Hello JWN. Over the years I have posted about the existence of God at the moment of the Big Bang. I have taken some major heat for this belief, but nonetheless it has remained my faith. The discovery of the Higgs Boson has provided compelling evidence for my faith and further strengthens it. I can do nothing but thank the scientific community for providing me the tangible information I need to fill in the gaps of my own understanding of the universe.
54 days before the Higgs Boson discovery was tentatively announced I was involved in a thread discussing this YouTube Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1BzP1wr234
The video makes the claim that the Christian God watches idly while little kids get murdered and women get raped and refuses to help. This is blasphemy because it's not taking into consideration all factors even though the creators of the video know that they don't have all the information. Such as the confirmation of the Higgs Boson Particle which is refered to as a revolutionary step in the understanding of all matter.
Renowned Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, an esteemed colleague of Richard Dawkins, had this to say on the discovery:
Assuming the particle in question is indeed the Higgs, it validates an unprecedented revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics and brings science closer to dispensing with the need for any supernatural shenanigans all the way back to the beginning of the universe—and perhaps even before the beginning, if there was a before. How the Higgs Boson Posits a New Story of our Creation
I agree that supernatural shenanigans are not a beneficial force for our world, but the Higgs Boson is not supernatural and provides itself as evidence for the credability of Genesis 1:1's reference to heaven and earth and their interrelationship. In the thread about the YouTube Video I had this to say on the subject:
My argument is that upon discovering the Bible has a margin for error that simply discarding it as a word of God is without warrant. Instead we are simply required to go back to the begininng of the Bible and reinterpret. That's the beauty of Genesis 1:1 it simply asserts the notion that God exists, was there in the beginning and is the creator of the heavens and the earth. Which typically is what both atheists and modern theists, like myself, do. The atheists conclude Genesis 1:1 to be a farse and theists conclude it to be a universal truth. This creates opposing forces.
Genesis 1:1 says "God created the heavens and the earth" for a very specific reason. A reason I suspect has evaded most of the atheist community especially the ones with the world take over agendas (it's ok, it's through reason *Dr Evil side-mouth-pinky*). In a very old religion in China called Confucianism they tell a tale of a Dragon-Horse emerging from a Yellow River with strange symbols painted on it's armor that are now called the 8 Trigrams in Eastern religions. They are called Trigrams because they were simlply a tri-grouping arrangement of two symbols: a solid line and a broken line. Three solid lines in a row is grouped and called the Heaven Trigram and three broken lines in a row is called the Earth Trigram.
So, what is being described in Genesis 1:1? I do not believe it's speaking about a literal heavens (like what we see with telescopes) or even a literal earth. I think it was speaking about the stages of their Trigram counterparts: Creative and Receptive. If you swapped these stage words temporarily with the words used in Genesis 1:1 you get "In the beginning God created the creative and the receptive." This is a rough linguistic way to explain what the "beginning" even means. It means the beginning of creation, not just the beginning of the universe. For atheists when they see the word "beginning" their minds automatically jumps to the big bang for reasons of an empirical nature. This is because they have already chose to reject Genesis 1:1 as legitimate for reasons that were likely already considered by the writers of Genesis 1:1. This is their right, but to assume that the writers of the Torah, a book of law, that Zid so eloquently points out caused the death of so many, did not give consideration to atheism before writing Genesis 1:1 is simply wrong and absurd. They did consider it and they chose the same path that I choose. We chose to believe in God as the creator of the creative process. When the Torah explains God as "I AM" it means something entirely different to you than it does to me. When the Moses character tries to trap the Creator himself into giving a name he give a cryptic response. Why? It's because it's not as cut and dry as that and neither is Genesis 1:1.
So, when you continue reading through Genesis once you have legitimately gotten past Genesis 1:1 (without rejection), which I contend you actually have not gotten past it yet because of preconcieved notions, you will see it's talking about the creative process rather than the events that followed the big bang, which is the beginning of our known universe. - post #8377
What many atheists do along with Dr Krauss is ignore the methodology that was used to create the Torah. They do this because the methodology was not preserved only the product was so the scientific method stalls.
Dr Michio Kaku just put out a new video on BigThink which talks about the God particle and why it's an explanation for Genesis 1:1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCnvuKb0T7E
He says that that Genesis claims "God put the universe into motion" which is exactly what the Higgs Boson Class of particles played a part in doing, if not is the sole force that set the universe into motion. Now, this discovery is NOT scientific evidence for the existence of God, but it is a unified theory of everything as in everything that has mass is given that by these particular particles.
Faith is not something that is blind that's what the Watchtower taught us all and it's a lie. Something doesn't just spring forth from nothing, there has to be something to work with in the first place. In the beggning there was a Force, and that Force broke symmetry. Was it God? I believe so.
Symmetry breaking in physics describes a phenomenon where (infinitesimally) small fluctuations acting on a system which is crossing a critical point decide the system's fate, by determining which branch of a bifurcation is taken. To an outside observer unaware of the fluctuations (or "noise"), the choice will appear arbitrary. This process is called symmetry "breaking", because such transitions usually bring the system from a disorderly state into one of two definite states. Symmetry breaking is supposed to play a major role in pattern formation.
-Sab