Black Holes In A Brief History by Niraj Pant (knowledgeable books to read TXT) đź“–
- Author: Niraj Pant
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The Dark Tower
Burningly it came on me all at once.
This was the place!
Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ”
Abandon a faith that abhors science. But if your newfound science won’t abide faith you’ve left
one narrow minded path to follow another. It’s possible to delight in both, but it isn’t easy.
Shelves sag with exciting books written for laymen like me, about how the universe began and
functions–cosmology and physics, but most are written by scientist who won’t tolerate faith and
thrill to say so. It’s a heavy obligation to show that in their contra-religious mentality these
scientists are narrowminded. Heavier still for a layman like me--I was a roughneck most of my
life, sweating and freezing night and day, summer, winter on an oil drilling rig, making some
oilman rich. We Starks were an uneducated lot, vagabond oilfield laborers who arrived in
California from Oklahoma in nineteen-fort-one. Only I, of four brothers and three sisters, ever
finished high school. I stayed only because of sports. Even then, I’m less an athlete than most in
my family. Less financially successful than most of them, too. So if I’m dwarfed by my seven
self-educated siblings, I’m a fool to take on scientists of Stephen Hawking’s ilk.
Why pick on Hawking?
Please. I can’t pick on Hawking. I agree with most of what he says that I have sense enough to
understand. Much of it I don’t understand and have no reason to object to. Only in those few
areas where Hawking attacks needlessly (and after at least twenty years, fruitlessly) humanity’s
hopes for meaning do I feel compelled to risk my considerable self esteem. His books are
enormously popular and his ideas influential. So if I’m going to make a fool of myself trying to
defeat the message that ours is an accidental universe, devoid of meaning beyond what physics
describes in theory and mathematics, why not at the expense of someone who is most influential
there, someone whose rich intellect can best afford it?
And a fool I am. Fool enough to hope that some young person reads my story and goes early
where, late, I wish I had gone. Or that my story will allay the fears of someone who yearns to
know how the universe began and functions but is afraid his faith won’t survive the
investigation. Oh, that mine had been one long journey of faith and science that began with
deliberation and, as with a Robert Frost poem, “assume(d) direction with the first line laid
down.” That I could reflect on a body of work like that of Arthur Koestler or Graham Greene,
then top it off with something of an autobiography describing the road I had traveled. Had I
talent enough and time...but I’m short of both. I do have a perspective on life denied Koestler or
Greene–I view reality through the lens of an undistinguished education. Should I have
contemplated suicide, as Graham Greene did, it could never have been on the Oxford campus
that I put the pistol to my head. Only by the good grace and long suffering of York College did I
ever set foot on a college campus, and then, nineteen-fifty-six, only because the new school
needed students lest it be a campus with teachers and no students. They scoured the continent
and came up with some surprisingly brilliant students, and me. I went because they allowed me
to and because I detested going back on that oily drilling rig. And while I would never have had
the courage to put a pistol to my own head, I’m sure there were several of my teachers who
would like to have.
Why do I rake up all this oilfield trash? To emphasize that if physics and cosmology excite a
man like me because they illustrate design in the universe, they can excite you, and should. If
you follow the logic of those many science books that sag the shelves, and not their illogical
prejudices against design, you’ll enjoy the splendor of science and remain as convinced as I am
that the evidence for design in the universe is, if not unassailable, compelling.
Nothing rewards like love. It’s its own reason to exist. The same goes for wonder. Love and
wonder are what humans are made for. But when one is confronted with evidence that makes
him suspect that all he has had faith in is fantasy, then wonder turns to despair. That happened to
me when first I peered through a microscope at fossils washed to surface from the bottom of a
ten-thousand foot oil well. There was no more hiding of the facts from what little faith remained
after a lifetime of sheltering it. No chance of holding Galileo in house arrest. I knew that the
earth was no longer the center of the universe, that fossils existed older than Noah’s flood, that
fifteen-billion years ago the universe deployed in what we call the big bang. No Grand Inquisitor
in my lifetime could stifle that knowledge. One follows for years a weak faith that allows only a
biblical interpretation of the physical universe until one day he suspects that he is arguing more
with God’s evidence than with the scientists who interpret it. Better, engage the evidence early.
Ah, there’s the rub; the rules for engaging God through his physical evidence are the same as
those for engaging him in meditation–ask honest questions, accept honest answers and prepare to
have your perspective changed forever.
There was no point at the end of my wandering where faith suddenly stepped forward like the
priests bearing the ark of the covenant, their feet striking the flowing waters of the Jordan and
halting it and Joshua leading the children of Israel into the promised land. Mine was a journey
like “Child Roland To The Dark Tower Came.” I was not sure I was even on a quest, I had
wandered aimlessly so long. “Burningly it came on me all at once. This was the place,” and I
was dauntless before the dark tower. But I was a battered old man at the end of a quest I began as
a boy. I had not conquered fear; somewhere on the long journey fear became disinterested in me,
shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Go early into science, it will alter your faith, but if this
book is successful it won’t destroy it.
What this book won’t do: It won’t change–does not attempt to change–people whose tragic
experiences in life have robbed them of faith–“If there were a God, how could He have let such
an evil thing happen?” I have nothing but compassion for such people. Not pity, compassion.
God’s existence is not contingent upon our belief in him, nor is he good or evil because we think
he is or is not. If God is good and someone rejects him because their experience in his creation
has been tragic and they can’t believe that a good God would allow such bad things to happen,
then their reasons for rejecting God as evil are good reasons. If God exists and is good, he thrives
in such doubts. But it is the good that drives these doubts. It is not scientific observation and
mathematical calculations. This book is zeroed in on scientific and mathematical calculations
aimed to dissuade people from believing in design in the universe. Physical things are neither
good nor evil, and physical existence is the study of physics. Scientists who argue that it is
impossible that a good god could have created a world riddled with evil should frame their logic
in theological or ethical proofs, not scientific ones.
But this book is not about religion poking holes in science, it is about logic poking holes in the
non-scientific claim against design in the universe. I’m convinced that the universe was
designed. Why it was designed as it is, and why there is evil in it, I do not know. The tsunami in
south Asia, the day after Christmas, two-thousand-four, left me shaking my fist at the heavens
one moment and perplexed the next at why a lotus eater like me, who flees catastrophe, is
privileged to share the same planet with others who rush to it risking their lives to bring relief;
and others who voluntarily leave the wealth and comfort I avidly pursue, to live in squalor so as
to make life less miserable for those who can’t escape it. When in this book I reason from first
cause, which has traditionally been called God, it is not because I aim to sell anyone on religion,
I am not associated with organized religion and have nothing to sell. I am grateful that mine is a
rich niche in time and place, a paradisaical time warp in man’s usual fare of famine, disease, war
and death. I cannot show you how a path back to the beginning will put you at the feet of a
beneficent First Cause of creation. But as I follow logic back to the big bang it leads inevitably to
the yawning question of First Cause and before I know it I have fallen in and can no more escape
than if it were a black hole.
Burningly it came on me all at once.
This was the place!
Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ”
Abandon a faith that abhors science. But if your newfound science won’t abide faith you’ve left
one narrow minded path to follow another. It’s possible to delight in both, but it isn’t easy.
Shelves sag with exciting books written for laymen like me, about how the universe began and
functions–cosmology and physics, but most are written by scientist who won’t tolerate faith and
thrill to say so. It’s a heavy obligation to show that in their contra-religious mentality these
scientists are narrowminded. Heavier still for a layman like me--I was a roughneck most of my
life, sweating and freezing night and day, summer, winter on an oil drilling rig, making some
oilman rich. We Starks were an uneducated lot, vagabond oilfield laborers who arrived in
California from Oklahoma in nineteen-fort-one. Only I, of four brothers and three sisters, ever
finished high school. I stayed only because of sports. Even then, I’m less an athlete than most in
my family. Less financially successful than most of them, too. So if I’m dwarfed by my seven
self-educated siblings, I’m a fool to take on scientists of Stephen Hawking’s ilk.
Why pick on Hawking?
Please. I can’t pick on Hawking. I agree with most of what he says that I have sense enough to
understand. Much of it I don’t understand and have no reason to object to. Only in those few
areas where Hawking attacks needlessly (and after at least twenty years, fruitlessly) humanity’s
hopes for meaning do I feel compelled to risk my considerable self esteem. His books are
enormously popular and his ideas influential. So if I’m going to make a fool of myself trying to
defeat the message that ours is an accidental universe, devoid of meaning beyond what physics
describes in theory and mathematics, why not at the expense of someone who is most influential
there, someone whose rich intellect can best afford it?
And a fool I am. Fool enough to hope that some young person reads my story and goes early
where, late, I wish I had gone. Or that my story will allay the fears of someone who yearns to
know how the universe began and functions but is afraid his faith won’t survive the
investigation. Oh, that mine had been one long journey of faith and science that began with
deliberation and, as with a Robert Frost poem, “assume(d) direction with the first line laid
down.” That I could reflect on a body of work like that of Arthur Koestler or Graham Greene,
then top it off with something of an autobiography describing the road I had traveled. Had I
talent enough and time...but I’m short of both. I do have a perspective on life denied Koestler or
Greene–I view reality through the lens of an undistinguished education. Should I have
contemplated suicide, as Graham Greene did, it could never have been on the Oxford campus
that I put the pistol to my head. Only by the good grace and long suffering of York College did I
ever set foot on a college campus, and then, nineteen-fifty-six, only because the new school
needed students lest it be a campus with teachers and no
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