16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
Just stop and think - these are some powerful statements about the pervasive presence of Almighty God - creation is the evidence of His hand, and the study of science becomes the discovery and documentation of how He has worked and continues to work. Hebrews 1 tells us that He is the sustainer of the unverse, upholding all things by His powerful word. And, if we believe in this majestic, creator God, then we can recognize that He is the One who will bring order to us personally - we can totally trust Him to lift us up and give us a firm foundation for our lives.
1God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,2has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;3who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high...
The Higgs boson, or the so-called "God Particle," which was discovered last year, garnered two physicists the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, but it didn't go to the scientists who detected it. Nearly 50 years ago, Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom had the foresight to predict that the particle existed.
According to CNN, Higgs and Englert's theories behind the elusive Higgs boson explained what gives matter its mass. By the way, the Telegraph says that Higgs is none too fond of the term "God Particle" since he is an atheist.
The universe is filled with Higgs bosons. As atoms and parts of atoms zoom around, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster around them in varying numbers.
Certain particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons, and the more of them a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.
The CNN piece says that the physicists' explanation helped complete scientists' understanding of the nature of all matter.
So, three takeaways for today:
1 - God is upholding all things. As William Lane Craig writes, "God not only created the universe in being, but He upholds it in being moment by moment. Were He to withdraw His sustaining power, the universe would be instantly annihilated." If we believe that He is our Maker and Sustainer, then we recognize that we can trust Him with every area of our lives. We can be confident that He will strengthen and sustain us!
2 - Science is the documentation of the work of God. There are certain aspects of matter that present evidence of the hand of God, and there are laws in the universe that we can acknowledge were set in motion by Him. As we think about the research that has been done in the multiple fields of science, if we regard that research from the grid of a Christian worldview, then we see that all this evidence points to the operator of an incredibly complex and orderly God.
3 - The evidence of design is overwhelming, and scientists can still not prove how something came from nothing. And this does gives us one point from which we can start a conversation about origins, and ask people who do not believe to explain how they think that this marvelous creation came to be.
Science and faith are not incompatible - in fact, our faith can inform the way we interpret science. God is sovereign, He is in control, and as He upholds the universe, so He is absolutely trustworthy to uphold our lives.
The Higgs boson, or the so-called "God Particle," which was discovered last year, garnered two physicists the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, but it didn't go to the scientists who detected it. Nearly 50 years ago, Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom had the foresight to predict that the particle existed.
According to CNN, Higgs and Englert's theories behind the elusive Higgs boson explained what gives matter its mass. By the way, the Telegraph says that Higgs is none too fond of the term "God Particle" since he is an atheist.
The universe is filled with Higgs bosons. As atoms and parts of atoms zoom around, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster around them in varying numbers.
Certain particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons, and the more of them a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.
The CNN piece says that the physicists' explanation helped complete scientists' understanding of the nature of all matter.
Christian apologist William Lane Craig writes on the Christian Research Institute website that the discovery "reinforces what the physicist Eugene Wigner famously called 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.' He asks, "How is it that a theoretical physicist like Peter Higgs can sit down at his desk and on the basis of certain mathematical equations predict the existence of a particle and a field that nearly a half century later the experimental physicists go out and discover? Why is mathematics the language of nature?"
Craig contends that:
Craig contends that:
Answering that question seems to be considerably easier for theists than for naturalists. Theists hold that there is a personal, transcendent being (God) who is the Creator and Designer of the universe. Naturalists hold that all that exists concretely is space-time and its physical contents. The theist enjoys a considerable advantage over the naturalist in explaining the uncanny success of mathematics. For the theist has a ready explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world: God has created it according to a certain blueprint that He had in mind. The world exhibits the mathematical structure it does because God has chosen to create it according to the abstract model in His mind.
By contrast the naturalist has no explanation why the physical world exhibits so complex and stunning a mathematical structure as it does. The theist thus has the explanatory resources to account for the mathematical structure of the physical world and, hence, for the otherwise unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics—resources that the naturalist lacks. The experimental confirmation of the theoretical prediction of the Higgs boson is precisely the sort of thing Wigner was talking about and redounds to the explanatory power of theism in contrast to naturalism.Craig, as well as Jake Hebert and Jason Lisle of the Institute for Creation Research make the point that this discovery really is not about the origins of the universe. Here is what Hebert and Lisle say:
The Higgs mechanism does not miraculously create mass out of "nothing." Rather, the mass is transferred to the particle from the Higgs field, which contained this mass in the form of energy. Thus, the Higgs mechanism does not account for the origin of mass in the ultimate sense.
If God chooses to use a Higgs field to set the masses of all particles, He can certainly do so. The fact that such physics is possible or even meaningful would only make sense in a created universe that is controlled by the mind of God anyway. The study of how God upholds the universe today is the very essence of science. So the possible discovery of the Higgs boson falls under operational science, not origins science.
So, three takeaways for today:
1 - God is upholding all things. As William Lane Craig writes, "God not only created the universe in being, but He upholds it in being moment by moment. Were He to withdraw His sustaining power, the universe would be instantly annihilated." If we believe that He is our Maker and Sustainer, then we recognize that we can trust Him with every area of our lives. We can be confident that He will strengthen and sustain us!
2 - Science is the documentation of the work of God. There are certain aspects of matter that present evidence of the hand of God, and there are laws in the universe that we can acknowledge were set in motion by Him. As we think about the research that has been done in the multiple fields of science, if we regard that research from the grid of a Christian worldview, then we see that all this evidence points to the operator of an incredibly complex and orderly God.
3 - The evidence of design is overwhelming, and scientists can still not prove how something came from nothing. And this does gives us one point from which we can start a conversation about origins, and ask people who do not believe to explain how they think that this marvelous creation came to be.
Science and faith are not incompatible - in fact, our faith can inform the way we interpret science. God is sovereign, He is in control, and as He upholds the universe, so He is absolutely trustworthy to uphold our lives.
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