What is the God particle?
The nickname "God particle" belongs to physics — it points to the Higgs boson, the particle thought to explain why matter has mass — but the name itself asks a religious question: is the origin of everything something we can find at the bottom of matter? The writers in this collection do not discuss modern particle physics, yet they deal directly with what the name reaches for: where matter came from, what holds it together, and whether science can ever reach the answer.
The Search for the Smallest Thing
One commentator, writing on the statement that the universe was made by God's word, saw the search for the basic building block of matter as an unfinished chase — and drew a conclusion from the chase itself.
Leslie M. GrantGod has made visible things out of things invisible. The atom, from which all matter is formed (and which He created, Col. 1:16), is invisible; and the atom itself is formed of smaller, invisible parts. Scientists wonder whether even these are again formed of tiny particles, and they doubt they will ever discover the smallest basic building blocks of matter. At the very least, the lesson cannot be escaped: what is unseen and spiritual is the basis of what is material, and therefore far more important.
Where Science Reaches a Blank Wall
Several writers argue that science, by its nature, works on effects and cannot reach back to the first cause. One of them quotes leading thinkers of his own day admitting the same limit.
William KellyThey and others who differ from them boldly acknowledge that science can give no account of the permanent and primary causes of the universe as it is. Science begins where creation ends. Science can investigate the effects of creation, but it can give no account of the wonderful powers that worked in creating... Herbert Spencer... adds that the only thing science can do is to lead its students to a blind wall, on the other side of which lies the solution, wholly outside science.
This is not treated as an attack on science. Another writer is careful to say the limit is fair and expected.
J. N. DarbyScience must stop within what belongs to it — the course and order of the ordered universe — and by its nature it cannot go beyond it... As to what that first cause is and how it is (and it is not itself caused, or it would not be first), science cannot tell. Of course it cannot; nor do I blame it. It is in the nature of things.
What Holds the Particles Together
A discussion of God's questions to Job in the whirlwind moves from measurable laws to the person behind them. The point is that describing how particles cling together is not the same as explaining it.
Samuel RidoutPresent-day knowledge can talk learnedly about nebulae and the solar system, about attraction and the laws of gravity... It can explain that by the laws of cohesion and chemical affinity the particles of the earth cling together. But law means a Law-giver. Who established these laws? How do they act without ever failing? Revelation, and revelation alone, gives the answer — "in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17).
The answer offered is not a thing but a word — a spoken command that both made the universe and keeps it going.
James Boyd"By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible" (Heb. 11:3). Everything God does, He does by His word: all Scripture testifies together to this fact. He wills the thing to be; He commands, and it exists... "he upholds the universe by the word of his power" (Heb. 1:3). By His word He created all things, and by His word they continue.
Chance Asks for More Faith
The alternative explanation — matter organising itself — is weighed and judged the harder thing to believe.
A. J. PollockThe belief that unbelief requires is far beyond what revelation asks. Revelation is simple, understandable, and majestic. The other is staggering beyond all belief. For if there is "a chance coming together of atoms," how did they come to be atoms? And if they came together, who gave the law of motion? In short, how did something come out of nothing?
What Creation Can and Cannot Tell You
Even at its best, the evidence in nature has a ceiling. It shows that God is there; it does not show you what He is like toward you.
J. Wilson SmithWhat is invisible in the Creator should be, and is, seen — seen clearly, understood by the things that are made, His eternal power and divine nature. Not His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design — so much so that people are left without excuse (see Romans 1:20). Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself.
Summary
- Wall. Science studies effects and stops at a blank wall; the writers say this is a fair limit, not a failure.
- Word. Behind the wall is not a smaller particle but a command — God spoke, and He still upholds everything by that word.
- Law-giver. Naming the law that makes particles cling together does not explain who set it and keeps it running.
- Cost. Chance assembling atoms into a universe demands more belief than creation does, and answers less.
- Limit. Creation proves power and leaves people without excuse, but only revelation tells you God's grace, truth and love.