Scientists, dreamers

I hope to hear Michael Strauss’ talk about Christianity and science (tonight at 6:30, Statehouse Convention Center). In thinking about his topic, I recalled my depression on the recent death of one of my many idols, Stephen Hawking. So this old Republican was inspired to complete my own, long maturing, theology: God as the universe; the universe as God.

I paraphrase and borrow from the very readable Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Tyson’s version—or vision—of Creation begins with the Big Bang. Within a trillionth of a second, subatomic particles (energy, matter, antimatter) swarmed in an expanding universe in a “seething soup of quarks, leptons, and their antimatter siblings, along with bosons, the particles that enable their interactions.” (I told you Tyson is very readable.)

So now the theology begins. In the beginning, the entire unborn universe was compressed into “a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.” Then came the Big Bang, rapid expansion and cooling, swarming minute particles, including the particles that would eventually combine into life forms that would develop nervous systems, could reproduce, and on at least one world, in at least one solar system, in at least one galaxy, beings would emerge with the gift of the gods: curiosity.

Our personal beginnings also started with a very private Big Bang. Spirituality (or soul, if you like) will leave us upon our death. The particle swarm defining my mind will return to the universe (if you will allow, return to God). I, as a singular, selfaware entity, will disappear into eternity. I believe in an eternal God: the universe. We can know him/her only wistfully, mistily, through the brains of scientists and other dreamers such as Stephen Hawking.

CLIFF HARRISON Hot Springs Village