I will admit right off the bat that I am not a physicist. I am a social worker, which is about as far as you can get from physics and still call yourself a scientist. However, there is something rattling around in my brain that has to do with physics, astronomy and theology, and a little to do with history as well. And maybe some sociology too. Meh, it's a mess.
I am talking about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. I have read a lot about this topic, seen TV shows on Discovery and Nova, even had a chat or two with physics types about it. And one thing keeps cropping up around it that bugs me to death.
Let me set the stage first, though. Generally, physicists and astronomers are a godless bunch. Those for whom I have the most respect are the agnostic bunch, but as a general rule they are non-believers. This is fine. More power to them. Either they or I am going to be surprised when we die - if they are right, I will no longer exist to be perplexed or disappointed. If I am right, they will have just about forever to regret their lack of faith. But I digress.
So these brainy, sciency types are convinced there is no God. They claim that God is a construct used to explain mysterious phenomena that have no other ready explanation. I distinctly remember one astronomer in an interview talking about 'the day he realized there was no God' as being analogous to the day he 'found out there was no Santa Claus'. They base this claim on one fact: you can't prove God exists, and have to therefore act on faith, which they seem to feel is tantamount to buying beach-front property in Arizona.
So that is the set-up. The science community has overwhelmingly embraced an atheist or agnostic stance on God, because God cannot be proved and is only a convenient way to explain the mysterious and unexplainable.
Well, enter Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
Don't know much about this stuff? Allow me to give my non-physicist summary: The material in the Universe should be creating enough gravitational pull to cause the universe to contract. Einstein and CO. did all sorts of calculations that indicated the Universe contains enough mass that it should be all pulling on itself until eventually the whole thing gets pulled back together. Except that is not what is happening. Instead, what the good people like Hubble discovered is that the universe is expanding. Using measurements with Red Shift and other fancy sciency stuff I don't really understand, they concluded that, instead of shrinking, the universe is growing. And instead of that growth slowing down, it seems to be speeding up.
So physicists and astronomers got their melons cranking, and came up with the ideas of Dark Energy and Dark Matter. This stuff is supposed to be the reason that the Universe is not contracting. They theorize that Dark Matter fills up 30% of the space in the universe, while visible matter like stars, planets and you and me only make up 4%. The other 66% is empty. The only trouble with this Dark stuff is that is has never been seen, and can only be surmised by looking at its effects.
Is anyone else hearing the hypocrisy alarm going off?
So, when people use an invisible, unknowable construct to explain the unexplainable, and they call that construct God, they are naive and simple. But if they call that construct Dark Matter they are serious scientists?
I'm sorry, but it doesn't wash. Further, many many people have had direct interactions with God, and can show proof that He exists. Nobody has EVER had any kind of interaction with Dark Matter. Does that mean that physics doesn't exist? For that matter, nobody has ever been able to prove that their really is such a thing as 'gravity.' All we have is observations of the effects of gravity: stuff falls when you drop it. So, we infer that there must be a gravity, even though nobody can tell you why it works. But sciency types theorize and dream of a Higgs Boson, which is supposed to explain all of it. Of course, no one has ever seen a Higgs Boson, so the scientists who are searching for it are acting, bizarrely enough, on faith.
I desperately wish that two things would happen: One - that science would finally fess up to being what it really is: people making up constructs to explain the unexplainable, and then looking for proof to support those constructs, which is precisely what science criticises religion for doing.
Two - that everyone, both religious and scientific, stop claiming to be so damned right all the time. I mean, I believe in a faith that claims a direct link to God all the time. Revelation and the whole nine yards, and yet I still recognize that my church has room to grow and improve. We may be good - even great - but we are not completely right. Not yet, anyway.
So we all just need to chill and be less defensive. Because as history has shown, the only guaranteed outcome of someone claiming to be right is that they will eventually be proven, more or less, to be wrong.
