Could God and Light be the same thing?
Light and god have always been very interlinked in the spiritual or religious sense. Light being a symbol of illumination, knowledge, beauty, all pervading, all revealing and similarly darkness being heavily associated with evil, sin, ignorance, the unknown.
But I want to talk about the physics of light - a very peculiar phenomenon indeed.
Light has no position in space, as it is massless. It occupies no volume. A photon regardless of how energetic it is (gamma rays or infrared) always travels at the speed of light in a vacuum and is thus heavily woven into the idea of time as Einstein highlighted with his equation E=mc2. It appears to slow down through material but individual photons do not slow down their path is just riddled with bouncing around off material before exiting. You cannot see any light passing by you unless it is deflected into your eyes, when light doesn’t come into contact with an object, it’s as if it Isn’t there. When it does interact with objects it imparts colour, form, texture, some much detail about something that would otherwise be invisible, would others be total blackness.
At the speed of light, time has no duration, and distance is no object. The beginning and the end of lights journey is essentially instantaneous from that massless reference point. This is barely even conceivable - the Big Bang, all of existence of the universe, the end (if/ whatever that may be) all occurring in a spontaneous moment for a photon.
Not only is light linked with time by Einstein’s equation but also with mass. And this with dimension/ space as you cannot have one without the other. Einstein predicted that two highly energetic photons colliding and losing energy rapidly should produce some matter (an electron) and some anti-matter (a positron) and this was proven at CERN by physicists.
We’ve seen matter turned into light energy - think if combustion, nuclear explosions etc. But to turn light into matter was much more difficult however physics permits it and experiments proved it.
Because light is energy it cannot be created or destroyed, can only transform - into matter for example.
To tie it into the many concepts regarding god. Light seems to be a timeless, non physical, creator of the material (physical) world that hurtles through the universe faster than anything else can, reaching all corners (omnipresence), being all degrees of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum (omnipotence) and carrying with it the content of all information - the fastest exchanger of information between point A and B, the fundamental warmth and brightness required for a planet to sustain sentient beings.
I don’t know about all peoples descriptions of a possible god but to me the mere physical properties of light or any energy for that matter puts it top of the list of my personal contenders.
But I want to talk about the physics of light - a very peculiar phenomenon indeed.
Light has no position in space, as it is massless. It occupies no volume. A photon regardless of how energetic it is (gamma rays or infrared) always travels at the speed of light in a vacuum and is thus heavily woven into the idea of time as Einstein highlighted with his equation E=mc2. It appears to slow down through material but individual photons do not slow down their path is just riddled with bouncing around off material before exiting. You cannot see any light passing by you unless it is deflected into your eyes, when light doesn’t come into contact with an object, it’s as if it Isn’t there. When it does interact with objects it imparts colour, form, texture, some much detail about something that would otherwise be invisible, would others be total blackness.
At the speed of light, time has no duration, and distance is no object. The beginning and the end of lights journey is essentially instantaneous from that massless reference point. This is barely even conceivable - the Big Bang, all of existence of the universe, the end (if/ whatever that may be) all occurring in a spontaneous moment for a photon.
Not only is light linked with time by Einstein’s equation but also with mass. And this with dimension/ space as you cannot have one without the other. Einstein predicted that two highly energetic photons colliding and losing energy rapidly should produce some matter (an electron) and some anti-matter (a positron) and this was proven at CERN by physicists.
We’ve seen matter turned into light energy - think if combustion, nuclear explosions etc. But to turn light into matter was much more difficult however physics permits it and experiments proved it.
Because light is energy it cannot be created or destroyed, can only transform - into matter for example.
To tie it into the many concepts regarding god. Light seems to be a timeless, non physical, creator of the material (physical) world that hurtles through the universe faster than anything else can, reaching all corners (omnipresence), being all degrees of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum (omnipotence) and carrying with it the content of all information - the fastest exchanger of information between point A and B, the fundamental warmth and brightness required for a planet to sustain sentient beings.
I don’t know about all peoples descriptions of a possible god but to me the mere physical properties of light or any energy for that matter puts it top of the list of my personal contenders.
Comments (30)
I think you're on the right track. Here's a PDF you may like.
https://adamford.com/NTheo/NewTheology.pdf
If god is anything material - and if god is anything like his cosmos - god is the perfect sacred commingling of darkness and light. In the bizarre mythology of William Blake - perhaps the solitary mystic genius of 18th and 19th Century England - the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Incidentally, Lucifer - that perennially mortifying, theologically disconcerting - and hence well-glossed-over - morsel of god - is both Prince of Darkness and Bringer of Light.
:fire:
God is creator of all things
Light is energy and thus created
Therefore God cannot be light
Furthermore light can not create anything
You've listed a lot of the properties of light. It's an impressive list, but I don't see what it has to do with God.
Quoting Benj96
Sorry to be a nitpicker, but this is not the reason light slows down in different media. Here's a really good explanation.
This is not how it actually works in quantum field theory. And it was not Einstein who predicted it. He didn't know about anti particles.
Light couples to the virtual electron field ,(vacuum bubbles). If the photon has enough energy it can turn a virtual electron bubble into a real electron and positron. There is nothing created or annihilated, or absorbed or emitted. The real photon goes virtual, the virtual electron goes real.
Sorry to nitpick again, but it could be seen that way. Photons get delayed by turning real, virtual, real, virtual, etc. But there are more explanations, even in the classical domain. Varying permitivities and permeabilities and all that.
That doesn't apply to the night creatures on the planets. Why should gods have no form and be light? The bat-gods would disagree.
Bats do not believe in God at least not as far as we know. We believe in God and so picture him in our own terms.
Why should they believe in gods? If the eternal heavenly gods created the temporary material universe in their image, bats do enough to just live and please the bat gods. Like we live to entertain the people gods.
Well than the bat gods be sound... (I do advice you to refrain from eating more mushrooms).
The bat gods sounds? Why not just bats in heaven? Why would there be only One God living there as light? Talking bout mushrooms... It's a pity you can't buy them anymore! Man, did I see and hear colored spaghetti!
It's speculated the the Jews of the time period of Nebuchadnezzar sarcastically referred to him as "Lucifer", one who thought so highly of himself that the sun rose because of him: the Bringer of Light.
At which point Lucifer became synonymous with Satan is possibly a mystery.
It's that why a match is called a lucifer?
True is guess it would be a sort of yin yang, positive negative, light dark thing. You can’t really have one without the other and if “god” is all things it must be both
Well I was pouring out how light is also non-physical (massless) and eternal (cannot be created or destroyed)
Quoting Hillary
Yeah why not. There are a few parallels. Perhaps they couldn’t be the same thing but maybe some phenomena have more god-like properties than others. I would say the properties of light are so strikingly bizarre that some of these parts of physics like the idea of indestructibility, timelessness, etc are worthy of awe. They seem so strange and impossible yet they are. And mathematically proven too.
Yes this was sort of along my line of thinking also. Lights properties are impressive and seem almost otherworldly yet it is present everywhere- in plain sight so to speak hehe
But that holds for all particles. They are either real or virtual and mass and pure energy (light or gluons) are interchangeable. A real photon can get virtual again and excite a virtual electron to real (which gives seemingly two particles, an electron and a positron). The comparison with light is adequate though. Light has different colors and shapes. Holograms!
Okay I’m listening haha. Can you explain more about why you see gravity as a superior candidate?
...but of course, we do not have to deify anything. We can just admit that we don't know.
If nothing else it would save space on this forum.
Wrong, Lucifer was the bringer of light but become prince of darkness.
Lucifer never was both.
Isaiah 14:12-15
"Oh lucifer, son of the morning!"
Just so lovely and brilliant. A breathtaking poet, Isaiah. :fire: :heart: :fire: