Negative Energy

I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between science and religion lately. More specifically, I have been thinking about my personal relationship with them both, and the roles they play in my life.

I have a Master's degree in astrophysics and cosmology, and I was raised as a catholic, going to church every Sunday. During those formative years, it never crossed my mind to even consider the possibility that God doesn't exist, and that there could be confrontation between science and religion. I remember a time when I was in year one at primary school (~ 5 years of age), I read about Jesus destroying the temple once he returned from the desert. I thought to myself "this guy isn't as good as everyone says". I instantly apologised to Jesus, because I thought Jesus could read minds.

As I aged through high school and on to sixth form, I learnt about the big bang, quantum mechanics and special relativity. Still, I believed that these could all have been created by God. There was nothing telling me that God couldn't still exist, and therefore I refused to rule Him out as a possibility. At this point, I wouldn't say I believed as such, but I didn't not believe. I was 'agnostic'. Religion did not play any part in my life at this point however: it had become redundant to me and I could not see a use in it that I could take advantage of to help me develop as a person.

Now, things are very different. I am as religious as I ever have been, but I define myself as an atheist. An argument used in favour of God goes as such: If the Big Bang created the universe, who created the Big Bang? There are a couple of ways to go about tackling this question. Firstly, it is imperative to realise that the Big Bang was not only the creator of space, but of time as well. Before the Big Bang there was nowhere anything could have resided, but no time in which it could have either. There was no past, present, or future. There was nothing.

Okay, you may say, but God doesn't have to obey the laws of physics and the universe. He transcends them. Another fascinating thing we have learnt about the universe is that it is possible for things to just... appear. There exists something called 'negative energy'. Hawking describes it as such: "Imagine a man wants to build a hill on a flat piece of land. The hill will represent the universe. To make this hill he digs a hole in the ground and uses that soil to dig his hill. But of course he's not just making a hill - he's also making a hole, in effect a negative version of the hill." The energy of the universe summises to zero. Mathematics can prove to us this wonderful theory, and therefore there is no need for a God to explain how it appeared. It is difficult to explain in a way that makes sense, but it is perfectly viable using our laws of physics that the universe could have seemingly popped up from nowhere. This revelation is the reason I began to define myself as an atheist. But maybe I had already been so for a while. What is agnosticism if not a type of atheism? Agnosticism is effectively saying "the evidence is not enough to convince me", and therefore if you are not convinced, as it stands, you do not believe.

Despite all of this, religion and spirituality has been playing a large role in how I think and act recently. I have been preparing for some interviews with some technology companies, and one question that keeps rising up is "Why do you want to be an engineer/scientist?" Every time I tried to answer this question, I failed to come up with an answer that satisfied me. Would I say it was because I liked to find out things? To help the human race progress? To better myself intellectually and emotionally? All of those answers are probably good foundations to a good answer that employers would be looking for, however they do not really get to the root of the question. Explaining the motivation for science is a task that we struggle to answer. It is an animal instinct to survive and to live as long as possible, but why do we want to? Why do we actually want to study cosmology and find out more about the universe? We are curious creatures, but why? There is a fundamental part of us, humans that is, that is driven by the big questions. Where this curiosity comes from I do not know, and hence have turned to spirituality and religion to help me figure it out. I was raised a catholic, but now that I have distanced myself from the organised religion that is catholicism, I have realised that there is much to be gained from reading texts from various religious holy books, such as what Islam or Buddhism teaches.

The main reason that I prefer not to conscribe to one religion is that I am fundamentally against the fact that many have stopped asking questions. The bible was a product of its time, written by men. You can believe that it is the will of God being told through these men, or you can believe that they were just men. Turning to the bible to answer modern questions is lazy. Science never stops asking questions, and therefore to be a scientist, or anyone who wants to continue to become a better and more well-rounded person, the religion you believe or the faith you have cannot prevent you from continuing to ask questions. It would be foolish to say religion is outdated however. If we didn't need religion or some form of spirituality in our lives, it would not have survived this long with us. That is science - darwinism in its purest form. Maybe my issues with God simply stem from nomenclature, or maybe it is something else. How am I supposed to know? I'm only human.