The God of Physics Post 1

CHAPTER ONE

I STUMBLED UPON OMNIPOTENCE

I would have loved to begin this long piece from my youthful years of imagination by telling you about myself. But I discovered like Albert Einstein would agree, it seems it is not necessarily you or me at the center of the universe. Anthropocentric views often lead us toward religion rather than towards God. And soon as we are led away into religion and more religion, we veer into superstitions and lose the truth which was our original aim.
Like Pythagoras, the Bible agrees that God is this truth. Organized religion has too often led us away from God (the truth), rather than towards God which was the aim.
Science and religion are not separate things as you have often heard. Science and religion are part of the same truth. Science is necessary to unearth and unravel the mysteries etched in poetic and figurative language left behind by the ancients on pages of Holy Books. Albert Einstein once said “science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind”.
I agree that both religion and science are part of the same truth. I agree that the scientific community and organized religion have been seeking the same truth throughout history.
But what is science? Is it not a study of the universe man has embarked on armed with his five senses? The Bible says “In Him (God) we live and move. The fact is that we live and move in the universe. Is the Bible calling the universe “God”? Is science a study of God?
A Christian once told me that the Bible verse I quoted above was referring to us being in the presence of God. I agree. The Bible explains that God is omnipresent (everywhere). Everywhere implies the universe and any dimension beyond it (immanence and transcendence). The universe is technically everywhere. The Bible is “technically” pantheistic in my view.
Before we run on the idea that the Bible is pantheistic, Romans 1:20 gives us a clearer picture. It suggests that the universe is a description of God. The universe is not God, the universe rather is a description of God, hence the Bible saying we move and live in Him is accurate. If you are dealing with an artwork like an image that describes Apollo, you can loosely say “look at Apollo” albeit it being not literally Apollo but rather a description of Apollo. The perfect description of God is the world at the era of Eden.
If the universe is a description of God, it can be said that studying the universe is studying a description of God. Science is basically a probe and study of the universe, hence science is the study of God. Indeed science and religion are a part of the same truth and compliment each other. The truth they both seek is God but they fail to understand that they need to work hand in hand to arrive at this truth.
If the universe is the description of God, I guess we can understand better why it is infinite. I once had a man ask me why other planets exist, why many other parts of the earth inhospitable to human life exist and why majority of the water on the planet is not good for human consumption? He asked me all these questions, all the while implying that God did not make the universe specially for us. I realized that the planets interact with us gravitationally and our existence would be impossible without them because they help keep the earth in its orbit around the sun. I realize that the inhospitable parts of the planet and the water bodies we cannot consume host many other lifeforms which are important for the food chain to be complete and for nature to have a balance. I mean, there are many poisonous plants that grow in places crawling with herbivores. The poison of the poisonous plant may make it seem useless in the eyes of a myopic herbivore but in reality, the plant is preserved for other purposes like fighting hazards like global warming. The myopic herbivore would not be aware that the very poisonous plant is the reason it isn’t slain by global warming. The herbivore owes it’s life to the existence of the poisonous plant. This myopic herbivore is basically every human being citing the fact that most of the universe is inhospitable to them as a reason the Bible’s idea of man being the focus of God is wrong.
For the Bible writers all that happen is God. When thunder strikes it is a proof of how terrible God can be, the rain is a blessing from God, and so is the sun. They ascribed everything to God because they understood that the universe is a description of God.
Pythagoras thought of God’s physical form as light and God’s soul as truth. If God is truth like Pythagoras and the Bible say He is, then organized religion and science in their war against each other have often led us away from God (truth) as seen in the trial of Galileo. But then what is the problem? Why does it seem in this world that science and religion are different things entirely? This book addresses this question and much more.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: Throughout history, dozens of pantheons, each containing dozens of gods have emerged from culture to culture. We have heard of the god of thunder, of romance, of beauty, of war, of fertility, etcetera. What if I told you that there is only one God, and He is the God of everything? He is the one I call The God of Physics.

I am a Christian, and I prefer to call myself the student of geophysics who fell in love with astrophysics and creative writing, mostly poetry. It is true that I am in love with very distant fields of study, but that’s not as strange as the fact that I have been in polyamorous relationships with fictional characters I create in my head. Trust me, I am not crazy, I just have a mind that would not stop wandering.
I often get a couple of people who would call me a case of cognitive dissonance because some people think it is impossible to be both Christian and geophysicist and be sane. These people seem to think science contradicts the Christian’s worldview. But I know these people are simply guilty of haste.
Now there are a lot of Christians who are notable scientists in contemporary times and throughout history. How come we have faith in God and are also students of science, applying the scientific method? The answer is in two parts. Firstly, science does not contradict God. Secondly we do not apply the scientific method all the time, in every situation. I would not advice anyone to apply the scientific method all the time because it is basically not feasible or useful to use the scientific method in some cases.
Although procedures relating to the scientific method vary from one field of inquiry to another, they are frequently the same from one to another. The process of the scientific method involves making conjectures (hypotheses), deriving predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments or empirical observations based on those [Peirce, Charles Sanders (1908). "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" . Hibbert Journal. 7: 90–112 – via Wikisource. with added notes. Reprinted with previously unpublished part, Collected Papers v. 6, paragraphs 452–85, The Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 434–50, and elsewhere].
Clearly, the scientific method is a very important tool, but it does have its limitations. These limitations are based on the very things that make science great, the fact that a hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable and the fact that experiments and observations be repeatable. This places certain topics beyond the reach of the scientific method.
For instance, the scientific method is incapable of making value judgments and other forms of measurement that require subjective perception like a teacher asked to point out the most sociable student in his class, a dozen teachers might present a dozen different students from the same class and the scientific method would be unable to remedy this.
The point is that the scientific method and science itself is limited, as limited as the human mind which created it. So when an atheist calls me a case of cognitive dissonance because I believe in God, a subject that remains a debate with mainstream scientists and philosophers, I wonder because there are a lot of things believed in by the atheist, things like “what the atheist believes is moral or immoral” which have not and may never be solved or tested by the scientific method. The scientific method is thus limited and is not an absolute judge because science is subject to changing through the years as knowledge and ideas increase (or decrease). The bottom line is that every human is guilty of not applying the scientific method at one point or another.
Though like every human being out there Christians do not use the scientific method in every aspect of their lives, Christians understand that when doing science they are looking at the natural mechanisms God put in place to ensure that the effects we see in nature arise. For instance, though we know that God created our faces and bodies, we also know that God set up natural mechanisms like genetics to ensure our bodies take the shape we see them own. In other words, though God is responsible for the effects we see in nature, He uses natural mechanisms like genetics. There’s hardly any need for cognitive dissonance here.
In my worldview God exists and I have evidence of God through my personal experiences and encounters in life which of course are not proven or disproven by the scientific method. I also have a good dose of clear scientific evidences of the existence of God.
As I would show in this book subsequently, the idea of an infinite God is pro science..........To be continued.



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