Of God, Fields, Particles And Holes

The forum has turned into an interesting discussion club.Thank you Satchitananda Madam for giving food to the thoughts of many members.


An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty. He asks one of his new students to stand and.....
Prof:-So you believe in God?
Student:-Absolutely, sir.
Prof: -Is God good?
Student:-Sure.
Prof:-Is God all-powerful?
Student: -Yes.
Prof:-My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is this God good then? Hmm?

(Student is silent.)

Prof:-You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fellow Is God well?
Student:-Yes.
Prof:-Is Satan good?
Student: - No.
Prof:-Where does Satan come from?
Student:-From...God....
Prof:-That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student:-Yes.
Prof:-Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student:-Yes.
Prof:-So who created evil?
(Student does not answer.)

Prof:-Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student:-Yes, sir.
Prof:-So, who created them?

(Student has no answer.)

Prof:-Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son...Have you ever
seen God?
Student:-No, sir.

Prof:-Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student:-No, sir.

Prof:-Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student:-No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.

Prof: -Yet you still believe in Him?
Student:-Yes.

Prof:-According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student:-Nothing. I only have my faith.

Prof:-Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.
Student:-Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Prof:-Yes.
Student:-And is there such a thing as cold?

Prof:-Yes.
Student:-No sir. There isn't.

(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)
Student-: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that.
There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it. (There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)

Student:-What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof:-Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?
Student:-You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness isn't. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?

Prof:-So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student:-Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

Prof:-Flawed? Can you explain how?
Student:-Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it.
Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Prof:-If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student:-Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)

Student:-Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher? (The class is in uproar.)
Student:-Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain?
(The class breaks out into laughter.)
Student: - Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable.)

Prof:-I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.
Student:-That is it sir.... The link between man & god is FAITH . That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

NB: I believe you have enjoyed the conversation...and if so...you'll probably want your friends/colleagues to enjoy the same...won't you?..... This is a true story, and the

student was none other than.........
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Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam , the former president of India .


Albert Einstein who dismissed the theory of God initially was forced by the scientific evidence to conclude"There is a transcendent source of rationality called a SUPERIOR MIND or ILLIMITABLE SUPERIOR POWER or a MYSTERIOUS FORCE"

Paul Dirac, a pioneer in Quantum Physics observes"God is a mathematician of a very high order.He used Advance Mathematics in constructing the universe"

Physicist Max Plank says" religion and science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant crusade against skepticism and unbelief concluding with a rallying cry -"ON TO GOD"

Anthony Flew, a well known atheist philosopher who was at his age of 80, transformed to a believer in 2004
writes"The journey to my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason.It has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent,omnipotent,omniscient Being"

Collins, a genetic scientist,the head of the Genome Project says"God is more plausible than atheism.In my research I have identified several pointers to God which dragged me
towards the MIND that created the universe,more remarkably,life.This MIND has a mathematical bent beyond imagination.The universe has been finely tuned to produce and sustain life."
He further states"There are exact numerical value for certain constants which make the planets exist. If you interfere in any of the constants,the universe will not have a complexity needed for evolution.If the gravity had been weak,matter would fly apart & there will be no
planets. If the gravity had been stronger ,BIG BANG would have been followed by a BIG CRUNCH and there would not have been evolution of intelligence in stages..So I believe there is a God who loves Maths,wants a universe ,keeps a balance of complexities in specific mathematical proportion which enables living beings to evolve into intelligence and more intelligence to understand His complexities better"
To conclude,scientists who have arrived at the door steps of God ,have not taken a route illuminated by religious faith,but have travelled a long distance by sticking to evidence, by looking into very small and very large things,exploring DNA and quantum particles,and puzzles of the universe and in the BLUE PRINT they see the hand of GOD.

So GOD may not be,as the atheists believe,a DELUSION but a definite CONCLUSION.
The INFINITE INTELLIGENCE that maintains all the planets in the orbits and maintains the molecular chemical composition of air which all the living beings breathe,may not be the product of narrow fundamentalism but a great truth accepted by rigorous scientific minds ..Sorry for the long response.
Jayasala 42

 

You said, "Besides, given that the whole world performs different rituals is enough to tell one that it does not really matter."

This is precisely my argument. An extension of this nullifies the significance of the set rituals, good/bad mahurtams, set practices etc. All good and bad about the unending specifics are meaningless.

Brahmins never offer food containing garlic or onions as naivedyam. While the fishing communities offer dishes prepared using fish as naivedyam and some communities even offer 'desi daaru' (alcohol) as naivedyam! I guess God accepts all as long as it is served with devotion.

A friend shared this anecdote. A Tamil brahmin boy married a Telugu brahmin girl. When their first child was due around the solar eclipse day, her mother prayed desperately that the child should be born before or after the eclipse. While his mother prayed that the child should be born during the eclipse. The reason being, her family followed the lunar calendar and his family followed the solar calendar! A beautiful baby boy was born during the eclipse and nothing untoward happened!

 

The 'something rather than nothing" attempts to gradually explain: how that fantastic has been incrementally built in the fabric of the universe to dethrone any irreconcilable intrusion in scientific premise. It is fantastic but not improbable to exist on its own.

A reasonable embarkation in that Higgs waypoint is to rise from "why something rather than nothing".

'Something over nothing' is a customary pointer to probe hierarchically the vacuum energy, critical density, particle physics, Higgs and other force particles/fields for science junkies trying to understand the fundamentals of the building blocks of the universe.

I was confounded when I jumped to Higgs, trying only to grasp Higgs in isolation. Quantum modelling of the reality is a precursor to fidget with the Higgs theory in the standard model in physics. And for that quantum, 'something rather than nothing' is the bedrock.

That 'what little I understood in a video is some invisible field that gives mass to whatever particle passes through it' is slightly reductive losing out the finer interpretation of Higgs.

To be frank, I still struggle to propose the best entry into ontological inquiry through sciencey headlines, Higgs? I might have ill-advised in this count, perhaps, there's a better alternative into Higgs inquiry as I am prejudiced that learning routes which helped me are assuredly purposeful to others.

Hmm, I don't know. I assumed that learning from the groundwork (why anything exists in the quantum world!) might clarify the necessity for Higgs proposal even before it was theorized and proved. Why the researchers so badly wanted Higgs field to exist in their calculations.

I get your inquiry and astonishment both. But, I don't know how to benignly approach that inquiry without reanimating myself as that dreaded science teacher from hell.

 

Oh yes! We have to always strive to explore the unknown.
We will get an answer that will,still be laden with some unknown mystery which yield some more information, with some more mystery..
It is this exploration, this questioning of everything around us, that makes life interesting.

 

Dear Satchi,

City of cells function inside the body coordinating so many functions. Have we perceived them through five senses? There are so many things that exist beyond physical level. Can a cell understand how the city of billion cells work together?

If we are part of the whole, how do we perceive the whole remaining a part? Have we seen the brain instructing us to inhale and exhale? Even assuming it is an automated neural fuunction, what happens when we are in deep sleep state?

Attempting to define the whole as a part is just like a scientific invention trying to define the scientist.

 

That response would remain supernova of this thread!!
2. Though directly not relevant, I ought to have mentioned about this link of quotes attributed to celebrated relativity scientist Albert Eisenstein:
Religion and Science Quotes by Albert Einstein
Religion without science is blind and science without religion is LAME!
3. Another anecdote attributed to Louis Pasteur thanks to google:

A story is told of a young businessman sharing a compartment on a train with an elderly gentleman. When he noticed that the old fellow was quietly and intently praying with his rosary, the young man chided him for his ‘superstition’ and told him that science had rendered the beliefs of religion irrelevant.

“How did you come to discover that?” the old gentleman asked.

His companion didn’t really know how to answer the question fully right then and there, so he offered to send him a few texts and public lecture notes on the subject for his enlightenment.
“What’s your address?’ he asked, “I’ll send you the material via the Post Office.”
The old man rummaged in his coat pocket and produced a tattered business card that read, Louis Pasteur, Paris Institute of Scientific Research.

Louis Pasteur was the 19th century giant of microbiology who proved the germ-theory of disease and invented the rabies vaccine.

His humility certainly didn’t hinder his greatness and his commitment to science did not preclude his belief in God.
Great men theist never waited for proof to have faith in God. (Mine)

Thanks and Regards.
God enjoys making us to stand and dance to His tunes!

 

I presume all followers of this thread would be in absolute delight including OP. KUDOS to Madam Sister @jayasala42 . Brothers & sisters - Faith moves mountains including theist and atheists with this blast. A small particle boson created vast line of discussion par excellence!

Thanks and Regards.

 

The story of Kannappa Nayanar comes to mind.
Kannappa was a staunch devotee of Shiva and is closely associated with Srikalahasteeswara Temple. He was a hunter and is believed to had plucked his eyes to offer to Srikalahasteeswara linga, the presiding deity of Srikalahasti Temple. Wikipedia