The ultimate building block of all life.

I recently wrote that we are actually a package of organized energy. I wonder how many discounted me as crazy or, at best, a comedian. In reality, I am absolutely serious (and correct). Most readers have heard of Einstein’s development of the equation E=MC². No scientist has yet been able to disprove this as not true.  I do, however, question whether C is really the speed of light or was that simply a known very large number which was convenient to use. In any case, it should really be written M=E/C². Looking at it that way, so far as we know energy (E) has no weight, and speed does not carry any assumption of weight, so what are we measuring when we stem onto a scale? We are measuring the attractive force holding our mass to the surface of an extremely large mass, or package of energy, called “Earth.” That force is conveniently called “weight” and the magnitude is proportional to the size of two energy packages. Slowly, but surely, scientists are beginning to understand what is going on.

Let’s take a tour through the understanding of human bodies – opening of the doors of understanding is becoming more and more rapid. In the earliest days I am sure that there was no thought other than the unity of a human being. It may have been magic to see a woman’s stomach gradually enlarge followed by production of a baby. It probably was not long before this was associated to an enjoyable activity in which man and woman engaged. People, animals, trees, etc. were simply considered units which started out small and grew to “adulthood.” Humans, however, are curious and inventive. By the sixteenth century, AD, it was known that, if carefully formed, one could enlarge items by looking through glass. Hans Janssen was a lens maker, which provided his son, Zacharias, with plenty of lenses to play with and in 1595, at the age of seven, he invented the compound microscope (perhaps with his father’s help?).

The microscope opened up whole new worlds to investigate. Not only was it turned to the heavens in the form of a telescope, but very small things could be enlarged for examination. In 1665, Robert Hooke reported the discovery that wood was actually a collection of cells. In 1674 Antony van Leeuwenhoek was first to describe living cells, in this case, the green charophyte alga, Spirogyra. As a result of his work, the complexity of our makeup began to become understood, but how was a different story.

Even so far back as the Greek philosophers it was thought that everything was somehow made up atoms, but the atoms of the time were earth, fire, air, and water. (this, of course, led to the belief you could rearrange the components to form different materials, i.e. alchemy). In 1799, the French chemist Joseph Louis Proust established the fact that compounds were made up of atoms, and would always be of the same “recipe.” About 460 B.C., the Greek philosopher, Democritus, develop the idea that atoms would be the smallest unit into which a substance could be broken. However, it was not until the early nineteenth century that people begin again to question the structure of matter. An English chemist, John Dalton, reported that matter consists of elementary lumpy particles (atoms). Although he couldn’t describe a structure, the evidence pointed to something fundamental. In 1897, the English physicist, J.J. Thomson, discovered the electron and proposed an atom structure. Knowing electrons had a negative charge, Thomson proposed that the atom matter must also contain positive charge. His model looked like raisins stuck on the surface of a lump of pudding -- i. e. the “pudding” model of the atom.

In 1909, Ernest Rutherford found that most of the mass and positive charge of an atom is concentrated in a very small fraction of its volume, assumedly at the very center. Further experimentation indicated that positive charge of the atom must be concentrated in a very tiny volume producing an electric field. Rutherford therefore proposed a planetary model in which a cloud of electrons surrounded a small, compact nucleus of positive charge. An excursion into theoretical theory ensued in an attempt to understand what kept the electrons away from the nucleus. I won’t go into that, but simply say that, in 1913, Niels Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which electrons orbit the nucleus in particular circular orbits. The Bohr model was taught to me in High School Chemistry (1952-3) and college introductory Chemistry (1958). The Bohr model still had some theoretical problems, and has been displaced by a “modern model” which basically says the electrons are not in orbit, but in a cloud around the nucleus. I won’t go into that here either. I will just say that I was not introduced to this model until undertaking Physical Chemistry. By the time I finished graduate school, the Bohr model had been abandoned in Introductory Chemistry, and it wasn’t much longer until it had been abandoned in High School Chemistry.

By default, within this development, the electron was displaced as the smallest possible unit of mass. It has now been possible to split electrons into something even smaller. When it is split, there are small units flying away in different directions. Each with a unique path, so the units are given unique names. Are they, in fact, the smallest possible unit? Whether they are or not, we may have to stick with the idea, because these units only exist for microseconds and are gone. Why? Because they are small units of energy, which is quickly dispersed. All evidence also indicates that atom nuclei are also nothing more than conglomerations of energy. The whole idea carries some very interesting implications, but I will go into that elsewhere. For now, I will stop at the understanding of all mass being nothing more than organized energy.

Trump and Daniel - same story?

Are we currently experiencing a reenactment of Daniel in the Lion's Den?  No services today due to the snow, so we went to our "second team" TV preacher, David Jeremiah. He preached on Daniel 6, "Daniel in the Lion's den." He didn't make a whole lot of comparison with today, but he did make a comparison of the political actions (Daniel 6:4-7) to what is going on in Washington today. God put Daniel where he was, and, as the story plays out it is obvious that God was going to take care of him.    What I am about to say is going to raise the anger of some who are reading this, but when I step back and consider all that has happened over the last three years, the only way it really makes sense is that God has put Donald Trump into the President's chair. This has angered today's politicians just as did giving Daniel the supervision authority over Darius' entire kingdom. And they have reacted in a similar manner. Just in case a few readers don't know what happened next, the politicians of the day managed to maneuver the king into (very reluctantly) throwing Daniel into a den of hungry lions. He spent the night there, and the next morning the King pulled Daniel out, without a scratch on him. The perpetrators of this action were then thrown into the den and were devoured immediately.    In some regards, President Trump has already been thrown into the lion's den, and opposing politicians are egging the "lions" on, with expectation of him soon being devoured. The final act of this drama is yet to be seen, but if he was, indeed, placed there by God, he will come successfully through this trial and, as were the politicians of many years ago, his opponents will be thrown into oblivion.    Those who hate President Trump should read no farther. There is a possibility that your head will explode in anger. If God is really behind President Trump, just as Daniel is still revered by many today, with time he may join Presidents Washington and Lincoln as the most revered presidents of the United States.

The problem of conflicting visions

As I look back through my career, I realize that I have my feet in two worlds: One in the world of science, the other in the world of Christianity. Each seems to always be ridiculing the positions of the other. I wish I could bridge them and help people understand they are simply studying the same thing, but from different perspectives - much as two blind persons might be describing an elephant, one examining the tail and the other the trunk. Perhaps I am one piece of the bridge structure, but after centuries of study the supporting structure is still not complete, and I wonder whether it will ever be complete. So, I feel like I am moving back and forth via canoe, attempting to make sense of connections.

A Warning to Washington?

There was once a man named Ezekiel who had some very serious charges against Jerusalem, and filled a book with warnings. I wonder: If, instead, he were living in the U.S.A. today, and warning Washington, would chapter 22 of his book read something like the following?

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The word of the Lord came to me:

 “Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of corruption? Then confront her with all her detestable practices and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Your city that brings on herself doom by committing felony in her midst and defiles itself by lying to hide actions, you have become guilty because of the crime you have committed and have become defiled by the evil you have compiled. You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come. Therefore, I will make you an object of scorn to the nations and a laughingstock to all the countries. Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, you infamous city, full of turmoil.

“‘See how each of the elected leaders who are in you uses power to gain wealth. In you they have treated the poor with contempt; in you they have oppressed the legal immigrants and mistreated the poor. You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths. In you are slanderers who commit felony and blame the honest; in you are those who freely spend money that is not theirs and make decisions that benefit themselves rather than those they represent. In you are those who dishonor women; in you are those who violate women by force, when they are unable to resist. In you one man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully goes to prostitutes, and another violates children, both girls and boys. In you are people who accept bribes to direct their votes; you take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from those who elect you. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign Lord.

 “‘I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and the people you have destroyed in your midst. Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you? I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it. I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you through the countries; and I will put an end to your corruption. When you have been defiled in the eyes of the nations, you will know that I am the Lord.’”

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “Politicians have become dross to me; all of them are the copper, tin, iron and lead left inside a furnace. They are but the dross of silver. Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Because you have all become dross, I will gather you into Washington DC. As silver, copper, iron, lead and tin are gathered into a furnace to be melted with a fiery blast, so will I gather you in my anger and my wrath and put you inside the city and melt you. I will gather you and I will blow on you with my fiery wrath, and you will be melted inside her. As silver is melted in a furnace, so you will be melted inside her, and you will know that I the Lord have poured out my wrath on you.’”

Again, the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, say to the land, ‘You are a land that has not been cleansed or rained on in the day of wrath.’ There is a conspiracy of her Congressional representatives like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows. Her Senators do violence to my law and profane the Constitution; they do not distinguish between the legal and the illegal; they teach that there is no difference between their acts and the Constitution; and they shut their eyes to the wishes of those who elect them, so that I am profaned among them. Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they ignore the cost to make unjust gain. The Supreme Court judges whitewash these deeds for them by false judgements and lying decisions. They say, ‘This is what the Constitution says’—when the Constitution contains no support. The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice, while awarding and supporting illegal immigrants.

 “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on the politicians and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

(or would this last paragraph read: “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, and I found one. You have ridiculed, belittled, voted down, and blocked the actions I have ordered. So, I will pour out my wrath on the politicians and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.”)

Power = wealth

Power = wealth is a relationship recognized since people began to group together for mutual benefit. It didn’t take long for leaders to arise and organize the groups. It didn’t take long for the leaders to become absolute authorities, then absolutely obeyed Kings. Sooner or later, the king would be overrun by another king who had acquired a bit more power. After this system had been in place for thousands of years, a small, young society got “fed up” with it and decided to turn it around, making the society leaders absolutely obey the people. Unheard of! But it worked! They grouped themselves into towns, counties, and states. The state leaders developed a government which was to unite the states, adjudicate their different opinions to develop the best action plans, and supervise action. They called themselves the United States.

Not everyone agreed with this system. After all it was contrary to the status quo that had been in effect for many centuries. Plus, they were usually interested in taking power positions themselves. They began to fight the new system. The had very little success in the beginning, but they began to develop what seemed to be good arguments. By the early 20th century they had united themselves and became known as Tammany Hall, working quietly behind the elected government. World War II and Franklin D. Roosevelt pretty much destroyed the system. The survivors had to start over again, keeping themselves more hidden. Gradually they became more and more powerful, and you began to hear of a “Deep State” which was gradually positioning itself for government take over. I suggest you might pick up a Bible and read the first 24 chapters of Ezekiel. The United States in not yet the position of Israel at the time, but we are getting there, and are increasingly in danger of what happened as a result.

Thirty years ago, Oprah Winfrey interviewed a successful young businessman who had become aware of developing problems in our national government, and he outlined a number of things he would do to correct things if he were president. Today Donald Trump IS our president. He is now trying to accomplish the things he had outlined - - - and the Deep State members are apoplexic! He is trying to undo everything they have accomplished in their takeover plans. They are accusing him of everything they would and have done and would do in activating their takeover plans. They accuse him of using the presidency for financial benefit. They can’t understand that a wealthy business man is simply interest in righting a government ship that is increasingly in danger of sinking. Why would a billionaire spend his own money to be elected, just so he would not have his hands tied by desires of financial supporters? Why would he be refusing a nice salary if he is after every dollar he could find? This is beyond their understanding! Yes, he is not a politician and has had a steep learning curve, but he has been a quick learner. Yes, he uses Twitter too much, but it is the only way he can get his thoughts out to the people – mass media certainly does not help him on this. Yes, he has done things the Deep State considers disastrous, but they have regularly turned out successful. Politicians, however, know how to get people to take their “side” and support them.

The conflict of existence

In reality, all existence is controlled by just two forces – the force of good and the force of evil. Different cultures refer to them differently light and dark, white and black, or perhaps ying and yang (a representation of white and black).  I am sure there are also other terms I have not heard. All relate to some aspect of light.

What is darkness? The absence of light. I once spent some recreation time in spelunking (cave exploration). If you turn off all sources of light you are using, the cave becomes absolutely dark. You can put something right in front of your eye, but you will not be able to see even the faintest outline of your finger. This is a blackness you will never see on the surface. You may stand in the middle of a desert with both sun and moon on the opposite side of the earth, and no moisture in the sky to reflect light from surface sources. Even here you will never experience such a blackness, because the stars provide enough light to see your finger before you eye. Similarly, something white is reflecting all colors of the rainbow, while something black is absorbing all colors of the rainbow.

Likewise, evil can be said to emit no goodness at all. The 'color' black absorbs all light waves and emits none. Or, like darkness, evil lurks in locations where it has minimal contact with goodness. In other words, the force of evil is a vacuum, sucking in anything good and releasing none.

I guess the conflict between good and evil, could be compared to the view I am seeing out the window. The light of morning sun has driven darkness into deep crevices. White snow is brightly reflecting the sunlight. There are morning shadows across the snow, dulling the reflection brightness. I see bare grey trees, and I see some green evergreens. Our life can be like that. You probably have known some people who are filled with the joy of life, and are ready to help when needed – brightly reflecting the goodness of life. You likely know others whose goodness is shaded. They are willing to give when asked, but they face problems making them less free to reflect the goodness of life. Then there are those grey individuals, who are basically good, but have some (often hidden) dishonorable characteristics. Finally, there are “green” people who are constantly praised for an involvement which is good, but who otherwise reflects no goodness at all (and who may be covering evil actions elsewhere).

Perhaps one reason for the Star Wars popularity is these movies’ effective capture of the conflict between good and evil, with which we are constantly confronted.  

Who is God? / What is God?

Every person worships a god, whether they accept the idea or not. For the majority, their god is some type of being that has powers beyond their own. Some call themselves atheists, but you can be assured that they worship something, whether they realize it or not -- it may be money, it may be position, or it may even be self. There simply seems to be something within human beings that recognizes their own weakness and need. Over the ages, many societies have created and worshiped their own god. Their worship took many forms, and many have created idols to provide a visual focus for their worship. Judeo-Christians believe in one God, who is the former of all creation, is ruler of all, and rejects the attempt to create any kind of image through which He can be worshiped.

I am a Christian and fully subscribe to the Judeo-Christian position. I am also a physical scientist, and I have found nothing to dissuade me from this position. Rather, I have observed and experienced many things in my life that support the position. But I still must ask “Who and what is this God?” As I grow older this question grows in my mind, likely because I believe there is a God, and every day brings me nearer a face to face meeting. As to identity, in ancient times (still today??) knowing someone’s name gave you power over them. One Jewish tradition is that God appeared to Moses and commissioned him to take the descendants of Jacob out of Egypt. Moses asks, “Who shall I say sent me?” God responded, “I am. Tell them I am sent you.” In other words, I will not give you a name. Simply let them know I am in charge.

Even today, we want a name and/or an image. Lacking either we have no choice but to examine the Bible for hints of character. In the Jewish records that also became the Christian Old Testament, we see God as a ruler who expects acknowledgement and obedience. We see a strict judge who gives sentences appropriate to the “crime” – nothing more, nothing less. We also see a father providing behavior guides to his children, as well as serious discipline for misbehavior. And we see a father who loves and cares for his children.  Unfortunately, His children so misbehaved that, as we read the record, his strict discipline seems to stand out. However, as we read the Christian New Testament, His love and care for his children stands out, although discipline is still there for those who reject Him and his gifts. No, God is not a benign grandfather, as often depicted.

So, who is the God we worship? We live in a ‘box’ of three-dimensional space and unidirectional time, and must put everything into the perspective of this box. It is impossible to really understand God, because He is not in the box. Not only is His existence outside the box, but He created the box for us. Does, perhaps, “Star Wars” really depict the on-going battle actions outside the box? Is, perhaps, God really a ‘force’ which we absolutely cannot understand and have no hope to describe? One thing is certain, there is a rebellion which we also cannot see or understand. If you accept the understanding of an all-powerful God, you must also accept the presence of a Satan who is in rebellion, always seeking a way to destroy God. Somewhere outside our existence box there is a perpetual war raging between Satan’s forces and God’s Angels, but Satan’s rebellion is always destroyed just when it seems to be ready to destroy God’s force. The rebellion is a spiritual war, but battles are also fought within our existence box. Who’s side are you on?