Large Hadron Collider Evidences God After All

To a philosophy student the Large Hadron Collider which began operations just days ago is a case study in human faith.  There are two groups of scientists in opposition to each other on a rather critical issue.  With which school of thought do you agree?

First there’s the camp that seems rather skeptical of man’s ability to crash two 3.5 trillion electron volt beams head-on in a 17-mile track without accidentally creating a black hole that could swallow the earth in a few years.  This group must have noticed a common denominator between… say,  the Hindenburg, the Space Shuttle Challenger, the Titanic, and Chernobyl.  Men who made even the tiniest of miscalculations, amplified a thousand times over by the scale of the experiment, caused more damage than anyone expected.

Most epic failures are like houses of cards.  They do not typically feature one blunder after another, rather, a “small”  mistake (as men view most mistakes) at some fundamental level, followed by a great many non-mistakes piled upon it.  Sometimes an impressive structure of non-mistakes is built up over many years and by many different people, perhaps long after the original mistake-maker has passed away.  Scores of people end up assuming that given the amount of time, energy, and sheer brainpower from the combined number of experts involved, no  fundamental mistake could have possibly been made.  The switch is finally thrown, something long-forgotten on the bottom of the pile trips and brings down the entire structure, including all of the ‘correct’ calculations.  All the ‘correct’ calculations smolder on the ash heap because they were built upon a flawed assumption.

I appreciate the collider-skeptics.  I want my kids to understand that faith in science can be misplaced.  Theories of Global Warming, Evolution, and the Big Bang, for example, can be impressive structures on non-mistakes teetering precariously upon a few fundamentally false assumptions.  I want them to trust God even more than the brakes of a Toyota Prius.  God isn’t susceptible to human error.

Then there is the CERN camp enthusiastically pursuing conditions that they believe were created just after the Big Bang.  What could possibly go wrong?  Never mind the minor glitches and the mysterious dark material that showed up in the last couple days, the planet is safe.

Now back to our philosophy student … on the one hand we have some scientists who don’t appear to be worshiping at the altar of science, at least when it comes to the LHC.  They’ve found faults with the research of others in the past, and observed the ensuing disasters from machines or policies built upon those faults.  Though they may know of no specific immediate threat at CERN, they point to a lack of humility in CERN’s approach that could spell disaster as certainly as other projects that have come before.

Then there are the scientists who strangely mock Christians with faith in God while ironically placing their faith in the LHC.  Is man’s science more reliable than God?  Perhaps a humble review of the history of each would be in order.

After reviewing my summary of these opposed scientific camps perhaps it will surprise you that I too have faith in the relative safety of the LHC.  Accidents may happen there, some could be impressively disastrous and/or fatal, but I believe at least the majority of the planet should be relatively safe for now.  Just like the scientists pursuing the Big Bang because they don’t accept God’s explanation of things in Genesis, I too at least share their belief that the earth won’t get sucked into a black hole because of their work.  Why?  Because that’s not the way God outlines the End of The Age.

The Large Hadron Collider will yield evidence of God and the trustworthiness of his Word.  As usual though, evidence alone will not be enough.  If evidence were enough, as I heard illustrated recently, people wouldn’t smoke.  There’s plenty of evidence that smoking is bad for you.  People smoke not for lack of evidence, but for other reasons.

Redeeming Tiger Woods

I have not been Ann Coulter’s biggest fan.  Her name-calling rhetoric has been a turn-off.  This is one of the most amazing articles I have read from a public political figure in a very long time.

Dolphins Without iPhones

Scientists have observed bottlenose dolphins wrapping pieces of sponge around their noses to prevent abrasions.  For being animals they are remarkable problem solvers, but according to this Wikipedia article, “nowhere as “intelligent” as human.”

Why the enormous gap?  I am always impressed when I read about the smarter things animals do.  But this impression always comes from grading on a curve, the animal curve.  In reality their brightest is still millions of lumens dimmer than our dullest.

I went searching Google with the words “how smart are humans”.  I was hoping to find someone, somewhere who could observe what I do … that dolphins never stop you on the street for a picture taken with you to email to the calves back home.  Instead I found countless articles on how surprisingly smart animals are.  Many are surprisingly smart.  At least on the curve.

This experience tonight added to the mystery I have been pondering since my last post, which seems like a very long time ago.  Since my last post I have finished reading a book by a former atheist in addition to reading several more articles and posts on atheistic sites/blogs.  How can truth be so obvious, so plain to me yet so un-obvious, so obscured to so many others?

I think there are two answers to this mystery, but before I get to that, let me once again point out how to level the playing field with an atheist.  To level the field, all you have to do is point to an atheist’s own skepticism of reason and science.  If they have little or no skepticism in reason and science, then they have faith in reason and science.

That only levels the playing field.  That is all you can do.  Cast doubt on their beliefs, certainly… or bear witness to yours, indeed… but bring them full circle into the kingdom of God? It is impossible for me and it is impossible for you.

Back to the two answers to the mystery of the truths that seem like they should be obvious:

1.  I came across this over the weekend in I Corinthians 1.  An oft-repeated theme in the Bible is that God hides the discernment of truth from those who are perishing.

2. Many choose, as in, on purpose, to obscure truth.  They do this out of fear, according to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3.

It’s that simple.  It is an honor to be called by God to bear witness to the truth, but only God can un-hide it in the mind of a sinner.

Alicia Chole considered herself a realist, a reasonable atheist,  right up to the day the “stuff and fluff of fairy tales knocked loud and clear and then stood there offending all {her} senses”.

Feel free to comment.  Dolphins too, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Day Swine Flew

I know something about you.  In fact everyone knows something about you.  What do we all know that is universally true and that we all agree is true about you?  It is that you have a framework of experience in your mind, knowledge from memories and instincts, combined with the ability to organize new information into that framework.

A fact.

Argh… if only it were ever that simple.  There’s always an exception so allow a minor qualification: Except for the rare flavor of agnosticism that anti-rationally  ‘knows’ you can’t know anything for sure, the vast majority of agnostics, atheists, Christians– indeed almost everyone–should be OK with the first paragraph.  If it is possible to establish anything as “a fact” to a near total majority of philosophies, the first paragraph should be a prime candidate.  For those of you who can’t know anything for sure… well, this post isn’t for you.

For the 99.9% of you that understand the first paragraph to be factually correct, I’m going to use this as a fundamental building block to understand something about submitted thought in Fort Wayne, IN.  Since it seems like it was already so long ago, let’s review:

You and everyone else has a framework of experience built up from knowledge through memories and instincts.  The existing framework helps you organize new information.

Agreed? Good. But now it gets tricky because some of our framework has taught us to detest certain words and concepts that are actually helpful for understanding the framework itself.  So piece-by-piece now, see how far we get in agreement, and I would enjoy hearing your contrasts to these fundamental philosophical structures:

We all have a framework of knowledge.

We don’t all have the same framework.

“New information” implies that we didn’t have all of the information to begin with.

If we all have a different framework, and we all have the ability to learn new information, this means none of us know everything there is to know.

If none of us knows everything, none of us will likely ever know everything.

Any new information is therefore not the last piece of information we’ll need to perfectly understand how the framework should be perfectly assembled.

Therefore the framework containing the bulk of our experience and knowledge is more likely to influence the interpretation of the new information than the other way around.

The framework may therefore be stretched a little or modified if needed to accommodate the new information, but seldom does anyone completely tear down their existing framework, even as the new information may occasionally require to build the best possible structure to best accommodate the new information.

This means that we are all biased.

…and the train goes off the tracks…

“Biased” is something few of us feel like we should be.  But under the limits of human reason, without the benefit of universal knowledge, how could we possibly claim to be objective?  Usually when someone claims objectivity they are grading themselves on the curve.  Their naturally limited framework doesn’t allow for perfect objectivity.

If I saw a pig moving across the sky this would be an example of new information.  My framework would probably bend a little to fit the new information.  “What do you know!  Pigs can fly!”, I might conclude .  My framework of knowledge and experience would be altered, but not fundamentally changed.

A fundamental change in the framework would come if I managed to conclude the pig was actually stationary while me and the earth were passing rapidly beneath it.  Against the framework of what I understand about the world, the first perspective is a stretch, though manageable, while the second by comparison would seem absurd if someone presented such an idea to me.  I am biased by my knowledge and experience to believe more that the pig is traveling across the sky than that the earth is traveling around the pig.

In the course of human history all of us can point to moments where nearly everyone thought the pig was flying across the sky, when out of the blue (so to speak) some witty observer made the absurd claim that we were actually traveling around the pig.  At first, laughter ensued.  But then slowly over the years more and more pieces were added into the framework to support the idea and after awhile, it didn’t seem so absurd.

If you agree that this is always possible, then congratulations, you’re a natural skeptic of science and reason.

Consider this though: what if yet another fellow comes along and says, “No, actually the pig was flying across the sky and all that you thought you knew that was right and later ‘proved’ wrong was actually right”?

Welcome to the battle of presuppositions.  In the realm of human reason, all are equal.  It takes a standard beyond the prison of human reason to give a man peace that he understands truth.