The God Particle

See the Higg's boson in there? or God? This is one of the collisions that went into the discovery of the poorly named "god particle". Courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Some of you may have heard over the summer the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the so called "god particle". Surprisingly for a particle given that name it has very little to do with god or religion or Christianity in particular. Here's an article with a christian take on it:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2012/07/why-scientists-dont-like-the-term-god-particle-for-the-higgs-boson.html

As you see, the title god particle is just a misnomer given to it because an editor wouldn't put up with the verbosity of one physicists frustration with it. God is at best incidental to the particle bearing his title.

For the curious among you as to what this discovery actually means, the physics behind it is actually much more godly than anything about its detection or naming. The idea behind the Higgs (as i understand it so give me some leeway) is why things are so dense. why do they have mass? why are atoms heavy and other things not? professor Peter Higss (an atheist by the way) proposed in the 60's that this is because particles have an interaction with a field, known as the Higgs field. This interaction is a lot like dragging string through syrup where the field likes to clump around around whatever is going through it depending on what it is and how big (the other analogy is a celebrity and a nobody walking through a party, you see people clump around the celebrity but not the nobody). This field, because of quantum weirdness, can be expressed in smallest terms as a particle, known as a boson, in this case, Higgs' boson. I don't know about you but even as an agnostic something seems ... perhaps divine... or at least amazing about that.

Quantum physics and god

I found another interesting article on the relationship between physics an Christianity:
http://www.renewingyourmind.com/Articles/Quantum_Physics.htm

A physics professor was asked whether quantum physics has renewed or brought faith in a christian god, and he asked both a christian and non-christian colleague. while both agreed that quantum physics has really not brought anyone closer to Christianity, many people have found that the extreme orderliness of nature and the lack of proof to at least keep the possibility of a god open. The way he says it, scientists have an awe of god but are not wowed by simple traditional explanations of god. While calling the big bang a proof of genesis 1 may not sit well with physicists, it is hard to deny the beauty and extreme miracle of nature when shown the mechanics of equations of it, it is not too hard to find god in the math there.

On the Other Hand

Somewhat contrary to my last argument, you have to be careful about what parallels one draws between physics and theology, as this article so aptly demonstrates:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2007/06/11/frank-tipler-says-physics-proves-christianity/

No, there is no grand unified theory of everything, not even close to what we would want in a grand unified theory. The fact that the universe started in a singularity is in fact widely accepted, this is known as the Big Bang (a church sponsored view I might add), however this is really not great proof for god, unless you want to bestow divinity upon what essentially was a universal black hole. Also while I'm at it, the advent of better computing is not necessarily a sign that revelations has come upon us and the alpha and the omega are about to hit the fan. Quantum computing, the next level of computing being discussed here, has only so far managed to calculate 5x3=15, a fair bit away from an AI causing Terminator. My personal favorite, from somebody who professes to be an expert no less,"Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory.". Let me break that down for you, Tipler claims that Jesus through the power of bunches of really fast highly charged particles (about 19 or so centuries before the first particle accelerators, without a physical reason to be there)  somehow managed to use this in conjunction with "dematerialization" which in essence is teleportation (which only practically happens at a scale that makes atoms look pretty big, otherwise the probability of it happening is pretty much like winning the cosmic lottery for four years in a row around the world) to somehow make himself extremely buoyant. Beats me how he thinks high energy physics (hypothetical extremely sketchy physics in the case of the "multiple universe model") all combined to make Jesus walk on water.I mean does he think that suddenly particle beams exerted such energy on Christ's feet to keep him standing straight? its baffling. 

The conclusion to be drawn here though, is that the philosophy of Christianity and Physics is perhaps not so irreconcilable, trying to make physical law into a biblical explanation, doesn't work well. I've mentioned it before but it seems the laws of the universe are secular. 

Beauty

I found an interesting article on the crossovers between theology and the christian traditions at:
http://www.cslewis.org/journal/physics-and-christian-theology-beauty-a-common-dialect/

The author discusses the search for beauty as a major talking point between the two ideals. Physicists are always looking for a simple expression, a symmetry, a grand underlying principle from which you can derive things. To them (us?) this is what makes a system beautiful, simple expressions and no chaotic or un-neccessarily complicated principles or equations describing a system. For example, most of electro-statics is well defined and derived very simply from single equation, Coulomb's law. For the followers of the christian tradition beauty has also been a target, a kind of beauty in the worship of god and messiah, a beauty in salvation, a community coming together. Many things describe the christian world's beautiful, just as many things describe the physical beauty of the world, maybe there is overlap to be found.

Physics Jokes Part 2: Anthropomorphical Boogaloo

Seems unlikely that Physics ought to prefer a Methodist to a Presbyterian or something similar no?  Taken from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, all rights go to Zach Weinersmith.

There is a principle in physics that is highly hated, and adhering to it gets you a lot of crap, known as the Anthropomorphic principle. The argument goes a lot like roughly saying "we exist, so the universe was made this way so it could happen." This is bad science. This is putting results before reasons, and arguing that implication works in reverse, logic simply does not work like that. Furthermore, if we say that our physics, that allow so beautifully for us to exist, argues design, who's design? Carrying this argument suddenly becomes vary precarious. Did god design physics for the Christians or the Hindus? how far do you you want to take it? Did he design physics for Catholics? The fact is that mathematical and physical sciences are nearly entirely secularized in their truths. However this needn't be a disproof of the entirety of faith, as many feel. Instead, perhaps this is a reason for unity of faith, no-one of us is any more favored than another.

Mister Leibniz, You Should Have Gotten a Copyright

Gottfried Leibniz, Mathmatician, Philosopher, Prominent Lutheran -Cathlic Reconciler. Hair included.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

   Gottfried Leibniz was born on the first of July 1646 in Leipzig. His father was a Professor of moral philosophy, a fact that would later influence his development as a philosopher and a religious figure. For the most part the Polymath was self taught, not really attending any schools after his father had died. His resume was exceedingly impressive, including self taught Greek and Latin  and logic.  He entered the University of Leipzig as a law student at the age of fifteen. Fifteen. For the most part he seemed to want to study philosophy and law, but it was likely during this time he became acquainted with the scientific and mathematical works of Kepler, Galileo and Descartes. Leipzig refused him a law degree, but leaving his hometown he received his doctorate in 1666, not yet even 21 years old. He was even offered a professorship, that he turned down.

  Leibniz found employment under what was known as the "elector", a position designed to defend the fractured German states and principalities. For example, Leibniz spent some of his time writing under the guise a catholic priest as to why a German noble ought to have the kingdom of Poland  from a mathematical stand point. Leibniz later found his attention turned towards France  who had grown aggressive toward Holland and Germany, and Leibniz wrote the French Secretary of Sate tying to funnel aggression away from Germany and into a holy conquest of Egypt or the like. Leibniz was invited to Paris and was informed that Holy Wars had gone out of Fashion with St Louis some centuries earlier, but thank you anyways. Leibniz continued to try and convince them to go forward with this neo-crusade but it didn't really happen until napoleon. 

    Leibniz's time in Paris was not without merit though, he spent some time meeting with the philosophers there and he wrote an essay both defending the new Mathematical explanations of nature, and reconciling them with the new methods of philosophy. He also defended the Trinity claiming that the study of Mathematics almost required divinity to be a thing.  

   However more importantly it was during this time that he met a Mathematician by the name of Christian Huygens. This became a time of huge discovery both for math and science but for Leibniz as well. by 1673, in between political missions to London and being inducted into nearly scientific organization under the sun for discoveries in math, natural science, optics, philosophy, hydro-statics, pneumatics and even early computing, Leibniz stumbled almost at once onto perhaps the most famous discovery of his career, the formulation of differential and integral calculus. 

   For those of you who know the history of calculus, most of you will protest that it was in fact Issac Newton (another famous christian physicist-mathematician, but we'll get to him later) that discovered calculus. well it appears quite separately and a little before Newton, Leibniz discovered the exact same thing, but received little to no credit for it for various reasons, except for having his name on the common d/dx notation. The most fundamental discovery in math in several centuries, and he forgot to write about it extensively and claiming it for his own. Sure he was in it for the discovery, but the irony is still astronomical.

   Returning to Germany in 1673, Leibniz found found employ under the Duke of Brunswick, Performing many Chancellor duties for the duke. He traveled and composed the Brunswick family, studying even Vatican records (despite being Lutheran) where he was offered custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his conversion.

   Speaking of which, during his 40 years under the Brunswicks, a great deal of his time was spent on his scheme for the reunification of the Lutheran and Cathlolic Churches. Various writings and meetings upon which he implored them to recognize their differences, but the English revolution in 1688 destroyed his scheme in Hannover and Leibniz reunion fell apart.

   Leibniz's last great contributions came between 1690 and 1716, in philosophy. They were for the most part preliminary sketches. But they hinted at something far larger and greater.

  So what can we learn from Leibniz? his was a life of reconciliation of math philosophy and divinity of all stripes. 

Literalism

What happens when you take a straight forward literal physical-sciences interpretation of the bible? Well its the kind of bad joke I should likely apologize for before hand.

Zach Weinersmith (and yes that is his name), The creator of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal web-comic, shows what might happen if we throw fusion together with the Bible. All rights for the image go to Zach Weinersmith, I didn't make this, bla bla bla. 

Quite frankly things fall apart with full literal interpretation and physical explanation of the miraculous acts of the bible. What Zach depicted here quite frankly would happen if one were to fuse together alcohol out of its constituent elements. Can a physicist still believe in this case? Did Jesus ignore our normal laws of conservation of mass an energy when he made dense wine out of less dense water? Did he create mass when he fed all these people? Do we accept that perhaps there are flaws in physical laws of the universe tat perhaps divinity or Christ or whatever can exploit? The principles of Induction would argue no, but science is by no means complete. On the other hand (or cheek for those of you in a literal mood) do we completely right off thousands of years of tradition? Of explanation and comfort and say that these tales are flawed? Exaggerated  Allegories?

And here's the big one. Is it necessary to do either?

Plenty of men have managed to be both be scientists and religious, despite knowing full well the apparent contradiction of applying everything we know to a religion. Perhaps the most famous view (and my personal favorite) comes from Einstein, that there is something divine to the science itself, he called it seeing "the mind of god". Perhaps that is the best framework to make the two exist, if a little lopsided.