Christmas Stories ... 3

Another death to mourn this week, and one that strikes an altogether different note from that of Christopher Hitchens, one an avowed atheist in a deeply religious country, the other decidedly religious in the midst of a formerly Communist society.  With a poignantly festive resonance, world leaders and  ordinary citizens will gather today in and around Wenceslas Square, Prague, for the state funeral of Vaclav Havel.  

A complex, in many senses almost romantic, figure Havel lived through turbulent times, as a playwright, dissident, politician and president, in the latter two-thirds of the 20th century in Eastern Europe.  Never a natural politician he was, essentially, a man of words and ideas, an imaginer of hopeful possibilities, a crafter of brighter dreams.  He was convinced by the view that artistic and philosophical creativity were the mainsprings of significant political change, and that the reality of God guaranteed the legitimacy of hope in that change.

By no means a classic Christian, Havel was always reluctant to too closely define the God in whom he believed. Yet his faith was the key to his hope which, in turn, was the rock from which he wrote, and acted. In this season of 'Good King Wenceslas', today, of all days, it would be no bad thing to reflect on some of the wise words of the last president of Czechoslovakia...

"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."

"When we lose God in the modern world, we lose meaning, purpose, accountability, and responsibility."

Another passing thought on the, vaguely Christmas related, news items of the past few weeks … ‘The God Particle’ apparently has shown up, sort of, possibly.  Together with the ongoing head scratching over the apparently excessive speed of the neutrinos, it really does seem as if physics is the new rock n roll.

I do find this all fascinating, the world of quantum physics seems a bizarre and extraordinary place, but, inexpert as I am, I do still have some nagging questions.  If the existence of the Higgs-Boson has been assumed for a while now, its discovery merely confirms the current standard model – important for sure, but not as exciting, to the lay-person, as was, in some places suggested.  It seems that in much popular imagination finding the God particle is akin to discovering the ‘thing’ that plays the role hitherto granted to God in the whole beginning of the universe business, and we can now all move on, having finally sorted that one.  Of course no serious scientists really believe that, but when you look at some of the things that are said you can forgive the confusion.  In a statement which was presented as the ‘key conclusion’ of Stephen Hawking’s ‘The Grand Design’ he said ‘Because there are laws such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’  Now, it seems to me, that you don’t have to know anything at all about physics, just be able to attribute the usual meaning to each of the words in that sentence, to regard it as both self-contradictory and ridiculous.  In the words of another Oxford professor, ‘Nonsense remains nonsense even when it’s spoken by very clever people.’

One other thought, it does seem that levels of excitement in the scientific community, understandably, are in direct proportion to the time elapsed from the point of the big bang to the appearance of the most recent discovery.  Last week Professor Brian Cox breathlessly enthused that the potential discovery of the Higgs-Boson took us to within one billionth of a second of the big bang itself.  Now call me old fashioned but, impressed as I am by the smallness of that number, I would still be far more intrigued by some discovery relating to the moments before the big bang.  Professor Dawkins might call this a non-question, but what is this nothingness out of which something comes?  Is it just some pre-existent physical law, as Hawking’s suggests, if so to what does it relate? Might there be someone there after all?  And if they were to come down at Christmas, and be discovered closer to us than we think, wouldn’t that be something to get excited by.