I Just Had To Laugh. I Saw The Photograph.

This post has nothing to do with the lyrics to the Beatles’ song, A Day in the Life.

Click bait. I apologize.

However, it is, though, a bit, because it’s about a video, which is a series of moving photographs; moving pictures, from which the word “movies” came. I laughed at those moving photographs during a documentary entitled Einstein’s Quantum Riddle because, in it, a physicist said, “Nothing makes any sense.” She was referring to what is called quantum entanglement. Do you know what that is? Well, I am abysmally far from being a physicist, but with what I understand, I’ll provide an illustration similar to the one they used.

Imagine a football field. In one end zone standing upright is a single domino, which represents a particle. In the other end zone, another solitary domino, also representing a particle, also standing upright. One of them topples over. At exactly the same time, the other domino topples.

Quantum entanglement.

Einstein said this was not possible. He called it “spooky actions at a distance.” From his understanding, if something is traveling through space, it takes time. Even light, which is the champion speedster of the universe. takes time to travel. He thought there must be another explanation. Through experimentation, however, physicists have proven that quantum entanglement is true. As a result, one of the physicists on the documentary actually said, “Space doesn’t exist.”

So, as strange as it is, at this point in our knowledge about quantum entanglement, that makes sense.

I guess.

Physicists have discovered other startling things. One is that the old models we used to see of atoms with electrons orbiting protons and neutrons are inaccurate. What an atom really “looks like” is, well, mush. A haze. Not only that, it turns out that atoms don’t exist until we measure or observe their behavior.

Think about that for a moment.

Okay. That didn’t help.

So, as the physicist said, nothing makes sense. I just had to laugh because I thought, “After all their years of mind-burning hard work, they have come to the same conclusion I have!” Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely appreciate what physicists do and the work they have done. In spite of my interest in this science, my brain has never been able to wrap itself around it and its mathematics, even without these mind-blowing realities.

Then I glorified God. And I laughed again. “You have baffled us again, Lord, even the brightest among us.” We Christians do not comprehend and will not, in our lives on the earth, the magnificent heights of God’s mind, power, and creativity. And physics isn’t the only thing scientists don’t understand. As I wrote in a recent article, they don’t know what ninety-five percent of the universe is. They don’t know how the universe came into being. They don’t know how life began on the earth. These are exceptionally large questions. But this one about quantum entanglement—well, it reveals to us how unknowing we humans really are. As it turns out, we don’t even know what reality is. These serious scientists have now speculated that all we observe and study is an illusion. This is what your brain looks like when one studies physics and discovers that nothing makes sense. That speculation about a world of illusion works until you spill some hot water on your hand.

The Lord God Almighty doesn’t speak at length about His creation. The Bible simply says in the first verses of Genesis that He created everything. The psalmists often lauded Him for it, which was right, good, and proper. The author of Hebrews wrote about Jesus, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3a).¹

This is not a scientific explanation of our universe, of course. Scientists will not be satisfied by it. Neither should they be. I’m happy about their efforts to ferret out the mysteries of creation. Because of their discoveries, this verse has taken on a deeper meaning:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).

Invisible things. As it turns out, the invisible things are so wondrous that we cannot comprehend them.

That sounds like something the Lord God Almighty would do, doesn’t it?

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy Bing images.