The modern era, now that was the time. Everything was so certain. We were discovering things we never thought available to mankind. Many a modernist bemoaned the arrival of postmodernism and its uncertainty and skepticism. Churches in western countries have progressively lost membership and attendance since the death of modernism, which at first glance doesn't make sense. Postmodernism should give rise to more spirituality since it admits unashamedly that we just can't know, whereas Modernism states unequivocally that we can know everything.
The reason we see such a decline in religion is possibly because not only did modernism give rise to extreme faith in science, it also gave rise to extreme absolutism in religion. Einstein's organized universe just made so much sense to religious thinkers. It was obvious that God created everything, after all everything fit where it was supposed to and did what it was designed to do.
The discovery of quantum physics really destroyed this certainty. The fact that electrons and photons behaved differently based simply on whether or not we were observing them really threw people for a loop. You have a piece of energy that was a wave or a particle depending on what you happened to be measuring at the time. This meant that we could no longer trust our observations. Everything became suspect because nearly everything is based on the human's ability to experience and observe it. You see, although modernism gave new authority to science and made people less likely to claim all things to be divine interactions, it also gave people a sense of stability in absolutes. The world of postmodernism destroyed all this.
For instance, in 1917 Einstein theorized that our universe was held together by a force that negated the actions of gravity. This force would unify the universe and stop it from tearing itself apart. It was known as the cosmological constant and Einstein assumed this constant to have a value of exactly zero in order to hold the universe in static equilibrium. However, astrologists discovered that the universe was in fact expanding and speeding up. Every galaxy in our universe is moving away from every other one. Which can only mean one thing, not only are galaxies traveling further distances, but in fact the space between galaxies is expanding as well. You can picture it like a rubber band with several points on it, as the rubber band is pulled tight, every point moves away from the other while still expanding outward, and from any given point it appears as though it is standing still and everything else is moving away.
So what did this mean? Well, a great deal. It just so happens that this cosmic constant is set at just the perfect ratio in order for life to exist. Any greater and the universe would expand too quickly for any matter to coalesce at all. Any smaller and the universe would never have expanded at all. The discovery of the cosmic constant was an incredible leap in our understanding. Before this we had no answer for why the universe was the size it is. The best we could come up with was, "Because God knew it would be most conducive to life." The cosmic constant proved this to be a simplistic and foolish answer. The universe is this size because it is a fundamental aspect of reality itself.
It could still be argued that because the cosmic constant is such a specific non-zero number the universe had to be created by a truly awesome and loving God who fine tuned absolutely everything in order to create a system that could perfectly sustain life. However with the discovery of particle theory this perfect system was also called into question.
It all has to do with the Higgs Boson particle which is the central part of particle theory. Without going into too much boring detail that I don't actually understand, just suffice it to say that the Higgs particle gave rise to two separate theories of the universe. One theory claimed the Higgs had a mass of 115 GeV (giga electron volts) in size, which meant that there had to be other particles yet to be discovered that would unify our universe. This theory is known as Super Symmetry. The other theory proposed that the Higgs was actually 140 GeV which essentially meant that the Higgs Boson was the very last particle ever to be discovered inside our universe. What's more is that because the Higgs would be the last particle in our universe it had no particle inside this universe with which to balance it. This means it is fundamentally unstable and the only thing balancing it and keeping our universe from collapsing are other universes very close to our own with their own randomly assigned values for this cosmological constant.
This last theory is known today as the multiverse theory. It essentially states that our universe is in fact finite and temporary, that there are millions of other universes out there all with their own laws of physics and without the perfection of our own system. You see if the cosmological constant is off by just a hair you would have a break down of the entire system, thus nothing would exist at all. That means that our universe is an accident of chance. It is reality playing with the numbers and arriving at one perfectly ordered universe surrounded by potentially endless universes that are nothing but chaos. This doesn't speak of a God of love and purpose. If it pointed to a god at all, it would be pointing to a god of indifference, a deistic god who set the universe in motion with no care as to its end.
So which theory is correct? The elegant and potentially designed universe of Super Symmetry, or the chaotic and accidental universe of Multiverse? Well, it just so happens that we think we know the beginning to the answer. In 2012 CERN announced that they had finally found experimental evidence of the Higgs particle using their underground large hydron collider(LHC). Can you guess what size they found the particle to be? The answer baffled many because physics yet again refused to be stuffed into the boxes we so wish to create for it. The particle was found to be 125 GeV, right smack in the middle of two opposing theories.
What is more is that although the number is closer to the predictions of super symmetry, the LHC has not revealed any twin particles to balance the Higgs particle. This leaves us with an unstable field many times larger than gravity but yet at the same time coexisting with gravity in a way that shouldn't be possible. This leaves us with the implication that perhaps multiverse theory is correct and our universe is but a pencil standing on its tip balanced by the accidental equilibrium of random variables that could just as easily bring the pencil crashing down.
So what are the philosophical implications in the fact that neither theory adequately represents reality? Why isn't God the absolutist of modernism that so many religious institutions are desperately trying to make "him" into? At the same time why doesn't the universe simply make sense in the terms of an accidental multiverse? Why does there have to be so much dichotomy?
I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will propose an alternative view. What if the study of physics and science in general is not simply the study of God's creation, but rather is the study of God Himself? What if we are not simply studying the properties of experiential reality, but in fact studying what religious persons would refer to as God. If this is the case than we should expect never to find the answers we seek, and to never come to the end of all that there is to know. How does something created understand that which created it?
I propose that science will forever continue to baffle our small minds as we attempt to make sense of our existence. Religious persons solve this perplexing problem by simply putting our understanding off into the distant future by saying, "one day, in heaven, all things will be revealed." While the non-religious continue to struggle with a universe that seems to defy reason, but all the while attempting to force it to our brain power. Both approaches are foolish. Heaven is a pipe dream created by individuals who cannot handle the reality of our world, but at the same time, attempting to force our understanding on reality is an effort in futility. Can we not recognize the beauty and elegance of creation while embracing it's mystery, exploring it's theories, and standing in humbled reverence at its revelations?
Heaven is hear and now. Reality is the revelation of God, we will never have a more complete picture than what has already been given through the universe itself. Science hopes that the Higgs Boson, known as the god particle by some, will give us the answers as to why we exist and what our purpose is, yet I suspect it will tell us no more than what we should already know by now, it is nothing but a piece in the giant cosmic puzzle that is so infinite it will never be solved.
