I recently came across your site after researching the works of John Polkinghorne. It is a great site and I was even more thrilled to find out that we could contact both you and John to ask questions.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the Higgs Boson in the news. As a layman when it comes to science, I was wondering what both you and John thought about the recent Higgs Boson discoveries, what it means for the science/faith interface and what implications, if any, it might have for the Christian faith? For example, I saw a news clip featuring the physicist Michio Kaku who said something along the lines of "now we're going to be able to see before Genesis chapter 1" in light of the recent discoveries (I found it online here). I'm not sure what point he was trying to make by this, but he seemed to be overall sympathetic to many multiverse theories and attacking the notion of God, faith, etc. Is this just a matter of people, such as Kaku, interpreting the data the way they want to or does the discovery actually point at all to a multiverse?
Thanks for all the work you do in Christ,
Response: The Higgs Boson doesn’t require the multiverse at all – just as well since Higgs predicted it long before multiverse ideas were fashionable.
The only “theological” implication is that if the Standard Model is correct then there is an awful lot of fine tuning. This is why most physicists hope it isn’t.
We shall see…
Showing posts with label Cosmology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cosmology. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Big bang and Existence of God
I have taken the position among colleagues and friends that the "big bang" theory, if accurate, clearly demonstrates the existence of God. I would be interested in the good doctor's thoughts on the subject and rational comments from anyone who might have pondered the issue.
Response: The Big Bang theory was developed by a catholic priest (Lemaitre) but he was clear that it has no direct religious applications. God could certainly have created a “steady state” universe and equally it is conceivable that one of the various secular stories about the Big Bang (eternal inflation, quantum vacuum etc…) might be true.
Having said that, it is certainly a problem for atheists to explain why a “big bang” with the very special characteristics we require for life actually occurred – see Questions of Truth for a discussion of this. And Big Bang is similar enough to Genesis to give pause for thought at least!
Response: The Big Bang theory was developed by a catholic priest (Lemaitre) but he was clear that it has no direct religious applications. God could certainly have created a “steady state” universe and equally it is conceivable that one of the various secular stories about the Big Bang (eternal inflation, quantum vacuum etc…) might be true.
Having said that, it is certainly a problem for atheists to explain why a “big bang” with the very special characteristics we require for life actually occurred – see Questions of Truth for a discussion of this. And Big Bang is similar enough to Genesis to give pause for thought at least!
Sunday, 21 October 2012
How did the ascension happen, and where is heaven?
I was referred to John P. because Ravi Zacharias has taken some classes from him. So I thank you guys for what you are doing. I was just wondering if there is any scientific evidence to show that the ascension of Jesus could very likely happen. With the discoveries in quantum physics and such I was wondering if it is not so much an unlikely event anymore. Thanks and blessings.
Response: It’s clear that Jesus’ resurrection body was not subject to normal physical laws in the normal way. How God did this in detail we have no idea, but why should we.
Follow-on Question: Yeah that's what I think too. He was able to eat fish and honey and then go through walls and stuff so yeah I believe that His body functioned differently then we can understand. Could I ask you where you think heaven, or the location of departed saints is? Is it outside the universe or within it? Just wondering. Like where is the actual location of the Revelation 4 place or throneroom.
Response: I don’t think heaven has a spatial location in this universe.
Interestingly the cosmologists are now very comfortable with the idea of multiple universes (far too comfortable in my view).
Response: It’s clear that Jesus’ resurrection body was not subject to normal physical laws in the normal way. How God did this in detail we have no idea, but why should we.
Follow-on Question: Yeah that's what I think too. He was able to eat fish and honey and then go through walls and stuff so yeah I believe that His body functioned differently then we can understand. Could I ask you where you think heaven, or the location of departed saints is? Is it outside the universe or within it? Just wondering. Like where is the actual location of the Revelation 4 place or throneroom.
Response: I don’t think heaven has a spatial location in this universe.
Interestingly the cosmologists are now very comfortable with the idea of multiple universes (far too comfortable in my view).
Sunday, 7 October 2012
About the cyclic model of Prof. Penrose.
I have recently read about the cyclic model of Prof. Penrose. And to be honest I feel somewhat shaken and confused.
First of all as I am not very familiar with this model does a recycled universe imply eternal recurrence such as that everything reproduce exactly the same so that we get to live again exactly the same lives. Or is there a variation of some cosmological constants.
Secondly I think there is still active interest in that field as they claim that they will test the hypothesis by employing the Einstein telescope and gaze even further into the big bang trying to find evidence of a previous big crunch but I am not aware whether it can be proven true or not. However in the case it does, what implication would that have with respect to faith.
Response: Roger’s idea is that the eventual end state of an expanding universe, where everything is “smoothed out” into a heat death, can be identified mathematically with an initial singularity because both a uniform distribution of matter and a singularity can be considered to have zero entropy.
This is (of course, from Roger) mathematically ingenious but it is far from clear whether it even could have any physical meaning. It’s not the same as a “big crunch” because it now seems almost certain that the universe will expand forever.
Roger wrote a paper claiming to find echos of a previous universe in concentric circles of early stars, but the consensus seems to be that the statistics of this paper are not remotely convincing, and in any case there are many other possible reasons why there might be concentric circles of stars.
Highly speculative cosmology is very interesting but has no real implications for faith. From God’s perspective no doubt all of these ingenious guesses seem amusingly naïve.
First of all as I am not very familiar with this model does a recycled universe imply eternal recurrence such as that everything reproduce exactly the same so that we get to live again exactly the same lives. Or is there a variation of some cosmological constants.
Secondly I think there is still active interest in that field as they claim that they will test the hypothesis by employing the Einstein telescope and gaze even further into the big bang trying to find evidence of a previous big crunch but I am not aware whether it can be proven true or not. However in the case it does, what implication would that have with respect to faith.
Response: Roger’s idea is that the eventual end state of an expanding universe, where everything is “smoothed out” into a heat death, can be identified mathematically with an initial singularity because both a uniform distribution of matter and a singularity can be considered to have zero entropy.
This is (of course, from Roger) mathematically ingenious but it is far from clear whether it even could have any physical meaning. It’s not the same as a “big crunch” because it now seems almost certain that the universe will expand forever.
Roger wrote a paper claiming to find echos of a previous universe in concentric circles of early stars, but the consensus seems to be that the statistics of this paper are not remotely convincing, and in any case there are many other possible reasons why there might be concentric circles of stars.
Highly speculative cosmology is very interesting but has no real implications for faith. From God’s perspective no doubt all of these ingenious guesses seem amusingly naïve.
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