Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Brian Greene Hosts "The Fabric of the Universe" on NOVA


Genesis 1.1-5: The First Day

1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

3And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.


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Introduction


"The Fabric of the Cosmos," a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and author Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time, and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we’d hardly recognize—a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected.

Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe—that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists—just might be wrong.

Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with crystal-clear explanations and imaginative metaphors like those that defined the groundbreaking and highly acclaimed series "The Elegant Universe," "The Fabric of the Cosmos" aims to be the most compelling, visual, and comprehensive picture of modern physics ever seen on television.



What is Space


Space. It separates you from me, one galaxy from the next, and atoms from one another. It is everywhere in the universe. But to most of us, space is nothing, an empty void. Well, it turns out space is not what it seems. From the passenger seat of a New York cab driving near the speed of light, to a pool hall where billiard tables do fantastical things, Brian Greene reveals space as a dynamic fabric that can stretch, twist, warp, and ripple under the influence of gravity. Stranger still is a newly discovered ingredient of space that actually makes up 70 percent of the universe. Physicists call it dark energy, because while they know it's out there, driving space to expand ever more quickly, they have no idea what it is.

Probing space on the smallest scales only makes the mysteries multiply. Down there, things are going on that physicists today can barely fathom—forces powerful enough to generate whole universes. To top it off, some of the strangest places in space, black holes, have led scientists to propose that like the hologram on your credit card, space may just be a projection of a deeper two-dimensional reality taking place on a distant surface that surrounds us. Space, far from being empty, is filled with some of the deepest mysteries of our time.



The Illusion of Time


Time. We waste it, save it, kill it, make it. The world runs on it. Yet ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: They have no idea. Even more surprising, the deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be nothing more than an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong? In search of answers, Brian Greene takes us on the ultimate time-traveling adventure, hurtling 50 years into the future before stepping into a wormhole to travel back to the past. Along the way, he will reveal a new way of thinking about time in which moments past, present, and future—from the reign of T. rex to the birth of your great-great-grandchildren—exist all at once. This journey will bring us all the way back to the Big Bang, where physicists think the ultimate secrets of time may be hidden. You'll never look at your wristwatch the same way again.



Quantum Leap


Join Brian Greene on a wild ride into the weird realm of quantum physics, which governs the universe on the tiniest of scales. Greene brings quantum mechanics to life in a nightclub like no other, where objects pop in and out of existence, and things over here can affect others over there, instantaneously and without anything crossing the space between them. A century ago, during the initial shots in the quantum revolution, the best minds of a generation—including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr—squared off in a battle for the soul of physics. How could the rules of the quantum world, which work so well to describe the behavior of individual atoms and their components, conflict so dramatically with the everyday rules that govern people, planets, and galaxies?

Quantum mechanics may be counterintuitive, but it's one of the most successful theories in the history of science, making predictions that have been confirmed to better than one part in a billion, while also launching the technological advances at the heart of modern life, like computers and cell phones. But even today, even with such profound successes, the debate still rages over what quantum mechanics implies for the true nature of reality.

Notes on the DVD: The DVD version of the program stated that one entangled photon is sent from the island of La Palma to the island of Tenerife by laser. The photon is sent via laser-guided telescope. In the DVD version of the program, it appears that the research team led by Anton Zeilinger has successfully teleported photons from La Palma to Tenerife. Although the Zeilinger team has used the method described to teleport photons shorter distances in other locations, as of November 2011, photons have not yet been teleported between La Palma andTenerife. The team plans to continue experiments in the Canary Islands, which attempt to complete the teleportation process there.



Universe or Multiverse?


Hard as it is to swallow, cutting-edge theories are suggesting that our universe may not be the only universe. Instead, it may be just one of an infinite number of universes that make up the "multiverse." In this show, Brian Greene takes us on a tour of this brave new theory at the frontier of physics, showing what some of these alternate realities might be like. Some universes may be almost indistinguishable from our own; others may contain variations of all of us, where we exist but with different families, careers, and life stories. In still others, reality may be so radically different from ours as to be unrecognizable. Brian Greene reveals why this radical new picture of the cosmos is getting serious attention from scientists. It won't be easy to prove, but if it's right, our understanding of space, time, and our place in the universe will never be the same.



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Facebook Update on
the Higgs Boson Particle


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July 4, 2012

Hi Everyone,

Here's the situation just announced at CERN:

Each of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider has discovered a new particle with properties that are consistent with it being the long-sought Higgs particle. It will require more data and work to definitively establish that the particle is indeed the Higgs, but there's now no doubt that a new particle has been found.

When this result was announced at CERN, the auditorium erupted into prolonged applause, fitting for this historic discovery. No doubt, physicists worldwide erupted into similar applause. Decades of work by thousands of scientists around the globe have resulted in this spectacular achievement.

--BG

July 16, 2012

Hi Everyone,

Following up on my somewhat cryptic statement on twitter (@bgreene), I want to briefly explain a point about the Higgs idea that, on a few occasions, I’ve seen incorrectly reported.

The Higgs field provides mass to fundamental particles like electrons and quarks, and that’s extremely important. But when it comes to the mass of ordinary matter such as you and me and trucks and baseballs, most of the mass does not arise from the Higgs field.

Ordinary matter is made from atoms, whose mass mainly comes from protons and neutrons—which, in turn, are each made from three quarks. But if you add up the masses of the quarks (whose mass comes from the Higgs) the total is only a few percent of the mass of a proton or neutron. So where does the bulk of the mass of protons and neutrons come from?

The answer comes from Einstein’s famous E = mc^2, written in the equivalent but more illuminating form m = E/c^2, where it establishes that energy (E) yields mass (m). The quarks inside a proton are held together by a kind of nuclear glue (“gluons”), and that glue that harbors significant energy. Indeed, most of the mass of protons (and neutrons) comes from that energy.

So, while the Higgs gives mass to the quarks and other fundamental particles, it’s the energy of the gluons that is responsible for most of the mass of the protons and neutrons, and hence the mass of familiar matter.

--BG


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Facebook Update on Nova's Mini-Series

"The Fabric of the Cosmos"


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July 11, 2012

Hi Everyone,

As I just mentioned on twitter (@bgreene), the first episode of my NOVA mini-series, Fabric of the Cosmos, airs tonight on PBS. Tonight's episode -- "What is Space?" -- explores a range of topics from gravity, to the Higgs field, to dark energy, to the quantum activity that defines nothingness. Check out the program and send on your questions. I'll do my best to answer as many as I can.

--BG


July 24, 2012

Hi Everyone,

Tomorrow night PBS will air the third episode of Fabric of the Cosmos on NOVA--the episode on quantum mechanics (called "Quantum Leap").

For those who haven't yet seen it, a quick word on the physics in this episode.

The program begins by covering the essential core of the quantum framework: Instead of the definite predictions we are familiar with from the older framework of classical physics laid down by Isaac Newton, quantum theory makes probabilistic predictions. For instance, in predicting the position of a particle, quantum physics can only provide the probability that the particle will be found at one location or another.The episode explains why physicists were led to introduce these probabilities into fundamental physical law, what the probabilities mean, how we can test them, and why we believe them.

In making the program, though, I was committed to going further and covering some of the more modern, absolutely stunning developments in quantum physics. In particular, results which speak to what's called "non-locality": the possibility in quantum physics that what you do here can be instantaneously entwined with what happens over there, even if here and there are widely separated. I consider these to be among the most interesting insights of modern theoretical physics, but they are also quite subtle. So, please feel free to send on any questions. (For previous episodes I did not answer as many questions as I'd hoped, largely because I'm giving various talks at European conferences this month. But I'll try to get to as many as I can).

--BG


August 1, 2012

Hi Everyone,

Motivated by tonight's airing of the final episode of Fabric of the Cosmos on NOVA--The Multiverse--I want to say a few words about a development that's now gaining momentum in the physics community: a rethinking of the big bang and cosmology.

For decades, a puzzle that dogged the big bang theory was what "set off" the bang. What fueled the ferocious outward force that drove everything apart? In the 1980s, a proposed solution was finally put forward; as many of you know, it is called Inflationary Cosmology.

The essential idea is that in Einstein's general relativity, gravity can not only be attractive (as in Newton's theory, and attested to by everyday experiences), but in certain exotic circumstances it can also be REPULSIVE. The inflationary theory suggests that the exotic circumstances (a region of space filled with a cosmic "fuel" called an 'inflation field) were realized in the early universe, yielding a fantastically large repulsive push--the BANG.

Wonderfully, the inflationary proposal is not just a vague idea; it's based on solid mathematical analysis which yields testable consequences: the repulsive push would have stretched the universe so enormously that tiny quantum jitters from the micro-realm would have been smeared across the sky, yielding a specific pattern of tiny temperature variations across space. These predicted temperature variations have now been confirmed through precise astronomical observations. And for this reason, inflation has become the dominant cosmological theory for the past two of decades.

So far, this sounds like a spectacular success. But there's another consequence of inflation that's exciting that yet poses a potential problem. Mathematical studies show that the inflationary fuel would be so efficient that it's very difficult to use it all up. Which means that the although ferocious expansion ended in our vicinity of the cosmos, it would continue elsewhere, generating one big bang after another, after another--generating, that is, many universes: the multiverse.

That's a mind-bending idea (and the subject of tonight's NOVA program as well as my latest book, The Hidden Reality). But as I describe in the book (although not fully emphasized in the TV program), it raises a new and subtle challenge:

The other universes would generally have different features from ours, including different patterns of temperature variations. So, the very predictions on which our confidence in the inflationary proposal is based--the observed temperature variations across space--would be compromised: with many different universes you get many different predictions. In fact, there's reason to think that any possible pattern of temperature variations will be realized in some universe in the multiverse. And a theory that "predicts" anything is a theory that predicts nothing.

For some physicists, this means that the inflationary proposal has crashed, plain and simple. Others are more sanguine, suggesting that when we understand the theory better, we will be able say something like: sure, any results are possible, but some outcomes are more likely than others. So, if the inflationary theory is correct, our observations should agree with the more probable outcomes of the theory.

To date, however, there's no consensus on how to calculate the likelihood of one outcome relative to another. I suspect this is an issue we will one day crack. But because we've yet to do so, a small but growing number of physicists are contemplating that the inflationary theory either needs a significant overhaul or we might require a new theory altogether. Both are daunting but exciting prospects.

--BG

P.S. There's a separate point I'd like to explain regarding the Higgs, but as this post is long I will save that for another day.




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