Sitting alone on the porch of a friends cabin in Wisconsin staring out at 106 degrees due east (thanks iPad compass app) over Lake Michigan. Imagining the shoreline of Michigan 118 miles away (thanks Google). Imagining the volume. The expanse. Watching one wave hit the shore and imagining the potential of trillions more in the expanse. Imagining eternity. I got dizzy. So I stopped.
I went back to reading the news and came across an interesting article on the $4 billion dollar Hadron Large Collider and particle accelerator in France built in 2008 to search for the elusive Higgs boson particle. (see photo)
“Higgs boson” is the only subatomic particle predicted to exist but still not yet discovered. Other particles including quarks, electrons, and neutrons have all been discovered, but the theory of Higgs boson is so key to fundamental physics that Nobel Laureate scientist Leon Lederman nicknamed it the “God Particle.”
Lederman claims he named it the “God Particle” in 1994 because it was “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” Lets be clear. Nobody saw it when the Hadron turned on in 2008. Nobody has seen it yet. Apparently there is an update next week. But even then, “even if we see strong evidence of a Higgs-like particle … the correct understanding of that particle — in particular, determining whether it is or isn’t a ‘simplest Higgs’ — may take years.”
So apparently the observations and tests don’t prove that Higgs boson exists. But instead, the concept of Higgs boson explains the observations and tests so well that it must exist and be the only answer. It’s almost as though high-energy-particle physicists don’t need to wait to see Higgs boson before they start believing in it.
Hmmmmmmmm. Sounds familiar. Sounds like what I’m so often accused of when I share my “simplistic faith in God” to an atheist.
I am constantly told that for God to be real then He must be proved by the empirical and measurable results from the scientific method. “I can’t believe in anything that can’t be proven,” I’m told. But it seems to me that the scientific method is really about offering the best theoretical explanation to a question. Furthermore, understanding that our scientific explanations often cant be firmly proven, may lie beyond proof, or at the very least will require constant scrutiny and further searching.
Science often offers explanations for the existence of invisible and undetectable mysteries such as black holes and dark matter, to explain what can’t be seen. It seems that the reason why Higgs boson is hypothesized to exist is not because it does exist, but because it makes so much sense based on other observations. The best indication that it exists seems to be the power it seems to have to effect its environment. Again…hmmmmmm.
Just as the physicists at CERN believe Higgs exists because it’s the best explanation based on other observations I believe in the existence of God because He gives me the best framework for making sense of the world I see around me. Harvard psychologist William James wrote that, “religious faith is about inferring the existence of an unseen order in which the riddles of the natural order can be explained.” Sure, OK. Yes and Amen. Sounds a bit like Hebrews 11:1-2 in The Message, “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.”
I do think Christians need to learn a very valuable lesson from the physicists at CERN. Never stop looking. Never stop studying. Never stop searching. Never stop getting closer. Never stop being open to other ideas. Just like science, theology too is progressive. Never stop asking why.
“Last December, the teams reported that they saw “tantalizing hints” of the Higgs’ existence at a mass of around 125 billion electron volts, or 125 GeV.” I have no idea what that means, but I found “tantalizing hints” of the existence of the God that created Higgs this morning in prayer, scripture, and worship.
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