My Ways
Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2012 10:20 am
Summer greetings my friends.
My Ways
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.Everything is made of atoms. Every single thing. The book you’re holding…the hands you’re holding it with…the eyes you’re reading it with…and even the space between your eyes and the book…all things…are made of atoms.
Atoms are very, very small. The space between these two colon dots ( : ), holds over 200 trillion atoms. Very small. And yet, the atom is a super-giant, compared to much smaller…sub-atomic…particles now discovered.
Each atom has a nucleus at its center. This is where some of these smaller particles live. Take, for instance, the simplest of all atoms…hydrogen. In the hydrogen nucleus, lives a single proton…and at its farthest edges, a single electron.
This proton is 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself. And 100,000 times smaller again, is the electron. To visualize this, imagine you flew to Bonneville, Utah. There on the salt flats, you place a marble. We’ll call this the nucleus of an atom…or in our simple hydrogen atom, our marble is a single proton. Now, begin walking away from the marble, in any direction. To reach the edge of our hydrogen atom, we must walk about thirty football fields. Here, is where the tiny electron lives.
Now let’s walk back to our marble. Upon arrival, pluck a hair from your head, and cut it in half lengthwise. If you lay that ½ hair upon our marble, you can get a feel, for the width of our electron…thirty football fields away…and perhaps a peek, at the size of the empty space between them.
But our marble isn’t the end of our journey. Inside of it are yet more treasures…three quarks, and three gluons. These are near in size, to our electron. Are quarks the final box-inside-a-box-inside-a-box? Who can say. That’s as deep as we’ve probed.
If you have a feel now, for the size of 200 trillion atoms between these colon dots ( : ), then consider also the activities going on inside each atom. Way down in the proton, these quarks and gluons are in a constant state of flux and motion. They jitterbug about…exchanging color charges…emitting gluons…absorbing gluons…at the blinding rate of billions of times per second. Thirty football fields away, our electron is simply a blur…whizzing around at 670 million miles per hour (the speed of light).
All of this hyper-activity, is going on inside of every atom…of which every single thing is made. Rocks, trees, seas and fleas…all made of atoms, just like us.
If we did super-size 3 quarks to the size of basketballs, what will the space be made of, around the 3 balls? After all, if space is made of atoms…and we’re way, way down inside one of those atoms…then what is that space made of? Or our basketball-sized quarks. If our math is right, and the mass of a quark is 10 to the minus 27th power cm…then what is that mass…that basketball skin…made of? It can’t be atoms, because at this scale, we’re 10 billion times smaller than the atom itself.
The Bible welcomes us to accumulate knowledge…to rightly arrange that knowledge…and so, to get understanding. Certainly, physics is a poster child for this truism. But back at the edge of the forest…where we can see all of life’s trees…it also tells us, that wisdom is the principle thing. Perhaps every Bible student ought as well, be a student of physics. Few things in life are as satisfying…or as exciting…as beholding deeper and deeper layers of his handiwork. Such discovery can become engaging…even dominating.
Thankfully, wisdom compels us to put it all into perspective. Injecting, as it were, a dose of temperance into the fever, without killing the joy. Because if you believe the Bible…or only history…then the story of life has little to do, with it’s mind-boggling, sub-Planck constituent parts.
Near story’s end, the Apostle gives us a real jaw-dropper:
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened.That’s everybody, friend…you included. Consider this sea of humanity…from all time…for just a moment. If we take only those from Adam until the death of Noah…2,000 years of people’s lives…how many in that crowd know what a cell phone is? A car? A refrigerator? Or everyone who lived from Noah to Christ…another 2,000 years of humanity. How many in this crowd, ever knew that each of their retinas holds 103 million neurons? Or that the air they breathed their whole lives, was 78% nitrogen? Or that sunlight reaches the earth in 8 minutes? And finally the third crowd…those who lived from Christ until today…another 2,000 years of humanity. In this crowd, how many lived and died, never knowing what a quasar is? Or general relativity? Or that Calabi-Yau spaces, when arranged in a Kahler manifold, admit a Ricci-flat metric?
Clearly…based on solid scientific evidence (the whole history of humanity standing before the throne of God), these wonderful details of his handiwork are only secondary, to living for God, and making heaven our home. Here before the throne…by a 98% majority…judgment is meted out to folks who lived crude, frontier-ishly simple lives. They lived among, and with, the creation, and all of its earthiness. Home fires for cooking and warmth. Growing their groceries, and hunting their meat. How often we forget these things, in our commercialized nest.
So, call it an End Theory, if you will. The purposes of God are revealed in His judgments. And His judgments…of the 98% around us in that throne room…will be void of any technology or convenience. It will be about character…stewardship…family…love…and each ones relationship, with the judge of all the earth. Because, that’s all they knew. Other than the wheel and fire, that’s about as far as the majority got. A whole sea of humanity…judged only on the merits of their very primal lives.
String Theory…M Theory…and all of their outré children, are fantastic discoveries. We are beholding the very iceberg tips, of His immense wisdom. But when we cut the basketballs open, what do we hope to find?
How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.We should love knowledge…and understanding…and wisdom. But at the sub-Planck level, doesn’t relevance enter the fray? This history of humanity…standing before God for judgment…affirms that it does.
The substance…of the miracle of us…should be servant to the purpose…of the miracle of us. The science of our creation, secondary to the reason for it.
If we ferret out the substance of creation, we shall at last come, to an anti-Calabi-Yau space, containing a fortune cookie. When we break it open, perhaps it will say:
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
If instead we search out his purposes…with the same tenacity as our scanning-tunneling microscopes…perhaps then, will we find our God.
My Ways
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.Everything is made of atoms. Every single thing. The book you’re holding…the hands you’re holding it with…the eyes you’re reading it with…and even the space between your eyes and the book…all things…are made of atoms.
Atoms are very, very small. The space between these two colon dots ( : ), holds over 200 trillion atoms. Very small. And yet, the atom is a super-giant, compared to much smaller…sub-atomic…particles now discovered.
Each atom has a nucleus at its center. This is where some of these smaller particles live. Take, for instance, the simplest of all atoms…hydrogen. In the hydrogen nucleus, lives a single proton…and at its farthest edges, a single electron.
This proton is 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself. And 100,000 times smaller again, is the electron. To visualize this, imagine you flew to Bonneville, Utah. There on the salt flats, you place a marble. We’ll call this the nucleus of an atom…or in our simple hydrogen atom, our marble is a single proton. Now, begin walking away from the marble, in any direction. To reach the edge of our hydrogen atom, we must walk about thirty football fields. Here, is where the tiny electron lives.
Now let’s walk back to our marble. Upon arrival, pluck a hair from your head, and cut it in half lengthwise. If you lay that ½ hair upon our marble, you can get a feel, for the width of our electron…thirty football fields away…and perhaps a peek, at the size of the empty space between them.
But our marble isn’t the end of our journey. Inside of it are yet more treasures…three quarks, and three gluons. These are near in size, to our electron. Are quarks the final box-inside-a-box-inside-a-box? Who can say. That’s as deep as we’ve probed.
If you have a feel now, for the size of 200 trillion atoms between these colon dots ( : ), then consider also the activities going on inside each atom. Way down in the proton, these quarks and gluons are in a constant state of flux and motion. They jitterbug about…exchanging color charges…emitting gluons…absorbing gluons…at the blinding rate of billions of times per second. Thirty football fields away, our electron is simply a blur…whizzing around at 670 million miles per hour (the speed of light).
All of this hyper-activity, is going on inside of every atom…of which every single thing is made. Rocks, trees, seas and fleas…all made of atoms, just like us.
If we did super-size 3 quarks to the size of basketballs, what will the space be made of, around the 3 balls? After all, if space is made of atoms…and we’re way, way down inside one of those atoms…then what is that space made of? Or our basketball-sized quarks. If our math is right, and the mass of a quark is 10 to the minus 27th power cm…then what is that mass…that basketball skin…made of? It can’t be atoms, because at this scale, we’re 10 billion times smaller than the atom itself.
The Bible welcomes us to accumulate knowledge…to rightly arrange that knowledge…and so, to get understanding. Certainly, physics is a poster child for this truism. But back at the edge of the forest…where we can see all of life’s trees…it also tells us, that wisdom is the principle thing. Perhaps every Bible student ought as well, be a student of physics. Few things in life are as satisfying…or as exciting…as beholding deeper and deeper layers of his handiwork. Such discovery can become engaging…even dominating.
Thankfully, wisdom compels us to put it all into perspective. Injecting, as it were, a dose of temperance into the fever, without killing the joy. Because if you believe the Bible…or only history…then the story of life has little to do, with it’s mind-boggling, sub-Planck constituent parts.
Near story’s end, the Apostle gives us a real jaw-dropper:
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened.That’s everybody, friend…you included. Consider this sea of humanity…from all time…for just a moment. If we take only those from Adam until the death of Noah…2,000 years of people’s lives…how many in that crowd know what a cell phone is? A car? A refrigerator? Or everyone who lived from Noah to Christ…another 2,000 years of humanity. How many in this crowd, ever knew that each of their retinas holds 103 million neurons? Or that the air they breathed their whole lives, was 78% nitrogen? Or that sunlight reaches the earth in 8 minutes? And finally the third crowd…those who lived from Christ until today…another 2,000 years of humanity. In this crowd, how many lived and died, never knowing what a quasar is? Or general relativity? Or that Calabi-Yau spaces, when arranged in a Kahler manifold, admit a Ricci-flat metric?
Clearly…based on solid scientific evidence (the whole history of humanity standing before the throne of God), these wonderful details of his handiwork are only secondary, to living for God, and making heaven our home. Here before the throne…by a 98% majority…judgment is meted out to folks who lived crude, frontier-ishly simple lives. They lived among, and with, the creation, and all of its earthiness. Home fires for cooking and warmth. Growing their groceries, and hunting their meat. How often we forget these things, in our commercialized nest.
So, call it an End Theory, if you will. The purposes of God are revealed in His judgments. And His judgments…of the 98% around us in that throne room…will be void of any technology or convenience. It will be about character…stewardship…family…love…and each ones relationship, with the judge of all the earth. Because, that’s all they knew. Other than the wheel and fire, that’s about as far as the majority got. A whole sea of humanity…judged only on the merits of their very primal lives.
String Theory…M Theory…and all of their outré children, are fantastic discoveries. We are beholding the very iceberg tips, of His immense wisdom. But when we cut the basketballs open, what do we hope to find?
How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.We should love knowledge…and understanding…and wisdom. But at the sub-Planck level, doesn’t relevance enter the fray? This history of humanity…standing before God for judgment…affirms that it does.
The substance…of the miracle of us…should be servant to the purpose…of the miracle of us. The science of our creation, secondary to the reason for it.
If we ferret out the substance of creation, we shall at last come, to an anti-Calabi-Yau space, containing a fortune cookie. When we break it open, perhaps it will say:
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
If instead we search out his purposes…with the same tenacity as our scanning-tunneling microscopes…perhaps then, will we find our God.
