In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned the idea that the Higgs boson discoveries are very close to the heart of the question about the manifestation of God, or, the emanation of the transcendent principle, the reality, into what we call the material universe.
One of my close friends recently conducted an interview with a physicist involved in this discovery. You can access the interview at the link here.
What you will learn if you read the interview is that the majority of the material universe lies in the realm of the unseen. It is referred to as dark matter or dark energy; and the only thing that gives the universe any mass at all is a mysterious field called the Higgs field, a completely invisible field of energy— not directly accessible to measurement by any instrumentation we own — that causes particles to have mass.
This, it turns out, is of considerable concern to physicists because, you see, from their point of view, particles shouldn't have mass at all. It simply isn't necessary, or even, mind you, entirely plausible. They ought to just consist of energy alone; the fact that they don't is a matter of some consternation.
The majority of the universe is, in other words, formed and affected by things that cannot in the least be seen or measured. It emerges from an unseen realm where mass is determined by a field that cannot be directly detected by instruments; the expansion of all that mass is dictated by a force that cannot be seen or measured called dark energy; and the majority of the mass that exists in the universe, as evidenced by the behavior of galaxies, is also invisible. So we live in a universe that is, to about 95%, governed by unseen forces and principles that our instruments cannot directly detect or measure.
The odd thing about this is that for many scientists, there is no God. They are unable to account for 95% of the basic things that happen in the universe; yet these same folk are certain they can explain them, if only...
If only...
The explanations aren't that complicated. They just aren't "scientific." They are metaphysical and philosophical, and they relate to discoveries that were made by mystics in earlier centuries. The universe is formed by the manifestation of the transcendent, of God; and it is the emanations of this sacred principle that form reality as we know it and encounter it. Physics, in peeling back the layers of the onion, has discovered that even though there is an onion, there isn't an onion. This baffles them; because it's quite clear there is an onion, yet when they peel it all away, there isn't anything there. The scientific principle that they thought to uncover, the basic onion-ness of the universe, turns out to disappear at the last layer.
From what I can see sitting here, there is absolutely no difference between what the scientists invoke and God. In both cases, an unseen, immeasurable force or principle is used to explain why everything is the way it is. The main difference is that in one case (God) it is maintained that the force is intelligent; and in the other one (science) it is claimed that it is stupid, that is, mindless.
One thing we might be tempted to conclude from this is that smart people prefer the basic explanation for everything to be stupid; and stupid people want the basic explanation for everything to be smart.
Perhaps this ought to concern us; but maybe not. After all, people always want everything to be different than it is, don't they?
If we measure their motives, the stupid people seem to be the winners, because at least they want to describe a movement towards intelligence, purpose, and meaning, whereas the smart people seem to want to strip intelligence out of the argument in favor of random accident, without any purpose or meaning.
Put in other terms, religious people prefer to observe apparent randomness and assign an order to it; scientists prefer to observe an order and declare it to be, in its essence, meaningless.
Ah, those scientific
rascals! Whatever will they be up to next?
A bit more on the interview tomorrow.
Hosannah.