Jesus and QED
The Light (Part 5)
by Cabe Matthews
What Joseph is talking about in his post is Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). It is the quantum study of electromagnetic interactions, and if you look it up on the internet and try to figure it out it should completely blow your mind. It’s the process of these virtual photons in QED being exchanged that makes chemistry work and even stranger processes (Quantum Chromodynamics) that actually hold nuclei of atoms, and even protons and neutrons themselves together. These sciences consist of many results that are difficult to visualize, and a number of equations that are literally impossible to solve exactly.
A lot of people have devoted their lives to the study of QED and related subjects, but no one really understands it all completely. There are a plethora of good ideas and methods in physics that work well with experiment, but as a whole modern quantum theory doesn’t really jive well with gravity quite like it should the way we currently understand it, and there are a number of other questions that are also left unanswered. QED itself is actually the simplest of all quantum field theories, but everyone pretty much agrees that the knowledge that we have of it is incomplete and imperfect, and although one day we as humans may be able to understand QED, we won’t ever completely understand the ways of our God.
The great physicist Richard Feynman (certainly one of the smartest men to have lived in the last 100 years) once said, “Nobody understands quantum theory”, and I think this is also very true of God. I think the biggest problems occur when people decide that they have God and His will figured out. If someone thinks they have God figured out then they can’t be taught, not by God or anyone. This is because if they think that way then in their heads they are basically in a position in their lives where God doesn’t really have anything to offer them. They kind of know everything and have it figured out, and whether they appear to be the best church going Christian ever or not they are effectively living as an atheist. They don’t need God because they are smart enough to be their own God.
They can also do another dangerous thing. Since they have God figured out and they know everything then of course they can take God and tack Him onto their own agenda. The name of God can be used to improve their position in society, support what might otherwise be an unpopular decision or just make them feel right all the time and better than everyone else around them.
I think when you really boil it down this is the biggest problem that people like Job’s Friends and the Pharisees and David Koresh and Hitler and Medieval Crusaders and even I ever have had. We tend to put God in a box and pull Him out to show everyone only when it’s beneficial to us. This is really stupid because I don’t think a god small enough to fit in the box I often try to keep him in would be enough to come up with the ideas that form the basis of physics or light or grasshoppers or mountains.
So a creation that at the most fundamental level is not understood by the most intelligent of humans must by logical necessity have been created by a being of considerably more complexity and beauty than that which He created. It is when we step back and admire this beauty of God and embrace the fact that we’ll never really understand Him at all that we are being the people who he made us to be – people who simply stand (and live) in awe of Him.
Light is often used in the Bible as a metaphor for a number of things, and one of them is truth and honesty. If you are “in the light” – in Christ, that is – then you will be honest about how much, or rather how little you really know.
That’s worship.
by Cabe Matthews
What Joseph is talking about in his post is Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). It is the quantum study of electromagnetic interactions, and if you look it up on the internet and try to figure it out it should completely blow your mind. It’s the process of these virtual photons in QED being exchanged that makes chemistry work and even stranger processes (Quantum Chromodynamics) that actually hold nuclei of atoms, and even protons and neutrons themselves together. These sciences consist of many results that are difficult to visualize, and a number of equations that are literally impossible to solve exactly.
A lot of people have devoted their lives to the study of QED and related subjects, but no one really understands it all completely. There are a plethora of good ideas and methods in physics that work well with experiment, but as a whole modern quantum theory doesn’t really jive well with gravity quite like it should the way we currently understand it, and there are a number of other questions that are also left unanswered. QED itself is actually the simplest of all quantum field theories, but everyone pretty much agrees that the knowledge that we have of it is incomplete and imperfect, and although one day we as humans may be able to understand QED, we won’t ever completely understand the ways of our God.
The great physicist Richard Feynman (certainly one of the smartest men to have lived in the last 100 years) once said, “Nobody understands quantum theory”, and I think this is also very true of God. I think the biggest problems occur when people decide that they have God and His will figured out. If someone thinks they have God figured out then they can’t be taught, not by God or anyone. This is because if they think that way then in their heads they are basically in a position in their lives where God doesn’t really have anything to offer them. They kind of know everything and have it figured out, and whether they appear to be the best church going Christian ever or not they are effectively living as an atheist. They don’t need God because they are smart enough to be their own God.
They can also do another dangerous thing. Since they have God figured out and they know everything then of course they can take God and tack Him onto their own agenda. The name of God can be used to improve their position in society, support what might otherwise be an unpopular decision or just make them feel right all the time and better than everyone else around them.
I think when you really boil it down this is the biggest problem that people like Job’s Friends and the Pharisees and David Koresh and Hitler and Medieval Crusaders and even I ever have had. We tend to put God in a box and pull Him out to show everyone only when it’s beneficial to us. This is really stupid because I don’t think a god small enough to fit in the box I often try to keep him in would be enough to come up with the ideas that form the basis of physics or light or grasshoppers or mountains.
So a creation that at the most fundamental level is not understood by the most intelligent of humans must by logical necessity have been created by a being of considerably more complexity and beauty than that which He created. It is when we step back and admire this beauty of God and embrace the fact that we’ll never really understand Him at all that we are being the people who he made us to be – people who simply stand (and live) in awe of Him.
Light is often used in the Bible as a metaphor for a number of things, and one of them is truth and honesty. If you are “in the light” – in Christ, that is – then you will be honest about how much, or rather how little you really know.
That’s worship.
posted at 12:10 AM
2 Comments:
light is so cool.
cabe...great post! you have reminded me again why it's so important to look at creation as foundational to the gospel. creation only magnifies God.
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