Zeal For Truth

Sometime in the latter part of 2006, Queen’s University (or rather a student body within the group) held a debate. It was marketed under the title “Does God Exist”. In the days leading up to the debate I overheard a fellow classmate saying he’d go to the debate to see the Christian debater get destroyed. That seemed to be the mood of the class in general, well at least the vocal ones.

I showed up at the debate and watched from an elevated position as the debate took place. Both participants in the debate were highly educated with accolades in various fields of study. The participant speaking against the existence of God argued all the classic arguments said by just about anyone who doesn’t believe in Him (I can’t see Him, why does He let bad things happen to good people etc…); the person speaking in favour of His existence focused on the existence of a protein existent in certain organic beings that is so complex that it could not have been produced by common means, which suggests a higher power or intelligence. If he could convince his opponent to admit that then he could then move on to counter arguments as to the nature of God.

I am currently reading a book called Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown. As some of you may know, Dan Brown is the author of the book the Da Vinci Code, which follows protagonist Robert Langdon, a specialist on symbology, as he tries to uncover a mystery that affects the very foundations of Christianity. Though it is a fictional book, I did find it rather interesting to read. Anyways, Angels and Demons is a prequel to the Da Vinci Code, introducing Robert Langdon as the protagonist who tries to help when a high ranking physicist working for a physics lab in CERN, located in Geneva, is murdered and branded with the symbol of what is supposedly a long dead secret society of academics persecuted by the Catholic church.

Book plot aside, what I found particularly interesting was how the victim was described. The book’s premise is that, for as long as scientists and churches have existed, there has been a separation of church and state, which still exists to this day. The generally accepted theory of how everything came into existence among scientists and physicists is that of the Big Bang, which accords to The First Law of Thermodynamics (or Conservation of Energy), which states, essentially, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only reformed. And for the vast majority of applications in physics, or worldly applications this holds true.

The creationist theory by the Church is found in the book of Genesis, where God created everything.

The Big Bang theory suggests that at one point in time, there existed a super dense and hot singularity that suddenly exploded and began to expand, creating what we know now as the universe.

The problem with the Genesis theory (which non-creationists love to point out) is that it does not agree with the laws of thermodynamics. Conversely, the problem with the Big Bang theory, which the Church often likes to point out, is that, while the math and physics behind the theory seem to work for history as it goes back, it breaks down as they get to time zero, the very instant of the time of the bang, which they cannot account for (String Theory has a theory for this too but that’s another matter).

Back to the victim. As mentioned before, he was a highly renowned physicist working for CERN who had been responsible for many of science’s breakthroughs in physics. He was also a priest. His belief was that science, specifically the nature of physics, didn’t deny the existence of God, but rather proved or confirmed it. Thus, he was working on an experiment deep underground to create what is known as antimatter.

Antimatter, as the name suggests, is the physical opposite of matter. Theoretically, if everything is composed of matter in this universe, than it’s opposite would be a world composed of exactly the same matter and particles, just with opposite charges. Antimatter, though, is highly unstable as once it is mixed with matter, it destroys the particle of matter it touches along with itself in what is known as mutual annihilation.

In his creation of this antimatter he had succeeded in creating something out of nothing, which was his goal in helping him unify religion and science.

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So while the book is fiction (some ideas in it are true, some are false; these can be seen on Dan Brown’s website for the book), it does have an interesting concept of using physics to unify religion and state instead of trying to prove one over the other.