Genesis Revisited
If the Genesis creation myth was re-told scientifically. Credit to Michael Shermer for the text.
Topic Agnostic Illustrated daily news, salacious gossip, opinion & discussion on religion & atheism.
Posts Tagged ‘creation’
God’s particles begin their search for truth
First off, seriously kudos to you, Science. The Large Hadron Collider was switched on at 07:32 GMT, and the world did not end (hint: read the URL first, lol). The kudos are not for averting planetary destruction, but for devising, building, and operating the most complex machine, the most salient experiment man has ever achieved. Right on.
The metaphysical angst generated by this whole thing are pleasing to the atheist soul, I must say (except for the girl who killed herself in Bohpal, India. That’s really sad, & just effing ridiculous). What I do like is that the religious are given pause to wonder: if the collider too accurately details the birth of the universe, does that leave any room for God?
Well, I mean, it’s a Big Bang Machine, people. The folks that built it aren’t pretending that God or anyone else created the universe; they’ve formed a hypothesis through observation (hypothesis: the universe banged into being 14 billion years ago; observation: cosmic background radiation & observable redshift) and have diligently conceived of an experiment to prove or modify the theory. It seems the people that think about this for a living are reasonably certain—billions of dollars certain—that this theory does, in fact, represent exactly what happened the day the universe popped into being, and yes, it is in direct opposition to the creation story of the Bible.
Can there be a God and a Big Bang? Sure, why not. God said “Let there be light”, and lo, there it was with a bang…I read a great comment from Erik B. on a Reuters blog: “If I give you a cake and its recipe, does it make sense to look at the recipe and declare that bakers do not exist?” Ultimately, Erik, no, if Gods as primitive man perceived them are real, they can do anything they like with matter and time. But the Bible as a literal record of creation simply has to be put to rest now, doesn’t it? Overwhelming evidence exposes it as simple, ignorant myth.
As the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang are recreated, and mankind looks into the cold, hard, real face of our creation, may we galvanize around the real search for knowledge. May “God” become an affectionate term for particles present at the beginning of time, and nothing more. This is another nail in the coffin of simplistic, fantastic pre-science explanations like the Bible, whose reality is ultimately shown to be completely unrealistic.
Coming soon: creation explained (at least, a little bit!)
The search for the origins of the universe scores a major coup with this summer’s launch of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, finally active after 5 years of construction. The 17 mile particle accelerator – the world’s biggest scientific instrument – should shortly confirm the existence of the Higgs-boson “God particle”, so named because its discovery could unify understanding of particle physics.
This advance is really, really exciting as it may confirm, disprove, or suggest new theories as to the origin of the universe, what it’s made of, and whether that kid in India really is an incarnation of Durga!
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