Dark Matter and Dinosaurs

By Eric Von Salzen

I was fascinated by the article about CERN and the God particle (the Higgs Boson) that Greg posted recently. Serious scientists are actually talking about particles that travel through time to affect human activities. As a commenter said, “And people think we're weird for believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.” As if that weird science weren’t weird enough, other serious scientists are debating whether the movements of galaxies and galactic clusters – which don’t make sense according to the laws of gravity – should be explained by assuming that 90% of the matter in the universe is stuff we can’t see and know absolutely nothing about (“dark matter”), or by changing the laws of gravity to fit the observations.

This all brings to mind an impression I have that belief in God is more prevalent in some scientific disciplines than in others; specifically that cosmologists and quantum physicists are more likely to believe in God than are biologists.

I’ve done no research on this, and maybe I’ve just been overly influenced by books I’ve happened to read – like God and the Astronomers by Robert Jastrow, on the one hand, and practically every book that Stephen Jay Gould wrote, on the other. If anyone has any actual data on this, I’d love to hear about it.

But for the time being, assuming that this impression is correct, it makes sense to me that this should be so.

Cosmologists and quantum physicists deal with matters that are right on the edge of human comprehension, as the discussion of the Higgs Boson illustrates. I don’t mean merely that I don’t understand these subjects; there are myriad things I don’t understand, from the popularity of rap music to why anyone would eat Manhattan clam chowder if they can get New England. What I mean is that the most powerful human minds are stretched to the limit to puzzle over what happened in the first micro-instants of the Big Bang, or why galaxies are the shape they are, or what it is that makes a quark charming.

A scientist who has to face the possibility that what he’s trying to discover may lie, unknowable, beyond the blue event horizon, might find it possible to believe that there’s something beyond the edge of human comprehension, and that something might be “God”. I don’t claim that every cosmologist or quantum physicist believes in God – that’s probably a minority position at best, and even those who believe in God may more likely be Deists than Christians – but I think that belief can be found in such company.

Now for the biologists. If I’m right that they are the least religious of scientists, there’s good historical reason for their being so. A central tenet of biology -- evolution through natural selection – has been the battlefield on which believers and secularists have waged their campaigns against one another for a century and a half. In this country in recent years the fight has been over “teaching evolution in the schools”. If you were a biologist, your opinion of religion could not help but be affected by the fact that it was religious people who were trying to get the school board to ban evolution from the high school science curriculum, or add a unit on “creation science”. You could be excused for seeing faith as an enemy of science.

And it’s not just biologists for whom Biblical literalism is a stumbling block in the way of religious faith. Many educated people in this modern world are going to hesitate to embrace a belief system that demands that they reject what they have learned to be the established consensus of scientific thought.

Frankly, Christianity makes claims that are pretty tough for people brought up in this modern secular world to accept – that God became embodied as a Jewish carpenter who performed miraculous healings and other feats, was executed in a gruesome manner, and then rose bodily from the dead. We Christians make it much harder for such people to accept the Gospel if we insist that they also have to swallow the claim that all the animals, birds, and fishes were created just as we see them today in seven days six thousand years ago.

I’ve often felt that the Episcopal Church, tiny as it is in membership, may be called to bring the Gospel to intelligent, educated, modern people, who are turned off by the excesses of the Protestant fundamentalists on the one hand, and the rule-bound Romans on the other.

That’s not a bad ministry to have in the United States today. Unfortunately, though, some church leaders – even a bishop or two – seem to think that the way to make the church acceptable to modern people is to dilute its religious content. That hasn’t worked, and it shouldn’t be expected to work. What would draw a modern secularist to a church that said the same things he/she heard all the time from the modern, secular world? Oh, maybe some people will come for the music, or the incense, or the pretty gowns the clergy wear, but that’s not a rock on which to build a church. The only reason for significant numbers of modern, secular people to become part of the church is the kerygma, the Gospel, the Good News. Without that the church is just another venue of the secular world. It doesn't help to tell them that we don’t question the Theory of Evolution, but we have our doubts about the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. If they want evolution without Resurrection, why go to church? They can get plenty of that in the world around them, and sleep late on Sunday.

Northern Michigan

The Diocese of Northern Michigan is starting a new process to identify and elect a bishop. They admit to reeling after the failure of their last bishop-elect to receive necessary consents. This must certainly be true. The difficult part to sympathize with is the understanding the leadership of that diocese have of what exactly transpired in the case of Kevin Thew Forrester's consents. The head of the standing committee has intimated that some of the trouble may have had something to do with their failure to amply communicate to the wider church the ins and outs of their internal process of discernment. In other words, it seems they think that if they had told everybody why they only had one candidate, everything would have worked out fine.

But, again, that's not the point. To some the fact that they had only one candidate from which to elect may be a big deal -- but not necessarily. It begins to look like a small group has effectively appointed the bishop elect, and then had a convention ratify their appointment, but I suppose that could be alright.

What really bothered folks about the person elected in Northern Michigan was not merely the process, but the result. According to his own published works of theology, the man elected did not uphold the doctrine and discipline of The Episcopal Church according to what is made clear in the Prayer Book, Hymnal and canons. Simple as that.

The reason why the leadership of this tiny diocese, which consists of a few hundred persons in average Sunday attendance, may have difficulty in understanding why their appointment fell through is because it appears that they share the theology of their appointee -- and seem to have no sense of awareness of what the wider Episcopal Church teaches and values as regards the essentials of the Christian faith.

One has only to look at the vision statement of the Diocese of Northern Michigan. It says:

We envision a world in which all people live together in peace
and in harmony with all of creation, where all can contribute
and the gifts of all are joyfully received, nurtured, and supported,
where our diversity is celebrated in community, and every creature
is recognized as having eternal significance.

Now, this may not be such a bad statement at all, if there were anything about it that seemed to say this vision was rooted in the basic Christian proclamation. It is not inherently clear that this vision is particularly Christian -- or even theistic, for that matter. Very possibly this vision could be put forward by someone who is neither Jewish, Muslim nor Christian. Indeed, as well, it seems like no Buddhist or Hindu would necessarily firm all of it -- because I wonder whether they do recognize that every creature has eternal significance.

Time Travel and God Particles

Interesting:

Search for elementary particles hindered by time travel

By: Irma Zhang

Posted: 10/29/09

More than a year has passed since the world's largest and most expensive physics experiment shut down due to technical difficulties. With intense maintenance and painstakingly tedious corrections, the infamous Large Hadron Collider is back to working standard, and is expected to start once again in December. But according to two physicists, the repairs may have been for naught and the original breakdown was destined to occur.

After observing several strings of bad luck, such as cancellations or breakdowns, that have haunted other supercolliders, physicists Holger Bech Nielson of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, have proposed that the sought-after product of the collider is so destructive to nature that it travels backwards through time to stop the collider before it can even be created.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator, with a 17-mile circumference that lies 570 feet underground near Geneva, Switzerland. The accelerator was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, for the purpose of finding forces and particles that existed in the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. The LHC has been in the works for 15 years and has cost $9 billion so far.

Protons within the collider are accelerated until they reach a peak energy of seven trillion electron volts, and then collide together to form primordial fireballs.
Although some doomsday theorists speculate that planet-consuming black holes would subsequently form, physicists believe that the collision would instead generate what is known as the Higgs boson, the "god" particle that supposedly explains the origin of mass in the universe.

Nielson and Ninomiya have published multiple papers with titles such as "Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal" and "Search for Future Influence From LHC." According to the New York Times, in an unpublished essay, Nielson claims, "One could even almost say that we have a model for God," since the very existence of the Higgs is so contrary to the nature of the universe.

This negative influence of Ninomiya and Nielson's proposed Higgs product could be one possible reason that the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, could have been canceled back in 1993. Furthermore, they predict that all other future Higgs-seekers will be blocked by fate.

However, Neilson and Ninomiya's theory has been met with much criticism. "When I heard about this proposal, I thought it was either a tongue-in-cheek parody or an attempt to see how many people were gullible enough to believe it," Barry Blumenfield, a professor at Hopkins specializing in neutrino physics and hadron-collider physics states. "I don't believe this proposal any more than I believe a field goal kicker missed in the last 2 seconds because of ripples going backward in time that prevented him from making it."

Furthermore, some argue that it's possible that the Higgs boson already exists, but as far as we can tell, the passage of time has not been altered. "Cosmic rays hit nuclei in our atmosphere at higher energies than person-kind will produce [at] the LHC. If the Higgs particle exists then cosmic rays will be producing them all the time," Bruce Barnett, a professor in the Hopkins Physics Department who performs research at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, said. "The possibility of a Higgs being produced does not cause cosmic rays to stop coming from outer space into our atmosphere."

Although it would seem that such a ridiculous-sounding theory would be immediately dismissed by the physics community, the fact that the two proposers are prominent thinkers in the field of particle physics makes their ideas even more controversial. Nielson, for one, is one of the founders of string theory, which combines quantum mechanics and general relativity to explain the most basic components of the universe.

Undaunted, however, Neilson and Ninomiya have proposed a test, using a random-number generator to distinguish bad luck from events prohibited by the future.

The LHC is scheduled to start accelerating protons to an energy of 3.5 trillion electron volts by the end of this year, and then build up to 7 trillion electron volts by the end of 2010. But according to Nielson and Ninomiya, even if it does reach 3.5 trillion electron volts, the energy will not be large enough to generate a Higgs. But no matter what happens at CERN, for elementary particle hunters, the theory is the ultimate statement of pessimism.

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© Copyright 2009 News-Letter (Johns Hopkins)

Benedict's Crozier: Staff or Spear? REVISED

Recent actions by Pope Benedict raise the question for me -- is his papal crozier primarily a staff for the prodding of sheep, or a trident for the spearing of fish? He certainly is leaning in a strongly tridentine direction these days. [ed. note: The Council of Trent was the harsh anti-protestant response of the Roman Catholic Church, and the form of the mass which was established at Trent is called the 'Tridentine Mass.']

Indeed, it appears to be exactly the kind of left-handed spear toss that this pope has been practicing for decades, at least since his time as Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Catholic Church (yes, he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which until 1965 had the name, 'Holy Office of the Inquisition.') Of course, this spear has three points, and only the first strikes at Rowan Williams. The second tine jabs at all Anglicans who cherish the reforms that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries, including our restoration of early catholic models of authority in which the bishops of the church were collegial brethren, and the other orders of the church had a degree of shared authority in their representation at church councils. ('Conciliarism') And the third barb cuts back upon at those in the Roman Catholic Church who actually appreciated the movements developed at the Second Vatican Council, and have lamented the backward-movement of the Roman Catholic Church's leadership under the influence of then Inquisitor, now Pope Benedict.

This is the same Pope, who just two years ago on his own initiative (motu proprio) issued a decree allowing the Latin Mass to be used by any priest who wants to do so, following a minimum of criteria. The purported motivation behind the decision was the pope's desire to reconcile with those traditionalist Roman Catholics who did not approve of the changes to the liturgy and theology of the church coming about in Vatican II. This was the same purported motivation behind the pope's decision earlier this year to restore to communion to several extremely conservative Roman bishops -- including Richard Williamson. Williamson, for those who don't remember, has actively denied the Holocaust. These chaps had originally been excommunicated for their involvement with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Pius X, a rabid critic of Vatican II and its changes in Roman Catholicism. Lefebvre was also, by the way, a supporter of the Nazi-friendly Vichy government, and the fascist regimes of Franco and Pinochet.

The pope's decision to allow the Tridentine mass and the reinstatement of the leading figures of anti-Vatican II Roman Catholicism back into the fold may also be seen to be theologically and ecclesiologically connected to his decision to receive disgruntled Anglican clergy and laity into the Roman Catholic Church via the creation of personal ordinariates. The connection consists of Benedict's long-held antipathy for the conciliar/collegial vision of authority pointed to by Vatican II -- and his long-held preference for the supremacy of papal authority. Benedict is the chief architect of the re-emphasis of central papal authority.

The debate between Cardinal Kasper and then Cardinal Ratzinger over the relationship between local and universal church -- between local bishop and pope -- which occurred some ten years ago -- has clearly been decided in the election of Ratzinger to the throne. He is simply enforcing his top-down, centralized model of imperial authority for the papacy that Kasper and Vatican II opposed. Father Hans Kung, the famous Swiss Roman Catholic theologian and professor who openly repudiated papal infallibility in 1971, and was stripped of his authority to teach doctrine by the Vatican in 1979, writes in the Guardian (UK):

Pope Benedict is set upon restoring the Roman imperium. He makes no concessions to the Anglican communion. On the contrary, he wants to preserve the medieval, centralistic Roman system for all ages – even if this makes impossible the reconciliation of the Christian churches in fundamental questions.

The relationship between the authority of the papacy to the authority of the bishop's of local churches shared by Pope Benedict XVI is as follows: The Fullness of Church Authority reside in the Pope; the province/archdiocese/diocese is under the authority of the Pope; the province/archdiocese/diocese's own particulars are far less important than the universals of the whole church; therefore the Pope should tell the local churches what and how to do; their input is of minimal importance.

Of course all of this goes quite against what Anglicanism is essentially all about -- which is to say collegiality, subsidiarity, and conciliarism. In this model, the authority of Jesus Christ resides in all the members of His Body, but each order within the body is called to different ministries -- some with a greater degree of oversight than others, but none with supreme authority. Conciliarism holds that church councils (sometimes called conventions, synods, or even vestries in a sense) share the authority of God by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when we meet together as representative leaders of the Body of Christ. Roman church imperialism says, no, the authority of God in Christ has been given to the pope.

Indeed, the best thing about the recent actions from the Vatican is that it reminds me how glad I am that the English Church experienced the Reformation in the 1500s, and that bad old Henry VIII may have done us a favor.

Looking Ahead

I am of course very much an Episcopalian, and this is without question my home in Christ. No fear that I will be swimming the Tiber, now or ever. But, the recent news of our own denominational membership decline is far more troubling to me than any news about the Vatican offering a very small and uncomfortable looking door for former Anglicans.

Our church is in decline, and so are the other large churches we are in communion with in cultural contexts similar to our own. Consider, the ELCA has some 4.5 million members, with an average Sunday attendance of about a third of that -- some 1.5 million -- but those numbers are of course down significantly in the past decade. Same with the Church of Sweden -- which claims some 6.75 million members -- but with just under 300,000 attending church services weekly -- that's about 3%. The Church of England claims some 20 million members, but average Sunday attendance is under a million -- or about 5%. The Anglican Church of Canada has some 650,000 members or so, and about 200-300,000 attend weekly. We have just over 2 million members, and just under 800,000 attend services weekly.

While I agree with Diana Butler Bass' contention that the decline story is not merely because these churches are largely 'progressive' and inclusive of modernity in their vision and practice. It is not just that. My own parish has grown significantly, and so have many other parishes which are equally vibrant in their focus on Jesus Christ, the traditional essentials of the catholic faith, the sacraments, prayers, missions, Christian education, youth work, newcomer development and inclusion, outreach, and fellowship.

But something's clearly going wrong -- if we were given the kind of bill of health by our doctors that our own annual membership statistics indicate, we'd be on meds, exercise, diet-change, etc.

Again, I agree with Diana Butler Bass - churches that are intentional about the Christian practices and message I mention above -- are much more likely to thrive. So why can't we turn this mess around?

I suggest a few things. First, the particular reticence to preach Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, resurrected and ascended must be put to rest. We must focus on this message with passion, excitement, and interest in sharing it with folks. Second, we have too many ministries that are not thriving -- they need to be consolidated. Third, we must be actively looking for energetic and faithful people who are flexible and able to do something daring in leadership. Fourth, we must consolidate our seminaries, and then require that aspirants go to one of them.

Perhaps most of all, we need to believe that God wants us to grow both spiritually and numerically. Inclusion is our mission -- including people into the kingdom of God specifically -- and that means fishing for people -- not waiting for them to perhaps show up.

Swimming the Tiber Anyone?

Today's paper has a front page story about big news in the area of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations. The Vatican has dramatically and suddenly announced a new provision which will permit Anglican laity (and clergy) to form church entities within Roman Catholicism that are independent of the regular chain of oversight but still ultimately under the oversight of the pope. In other words, in addition to the regular diocesan arrangement of the Roman Catholic Church in which archbishops oversee bishops who oversee parishes which are seen by priests -- there will exist an additional type of arrangement in which former Anglican clergy have oversight of units peopled by former Anglicans. These "personal ordinariates" -- as they are called in the mystifying jargon of catholic Christianity (which we Anglicans also share) -- will follow certain Anglican liturgical traditions and customs.

How will this look on the ground? Very likely in the United Kingdom -- let's say in London -- there will be a bishop who was once a cleric in the Church of England who now oversees a cluster of missions/parishes/chaplaincies led each by clerics who were once in the Church of England, and they will be largely peopled by laity who were once in the Church of England. They will all ultimately be considered Roman Catholic now, and the leadership will of course be reporting up to the Vatican hierarchy.

Interestingly, all of the clergy who leave the Church of England for this new Anglican Rite (or whatever it will be called) will have to be reordained. Since Pope Leo XIII declared in 1896 that Anglican holy orders are "utterly null and completely void" -- in the eyes of Rome we don't have valid deacons, priests or bishops anyway. Moreover, those former Anglican clergy who are married, will be able to become Roman Catholic priests -- but -- they will never be allowed to be bishops while married.

Does this mean that Church of England cathedrals, parishes or dioceses will all of sudden possibly become Roman Catholic again (after more than five centuries of independence)? Almost certainly not. The Church of England is still the established church of the realm, and it will still be around. Does this mean that a great many Anglicans in Britain will become Roman Catholic in this way? I rather doubt it. Lay people have always been free to switch churches and those that have long wanted to be Roman Catholic probably have already made the switch. On the other hand, those clergy who feel they must leave the Church of England because of its inclusion of women into ordained ministry, and its debate over the inclusion of gay clergy and couples, may be end up going this route. Indeed, for those Anglican clergy who cannot abide women or openly gay persons as colleagues, this may be the best choice for them. That is, of course, unless they are primarily evangelical in theology.

Yes, the old split in Anglicanism -- long before struggles of egalitarianism emerged in the past century -- has always been between evangelical/protestant-minded folks and catholic-minded folks. Those Anglicans who identify very much in terms of catholic history, theology and practice, won't have a huge problem switching to a Vatican-based church. Those Anglicans who identify very much with protestant history, theology and practice -- they would have a huge problem. Indeed, until fairly recently, evangelical Anglicans have been as anti-Roman Catholic as anybody -- and virulently so in the past century.

To be sure, most of the Anglicans who have the biggest difficulty with women's ordination and the inclusion of gay persons are not 'Anglo-Catholics' but Anglican evangelicals. This group latter group dominates the various breakaway movements we have seen in recent years, especially in the United States and Canada. As one leader of this movement is quoted as saying in today's News and Observer, Martyn Minns, "there was a Reformation."

So what will this look like on the ground in the United States? Probably not much. I have friends who have already left the Episcopal Church and become Roman Catholics -- one has already returned! Either way, this development won't have much impact on such decisions. As well, there is already a substantial alternative to the Episcopal Church for those more protestant-minded folks who have problems with the ordination of women or the inclusion of openly gay people into the church and its leadership. In Raleigh alone, there are some five different churches with the word Anglican in the name. One meets downtown near Peace street and Glenwood, and another meets on Dixie Trail, near to us. As far as I can tell, these two - All Saints and St. George's -- tend to be a bit more catholic-minded in their liturgy and practice. Another, Holy Trinity Anglican, meets at St. David's School. This congregation as best I can tell has both a fairly mainstream Book of Common Prayer type worship service, as well as a more contemporary one. It's clergy leadership have always been rooted in the Anglican evangelical tradition. Another still, Church of the Apostles, meets in a new facility not far from North Hills, and is primarily rooted in the contemporary evangelical tradition. Yet another, Holy Cross, meets in a property formerly owned by the Episcopal Church on Millbrook Road near Crabtree - I believe they too are rooted in a more contemporary evangelical tradition of worship and theology.

I have friends and family who are Roman Catholic (including my father, stepmother, and two aunts who are nuns) -- and I have always assumed the posture that despite our differences of history and practice and some theology -- we are all disciples of the One Christ Jesus. I have the same exact posture towards my friends in the different variations on Anglicanism which have emerged recently.

What does this mean historically? Hard to say. My first impression is negative. I think that the Pope is doing something, both in terms of its timing, immediacy and surprise-factor, which doesn't seem quite gracious. Most interpreters in England seem to see it as a shot across the bow, a parking of tanks in the lawn, or a plain-faced insult to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the process of ecumenical relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Despite the Archbishop's own statement downplaying any sense of insult yesterday, I'm not sure I believe it. Certainly, it doesn't change that much -- all of these Anglican clergy will still have to be ordained again -- as if for the first time -- by a Roman Catholic hierarchy which does not recognize the validity of the ordination they have already had in the Church of England. To many of us clergy, who see ordination as a parallel to the vows people take in marriage, this is quite an insult. To tell me I am not a valid ordained priest of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church -- in the apostolic succession through the past two millenia -- would be the same as to say my marriage wasn't valid either. As well, if formerly Anglican laity and clergy are to operate in small ecclesiastical peculiars -- with their own liturgical customs and practices, and not as part of the wider Roman Catholic diocese in their given region -- one can imagine a tendency toward isolation within the wider church.

Only time will tell what all this means -- and I will be interested to follow it. But, it certainly doesn't worry me too much.

Pope Creates Anglican Doorway

For those who wish to swim the Tiber, Benedict has made the swim a little less difficult.

According to the Associated Press,

"Pope Benedict XVI has created a new church structure for Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church, responding to the disillusionment of some Anglicans over the ordination of women and the election of openly gay bishops.

The new provision will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining their Anglican identity and many of their liturgical traditions...The new church structure, called Personal Ordinariates, will be units of faithful within the local Catholic Church headed by former Anglican prelates ... Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. ... The new canonical provision allows married Anglican priests to become ordained Catholic priests — much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married.

The announcement was kept under wraps until the last moment: The Vatican only announced Levada's briefing Monday night, and Levada only flew back to Rome after finalizing the details at midnight."