Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Peter:

Having grown up in an academic milieu, with my 
maternal grandfather a physics professor and my 
father a math prof, I am not easily impressed by 
degrees (after all, I have 98.6 myself). Further, 
there is this delicious quote from Bertram Russel, 
I am told it was  his favorite description for 
mathematics, "the subject in which we never know 
what we are talking about nor whether what we are 
saying is right." (There is a modern practice that 
believes that if we can describe something 
mathematically, then it must be true. I disagree 
with it, but that is a different subject.)

With this as a background, the existence of a 
photon as a particle is a mathematical construct. 
The same for many beliefs commonly taught as fact, 
such as the Bohr model of the atom, and now some of 
the modern ideas of string theory and wormholes are 
likewise mathematical constructs. Even the commonly 
taught "Big Bang" is a mathematical construct based 
on presuppositions that may or may not be accurate 
(if Genesis 1 is accurate history, then those 
presuppositions are not accurate).

What has often been observed is that when matter is 
heated, such as a piece of steel, is that it gives 
off light. If it is hot enough, the light is in the 
visible range of our eyes.

When one goes to the races, one chooses a horse and 
bets on it. My horse is named Genesis 1, yours the 
Big Bang. The race is not over yet, the horses are 
on the back stretch, we all are cheering on our 
horses, but as of yet the winner is not apparent to 
an unbiased observer.

Karl W. Randolph.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Kirk" <peter AT qaya.org>
> 
> On 15/04/2006 01:45, Karl Randolph wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > I said that God created the world lifeless and still, then added 
> > motion. One aspect of the motion is light (I have an uncle who 
> > was a physicist, he assures me light is caused by the motion of 
> > matter) ...
> 
> As a former physicist myself, I would want to qualify that as 
> depending on one's definition of "matter". Light is caused by the 
> motion of particles, photons, which also have wave-like properties. 
> But these particles have zero rest mass, in other words they are 
> pure energy and so at least in popular terms not matter at all. 
> Light can also be generated by matter in motion, if that is what 
> your uncle meant, but, according to those same physicists, not all 
> light is so generated - some is left over from the Big Bang having 
> been created directly as photons.
> 
> 
> -- Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/

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