“Can You Fathom The Mysteries Of God?”

An You Fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? asked Zophar the Naamathite a very long time ago (Job 11:7 NIV).

Not long ago, Alan Guth, internationally renowned Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal, one of the most prestigious awards in the world of science, only a whisker short of a Nobel.

Franklin himself, I am sure, would have been startled at the reason for this award of his medal. Dr. Guth was given the Medal for answering Zophar with a resounding “Yes!” He was credited with being the greatest living thinker for “answering the central question of human existence, the origin of the universe.”

And what is his answer for which he has been given such an accolade? Here it is: “Everything was created in a random quantum fluctuation out of nothing. The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. All matter plus all gravity in the observable universe equals zero. So the universe came from nothing because it is, fundamentally, nothing.” [What the universe came from is something not visible to us, but it is certainly something, something awesome from which God made all things.]

Guth says that “it seems like a sure thing” that there are many universes, and they are all self-reproducing – “like bacteria.” He claims that he can “explain creation by the laws of physics,” by simply invoking quantum mechanics.

Is that explaining, or explaining away? Guth admits that the universe is so finely tuned that matter, velocity and gravity all balance to within a range tolerance of (at most) 1000 million million to one, otherwise the universe would have collapsed aeons ago. But he insists that this can still be thought of as within the reasonable limits of chance! During a recent interview, science writer Brad Lemley asked Guth, “You say that a chance or random spontaneous creation from nothing is compatible with the laws of physics. But where do the laws of physics come from?” Guth answered, “We are a long way from bring able to answer that one.” So there’s no Nobel Prize in the pipeline in that direction just yet.

The Franklin medallist claims to have identified the power that created the universe: repulsive gravity. According to Guth, gravity can ‘exist’ even when there is nothing. And can create everything out of absolutely nothing, including you and I, and — if he really exists at all — God. “Anything – a dog, a house, a planet — can pop into existence by means of a quantum quirk, a vacuum fluctuation.” His students — who adore him — describe him as full of excitement that either a telescope or an atom smasher somewhere in the world will soon provide the clinching scientific proof with, of course, a Nobel Prize to top it off.

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Do you know the laws of the heavens? (Job 38:18-19,33).

Alan Guth’s response to the Lord is not exactly modest. At a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences after ‘September 11,’ he proclaimed that only a secular scientific rationalism like his can possibly defeat terrorism and free the world of fear.

Job’s answer was a little different: “I am unworthy — how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer” (40: 4- 5).

Three thousand years before Alan Guth got his Medal, David king of Israel taught his choir a song: “The fool says in his heart, There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their ways are vile. God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Will the evildoers never learn? Oh that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! ” (Psalm 53:1,2,4,6).

That Benjamin Franklin Medal: was it awarded to Alan Guth for science, or for being a fool?