On July 4th, news reports around the world
screamed “God Particle Found.” A group of scientists at CERN (the European
Organization for Nuclear Research) had conducted experiments that proved almost
certainly the existence of a subatomic particle that called “Higgs Boson” aka
“God Particle”.
Scientists have struggled with the question “Why does matter
exist?” In 1964, Peter Higgs hypothesised the existence of this particle. He
proposed that the universe is bathed in an invisible energy field. Particles
gain mass by travelling through this energy field (“Higgs Field”). National Geographic News reported that a
scientist said, "It would be very difficult to
form atoms...So our orderly world, where matter is made of atoms, and electrons
form chemical bonds—we wouldn't have that if we did not have the Higgs field."
The report then summarised, “In other words: no galaxies, no stars, no planets,
no life on Earth.”
Let’s understand this from a non-scientist’s point
of view. Think of particles as cars, travelling through an energy field called
“road rage.” Those cars then end up in a traffic jam. Observers on the
sidelines then exclaim that they have discovered how traffic jams are created.
The observers don’t have an explanation as to how the cars or the road rage
came into existence.
And that is the problem with this fantastic theory
of how things came to be. It does not explain how the subatomic particles or
the energy field exist. The Higgs Boson exists because subatomic particles exist
and the energy field exists. The Higgs Boson isn’t the First Cause, i.e. it
isn’t God or a particle of God.
What scientists are trying to do is to come up with
a “theory or everything.” John Polkinghorne, particle physicist turned Anglican
priest writing in his book Quantum
Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (Yale University, 2007) said
that it is impossible for scientists to come up with a “theory of everything”
and that “if [scientists] want to pursue the search for understanding
through and through…they will have to be prepared to go beyond the limits of
science itself in the search for the widest and deepest context of
intelligibility. I think that this further quest, if openly pursued, will take
the enquirer in the direction of religious belief.”
As Paul said, “What may be known about God is plain to
them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of
the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have
been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that
people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19-20).
As scientists try to discover the origin of everything,
it will be well to listen in on the conversation between God and Job. The man
Job was angry with his friends for convicting him of sins they thought he must
be guilty of to be subjected to the woes he was experiencing in life.
Frustrated by not being able to convince them of his innocence, Job shifted his
anger on to God and questioned God’s justice. In the end, God confronts Job. But
instead of answering Job’s charges and questions, God asks Job, “Where were you
when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (38:4). In effect, God was saying to
Job, “You can’t know what happened, because you weren’t there. You have to take
my word for what happened then.” The point God made then, is what we too have
to accept.
Recently Khushwant Singh echoed the old question that
atheists and agnostics think is a clever one: “If God created all things, then
who created him?” (Hindustan Times,
July 21, 2012). Long before him, Bertrand Russell said, “the argument
that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may
say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously
in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until
one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I
there found this sentence: ‘My father taught me that the question “Who made me?”
cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question “Who
made god?”’ That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy
in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God
must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as
well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument”
(Why I Am Not a Christian and
Other Essays ... (1957).
In their foolishness, people think that it is clever to
ask, “Who made God?” It isn’t. The universe and life exist within time, and
time is linear. Everything within the framework of time has beginnings and
endings. That is why it is valid to ask as to what it is that made the universe
begin to exist. Only a power that exists outside the framework of time can be
the cause of things within time. There has to be a First Cause, and God is that
First Cause of all things.
Genesis 1 gives the best account of what God did at
creation:
·
God
created everything “out of nothing”
·
God
created by command: “Let there be...and it was so...”
·
God made
everything good (that things went wrong is another story)
·
God made
humans in the image of God, which is why only humans can think abstractly,
appreciate abstract qualities.
