Sermon 31 - I believe because I am a physicist, part 3
1 John 1:5-7
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
I have just sat through another sermon on Christian hope. It was a slurry of Christian cliches and various scripture texts. There wasn't any evidence of any kind of argument in it, beyond a mishmash of proof-texting. I don't even think even the minister really believed what he was saying, or felt that he was making any kind of an argument. As he got towards the end of his sermon, he wasn't even sure he *was* at the end of his sermon. It was about the right time, but he didn't know whether he had any more slides, and he said so. Out loud. Now he happened to be correct. The next slide that he clicked on was the closing hymn. But obviously he didn't really know where his sermon was going, because his sermon wasn't particularly going anywhere.
Okay, you want hope? I'll give you hope.
Here's my thesis:
Evil is not real.
Yeah, yeah. I can just hear you now. "He's never going to be able to prove that."
Oh, yes, I bloody well can. I'm a physicist, baby!
I am a physicist. Being a physicist informs my worldview, and, particularly, understanding of God. Physics is, in reality, the study of--reality. We study what is and what isn't. We study things that are, but may be difficult to perceive, like forces. So, studying physics is studying everything that's real. God created everything that's real. So we study everything God made. And how he made it. And how it works.
Physicists have a different perspective on the world. Like I say, we deal with reality. We deal with things that are real, but which you can't see. We deal with things that you can see, but aren't real. Physicists have a saying which I once told Gloria. She loved it. And she decided that, when I died, she was going to use this in structuring my eulogy.
The saying is:
If it's there, and you can see it, it's real.
If it's there, and you can't see it, it's transparent.
If it's not there, and you can see it, it's virtual.
If it's not there, and you can't see it, it's *gone*.
(She told me that she had this eulogy all prepared. When she died, I knew that she had prepared material for both of our services. I went looking for them. I eventually found hers. [In surprisingly informal shape.] But I never did find mine. I assume she was going to end by talking about me being not there, and you couldn't see me, and I was gone, but I have no idea what she was going to do with the other three parts.)
So we deal with reality when you deal with the difference between what you can see, and what is actually there. And so some of the things that we, as physicists, say tend to be a bit strange to people who haven't studied physics.
For example, physicists will agree with me when I say that light is real. Light is there. Light has to do with force, and transfer of energy, and a variety of things. But dark is *not* real.
Now you say, of course dark is real. We can see it.
Ah, but of course you *can't* see it. That's the definition of dark. It's too dark to see. The thing is, dark isn't real. There isn't any "dark." You can't shine "dark" on anything. You can't add dark to a lamp to make it less bright. Dark is simply the absence of light.
Light is real. Light is measurable. Light has characteristics. Dark is simply what we call the absence of light.
Actually that isn't quite correct. Because dark isn't real, you can never have absolute darkness. There is always *some* light, even if it is very faint or in a non-visible part of the spectrum. What we call dark; what we call pitch dark; what we call dark without a trace of sunshine, without any indication of light at all, isn't actually, completely, 100%, dark. There is always *some* light.
Let me turn it around and give you another example of the same idea when I say that heat is real. We can measure heat. We know what heat does. There is no such thing as cold. Or, rather, cold is not real. Cold is simply the absence of heat, in the same way that dark is simply the absence of light. People are starting to explore what happens when things get really, really cold. And, of course, you can't inject cold into things, because cold isn't real. It isn't a "thing." All you can do is try as hard as you can to take heat away from something, and to prevent it from getting any more heat.
We know that there is, in fact, an absolute zero temperature. A temperature of absolute zero. If I remember correctly (and I probably don't), it's -273.16 degrees Celsius. That is absolute zero. Where there is absolutely no heat. The thing is, we can get close to it. But we've never been able to get absolutely there. It's really quite interesting, as people have been trying to work on low temperatures, and the properties of materials at very low temperatures. One of the areas that people have been exploring is to do with quantum computers. There are a variety of ways to try and make quantum computers, but one of the ways is to cool things down to very close to absolute zero. The D-Wave company, based in Burnaby, makes one of these versions of quantum computers that works at very low temperatures. We talk about interstellar space being very cold, and that it's very dark, and there is an absence of heat, and so it's close to absolute zero. Well, as a matter of fact, it's *not* very close to absolute zero. The temperature that we live at is about one hundred times hotter than the temperature of interstellar space. But when the D-Wave computer is operating, it's actually operating at a temperature that is a thousand times colder than interstellar space. And it's *still* not at absolute zero. It turns out to be really, really hard to get something really, really cold. There is always some source of heat, even if that "heat" is very much colder than a temperature that we are comfortable with.
I know that when I say that cold isn't real, that those of you who remember the cold snaps we've had over the last couple of years here in Port Alberni will say, "Oh, yes! Cold is real!" and those who have lived on the prairies will say, "Oh, no, you don't understand cold! We've been in cold! Cold is really real!"
Yes, the *effects* of a lack of heat are real. But cold isn't real. Cold isn't a thing. Like I say, you can't inject cold into a system like the D-Wave computer and make it cold enough to operate. All you can do is to try very, very hard to take heat away, to let the computer radiate away what heat it does have, and protect it from getting any more heat, so that it's heat reduces to smaller and smaller and lower and lower levels.
Okay, something else we need to put in here. We can make light as bright as we want it. We can make light brighter and brighter and brighter. There is a point at which there is no light, although it's harder to get to that point than we realise. We can make things hotter and hotter and hotter. We can make things as hot as we want, or as hot as we can. There is a point at which there is no heat, a point of absolute zero. It's really difficult to get there, but we know where that point is. We just can't ever do it. We can have perfect light. We can have perfect heat. We can't have perfect darkness. We can't have perfect cold. We just can't ever get there. It's not achievable. It's inherently impossible. And, the thing is, at the other end, there *is* no maximum brightness, or maximum heat. We can keep on going. As far as we can.
So, light is real. And dark is not. And heat is real. And cold is not.
So, you say, what does this tell us about God?
Well, rather a lot. I'm pretty sure that, in the same way, good is real, and evil is not.
In the same way that light is real, and dark is simply the absence of light, so also evil is not real.
Now, you say, there is evil in the world.
Yes, I'm not saying that there isn't evil, in the same way that I'm not saying that the effects of cold and dark aren't real. Yes, they are real. The effects, that is. But dark and cold aren't real because they're not "things." We can't measure them. We can only measure, indirectly, a lack of heat or a lack of light. So, in this same way, we can say that evil is simply a lack of good. Sin is a lack of good, a lack of doing what God wants us to do. But it's not *real.*
We don't know how to measure good.
I mean we are fallen, sinful creatures. We're not *really* sure what good even *is*. But we *do* know that we can't be perfectly good. We can try. We *should* try. And we can always do *better*. But we can't be perfectly good. Not yet.
But, the thing is, there cannot be pure, perfect evil, either. Partly because it's not real. It's not a thing: it's simply the absence of good. That should give us hope. Good is real, evil is not.
I do not know what will happen when God "unmakes" our existing world and remakes it and us. The new, perfect world. I don't know how that's going to translate. But I do strongly suspect that what is real will survive, and what is not real will not. So good, and any good that we do, will survive. What we do on God's behalf will survive. What we do that is evil, that is sinful, that is flawed, that is not, in fact, real, will not survive. That's strikes me as a pretty good definition of Heaven. Heaven will be perfect. And therefore Heaven will be real. In a sense, Heaven already *is* real. The kingdom of God is at hand. Because whatever we are doing with, and for, God, on God's behalf, as directed by God; whatever God wants us to do; is real. And is already real. And will survive when unreality is swept away
You cannot add dark to something to make it darker. You cannot add cold to something to make it colder. All that you can do is insulate something from heat or light.
You *can* add heat to something. You can shine light on something. You can't add dark to anything. You can't "shine" dark. So, when we insulate something, we make sure that, as far as possible, no more heat or light gets in. But there always is a little bit of light in there. When we call something dark; when we say that it's pitch dark; when we call something cold; when we say that it is absolutely freezing cold; (and remember that freezing refers to water, and water, when it freezes, is more than 270 degrees celsius or four hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than absolute zero), but when we say something is pitch dark, all we are really saying is the light is at such a low level that we can't detect it. It's saying something about us. Not something about the object that we are saying is dark. When we say that something is absolutely cold, absolutely freezing cold, again what we are saying is that our ability to measure the heat in this object is too limited. There is still some residual heat in it. It's just that it's below the threshold that we are able to measure. It doesn't mean that it is absolutely zero. Absolute zero, as I have said, doesn't exist. So, in the same way, when we say that something is absolutely evil, we're not certain of that. I frequently tell people, never challenge "worse." Things can always get worse. In a sense, in saying this, I am saying that there is always a little bit of good, even in what seems to be a really evil situation.
So evil is not real. And therefore evil is, inherently, bound to fail. Because you can never get to absolute evil. This must be rather frustrating for the Devil. If he's supposed to be evil, and God is absolutely good, then the Devil should be able to get to absolute evil. Well, I don't know whether you can or you can't. Not for sure. I do not know all of the rules of reality. But it would seem that the Devil is very likely in that situation where he cannot be absolutely purely evil. And, as I say, that must be frustrating.
So, in the battle between good and evil, not only does good have the advantage in being able to go so much further, so much higher, never to have a top end to good, in the same way that there is a never a top end to light or heat, evil is always going to be limited. There is a bottom end. Which evil can strive for, but can never get there. Evil can never get there.
So we've got two very promising indications, from what we know of physics and reality, which indicate that good is always going to win. Good always has the upper hand. Good can never be defeated because good is real, and evil, well, it's just not. You can't inject any evil into any situation to make it *more* evil. You can only try, whatever way you want to try, to prevent good from getting in. And always remember, good can be as big as it wants. So, no matter how hard you try to prevent good, if you're trying to go in that direction, you are always going to be faced with the probability that you are on the losing side.
Come to the light side. We have reality.
see also Sermon 20 - Science vs Faith
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/sermon-20-science-vs-faith.html
also Sermon 30 - How do you know that? science part 2
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/06/sermon-30-how-do-you-know-that.html
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