Where is God at the LHC?

CERN's efforts to recreate the beginning of the big bang is not all about science. There are theological questions too

The simple theological answer is “Everywhere”, as the Creator of a world that contains particle physicists, CERN, and even Higgs bosons (if such there be). But what could persuade us that the Universe is indeed a divine creation? It is certainly not full of items stamped “Made by God”, for the Creator is more subtle than that. Yet science has some things to show us that encourage one to look deeper into the question of God’s existence.

First, however, we must dispose of an approach that would be mistaken, both scientifically and theologically. When the LHC was switched on in a blaze of glory, sadly only to be disabled temporarily a few days later by a different kind of blaze, there was much media hype that this new machine would enable us to look back to the big bang itself.

Scientifically, this was a foolish claim. Certainly the LHC will tell us things of great interest about physics at energies much higher than those hitherto explored, but they still fall far below the level of energies present immediately after the big bang.

Even if this had not been the case, the big bang is not all that interesting theologically. To believe in a Creator is not to answer the question of who lit the initial touch paper, but to address the much deeper question of why there is something rather than nothing. God is as much the Creator today as God was 13.7 billion years ago, for the Creator’s role is to ordain the order of this remarkable world and to continually maintain it in being.

To search for hints of a Creator, therefore, is to look to see if there might be signs of a divine Mind behind the order of the Universe. The best question to ask is: why is science possible at all, in the deep way that the LHC is seeking to exploit? Of course, we have to be able to make sense of the everyday world in order to survive in it, but why can we penetrate the secrets of the strange, counterintuitive quantum world of the LHC, with its possible Higgs bosons and supersymmetric particles? Why is the Universe so rationally transparent to our inquiry, and why is that abstract subject mathematics the key to unlocking its secrets?

Time and again physics has been found to be expressed in equations possessing the unmistakable character of mathematical beauty, so that pursuit of this beauty has been an actual technique in formulating the theories that the LHC will test. The Universe is rationally beautiful and rewards its explorers with the gift of wonder. Science exploits this fact but it does not explain it. Is it all just our luck, or is it a sign that a divine Mind does indeed lie behind cosmic order?

I believe that science is possible because the Universe is a creation and that we, to use an ancient phrase, are creatures made in the image of our Creator. That’s where God is at the LHC, as the producer of the show.

The Rev Canon John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge