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Contemplating the God Particle
When I was a small child my father, who was a pediatrician, cautioned us so
severely about the physical harm fireworks can cause to the human body that I developed
something of an aversion to them. I liked to watch fireworks displays from a distance, but
being close to even so much as a firecracker made me extremely nervous. I got over this
feeling by the time I was a teenager, to the point where I eventually developed and tested a
system for launching 120 bottle rockets very nearly simultaneously. About five years ago I
reconnected with an old high school acquaintance, discovering to my intense delight that he
now puts on fireworks displays professionally. I spent an interesting part of one afternoon
receiving a demonstration of the prolonged and intricate process he goes through to create
a fireworks display. It is always interesting to get a look behind the scenes, to learn the
ordinarily hidden details of a creative process.
High winds and dry conditions forced many communities to cancel pyrotechnic
displays in connection with Independence Day this year, but enough fireworks came out of
Geneva on the Fourth of July to make up for it. Scientists announced finding evidence of
the Higgs Boson, the so-called “God Particle.” Since then, Creationists and atheists have
had a field day debating the implications of this new look behind the scenes of the ultimate
creative process, the universe itself. I’ve read several articles that attempt to explain the
Higgs Boson and its significance in layman’s terms. I understand it to be as follows.
Mathematics fails to explain perfectly the interaction of known subatomic particles. More
than a decade ago, a scientist name Peter Higgs argued that the mathematics would make
sense if, instead of operating in a vacuum, subatomic particles operated within, and
interacted with, an invisible field of as yet undiscovered particles. Subsequently, scientists
worldwide devoted a tremendous amount of time and money trying to detect the theoretical
particle, labeled the Higgs Boson, which would make up the theoretical Higgs field. If
proven, Higgs’s theory would explain how the fundamental elements of the universe interact
and operate. Detection of the Higgs Boson proved so elusive that while being interviewed
one investigating scientist cursed it, calling it the “God –[bleep]” particle, a term the press
shortened to “God particle.”
Although the term “God particle” came into being more or less by accident, it
stuck because it seemed apt. Indeed, after the announcement in Geneva concerning
detection of the Higgs Boson, some atheists proclaimed that our understanding of the
universe is now so complete that it eliminates any role for a creator; God therefore does not
exist. Christian fundamentalists have either condemned the science as flawed, or cited
other evidence, allegedly scientific, which they claim proves that God does exist.
I’ve not qualified to analyze the science behind the controversy. But
contemplating the Higgs Boson has led me to muse upon what we know about the universe
and the question of whether that knowledge conflicts either with Scripture or with the
concept of a Creator. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe about 15
billion years old, the universe having its origins in a singular event commonly labeled the
Big Bang. The Book of Genesis provides a deeply moving and highly poetical commentary
on the relationship between the Creator and the Creation. Symbolically we are formed from
the dust of the ground, and quite literally to dust we shall return, but as a species we are
descended from apes -- that is, from earlier forms of primates. Fossil and DNA evidence
make this clear. While such knowledge leads me to interpret Genesis as a beautiful
metaphor rather than a factual account of creation, it has no impact on my belief in God or
the significance of Scripture. For me, God the author of complex evolutionary patterns is
more awesome and magnificent than a God who did it all in six days. Evolution is a pattern
within creation; by itself, it doesn’t address whether or not a creator exists. I don’t
understand why some people consider irreconcilable with religious faith the fact that we
evolved from not-quite-so-smart hominids into hominids with larger brains – homo sapiens.
Our non-human ancestors were probably just folks. Homo habalis and Australopithecus
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may have been overly hairy and a bit on the short side, but they probably compared
favorably to the current residents of Arkansas. (You can insert whatever state makes the
joke funniest for you.) Knowing that we have reached the present day through discernible
cause and effect, and through a process of natural selection, all of it taking place within a
field of Higgs Bosons, might refine our understanding of creation, but it hardly constitutes
evidence that no creator was involved.
But it does make one think about the almost unimaginable complexity of
things. Did you ever consider fully just how much effort God undertook in order to bring us
into existence? Apes are just the last little bit. Were it possible to travel backwards in time
200 million years, visiting each earlier generation, our humpty-millionth grandparents were
not hominids, nor even monkeys, but small four-legged mammals. This is not an
abstraction. All of us come from a specific individual mammal (let’s call him Fred), without
whose successful mating none of us would exist. But who were Fred’s ancestors? Go back
another several million years and we find that our fore bearers were not even warmblooded. They were lizards called pelycosaurs. We are quite literally lizard-spawn, the
spawn not of lizards in general but a specific actual lizard, one that existed in fact, not
theory, a lizard who basked in the sun about a billion year ago and passed along the genetic
material that became us. Let’s call her Ethel. Just like Fred, no Ethel, no us. And so on
back through time, passing back through ancestors sans backbones or even dwelling on
land, until were reach the time when life first began on earth. So who are our ultimate
ancestors? Where did Fred and Ethel come from? Some 3.5 billion years ago, for reasons
still not clear, some amino acids combined and began to self-replicate. Thus life began.
Think about it. A time machine investigating our ancestors could trace a direct line back not
merely through mammals and lizards, slugs and amoebas, but back to a specific event, a
“breeding pair” of amino acids. Not only all of us, but also every bit of life which has ever
existed on earth, descends from this one chemical reaction. (We might do well to remind
ourselves occasionally that quite literally all life is one.)
But those chemical compounds that are our ancestors didn’t create themselves.
The sub-atomic particles that formed the components of our chemical ancestors had existed
since the beginning of time. The protons, neutrons, and electrons forming the amino acids
that combined on a specific day to create life were spewed out from the center of the
universe by the so-called Big Bang. The sub-atomic particles that would one day constitute
life travelled unimaginable distances for billions of years even before participating in the
complex and prolonged coalescence that brought our galaxy, solar system, and planet into
being.
Some atheists cite the complexity and age of the universe as evidence that
God does not exist. If God is all powerful, they ask, why didn’t God create the universe in
six days as described in Genesis? But that is like asking why an artist paints on more than
one size of canvas rather than always painting the smallest possible picture. The artist does
what the artist wants to do. Why should the length and complexity of the process suggest
that there is no meaning or purpose to the universe? Or that it has no Creator? I find the
concept of a Creator significantly less implausible than the idea that some amino acids
accidentally bumped together and 3.5 billion years later one of their descendants just
happened to write King Lear. But what about Genesis? If science “disproves” the biblical
account of creation, doesn’t that prove that God doesn’t exist? Doesn’t it indicate that
Scripture has no value? Hardly. Scientific discoveries have not “disproved” anything in
Genesis because there is not the slightest indication within the Book of Genesis that the
creation stories found in the Bible are meant to be taken literally. After all, Genesis
contains not one but two separate creation stories, Genesis Chapter One, which I drew upon
selectively for our call to worship, and Genesis Chapter Two, part of which formed one of
today’s scripture readings. These creation stories are metaphors. The Bible abounds with
metaphors. Jesus uses them all the time. In John 6:35, for example, Jesus refers to
himself as the “bread of life.” In John 6:14, Jesus states that he is “the way, the truth, and
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the life.” As Christians we can understand the Genesis creation stories to be metaphors
without denying the authority of Holy Scripture or conceding anything to atheists.
But there are, of course, three creation stories in the Bible -- two in Genesis
and one in the Gospel of John. I can’t read the original Greek in which John was written,
and my Latin is far too rusty to appreciate John in the Roman Catholic Bible, the Vulgate, so
there may be much to this Gospel that I fail to appreciate due to my linguistic limitations.
But regardless of which English translation I read, I consider the opening passages of the
Gospel of John to be the most beautifully worded and philosophically profound thing I have
ever read. I like the language of the King James Version: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was
made.” The sources I consulted inform me that the Greek term “Logos,” which the King
James translates as “Word,” might also be translated as “Spirit” or “Mind,” and that in Greek
the Logos is understood to be God’s thoughts, God’s mind, the action of God thinking, or all
of the above. To put it another way, God had an idea and by having the idea brought the
universe into being. This too, is a metaphor, but what a sublime one! But even if viewed as
factual rather than a metaphor, the scripture passage in John describing the creation
process doesn’t conflict with anything we have learned from science. John’s gospel isn’t
focused on the physical details of creation (Did it take six days? Were we formed from
dust?) John’s gospel begins with creation in order to depict the relationship between the
Creator, the Christ, and our salvation, culminating in the well-known, but always worth
repeating, verse 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Proof of the
existence of the Higgs Boson particle doesn’t refute this.
While the staggering complexity of the universe suggests to me that it is an act
of creation, there are times when that same complexity causes me to question whether the
Creator has any concern for me, or anyone else, as individuals. Isn’t it egotistical to
consider ourselves to be anything other than just one in a long list of species to occupy the
planet? As for John 3:16, why should the Creator let self-aware and steadily evolving
hominids occupy the plant for some 200,000 years before achieving our salvation? Why
wait that long, and why accomplish it by the Word becoming flesh rather than by fiat? The
trite response is that God is a mystery; God works however God pleases. I don’t have a
better answer than that, but I want to close with an observation made by a biographer of
Johan Sebastian Bach. I heard it years ago on public television. I can’t remember the
name of the program or the biographer, but what he said made a profound impression on
me. The biographer stated that Bach did not concern himself overly with the end of life.
Bach was convinced that the same God who took such effort to bring him into the world
would surely see to his care once he left it.
My high school friend who now works in pyrotechnics goes through a lot of
planning and effort to produce big bangs. God seems to have taken some pains as well
when he created the universe. Particles scattered for billions years, amino acids, lizards and
apes – all of that to produce among other things those of us worshiping here today at the
corner of Portland and Delaware. If God can do that, I wonder what else He has done or
will do. In John 3:12 Jesus says to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye
believed not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” Jesus does not explain
the mysteries of God or the universe. But through His sacrifice on the Cross, which
achieves our salvation, Jesus reconciles us to God, to Himself, and to Creation. To the
Creator (God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) be the power and Glory forever. Amen.
Bill Piston
15 July 2012