubborn, short-sighted and foolish. But if viewed in the context of the times, it is easier to see the church’s point of view. Church authorities thought they were preserving truth, not suppressing it.
In many ways, the 15th century was not any more advanced than the fifth. Most work was done by hand, during daylight hours. Machinery was rudimentary and inefficient. If people traveled — and most never did — they were limited to the speed of a galloping horse, while their goods followed behind at the rate of a plodding ox.
Sailors cautiously edged their ships along the coasts, trying not to lose sight of land. A few brave mariners groped their way across the oceans at the mercy of the wind and the currents, trusting their imperfect knowledge of the stars and their crude instruments.
No amount of fear and repression can forever stop people from thinking. After many years of meticulous calculation, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) rejected the cosmology of Aristotle and Ptolemy and showed that the earth was a planet revolving around the sun. But he was a prudent man, not letting his work be published until just before his death.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) used the newly invented telescope to confirm the findings of Copernicus. He begged the church authorities to consider changing the official views. How could honest people be asked to believe what was demonstrably untrue?
Some theologians may have agreed with Galileo, but the traditional view prevailed. Mathematical tricks and fuzzy images in primitive telescopes had nothing to do with the truth. It was an insult to God. It was sorcery and an unpardonable invasion of the heavenly domain. Copernicus’ works were labeled as heresy and banned. Galileo was ordered to recant, then he was imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Besides, at this time, the established church was having enough trouble with the Protestant reformers. This was no time for mischievous scientists to make a nuisance of themselves. (Not that the Protestant reformers were any more enlightened. Martin Luther called Copernicus a fool intent on reversing the whole science of astronomy.)
It is important to understand that men like Copernicus and Galileo were not questioning the authority of the Bible. They maintained a deep respect for the Scriptures, believing that scientific observation was a confirmation of revealed truth. But the church authorities remained adamant in their opposition to experimental science.
Men of genius like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) were continuing to experiment in less controversial areas, such as engineering, art and architecture. They were ahead of their time, but their flashes of brilliance could not hide the fact that there still did not exist a systematic understanding of scientific principles. Knowledge was fragmented and disorganized, like a book without a table of contents, chapter headings or an index.
Someone was needed to tie the fragments of information into an overall framework of understanding.
The Breakthrough
That person was Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), one of the world’s greatest scientific geniuses. He is best known for formulating the theory of gravity. Newton, of course, was not the first person to notice gravity. The story of the apple falling on his head as he sat under a tree is probably a legend. But he is credited with being the first to recognize that the various effects of nature are governed by universal laws. The force that made an apple fall was the same force that governed the motion of the earth around the sun.
In 1687, Newton published his remarkable book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, showing how the previously unfathomable secrets of nature could be expressed in formulas and equations. Newton showed that although the creation looks complicated, its basic workings are quite simple. It is like a watch, which at first glance seems like a jumble of springs, sprockets and gears, but on closer examination is seen to operate on basic mechanical principles. Newton discovered a far-reaching principle: Laws govern physical phenomena.
Newton’s laws of mechanics, gravitation and motion, along with the invention of calculus, gave scientists tools to understand the world and even the universe as never before. The creation was seen to behave like a giant clock that, having been wound up, ticked steadily and predictably along.
Newton was aware that his methods only explained how the universe worked — not why. It is interesting to note that he maintained a deep interest in theology and spent his last years in a study of biblical prophecy. But ironically, his theories and laws opened even wider the gap developing between religion and science. The more natural phenomena could be explained, the more the grip of superstition and dogma loosened.
The medieval concept of God in heaven, and puny humans here below, continued to change. Now people began to see that they could become the revelator of nature’s secrets.
The scientists now had their hands on the home keys. They could learn from the mistakes of the past and apply the new scientific techniques to explore and experiment in ways never possible before. The forces that made the world work had become definable, and what is even more important, they began to be harnessed. It was the breakthrough needed, and the pace of invention quickened.
In 1851, Britain, the first industrial nation, staged the Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park. The centerpiece was the Crystal Palace, a monumental structure of iron and glass, a suitable temple to humanity’s newfound industrial genius. Beneath its soaring roof, the wonderful inventions of the industrial nations were arrayed for the world to admire.
Eight years later, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, in which he explained his theories of the evolution of life. At first even Darwin was reluctant to suggest the possibility of such a complex creation as life without a Creator. But his theory led him to an inevitable conclusion: Humans were not a unique creation. They were rather the most capable, efficient and intelligent creatures to have evolved through the process of natural selection. The human race was the magnificent end product of millions of years of evolution. As Darwin-ism put it, only the fittest survived.
For a people becoming infatuated with their own ingenuity, this was the right idea at the right time. The Western world was transforming itself into an industrial society, ready to exploit the earth’s resources as never before. Competition, it was claimed, was the first law of nature, and humans had won. Might was right, and thus humans had the right to dominate the planet.
So dominate they did.
The Triumph of Technology
Marvelous inventions began to transform the way the world lived. No longer did it amble along to the rhythm of nature. A network of canals, roads and railroads joined the new industrial cities. Steam was harnessed and obediently pushed the pistons that drove mighty locomotives at unprecedented speeds, or propelled great ships across the oceans, independent of wind and tide.
The invention of the internal combustion engine made possible the automobile, and with it a new freedom of movement.
Thomas Edison’s persistent experiments with electric light turned night into day. Messages sped along telegraph wires strung across the continents and through cables under the ocean. What used to take days or even months could now be accomplished in seconds.
In 1894, Marchese Guglielmo Marconi built his first radio equipment, and even the airwaves began dancing to the new tune.
What a world it was — with great machines clanking and puffing, their boilers hissing, motors whirring, wires humming and sparks flying — all obedient to predictable, definable laws, and all under human control.
Even the depths of the universe became humanity’s territory. Using Newton’s laws, scientists predicted, plotted and found previously unknown planets on the fringes of the solar system.
And at the other end of creation, the smallest pieces of matter were giving up their secrets. Physicists had long accepted that matter was made up of indivisible particles called atoms. Now they began to pry them open, discovering electrons and the protons and neutrons that made up the nuclei.
About a hundred years ago a young German student, Max Planck, asked his teacher for some advice on his future career. He had two options. He could become a physicist, or he could study to be a concert pianist. Be a pianist, he was advised. "Physics is finished. . . . It’s a dead-end street." But young Max Planck chose to walk down the "dead-end street" and helped turn the world of science upside down.
Chapter Three: Groping in the Light
Perhaps we should not blame Max Planck’s teacher for telling him physics was a dead-end street. It did seem, at the end of the 19th century, that all the major theories were established and the classical physicist’s work was done.
There were still many problems, but it was felt that at least science was now on the right track. The universe seemed like a great machine, still largely unknown, but thanks to Isaac Newton, at least explainable. Whatever was out there could be relied on to work predictably and coherently, obedient to the laws of gravity and motion that ruled the behavior of all moving objects.
But scientists began to notice that Newton’s laws did not give an adequate explanation of all observable phenomena. There were still some awkward paradoxes.
At the turn of the century, Max Planck focused his attention on one of these paradoxes — why heated objects radiated light of different colors as they became hotter. Most of us don’t give this a second thought, but physicists realized this seemed to contradict a basic law of physics.
In 1900, Max Planck advanced a revolutionary explanation: Energy was not radiated in a steady continuous stream, but in precise, discrete units or "packages," which he called "quanta." His idea helped explain the enigma of radiated light — but it also opened a door to a whole new way of looking at the universe.
Although quantum theory is now a century old, most people are still unfamiliar with it. Even fewer understand it. However, the expression "quantum leap" has entered our language to describe a sudden change in levels of activity or understanding.
For example, we could say that we hope these articles will be a quantum leap in understanding for you. We’ll soon be looking at some very peculiar ideas. If it gets a bit bewildering, don’t worry. You’re in good company. One of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, physicist Niels Bohr, said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
Understandable or not, quantum theory opened the door to the equally bewildering theory of relativity.
Einstein’s Light Fantastic
About the time that Planck was advancing quantum theory, a shy young man named Albert Einstein was employed as an examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern. His job as a patent examiner allowed him much free time, which he spent in scientific investigation.
In 1905, Einstein published a paper on the nature of light. Until the 19th century, light had been thought of as a wave that traveled through "ether," a mysterious substance that flooded the universe, like the water of a cosmic ocean. But experiments in the 19th century had failed to detect this ether. So, reasoned Einstein, if there was no ether, light could not be a wave, because there was nothing for it to "wave" through.
Given what Max Planck had suggested — that light traveled through space in little packets — Einstein thought light must be made of particles, which were later called "photons." He discovered, however, that in some instances, light also behaved like a wave. Light was both a wave and a particle — a "wavicle." Between them, Max Planck and Albert Einstein had opened a window on the extraordinary world of relativity and quantum mechanics.
In 1905, Einstein also published a paper describing his special theory of relativity, which gave a theoretical understanding of a whole host of strange effects in nature that occurred near the speed of light. Newton’s laws had shown that factors governing the speed, direction and mass of an object were constant and thus predictable. For example, if you knew an object’s present location, its speed and direction, you could know for certain exactly where it would be at any given time in the future.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity suggested that the very factors Newton had shown to be constant, were in fact relative. At very high speeds, mass would increase, time slow down and objects actually shorten in the direction of motion.
The only fundamental constant with respect to an observer was the speed of light, always approximately 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) a second.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity, published in 1915, proposed an even stranger idea. The characteristics of space and time were influenced by the presence of matter. Einstein suggested that the universe was in fact four-dimensional, with time being the fourth dimension. He visualized a universe as an expanse of four-dimensional "space-time," a concept that even some physicists still find difficult to grasp.
According to Einstein, matter caused depressions in space-time (think of a bowling ball resting on a mattress). The heavenly bodies followed the shortest distance along the curves of these depressions. The earth’s orbit, for example, followed a curved path in space (or rather space-time) caused by a depression made by the great mass of the sun.
You may find this difficult to comprehend. It gets even stranger, as we’ll see.
Bent Space and the Big Bang
Einstein explained that gravity should not be thought of so much as a force that acts on solid bodies, but as the very "fabric" of space-time. It could warp space, slow down time and even bend light.
This was very different from the rather neighborly, predictable cosmos of Isaac Newton. For those who understood the implications of Einstein’s theories, the universe once more became a rather unsettling place.
The complex mathematics of the theories of relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. In 1916, there was no evidence to support this, and Einstein, in what he later said was the biggest mistake of his life, altered the equations to fit the accepted idea of a static universe.
Almost at the same time, the astronomer Vesto Slipher concluded from his observations that about a dozen galaxies were moving away from the earth at speeds up to about 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour. In 1929, further observations by the astronomer Edwin Hubble verified Slipher’s conclusions. Far from being a constant size, the universe was expanding by many millions of miles every day. Einstein’s extraordinary ideas seemed plausible.
This raised an obvious question. If the universe was expanding, there must have been a time when everything in it was much closer together. This led modern physicists to a theory of the origin of the universe popularly known as the "big bang." It proposed that there was a time when everything in the universe was compressed into a single, infinitely dense point. Scientists estimate that sometime between 10 to 20 billion years ago, this incredibly dense mass "exploded" and began expanding at a tremendous rate.
Although this theory is still controversial, many scientists believe it offers an explanation of the origin of the universe. According to the big bang theory, all that we know and see — all matter, all space, even time itself — was created at that moment. The characteristics that decided the nature of the universe were established. Obviously, no one (no one human, at least) was around to know what was happening at the time, but radio telescopes have detected background radiation "noise" that comes from all directions in the sky and is unrelated to any earthbound or individual celestial source. Scientists think it may be a faint echo of the big bang.
One of the more challenging adventures physicists have undertaken in recent years has been to theorize what the universe was like in the first dynamic moments after the so-called big bang.
Matter would not have existed as it does now. Even individual atoms would not have yet formed. The four fundamental forces that scientists believe govern the behavior of matter — gravity, the electromagnetic force, a strong nuclear force that binds the nucleus of the atom, and a weak nuclear force that controls radioactive decay in nature — theoretically existed only as one "superforce."
Scientists today are hoping to be able to recombine these forces into a grand unified theory. A single theory has been developed for the electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, but gravity remains the odd one out. So far, scientists have been unable to fit it into a unified theory.
Nevertheless, it is one of the outstanding achievements of scientists today to have pushed back the frontiers of understanding and built a picture of what the universe was like 10-43 second after an event that scientists believe was creation. To give an idea of how short that is, a thousandth of a second, the limit of accuracy of most stop watches, is expressed as 10-3.
Physicists are still probing, but it seems that at about 10-43 second, calculations and formulas break down. Some doubt that it will ever be known what happened before this time because of the limits of humanity’s ability to theorize via experimentation. But to push past that barrier is one of the great challenges of physics today.
The Wonderful World of Quarks
Relativity is by no means the strangest idea to come from the new understanding of physics. Even more peculiar are the theories that offer a new way of thinking about what things are made of.
We have come a long way from Aristotle’s assumption that the world is made up of earth, fire, water and air. By the 19th century, scientists had learned that the everyday world was made up of combinations of 92 basic elements. Then they discovered that the elements were made up of atoms.
At the beginning of this century, the internal structure of the atom began to be understood. There was a nucleus, surrounded by electrons. Originally, electrons were thought to orbit the nucleus rather like planets in a miniature solar system. That view has been modified. The electron is now understood to be more of an energy-field cloud fluctuating around a solid nucleus, or rather, a not-so-solid nucleus.
The nucleus itself seemed to be composed of two smaller constituents — protons and neutrons. But were protons and neutrons the end of the trail? Or were there still finer levels of smallness?
In 1964, physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig showed evidence, later confirmed by experiments involving particle accelerators, that protons and neutrons were indeed made up of even more elementary particles, which Gell-Mann called "quarks."
If Einstein’s view of the universe seemed strange, it was even stranger to look into the miniature world of quarks. Again, "look" is not the right word. You can’t see quarks, and not just because they are too small. They also do not seem to be quite "all there." They may prove to be the fundamental building blocks of all matter, and yet they do not appear to have an independent existence. An analogy — although an imperfect one, for there are no adequate words to describe this strange world — is a stitch in a knitted sweater. The sweater is made up of stitches, but you can’t have a single stitch by itself. It depends on its relationship with others for its existence.
Quarks are grouped to form the protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. They are bound together by a force, transmitted by what physicists call "gluons." Gluons bounce back and forth between the quarks transmitting energy and momentum, rather like a ball does when children play catch with it. But once again, no analogy really conveys the wonder of this weird dance of the quarks as they jump and gyrate together to make up the nucleus. Scientists have given the various types of quarks they have discovered such whimsical names as "charm," "strange," "top" and "bottom."
How Real Is Reality?
Although it is hard to grasp, these quarks should not be thought of as the smallest pieces of matter. They are better described as swirls of dynamic energy, which means that solid matter is not, at its fundamental level, solid at all.
Paper, which seems solid, is really a quivering, shimmering, lacy lattice of energy, pulsating millions of times every second as billions of fundamental particles gyrate and spin in an eternal dance. At its most fundamental level, paper is energy — just energy held together by forces of incredible power.
At a simplified level, that is essentially how physicists describe what matter is like — until they can get a better look at the fundamental particles. But physicist Werner Heisenberg indicated there may be an insurmountable problem that will prevent this.
To help us understand this frustrating problem in dealing with subatomic particles, let’s review a basic law of Newtonian physics. Newton showed us that if you know an object’s present location, speed and direction, you can calculate where it will be at a certain time in the future. For example, you can know where a car traveling at a constant speed down a straight highway will be in, say, half an hour. But at the subatomic level, things aren’t so simple.
Heisenberg’s theories led him to the conclusion that we can know either where a particle is or how fast it is traveling. But we cannot know both. The very act of measuring the particle alters its behavior. Think of it as trying to measure with a wooden ruler how far a billiard ball is from the edge of a table. As soon as you touch the ball with the ruler, you move it ever so slightly. So you can never know its exact distance. It’s the same with particles.
Measuring the particle’s speed alters its position, and measuring its position alters its speed. You can have one or the other, but not both. The best you can have are probabilities.
Is Nothing Certain?
Fortunately, none of this alters anything in our everyday, predictable world. When we fly, or drive, or turn on the radio, everything works according to the basic laws of classical Newtonian physics. Up is still up, and down is still down. Newton’s laws of physics even work well for most of the things we want to do in space. His formulas enable us to calculate accurately the speed and direction of a spaceship in orbit. They proved a reliable way to calculate a path to the moon and back.
In the everyday world, nature behaves normally. But as we go farther out, or deeper in, nature’s laws seem less precise and less predictable. As we probe deeper and deeper into nature, we seem to enter a hazy, will-o-the-wisp, never-never land where nothing is solid or certain. It is a region where the five senses can’t go, and where the mind can only wander briefly and quickly gets lost.
Is it the end of the road? Are quarks the ultimate? Or are there yet smaller, even more basic building blocks to the material universe? Are there still other basic forces? If scientists do succeed in unifying the four basic forces into a grand unified theory, will it be the final triumph of theoretical science? Or the beginning of a new chapter?
How many dimensions are there? Most of us have enough difficulty trying to imagine four, but some physicists are seriously speculating that there may be as many as 10 or more.
The world, as we are beginning to understand it today, seems more tantalizing, yet more difficult to understand and more obscure, than we had ever dreamed.
Isaac Newton, reflecting on his astonishing voyages of discovery, said: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
We have pushed the frontiers of knowledge back further and further, only to learn that we may still be only on the edge.
According to physicist John Bell, "Somehow we have come to the end of the human capacity to form sharp pictures of what is going on."
Chapter Four: Mind & Matter
So where are we? Science is now probing at levels in nature where phenomena seem to blur and dissolve into ephemeral wisps of energy. The quest for "reality" has led us into regions that seem decidedly surreal.
If, as John Bell said, we are coming to the end of our human capacity to really grasp what we are learning, will we find ourselves once again groping in the dark? Or are the astounding discoveries of the last few decades pointing us in another direction? If the tools and methodology of physical science are reaching their limits of discovery, yet revealing there is still more to uncover, does this mean that there is an aspect of creation we will never comprehend? That is what we will discuss in this chapter.
In their quest to define the natural world, scientists are suspicious of theories that lean toward complexity. Their experience and intuition tell them that there must be an underlying simplicity and order. As physicist John A. Wheeler wrote: "To my mind, there must be at the bottom of it all...an utterly simple idea. And to me, that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, so beautiful, that we will all say to each other, ‘Oh, how could it have been otherwise?’ "
As Paul Davies wrote in his book Superforce: "If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us" (page 243).
Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize winner and neuroscientist, said science "cannot explain the existence of each of us as a unique self, nor can it answer such fundamental questions as: Who am I? Why am I here? How did I come to be at a certain place and time? What happens after death? These are all mysteries that are beyond science."
Another Nobel Prize winner, physicist Richard Feynman, wrote: "If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we are going, what the meaning of the universe is, and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned."
These are not the kind of statements that we are used to hearing from pragmatic men and women of science. But then, they themselves did not expect to be confronted with this situation. Their discoveries have taken an unexpected turn and cast them upon an unfamiliar shore. They set out to discover the what, where, how and when of the universe, but have arrived at the point where they must confront the question of why. But is it not the traditional role of the philosopher and theologian to question life’s purpose and meaning?
It is. It is time to bring theology back into the discussion.
The Search for Certainty
In our day of post-Newtonian physics, chaos theory and supergravity, the wave-particle duality of matter and radiation, and Heisenberg’s ominous-sounding Uncertainty Principle, some physicists have set out anew on the quest for the holy grail — a Theory of Everything.
In today’s culture, physics blends easily into metaphysics. Or so it seems. There are mathematicians and scientists at the end of the 20th century who sound much like theologians.
But then, it has always seemed logical to many acclaimed physicists and researchers that there is more to the cosmos than meets the eye. British astronomer Fred Hoyle is one. Hoyle once invited a Cambridge audience to envisage the possible existence of what the astronomer Laplace had referred to — a "supermathematician," a superior intelligence "capable of working out in full detail all the consequences of the laws of science" (John Houghton, Does God Play Dice: A Look at the Story of the Universe, page 147).
To Hoyle, the concept of such a supreme intelligence might bring humanity much closer to understanding the meaning and purpose of the universe.
"The Sacraments of Heaven"
In our day, no less a figure than Albert Einstein gave credit to the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation as the essential starting point for coming to grips with the cosmos. "Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding," Einstein commented. "This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion."
There have always been scientists and mathematicians unafraid to bring God into the picture. The astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was inspired to think that with the aid of a telescope and scientific equations he "could think God’s thought after him."
Charles Coulson, who held chairs of physics, mathematics and chemistry, was in the tradition of those earlier thinkers who viewed science as "a fit subject for a Sabbath day." In his 1955 work Science and Christian Belief, Coulson commented: "The reality of God affects every issue, since whatever we see, wherever we look, whether we recognise it as true or not, we cannot touch or handle the things of earth and not, in that very moment, be confronted with the sacraments of heaven."
A World Beyond the Physical?
The same "who" and "why" questions we wrestle with today were probed by Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek thinker who lived in the sixth century B.C. Heraclitus was a philosopher who was also a theologian:
Like most philosophers he longed to find the One behind the Many, some mind-steadying unity and order amid the chaotic flux and multiplicity of the world...if we could understand the world as a whole we should see in it a vast impersonal wisdom, a Logos or Reason or Word. (Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pages 144, 147)
The broad outlines of Heraclitus’ quest near the dawn of Western civilization seem curiously up to date. His formulation of the Logos as the unseen rational principle behind what we see — of a vast, impersonal mind behind matter — these ideas greatly influenced Greek thought:
Among the philosophers the precise significance of Logos varies, but it stands usually for 'reason’.... The Logos is a shock absorber between God and the universe, and the manifestation of the divine principle in the world. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, page 645).
The Greek Stoic philosophers adapted and extended this concept.
The Stoics asked, "What keeps the stars in their courses? What makes the tides ebb and flow? What makes day and night come in unalterable order? What brings the seasons round at their appointed times?" And they answered; "All things are controlled by the Logos of God. The Logos is the power which puts sense into the world, the power which makes the world an order instead of a chaos, the power which set the world going and keeps it going in its perfect order" (William Barclay, Daily Study Bible: John, Volume One, page 35).
The Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria, who lived at the time of Christ, adapted this classical Greek notion of the Logos as the agent of the world’s creation and ordering, the link between God and man:
He held that the Logos was the oldest thing in the world and the instrument through which God had made the world. He said that the Logos was the thought of God stamped upon the universe; he talked about the Logos by which God made the world and all things; he said that God, the pilot of the universe, held the Logos as a tiller and with it steered all things. (Barclay, ibid, page 36).
It is this concept of divine, superintending, creative power that is most prominently at the back of the New Testament writer John’s introduction of Jesus Christ: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). The Greek idea of an impersonal principle of rationality that holds the universe together — the Logos — was given a more exalted and more personal and intimate expression in John’s Gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him was nothing made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)
Majestically and in measured prose, John moves toward his climax: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (verse 14). The Logos became Jesus Christ. John uses the Greek Logos for "Word" as an effective term that his first-century readers could understand.
But what of us today?
John’s stress on the Logos gives Christians the answer to the crucial "who" and "why" questions. Those answers are revealed in the work and role of Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh. He was in the beginning. He was with God. And he was God. And he brought salvation to humanity. "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God" (John 1:12-13).
Living in the Light
The universe, we have discovered, is more complex than anyone had remotely thought possible. Today’s scientific law is often tomorrow’s discarded theory. Yet, as we have seen, the oldest questions still persist — questions put forcefully by cosmologist John Gribbin and Martin Rees, professor of astronomy:
Why is our Universe the way it is? What is our place in it?... Why above all does the Universe have the symmetry and simplicity that have allowed us to make any progress in understanding it? These issues, where even the specialists are still groping for clues, are the ones that come up most frequently in general discussions. (Gribbin and Rees, Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind and Anthropic Cosmology, page xiv)
They have even focused the question more sharply: "What features of the Universe were essential for the emergence of creatures such as ourselves, and is it through coincidence, or for some deeper reason, that our Universe has these features?" (Gribbin and Rees, pages xiv-xv).
Christians believe that their answer rules out such thought of cosmic coincidence. They believe that there is a higher intelligence not limited by the realm of time and space. They believe that God himself has come to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation," the apostle Paul wrote centuries ago, "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible...all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:15-17).
What this means for scientists and lay people, those with little formal education and graduate students, the rich and the poor, the young and the old alike, is that there is glorious good news: There is purpose and meaning both for the cosmos and for each individual human life.
In the words of the evangelical thinker Francis Schaeffer: "The universe had a personal beginning . . . Before 'in the beginning' the personal was already there. Love and thought and communication existed prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth" (Genesis in Space and Time, page 21).
We, the created, are coming to understand our Creator. The challenge is to take the next logical step: to live in the light of that knowledge.
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For Additional Reading
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If you are interested in learning more about the subjects discussed in these articles, you may wish to read some of the books listed below. Most of them should be available at your local bookstore or public library. Although we do not endorse all that is written by these authors, we think they will add to your understanding of the more technical material presented in this article. This list is by no means exhaustive, and new material is being published all the time in this fascinating and dynamic field.
Ashton, John F., ed. In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2001. Reprint, September 2003.
Augros, Robert M. and George N. Stanciu. The New Story of Science. New York: Bantam, 1986.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers. New York: First Vintage, 1985.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Creators. New York: Random House, 1992.
Casti, John L. Paradigms Lost. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1989.
Davies, Paul. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Flanagan, Dennis. Flanagan’s Version. New York: Random House, 1988.
Fritzsch, Harald. The Creation of Matter. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. NY: Bantam, 1988.
Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. NY: Harper, 1958.
Jaki, Stanley L. The Relevance of Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Kaiser, Christopher B. Creation and the History of Science. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago. 1970.
MacArthur, John. The Battle for the Beginning: The Bible on Creation and the Fall of Adam. Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 2001.
Marsh, Frank Lewis. Evolution, Creation and Science. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1947.
Martin, Jobe Ralph. The Evolution of a Creationist : A Laymen's Guide to the Conflict between the Bible and Evolutionary Theory. Rev. ed. Rockwall, TX: Biblical Discipleship Publishers, 2002.
Morris, Henry Madison. The Biblical Basis for Modern Science. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2002. Reprint, November 2002.
Pagels, Heinz R. The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1982.
Polkinghorne, J.C. Science and Creation: the Search for Understanding. NY: Random House, 1989.
Ross, Hugh. The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1993.
Schneer, Cecil J. The Evolution of Physical Science. NY: University Press of America, 1984.
Schrödinger, Erwin. Mind and Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.
Schroeder, Gerald L. Genesis and the Big Bang: the Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible. NY: Bantam, 1992.
Spielberg, Nathan and Bryon Anderson. Seven Ideas That Shook the Universe. NY: Wiley & Sons, 1987.
Van Till, Howard J., Robert E. Snow, John H. Stek, and Davis A. Young. Portraits of Creation: Biblical and Scientific Perspectives on the World’s Formation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.
Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes. NY: Basic Books, 1977.
Weizacker, Carl von. The World View of Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
Wilbur Ken, ed. Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists. Boston: New Science Library/Shambhala, 1984.
Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters. New York: Bantam, 1984.
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