Pictures of the machine that is intended to find the 'God particle'...

Trying to prove God's existence by reason and science is ultimately a futile endeavor! After all, if we could contain God's essence, God's being, or God's self within any part of our human reason or logic, we would be able to contain God within our minds (logically that would mean that we would be more knowledgeable than God! Surely we can see that this is a logical inconsistency!) It is for this very reason that belief in God will always require FAITH, the belief that what one experiences to be true can be true even though it cannot be explained, quantified, or measured.

We do this all the time in our ordinary relationships - I love Megan! I cannot measure that love objectively (i.e., I could not tell you how much it weighs, what shape it is, or even exactly what makes up this complex emotion called 'love'). Even if one were to stimulate the brain to oscillate at the same frequency, and ensure that the same chemicals were present in the brain as when I feel love for Megan, that would not be love. Love has an element of the mysterious to it. There is something about it that does not require understanding, rather it is intended to be enjoyed, to be loved, and experienced!

That, is in some poor way, a representation of faith.

Another great misunderstanding about the relationship between science and faith is that faith is the 'stuff' of religion, whereas fact is the 'stuff' of science. Nothing could be further from the truth! Both science and religion depend on both fact and faith. Science has a great deal of faith within it. For example, when one builds a large bridge, it is built in accordance with the principles of Newtonian Physics (i.e., as long as it is strong enough, and the two ends meet, it should join up and you should be able to travel along it. We 'believe' this to be true because this is what we have come to experience to be true. However, if you are a Quantum physicist you may not be as confident in this fact - Schroedigger's principle shows that at a quantum level we cannot accurately predict the exact outcome of any supposed mathematical 'certainity'. At times when particle is fired into Gate A it will exit through Gate A, but at other times when fired at Gate A it will (for some unknown reason, called the 'uncertainty principle' exit through Gate B.) That something will happen the way we anticipate it to take place is as much a matter of faith as it is of fact. We cannot assume that science is based entirely on facts!

Of course the same goes for religion, not everything in religion is based on indisputable 'facts' (in the sense that this word has come to be in modernism). To say that my wife has eyes as blue as pools of clear water does not mean that they are 4 meters deep and can be used to quench the thirst of animals! BUT, but the same token, it does not mean that my statement is NOT factually true! Quite on the contrary, it could be one of the most trustworthy and true things that I know about my love for her. Context moves faith to fact (and allows facts to take on a variety of 'true' meanings).

I hope this makes sense. So, does a God particle exist? Perhaps! Does it prove that God exists... Well, I could spend the billions of Dollars used on that machine in far better ways to prove that a loving, healing, life changing, God exists - for some food will be the truth, for others it will be medicine, for another it will be a job... Yes, God's existence can be proved. It can be proved in love.

Anyway, here's an interesting scientific experiment.

Great photos and an article in Nat Geo about the Large Hadron Collider being built and tested at CERN in Switzerland to search for the so called ‘God particle,’ the massive Higgs boson which is believed to exist, but no one has seen one yet. I like this description from the article about the difficulty in finding it:

Building a contraption like the LHC to find the Higgs is a bit like embarking on a career as a stand-up comic with the hope that at some point in your career you’ll happen to blurt out a joke that’s not only side-splittingly funny but also a palindrome.

Technorati tags: Science and Religion, CERN, The God particle, Large Hadron Collider

Comments

[Cori]

I connect with what you're saying here (about God being as real as love) as I often say it myself. But a counter-comment has been that we can see and touch the giver of love whereas we cannot see and touch God. We may be able to see the effects of God in the world but we cannot see God himself and for some people this creates a terrible stumbling block.

Thanks for all you write, Dion, it's a great read!