The title of this essay, looking as it does like a newspaper headline, is meant to sound dramatic. As far as I know, Albert was not particularly religious, nor did he ever make such a statement. What I mean to prove here is that his famous "discovery" of the theory of relativity itself has something to say about the possibility that God exists. It is my nature to look into the findings of science to uncover additional proofs for the postulate that a being of great intelligence and power not only exists, but can be seen to regularly interact with the events of our known universe. Because my own faith assumptions include the theory that the Bible is an accurate account of such a being's interactive existence, I am delighted when science "proves" one or another Biblical concept.
Before I get to the heart of the issue of relativity, I should take a moment to explain what I mean by "prove," and what exactly it is that Einstein did. Albert Einstein was, among other things, a theoretical physicist. One of the important activities of theoretical physicists is doing thought experiments. By this we mean that they observe the physical universe as it appears and theorize about why it behaves in a certain way. They then test their theories by imagining an experiment in which they operate in the imaginary universe according to their theory and imagine what the result would be. At approximately sixteen years of age, Einstein, for example, wondered what a beam of light would look like if he could run alongside it at the speed of light. It was this basic thought and ten more years of thinking which ultimately gave birth to the famous theory of relativity for which he is so widely recognized.
At first glance, any time spent ruminating about such an unlikely possibility would seem to be a waste of time -- daydreaming is what most would call it. This might seem particularly so in Einstein's 1905 when the fastest anyone could hope to go was that of a fast horse, say thirty miles per hour. But it isn't the actual performance of the thought experiment which lends it value. It is the ability of the imagined consequences in light of known physical laws to produce further theories regarding the behavior of the universe. It is these theories spawned in imaginary situations which populate the thinking of theoretical physicists and eventually trickle into "hard" science and thus into everyday life. The laptop computer on which I am typing this is a direct result of the application of the "theory" of relativity. So are microwave ovens, global positioning satellites and scores of other mundane items. (Yes, nuclear power and weapons also stem from this train of thought.)
Theoretical physicists state their conclusions in typical scientific fashion: if such and such is true, then so and so must result. Because of the "if" at the front of the sentence, the "result" at the end of the sentence is in the form of a probability. If I say for example that I am going to flip a coin into the air and it will land heads up, there is a one in two chance that I will be correct. In this simple "if" there are only two possible results: heads or tails. If I flip the coin one hundred times, it will land heads approximately fifty times and tails the remaining times. (I have to say approximately fifty because one hundred observations are not enough to say it will fulfill the statistical probability exactly.) So if I flip the coin, there is a fifty/fifty chance it will land heads up.
The more likely the "if," the more probable the "result." The "if" in Einstein's theory of relativity has been so convincingly proven to be true in the nearly one hundred years since he postulated it, that it would involve a massive shift in our basic paradigm of scientific understanding if it were ever proven wrong. Therefore, with such a strong "if," I feel confident in proceeding with my own thought experiment to test additional theories about the behavior of the universe. As long as I stay within the parameters of the rest of scientific knowledge, I can make assumptions about the universe with a fairly high degree of probability.
Before we get to my own experiment, however, I must give a rudimentary explanation of the theory of special relativity for those not already familiar with it. Contrary to popular assumption, Einstein's theory is not terribly difficult to state in such a way as to be understood by nearly anyone. It is the implications of the theory for physics which become increasingly complex as one delves deeper into them. The theory itself can be properly summarized to say that the laws of physics apply equally in any uniformly moving frame of reference. Or restated it says objects behave in accordance with the laws of motion no matter where the observer is as long as he is in a state of uniform motion. A simple inverse corollary to this statement would say that observers in different frames of reference will detect differences in the behavior of objects not moving in their frame of reference.
A simple thought experiment will suffice to demonstrate this aspect of the theory of relativity. Imagine you are tossing a tennis ball straight up and catching it again. From your perspective, you are standing still (at rest) and your environment is at rest around you. For our purposes, this is fulfills the requirement of a uniformly moving frame of reference: the motion at this point is none, or resting. You observe the ball travel straight up and then fall straight back into your hand. This behavior follows the laws of physics as you understand them. By applying force to the ball (throwing it,) you cause it to travel up until another force (gravity) causes it to stop and return to your hand. Nothing difficult to understand here.
For the sake of scientific precision, let us imagine you are a veteran tennis player so skilled that you can toss the ball up with exactly the same force on exactly the same path each time so that it travels exactly the same distance before being overcome by gravity. Further let us imagine that it is exactly one second between the time the ball leaves your hand until it falls back into your hand. You have become a human clock: "tick" is when you throw it up and "tock" is when it lands back in your hand. For each "tick-tock" of your clock, one second of time passes. Finally let us imagine the ball travels exactly three feet upward before being halted by gravity and returned to your hand. Thus we have a ball traveling at six feet per second (average speed for three up and three down.) As you observe the ball you see it going up and down, tick-tock at six feet per second each time you throw it.
Now lets imagine a second frame of reference. Now you are in a motor home traveling down the highway at seventy miles per hour. For the sake of this experiment, imagine a perfectly smooth, perfectly straight road with no hills or dips in the pavement. As you travel along at seventy miles per hour, you and your environment appear to be at rest. You can stand up or move about in the motor home without concern for the fact that you are in a frame of reference that is moving. This is because the movement is uniform. If the driver lurched to one side or slammed on the brakes, your peaceful sense of being at rest would be shattered very quickly. In fact if the brakes were applied hard enough it might be the windshield shattering as you passed through it.
Absent those sudden changes in movement, you could conduct yourself in the moving motor home as you would standing still on the side of the road. To pour yourself a cup of coffee you would not take the seventy mile per hour motion into account. You would hold the cup directly under the pot just as you would in your own kitchen. Because all the motion in the motor home is uniform, the laws of physics apply; this is Einstein's theory of special relativity.
If we were to conduct our human clock experiment in the moving motor home, we could duplicate the results we saw when standing still. You could toss the ball in the same tick-tock motion and keep the same time and speed observations. But imagine the motor home has a large window on one side and I am watching you from a point somewhere beside the road on which you are traveling? What would I see? Through the window as you passed by I would see you toss the ball up at one point and then catch it one second later at a point somewhere down the road. I would see the ball traveling not straight up and down, but following a curved path up from where you released it and back down to where you caught it. In fact, at seventy miles per hour, in the second it takes you to throw and catch the ball, you have moved over one hundred feet. From my frame of reference, the ball has traveled not six feet, but over one hundred and six feet. Since we know you are throwing the ball at the same speed as before in your frame of reference (six feet per second,) how do we explain the appearance that it traveled over one hundred feet from my frame of reference? (I warned you that the implications of special relativity would be complex.)
There seem to be only two possible explanations. Since we know the speed of the ball remains steady at six feet per second, either the time in the motor home slowed down to allow the ball to cover the distance required or the distance measure is different such that six feet equals over one hundred feet. I know this seems absurd at first, and I know that there is an obvious explanation which some in the audience have already reached. But let me make one more statement before I reveal the magician's sleight of hand I have used. Even though my proportions are hugely incorrect, the principle is correct as presented. Time and space are different quantities to observers in different frames of reference. This has been proven scientifically by flying highly accurate clocks at supersonic speeds and then comparing them to clocks left on the ground. The clocks in the jets came back a few billionths of a second behind the clocks that didn't move. The faster one goes, the greater the time discrepancy. (This phenomenon is know as time dilation.) If we could travel as fast as some significant fraction of the speed of light, we could begin to see the effects of time dilation on our everyday lives.
The reason my motor home experiment seemed to involve such a large time dilation can be seen by employing a third frame of reference. If you were in an Apollo spacecraft half-way to the moon and you looked back toward earth, it would be obvious that our "still" frame of reference on the side of the road was in fact moving at some speed up to one thousand miles per hour with the rotation of the earth. In addition, from the vantage point of the sun, you would see that the earth itself is moving some tens of thousands of miles per hour in its orbit around the sun's frame of reference. Hence, the seventy mile per hour difference between the moving motor home and the "still" observer was only a fraction of the thousands of miles per hour both were moving. This makes the time dilation in our very slow frame of reference so small as to be unnoticeable.
This completes the physics lesson for now. How does all of this "predict" the existence of God? I believe we can postulate that there is a frame of reference which is "at rest" relative to our known universe. The probability of such a thing is supported by the so-called "big bang" theory which follows from science steeped in the theory of relativity and itself ironically attempts to explain away the existence of a frame of reference from which our known universe might emanate. In fact, if the big bang did occur, it had to occur "somewhere", in some frame of reference. The universe as scientists now know it is expanding rapidly into that "somewhere" from its original bang. If one holds to the big bang theory, one must conclude that the universe has an outer limit, into which it is still expanding at its outermost reaches. In other words, the universe must have a boundary.
What is beyond the boundary? I conclude that it must be the same frame of reference in which the original big bang took place. Unless one takes the very unsatisfying position that the universe is infinite (an impossible position if one subscribes to the big bang theory,) it must have a boundary and that boundary must be infringing upon someplace "else." The theory of relativity instructs us that time and space are relative, so it is no stretch of the imagination to conceive of vastly different conceptions of them in an existence that is someplace "else." Furthermore, the big bang theory postulates that all of the elements which make up our universe were created in the super-energized instant of the bang and its subsequent interactions. It is again no stretch to imagine that "life" of some entirely different constituent elements might exist in that frame of reference somewhere "else." Nor is it impossible to imagine, finally, that a form of intelligence from that frame of reference somewhere "else" might have the capability to insert itself into our known frame of reference. It could be moving so fast or slow relative to us that we would not see it with our limited electromagnetic receivers (otherwise known as “eyes.”) It might have ways of communicating or otherwise interacting which we have no physical means of detecting. It might even be able to speed up or slow down to the point where it becomes physically measurable.
All of this is not only possible, but in my estimation, probable as a result of what Einstein's theory of relativity has taught us about our universe. When I realize that none of this need necessarily contradict the Bible, properly interpreted, I am the more impressed by the fact that the more we learn about the wonders of our universe, the closer we come to understanding the God who created it in the first place.
Before I get to the heart of the issue of relativity, I should take a moment to explain what I mean by "prove," and what exactly it is that Einstein did. Albert Einstein was, among other things, a theoretical physicist. One of the important activities of theoretical physicists is doing thought experiments. By this we mean that they observe the physical universe as it appears and theorize about why it behaves in a certain way. They then test their theories by imagining an experiment in which they operate in the imaginary universe according to their theory and imagine what the result would be. At approximately sixteen years of age, Einstein, for example, wondered what a beam of light would look like if he could run alongside it at the speed of light. It was this basic thought and ten more years of thinking which ultimately gave birth to the famous theory of relativity for which he is so widely recognized.
At first glance, any time spent ruminating about such an unlikely possibility would seem to be a waste of time -- daydreaming is what most would call it. This might seem particularly so in Einstein's 1905 when the fastest anyone could hope to go was that of a fast horse, say thirty miles per hour. But it isn't the actual performance of the thought experiment which lends it value. It is the ability of the imagined consequences in light of known physical laws to produce further theories regarding the behavior of the universe. It is these theories spawned in imaginary situations which populate the thinking of theoretical physicists and eventually trickle into "hard" science and thus into everyday life. The laptop computer on which I am typing this is a direct result of the application of the "theory" of relativity. So are microwave ovens, global positioning satellites and scores of other mundane items. (Yes, nuclear power and weapons also stem from this train of thought.)
Theoretical physicists state their conclusions in typical scientific fashion: if such and such is true, then so and so must result. Because of the "if" at the front of the sentence, the "result" at the end of the sentence is in the form of a probability. If I say for example that I am going to flip a coin into the air and it will land heads up, there is a one in two chance that I will be correct. In this simple "if" there are only two possible results: heads or tails. If I flip the coin one hundred times, it will land heads approximately fifty times and tails the remaining times. (I have to say approximately fifty because one hundred observations are not enough to say it will fulfill the statistical probability exactly.) So if I flip the coin, there is a fifty/fifty chance it will land heads up.
The more likely the "if," the more probable the "result." The "if" in Einstein's theory of relativity has been so convincingly proven to be true in the nearly one hundred years since he postulated it, that it would involve a massive shift in our basic paradigm of scientific understanding if it were ever proven wrong. Therefore, with such a strong "if," I feel confident in proceeding with my own thought experiment to test additional theories about the behavior of the universe. As long as I stay within the parameters of the rest of scientific knowledge, I can make assumptions about the universe with a fairly high degree of probability.
Before we get to my own experiment, however, I must give a rudimentary explanation of the theory of special relativity for those not already familiar with it. Contrary to popular assumption, Einstein's theory is not terribly difficult to state in such a way as to be understood by nearly anyone. It is the implications of the theory for physics which become increasingly complex as one delves deeper into them. The theory itself can be properly summarized to say that the laws of physics apply equally in any uniformly moving frame of reference. Or restated it says objects behave in accordance with the laws of motion no matter where the observer is as long as he is in a state of uniform motion. A simple inverse corollary to this statement would say that observers in different frames of reference will detect differences in the behavior of objects not moving in their frame of reference.
A simple thought experiment will suffice to demonstrate this aspect of the theory of relativity. Imagine you are tossing a tennis ball straight up and catching it again. From your perspective, you are standing still (at rest) and your environment is at rest around you. For our purposes, this is fulfills the requirement of a uniformly moving frame of reference: the motion at this point is none, or resting. You observe the ball travel straight up and then fall straight back into your hand. This behavior follows the laws of physics as you understand them. By applying force to the ball (throwing it,) you cause it to travel up until another force (gravity) causes it to stop and return to your hand. Nothing difficult to understand here.
For the sake of scientific precision, let us imagine you are a veteran tennis player so skilled that you can toss the ball up with exactly the same force on exactly the same path each time so that it travels exactly the same distance before being overcome by gravity. Further let us imagine that it is exactly one second between the time the ball leaves your hand until it falls back into your hand. You have become a human clock: "tick" is when you throw it up and "tock" is when it lands back in your hand. For each "tick-tock" of your clock, one second of time passes. Finally let us imagine the ball travels exactly three feet upward before being halted by gravity and returned to your hand. Thus we have a ball traveling at six feet per second (average speed for three up and three down.) As you observe the ball you see it going up and down, tick-tock at six feet per second each time you throw it.
Now lets imagine a second frame of reference. Now you are in a motor home traveling down the highway at seventy miles per hour. For the sake of this experiment, imagine a perfectly smooth, perfectly straight road with no hills or dips in the pavement. As you travel along at seventy miles per hour, you and your environment appear to be at rest. You can stand up or move about in the motor home without concern for the fact that you are in a frame of reference that is moving. This is because the movement is uniform. If the driver lurched to one side or slammed on the brakes, your peaceful sense of being at rest would be shattered very quickly. In fact if the brakes were applied hard enough it might be the windshield shattering as you passed through it.
Absent those sudden changes in movement, you could conduct yourself in the moving motor home as you would standing still on the side of the road. To pour yourself a cup of coffee you would not take the seventy mile per hour motion into account. You would hold the cup directly under the pot just as you would in your own kitchen. Because all the motion in the motor home is uniform, the laws of physics apply; this is Einstein's theory of special relativity.
If we were to conduct our human clock experiment in the moving motor home, we could duplicate the results we saw when standing still. You could toss the ball in the same tick-tock motion and keep the same time and speed observations. But imagine the motor home has a large window on one side and I am watching you from a point somewhere beside the road on which you are traveling? What would I see? Through the window as you passed by I would see you toss the ball up at one point and then catch it one second later at a point somewhere down the road. I would see the ball traveling not straight up and down, but following a curved path up from where you released it and back down to where you caught it. In fact, at seventy miles per hour, in the second it takes you to throw and catch the ball, you have moved over one hundred feet. From my frame of reference, the ball has traveled not six feet, but over one hundred and six feet. Since we know you are throwing the ball at the same speed as before in your frame of reference (six feet per second,) how do we explain the appearance that it traveled over one hundred feet from my frame of reference? (I warned you that the implications of special relativity would be complex.)
There seem to be only two possible explanations. Since we know the speed of the ball remains steady at six feet per second, either the time in the motor home slowed down to allow the ball to cover the distance required or the distance measure is different such that six feet equals over one hundred feet. I know this seems absurd at first, and I know that there is an obvious explanation which some in the audience have already reached. But let me make one more statement before I reveal the magician's sleight of hand I have used. Even though my proportions are hugely incorrect, the principle is correct as presented. Time and space are different quantities to observers in different frames of reference. This has been proven scientifically by flying highly accurate clocks at supersonic speeds and then comparing them to clocks left on the ground. The clocks in the jets came back a few billionths of a second behind the clocks that didn't move. The faster one goes, the greater the time discrepancy. (This phenomenon is know as time dilation.) If we could travel as fast as some significant fraction of the speed of light, we could begin to see the effects of time dilation on our everyday lives.
The reason my motor home experiment seemed to involve such a large time dilation can be seen by employing a third frame of reference. If you were in an Apollo spacecraft half-way to the moon and you looked back toward earth, it would be obvious that our "still" frame of reference on the side of the road was in fact moving at some speed up to one thousand miles per hour with the rotation of the earth. In addition, from the vantage point of the sun, you would see that the earth itself is moving some tens of thousands of miles per hour in its orbit around the sun's frame of reference. Hence, the seventy mile per hour difference between the moving motor home and the "still" observer was only a fraction of the thousands of miles per hour both were moving. This makes the time dilation in our very slow frame of reference so small as to be unnoticeable.
This completes the physics lesson for now. How does all of this "predict" the existence of God? I believe we can postulate that there is a frame of reference which is "at rest" relative to our known universe. The probability of such a thing is supported by the so-called "big bang" theory which follows from science steeped in the theory of relativity and itself ironically attempts to explain away the existence of a frame of reference from which our known universe might emanate. In fact, if the big bang did occur, it had to occur "somewhere", in some frame of reference. The universe as scientists now know it is expanding rapidly into that "somewhere" from its original bang. If one holds to the big bang theory, one must conclude that the universe has an outer limit, into which it is still expanding at its outermost reaches. In other words, the universe must have a boundary.
What is beyond the boundary? I conclude that it must be the same frame of reference in which the original big bang took place. Unless one takes the very unsatisfying position that the universe is infinite (an impossible position if one subscribes to the big bang theory,) it must have a boundary and that boundary must be infringing upon someplace "else." The theory of relativity instructs us that time and space are relative, so it is no stretch of the imagination to conceive of vastly different conceptions of them in an existence that is someplace "else." Furthermore, the big bang theory postulates that all of the elements which make up our universe were created in the super-energized instant of the bang and its subsequent interactions. It is again no stretch to imagine that "life" of some entirely different constituent elements might exist in that frame of reference somewhere "else." Nor is it impossible to imagine, finally, that a form of intelligence from that frame of reference somewhere "else" might have the capability to insert itself into our known frame of reference. It could be moving so fast or slow relative to us that we would not see it with our limited electromagnetic receivers (otherwise known as “eyes.”) It might have ways of communicating or otherwise interacting which we have no physical means of detecting. It might even be able to speed up or slow down to the point where it becomes physically measurable.
All of this is not only possible, but in my estimation, probable as a result of what Einstein's theory of relativity has taught us about our universe. When I realize that none of this need necessarily contradict the Bible, properly interpreted, I am the more impressed by the fact that the more we learn about the wonders of our universe, the closer we come to understanding the God who created it in the first place.
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