Chapter
2
Epicurus:
Inventor of God
What
a strange title you might say. Everyone knows Epicurus was an
atheist, how is he the inventor of God? Epicurus is often accredited
as the father of modern scientific philosophy. The major premise
behind Epicurus’ philosophy was that pleasure was the highest form
of good. Not pleasure in and of itself, but more the absence of pain.
The absence of pain is what is good. This sounds like a very nice
philosophy correct? If it hurts, it must be evil, avoid pain and you
find good. Avoiding pain also means that you avoid hurting others
because hurting others brings them pain, and disturbs your peace.
Epicurus
is thought of by many to be one of the fathers of scientific inquiry.
Indeed, his theories and ideas have become the foundational backbone
behind Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. There is one very
large difference, however, between Epicurus and Charles Darwin.
Epicurus studied the natural world as a means to obtain freedom from
disturbances in his life, as a way to drown himself in the mystery of
the cosmos and get lost in the wonders of nature, for in this
meditation was all peace and freedom. Epicurus did not set out to
disprove the gods through science; he only meant to understand the
natural world. This is the one main difference between Charles Darwin
and Epicurus. Evolution has set out to disprove the existence of God
through the study of the natural world. That has become the focus of
modern science; this was not the subject of Epicurus.
That
being said however, Epicurus found that the gods he believed in were
a hindrance to his peaceful life. They encroached on tranquility.
Thus, just as Darwin would do1,500 years later, he set out on his
quest for theodicy. Epicurus did not wish to say the gods did not
exist, only to remove them from an interaction with the natural
world. Are you starting to see a trend? Epicurus wanted a world in
which mankind was able to make his own path, and do his own desires
without the interference of the gods. Here is why. Epicurus had a
tainted view of god. To my knowledge, Epicurus had no knowledge of
the god of the bible; his gods were naturalistic gods, ruling over
the forces of nature.
In
Greek thought the gods were just humans elevated to a higher
existence. This philosophy taught that god, man, and nature were 3
parts to the circle of life. All parts were related to each other,
thus, mankind had a certain amount of control over the gods through
nature and indeed themselves. If you wanted the gods to do something
for you, you would excite them to perform their job. For instance, if
you wanted your crop to be fruitful or you wanted your wife to
produce children, you would go to the temple and perform sexual
rituals so that the gods would be roused by your antics and in turn
they would have sex and their fertility would become yours. Thus
humanity had a type of control over these naturalistic gods.
What
Epicurus did was separate the gods, humanity, and nature. In so doing
he created a theodicy in which both groups were in a closed system.
God could not interact with the natural world and the natural world
could not control the gods. Like I have been saying, Epicurus put god
out of a job. With no interaction with the natural world humanity has
no need to interact or care about god in anyway. This was possible
because Epicurus saw the gods as nothing more than extensions of
humanity. Epicurus came to the correct conclusion. This is the
conclusion I came to several years ago when I was faced with my own
questions about nature, God, and reality. Either god is more than we
know of him, or he is nothing at all.
Epicurus,
in all his studies of science began to see a pattern, storms,
seasons, drought, fertility, growth, death, and life, all had natural
causes. He rightly observed that the gods had nothing to do with
these things. They all had natural explanations. Thus what were his
naturalistic gods left to do? They had nothing to do but sit in the
heavens and cry at the loss of worship. Epicurus saw that nature
died, and then was reborn. It required no divine interaction to send
the rain, it was all natural, the cycle of life.
Yet
there was one problem, that problem is eternity. What is one supposed
to do with eternity? If the gods are not eternal, what is? Something
must be eternal. Here is the reason there has to be something
eternal. If you went to the edge of the universe, what would be
beyond it? Or say there is not an edge to the universe; it must then
go on for eternity? You are starting to see the obvious problem. What
is the essence that has eternality in and of itself? To put it in
terms of evolution and science, what was there before the big bang?
Nothing can come from nothing. It breaks the laws of science to say
that something comes from nothing, so something was eternal before
the foundation of the universe.
Besides
the previous argument, Epicurus recognized without divine
intervention, the universe and all matter would have decayed to
nothingness long before now. Modern science recognizes this as the
second law of thermodynamics. The entropy of a system tends to
increase in reaching equilibrium. Entropy is a word used to describe
the disorder of a system, or the inability to predict the position of
atoms. As time passes, the interactions between particles lead to
greater and greater entropy. Left to itself, in other words, a system
will tend toward disorder.
Epicurus
came to the conclusion that matter itself was eternal. Matter had
always existed and would always exist for all eternity. This is how
he bypassed the problem of entropy continually increasing. If matter
is eternal it cannot be reduced beyond itself and thus when it breaks
down it simply recombines and forms more matter and life all over
again. He recognized that this is a hard idea to comprehend, but he
accepted that eternity had to exist, whether we as humans can
understand it or not. He went farther than just saying that the
eternal was just matter, Epicurus brought it all the way down to the
theory of the atom.
Epicurus
believed in the atom designed by Democritus because it seemingly
struck out the awe of order in the universe.1
He stated that atoms are, at their fundamental state, totally
uninspiring and deferring from each other only in weight and shape
and size. Thus the apparent order of everything in the universe boils
down to the totally unordered simple atom. Material was the random
mix of atoms that arrange themselves in haphazard ways. Epicurus was
seeking to strike out any awe that one might be tempted to have for
the atom. By making it a totally un-complex and simple unit everyone
just took it for granted that it was easy for it to be eternal
because it needed no designer.
The
word atom means indivisible. Greek thought, and indeed modern
scientific thought coming into the 19th
and 20th
centuries believed these particles of matter to be irreducible. They
thought they had finally found the smallest form of nature possible.
Scientists were hoping that this atomic theory would be the key to
understanding the eternity of matter.
When
Physicists first discovered that matter behaved as if it was made up
of particles, they proposed a model that would coincide with
Epicurus’ understanding of the simplicity of the universe. In 1906
Joseph John Thomson won the noble prize for his discovery that the
atom was not just a simple indivisible substance. He found that it
was composed of electrons and protons. His experiments with cathode
rays (also known as an electron beam) found that the ray could travel
much farther in air than predicted for the size of an atom. In fact
they could travel such distances that it suggested the particles in a
cathode ray were 1000 times smaller than the atom. During his
experiment, Thomson discovered that the cathode ray had a negative
charge and could be manipulated with an electric or magnetic field.
These experiments seemed to suggest that the smallest form of matter
was not the atom but something termed an electron. This lead to the
discovery of positively charged particles of slightly more mass than
an electron, since hydrogen was known to have a neutral charge there
had to be a particle with a positive charge to make the total charge
of the atom neutral.
At
first the model was proposed to be a “plum pudding” design, with
electrons and protons imbedded in the irreducible atom. This model
allowed for Epicurus’ theory of simplicity of the atom while still
accepting the ideas of smaller units of the atom, since they were
essentially part of the atom. However Ernst Rutherford’s gold foil
experiment showed this theory to be inadequate. By shooting highly
radioactive alpha particles through a very thin sheet of Gold,
Rutherford showed that the deviation of particles on the other side
was much different than the “Plum Pudding” model suggested. The
aberration of most of the particles was very small, almost as if they
were being sent through air, not an atom. A few of the particles
however showed a very large deviation of greater than 100 degrees.
The results of this experiment were shocking. Rutherford was able to
calculate that the radius of his gold central charge was less than
3.4 x 10-14
meters. This proposed an atom with a central charge of less than
1/3000th
of the diameter of the atom itself, with the rest of the space being
occupied by empty space and orbiting electrons.
It
was beginning to be very clear that the atom was not a simple unit,
existing for all eternity without falling apart. The atom is as
complex as our universe is complex. Electrons orbit the nucleus of
the atom at extremely high speeds, acting as both a particle and a
wave. For instance, they behave like a wave in that they occupy
different energy levels and frequencies, but if hit by a single
photon, only one electron is elevated in energy level thus acting as
a particle with mass. As we will learn when dealing with Quantum
mechanics in a later chapter, the behavior of an electron or photon,
changes from a wave to a particle, simply based off whether or not
you are observing them. The atomic theory has become so complex that
it is a hard concept to grasp.
The
point is that the atom is vastly complex. Those who study the orbit
of electrons and the interactions in chemistry are awed by the
complexity and order. This was not what Epicurus was hoping for.
There is no way that something with such order exists on its own. We
find that indeed, the atom is so full of order that it tends to also
break down. That much order cannot exist indefinitely on its own, it
must have a sustainer or a creator, with just the right conditions
for all of these parts to come together to work as an ordered system.
The
Theory of Evolution is hinged on the idea that complex can come from
non-complex. This is why the atomic theory is such a huge detriment
to the theory of naturalism. During evolutions birth the atom was
thought to be simple, but now it is seen as anything but. Simplicity
cannot produce complex, the atom was complex from the beginning.
Complexity cannot create itself; even evolutionists know this, which
is why they have simple creatures evolving to more and more complex
ones. The fact that the very matter that a creature is made from is
already complex begs the question, “What created the original
complexity?”
I
propose that complexity must stem from complexity, thus the complex
atom which is the basis for all matter in the universe must stem from
something complex. Since the atom is not eternal, and can indeed be
divided, it must have also been created. But what created the atom?
That question sparked a whole new area of science into which some of
the most expensive scientific research has been done. Quantum
mechanics in the area of subatomic particles began to gain the most
recognition in the 1950’s when scientists started obtaining
scientific data that seemed to suggest that the indivisible atom was
in fact made up of even smaller pieces called leptons which in turn
can be broken down into quarks.
The
study of these subatomic particles gave rise to the invention and
construction of the hadron collider that allowed scientists to study
atoms in even more depth than ever before. Through Quantum Mechanics
it was calculated that the velocity of these particles could be
calculated with some accuracy, as could the location of the particles
in space, but it was found to be impossible to calculate both at the
same time. Here is why, these particles seem never to occupy one
space in time because of their wave-like properties. It is almost as
if they are everywhere at one time. An Electron can be looked at as a
wave with multiple frequencies interfering with each other. This
interference pattern is centralized in a specific spot, and travels
as you would expect a particle to. It has momentum and can be moved
around, quite unlike a wave or a particle. Yet as you add more and
more frequencies, thus narrowing your location of the wave packet,
the less accurately you can tell what momentum the particle has and
where it is going.
These observations
and the resulting Uncertainty Principle so disturbed Einstein that he
would devote the remainder of his life to seeking to disprove these
findings.
Einstein
saw disorder in the theory, and the fact that it fit into no other
theory was a huge blow to him. Up to this point, Einstein’s theory
of Relativity fit every framework in the observable universe. It was
unified and understandable. It was calculable. The fact that quantum
particles could not be calculated and seemed to be haphazard, to
Einstein, seemed to indicate that God had no part in it. Einstein had
some kind of belief in God, he believed God was a God of order and
everything he created would be unified and testable. When speaking of
this theory, Einstein states, “God does not play dice.”
Einstein
had one assumed fallacy in his belief about God. Einstein, while
upholding the idea of God, still had a low view of Him. Einstein had
God in a box. Packaged nicely into something we could understand and
comprehend. To Einstein, God could not operate outside of what he
could understand. I do not seek to presume upon the character of
Einstein or discredit his view of God, I only desire to display an
alternative view. In the theory of God I wish to propose, God is
outside of this universe. We essentially live inside the mind of an
infinite creator. The fact that Einstein could not find any order in
the subatomic does not mean there is no designer. It simply means
that the understanding and the tools that we use to observe the
universe are not good enough to comprehend.
I
would not believe in the God Einstein wished to exist because a God
that could be totally understood and calculated would cease to be God
and merely be an extension of humanity. I am not saying we will never
understand the subatomic, I am only suggesting that God may be so
great that we will forever be learning of His ways. As Paul says,
“O
the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For
who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counselor?
Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him
again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to
whom be glory forever. Amen.”2
Solomon,
as tradition would have it, the wisest man that ever lived, said
these words, “He
hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the
world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God
maketh from the beginning to the end.”3
Science
has, as of yet, not found an end to our universe. Can you comprehend
what that means? We cannot even understand the distances that are
involved in the measurements that science uses to measure galaxies.
The universe is so immense. That light coming from distant galaxies
is 10’s of billions of years old. We are viewing things as they
were billions of years ago, not as they are now. When NASA turned
humble to view the darkest portion of the sky in 2012, this is what
they found.
This picture contains 5,500 galaxies. This is just what humble can see! Mankind truly cannot fathom the vastness of the mind of God. If you hold out your finger at arm’s length it would be twice as wide as the moon. The area humble covered in this photograph was about one hundred times smaller. With this view of the universe we are forced to exclaim as Job did,
“Canst
thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto
perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than
hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the
earth, and broader than the sea.”5
You
see, Epicurus is the inventor of God because my God is much greater
than a mere human. Epicurus saw god as just an elevated human,
subject to our passions, desires, lusts, and ambitions. When he
sought to find the essence of the universe, he discovered something
eternal, something outside of this reality, something so powerful
that it created galaxies and strung them out like sand. Yet again I
turn to David as he exclaims, “He
telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is
infinite.”6
No
matter how much we split the atom apart, no matter how deep we go
into space, no matter the inventions that allow us to explore like
never before, we shall never come to the end of the creation of this
God I propose. In my imagination the universe would be the three
dimensional representation of the very mind of God. We will not come
to the end of it because the mind of God has no end, and He sustains
it all. Without this God, nature tends to disorder. He is the cause
for order in a naturally unordered system. God, the eternal matter,
the immovable mover, the infinite energy that is needed to create
infinite galaxies and space. How wonderful that we live in a
universes that is the mind of God, which allows us to explore deeply
his nature.
1
Wiker
2
Romans 11:33-36 KJV
3
Ecclesiastes 3:11KJV
4
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/xdf.html
5
Job 11:7-9 KJV
6
Psalms 147:4,5 KJV
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