In the advancement of knowledge:

• Albert Einstein & his theory of relativity. [Physics]
  
• Alfred Wegner & his theory of continental drift. [Geology, Geography]
• Charles Darwin & his theory of evolution. [Biology]
  
• Nicolaus Copernicus & his theory of heliocentric cosmology. [Astronomy]
  

Onto the subject of the experiments being conducted at the Large Hadron Collider situated at CERN, their raison d'être is to scrutinize The Big Bang Theory. One of science's (& life's) greatest mysteries is the origin of everything (the universe, life itself etc). There are two schools of thought that try to illustrate this: Religion & Science. The former explains that the universe was created by a supreme being, God, at the beginning of time & took six days with our Heavenly Father resting on the seventh day. The latter explains that the universe was created in a cataclysmic explosion originating from the most infinitesimal particle of matter which has expanded (over the course of fifteen billion years & counting) to what we observe today through telescopes. Of course, these schools of thought have their respective weaknesses. Religion can't describe how God executed the creation process e.g. did he just snap his fingers when an idea came to mind or did he follow a procedure which culminated in an entity (star, planet, black hole etc)? Forgive me for offending/insulting my fellow Christians but what most of them don't understand is that the Bible is just a chronological series of events & not a biographical-like text. Picture this: the book of Genesis tells us the world was created in six days. How supremely confident are we that these are six Earth days? My quagmire is this: Does time pass at the same rate between us & God? My answer: Time Dilation, i.e. from the perspective of any observer within the same frame of reference & without reference to another frame of reference, time always passes at the same rate. "According To The Evidence" by Erich Von Daniken gives a good case of this. Science, on the other hand, explains how matter operates (from the atomic level) which answers questions as how the ozone layer is depleted, how the sun creates its energy that sustains life on Earth (though partly) etc though it can't explain who kick-started creation. My school of thought combines both religion & science to explain the origin of everything. My proposition is this: Science explains how God created & Religion explains why God created. God used science to create the universe & religion explains why we are here in the first place. Peter, understand why the physicists are conducting these experiments. They just want to find answers to questions that have plagued us since time immemorial. Whether or not they succeed, they'll definitely uncover knowledge that could be beneficial in our comprehension of the universe.

Mike.

My blog: http://kipsang.wordpress.com/





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"The computer programmer . . . is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. . . . No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or a field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops."

~ Joseph Weizenbaum...

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