Monday, June 23, 2008

So Long, George

I thought George Carlin was the funniest person in the world. In the late 60s and early 70s, I was a kid and the only time I ever saw Carlin perform was on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson). I knew nothing of his anti-establishment rants that were part of his act when he was not on television. I didn't know anything about the seven words you can't say on television. When George Carlin was on TV, his humor was simply ironic and really funny. When he was the guest host of the first Saturday Night Live (1974), I thought it was his show and I was disappointed he wasn't on the next week.

Later, I discovered the real George Carlin. The swearing, sexual humor and politics. I found his off-TV humor to be more bitter than anything else and I remember feeling sorry for him. I know from reading and seeing interviews that he really did put the blame for the world's problems on religion, particularly christianity.

He will be mourned by those of us on the right and canonized by Hollywood and the Left.

To me, he is simply a tragic figure. The Lord finds no joy in the death of the wicked.

Monday, June 16, 2008

There's Nothing There There

In the course of my scientific exploration, I have found a neat little web page:

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/index.html

This page illustrates the hydrogen atom. Hydrogen is pretty simple. There is a proton at the center and a single electron in orbit. The neat thing about the illustration is that it is to scale so that it may be seen by the human eye. The electron is represented by one bright pixel. The proton is approximately the size of a basketball. In order to see the electron, one must scroll over to the right what amounts to a distance of eleven miles. It may be the world's single biggest web page.

According to this illustration, if we could enlarge the hydrogen atom enough to see the electron with the human eye, it would be orbiting the proton from a distance of eleven miles away. Other atoms are more complicated but the principle remains the same. If you look at what we know about the galaxy, it is clear that it is also made of empty space. While the Sun is huge relative to the Earth and while there are bodies in the galaxy, which dwarf the Sun, the empty space in between it all is so large as to render the heavenly bodies relatively microscopic.

Furthermore, those heavenly bodies are made of the same empty space, which makes up our physical entity. We, and every material thing we encounter, are essentially made of empty space. We are a mirage, not even a vapor. Physically, we are nothing more than the sum of zillions of little balls of unidentifiable energy held together by an unfathomable force. What we call matter, is really an illusion.

I have never seen a more convincing scientific proof of the existence of God.The Bible tells us God created the Earth, its creatures and all the heavens from nothing. Not that God took what existed and shaped it but that He had to create what exists and form it.

From nothing.

We can give a name to the force, which holds our existence together. We can call it gravity between planets or bonding between particles. And we can experience the illusion of a substantial world. But giving a name to something we experience is not the same as knowing its essence. We cannot and will not ever be able to scientifically get to the bottom of it. That's because there is no 'bottom of it.'

The Bible also tells us that someday, God will peel back everything we think is real. Our world and the entire galaxy will be destroyed and replaced by a new Heaven and a new Earth. That won't be so hard for God because we are made of nothing to begin with. Everything we know to be real will be replaced by what is really real. As we go about our daily lives we should always keep in mind that our material world is something created by God for our benefit and His glory. But it is all as temporary as one of those facades on a Hollywood movie lot. As the old saying goes, there's nothing there, there.