Liderbach—The Spiritual Appeal to Scientists

Daniel Liderbach is described in his book only as a theologian and associate professor of religion at Canisius College, a Jesuit school, but I infer he may also be a priest since the copyright is in the name of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit). He is the only one of my group not a physicist. Nevertheless, he seems to have done a remarkable job in penetrating the domain so as to present it to lay persons in understandable concepts, at least insofar as illustrating the thesis he sets forth. In his Preface he acknowledges "the considerable assistance of academic colleagues trained in … physics and the philosophy of science." One of these physicists, James J. Ruddick, S.J., wrote the Foreword in which he pointed out two narrow areas in which Liderbach, as a theologian, may have erred in relatively insignificant peripheral points. But Ruddick makes the point, Liderbach's own thesis, "that Bohr, Born, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, and the others were open to a possibility that the world was vastly different from what they had previously thought." From this he extrapolates, again as does Liderbach and implicitly the other authors I cite above, that similar openness is demanded of those who would seek the kingdom of God, "a willingness to risk being faced with new and quite different challenges."

It would take us too far afield to look at the many aspects of Einstein's Relativity that Liderbach presented. As Zajonc says in CLT, "Of the many rich veins we might follow into Einstein's theory of relativity, none glitters more brightly than light" (p. 256). But since Liderbach's treatment of light is incidental to his elaboration on the nature of "relativity," let us look only at some examples of the latter that serve our present purpose of taking a fresh look at light. The radical openness demanded by relativity is certainly key to that purpose. And the deep mystery that light still presents to both science and religion points to the need for a radically new and different dimension of perception and comprehension.

Special and general relativity are conceptually related, the latter going beyond the limits of the former. As Liderbach puts it, "Special relativity restricts its concerns to the relationship between the motion of physical occurrences and the motion of those who observe occurrences. The more general theory is concerned … with all motion … all possible frames of reference" (p. 41).

To introduce special relativity, he quotes Einstein's example of a stone dropped from the window of a uniformly moving railway carriage. What is the trajectory of the stone as it falls to the earth? The answer is that it has no "independently existing trajectory, but only a trajectory relative to a particular body of reference." To the one who drops the stone from the window and watches it fall, it falls in a straight line. To a pedestrian standing somewhere on the railway embankment, it falls in a parabolic curve. Each trajectory is equally valid judged from its own perspective or frame of reference.

To introduce general relativity, Liderbach adapts Einstein's illustration of an empty chest suspended somewhere in empty space (Chap. 20) to the more common experiential case of "a person riding in an elevator within an extraordinarily tall building" (p. 42). When the car is at rest, the person feels the effect of gravity and notes its pull upon a key dropped to the floor. If the car then ascends, the person notes an increase in gravity and a more rapid descent of the key, i.e., the floor comes up to meet it. When the car descends, the person's gravitational pull (relative to the elevator car) decreases and the key falls more slowly, i.e., the floor runs away from it as it falls. If then the cable breaks, both the person and the key float in the car, and without knowledge of anything outside the car it could be interpreted as being motionless.

The seed for both theories was planted when Einstein was only sixteen years old. The thought came to him, what if he could run at the speed of light? Would light then stand still? With all the marvelous and startling insights he gave humanity, at the end of his life light was still the big question mark, though the speed of light was the basis, the measuring stick, of his formulas. Everything was relative except the speed of light. Neither space nor time had any independent validity, only space-time, a continuum in which everything without exception exists. Energy became mass. Einstein developed two postulates. The first had the effect of making the idea of ether (matter) unnecessary for the transmission of light. The second was that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and is independent of its source, the observer and the observer's motion. This flew in the face of both common sense and the general laws of physics as they previously existed, but it has been confirmed. Thus, the movement of the source of light does not affect the speed at which it travels in front or behind such movement relative to a fixed observation point. In other words, it does not travel faster when emitted in the direction its source is moving, nor slower when emitted in the direction away from which its source is moving, than it does when emitted from a stationary source.

Again under the general theory of relativity, there is an equivalency of all reference frames. Space is curved, and the shortest distance between two points is a curved line, an arc. The common sense rules of Euclidean geometry have to be suspended. A triangle, which we know has interior angles totaling 180 degrees, has more than that when traced upon a sphere. Liderbach gives the example of a triangle formed on the Earth's sphere by dropping two of its sides from the north pole to the equator. They would each make right angles (90 degrees) with the equator, so that the interior angles would total 180 degrees plus the arbitrary angle between the sides at the pole.

This is the simplest of illustrations, but in its way it typifies how relativity has shaken the foundations of common sense and classical physics and cosmology.

Liderbach reverses the chronology of their inception and takes up quantum physics following relativity. Much of the ground he covers there is covered by both Fagg and Zajonc, both of whom, particularly Zajonc, are directed more specifically toward light. What Liderbach crystallizes from his discussion are "enigmatic presences" within the physical world "that elude the range … the senses can grasp" (pp. 68 and 107). He calls them "quantum occurrences [that] challenge … common-sense." We will sample these later with Fagg and Zajonc. For now, we consider his conclusion "that the Presence of the kingdom is at least plausible for Christian believers who are sympathetic to physical science," for that "kingdom is not more extraordinary than [those] of relativity and quantum physics." Since his thesis (of openness by scientists to the presence of the Kingdom), as thesis, is unique among the quoted authors, and is quite well conceived and expressed, let us also look at its broader implications.

As we look at these scientific revelations that have emerged from the womb of human awareness since the last half of the nineteenth century, consider how they demonstrate what the Bible reveals from the very first-fission—a term we tend to associate with nuclear physics but which means simply "separation" or "division." It is the characteristic phenomenon of the Old Testament and the growth process, though it must finally reach fruition in its counterpart-fusion-where things come together again (Eph 1,9-10; Rom 8,19-23). Together they are the outgoing and return of the Prodigal Son. Our willingness to leave the old and move into the new is the very substance of Noah's departure from Atlantis (Gen 6-10), Abraham's departure from Ur (Gen 12,1-4), Jacob's departure from Haran (Gen 31-32, though Jacob's journeys show two such departures which, taken together, represent an outgoing and a return, Gen 28-32), and on and on.

A primarily New Testament version of the same spiritual phenomenon of "fission" is that of "homelessness." To follow the Christ one must leave the security of the past, of "home," and move into the uncertain terrain of the future (Mt 8,19-22; 19,27-29; Mk 10,28-30; Lk 9,57-62; 17,31; 18,28-30). Churches today are internally rent by social issues of this nature. Slavish devotion to church doctrine has proven unwise in the history of Christendom. Even going back only as far as Galileo, the Church's cosmology has had to be modified. During the twentieth century all but the most conservative have seen the necessity of accommodating the idea of evolution (though anthroposophy shows that the scientific idea of evolution, a necessary first step, is one hundred eighty degrees off course, for the lower kingdoms descended from the human and not the human from the lower). Martyrs imprisoned, tortured or burned at the stake by the Church, or otherwise anathematized in times past have been rehabilitated officially or unofficially. Origen, the first real Christian theologian, anathematized for his belief in the preexistence of the soul (which the Church, excepting perhaps only the Mormons, still does not recognize), immediately comes to mind. And it is only a short step from preexistence to the idea of reincarnation which the Church must surely someday recognize, or at least consider, as new organs of human consciousness evolve. Teilhard de Chardin, whose works were proscribed by superiors during his life, is today admired in many circles. Examples could go on and on. It is in the nature of things.

The sword Liderbach uses, "enigmatic presences" in the physical world, is effectively wielded, but it is two-edged and cuts also in another direction. He certainly seems to endorse the idea that there are new ways to experience the Kingdom of God in the world. He even suggests putting aside "the interpretations already learned and the consequent personal security" and accepting the "challenge to adopt a new world-view" (p. 119). Then in his next, and penultimate, chapter he endorses Darwinism right along with Homer, Einstein and Bach. It is, of course, now no risk within Christendom, even Catholicism, to accept the idea of evolution. One doesn't now become "homeless" thereby. It would be another thing, in our day, for theologians to recognize the evolution of the human soul and bodies, through multiple lives on Earth, as the journey of the Prodigal Son, the crown of creation and fountainhead from which sprang the lower three kingdoms rather than the reverse. Liderbach calls "openness" a necessary "heuristic" (an aid to discovering or understanding) for the Kingdom of God. Perhaps it is this characteristic of childhood, implied in Mt 19,14 ("for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven"; also Mk 10,14-15; Lk 18,16-17; Mt 18,3-4), that is most necessary in our day. It is a heuristic needed as much by theologians in their own outlook as in their preachments to science, a heuristic needed both in religion and science if they are to become as one, as eventually they must.