There have been many attempts by humanity to ‘play God’ over history. Here, Daniel L. Smith explains the Hadron Collider project in the context of the Tower of Babel narrative from the Bible, Genesis 11:1-9.
Daniel’s new book on mid-19thcentury northern California is now available. Find our more here: Amazon US| Amazon UK
Tower of Babel by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594. In the Louvre Museum.
When we consider lessons being taught and learned throughout our lives, we don’t necessarily think of these lessons starting at the very beginning of time. These lessons include the ethical and moral principles in which Christianity itself is based upon. Even further though, we never pull back far enough to see how lessons affect society and humankind as a whole unit. From the beginning mankind has chosen to take the path, seemingly today more frequently traveled, in poor decision making for achieving scientific greatness—all starting with Adam and Eve—with their choice to eat the apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Humanity didn’t learn its lesson from The Fall, which shows us that humanity can’t do it their own way. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. This ultimate expulsion sealed the fall of mankind.
The world was a wicked place in the days of Noah. The disgraceful, disgusting, violent, immoral and unethical societies in those days were something horrific. Dr. David Leston wrote that “archaeologists have unearthed bodies of people who lived in Mesopotamia, they have found evidence that cannibalism was practiced. In short, this was a very brutal era, in which humanity showed little to no regard for one another.”[1]He goes on to mention that in “January 1996 National Geographic did a comparison between rodeo riders and their injuries, and skeletons uncovered from the time of Noah. They found striking similarities between the injuries of the two groups, suggesting that this was a very violent society. When people reject God and the boundaries and purposes that He has created for them, they become a law unto themselves, and society becomes more weaker and dangerous.”[2]The net result? The same as always, extreme anarchy and a violent world. So, God flooded the world and spared the only honest and Godly man alive at the time. It was Noah who God gave the task of rebuilding civilization.
Man’s Rebellion
It was right after the Flood that people would repopulate the Fertile Crescent (the Middle East). This was a very fertile and agriculturally productive area which was quick to develop, and fought over heavily. One of humankind’s early technological developments was the ability to design and manipulate materials and so to make structures such as buildings. It was mankind’s obligation from God to subdue the earth. He ultimately gave mankind all the faculties necessary to create great constructions. However, in man’s rebellion against God, this gift was used in ways to honor men and not Him—such as The Tower of Babel. This attempt at building a ziggurat megastructure was humankind’s next attempt at playing God. Just a note here—it will blow your mind to look at the similarities in the Mesopotamian ziggurat of biblical days and a typical ziggurat from South America.
In Genesis 11, the tower planners said “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”[3]The planners of course were referring to making a name for mankind above God’s name. God saw this ability of man’s to centralize power effectively for the purposes of glorifying themselves. He then—in an instant—created world languages to confuse the masses and dispersed them globally. This effectively explains human migration in the ice age, world language and similarities in technology worldwide. Today, humankind over time has once again gathered to challenge God once again.
The Parallel?
On January 15, 2019, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) unveiled plans for an even larger Large Hadron Collider, with a 100km (62-mile) circumference - about four times longer than the current machine. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) will be almost 10 times more powerful than the current machine too. CERN said the FCC, which should be in use by 2040, would "significantly expand our knowledge of matter and the universe".[4] It was built by CERN between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries.[5]The final end-game to this complex science experiment is the specific knowledge of this “God-particle” that adheres all of the atoms of physical matter together—which is where we get our physical reality from. This is arguably a tongue-in-cheek observation of humanities last parallel to the ancient Tower of Babel.
This time, however, God is not going to come down to the Land of Shinar (the Fertile Crescent) to shake His head in humankinds disappointing direction. No. This should only serve humanity as a reminder. A sign of the times that we live in today. In the Biblical sense, humanity did not learn its lesson from The Fall. Nor did mankind learn its lesson from The Flood. Nor did mankind learn from the freedom of slavery that Moses gave the Israelites from the Pharaoh in Egypt. Nor did mankind learn from Sodom and Gomorrah. Finally, mankind didn’t learn either from the Tower of Babel. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Europe’s Large Hadron Collider is civilization’s last whole combined scientific effort to become God before humanity’s final Tribulation.
Daniel is giving a talk about his book on mid-19thcentury northern California. Find out more here.
You can read Daniel’s past articles on California in the US Civil War (here), Medieval Jesters (here), How American Colonial Law Justified the Settlement of Native American Territories (here), Spanish Colonial Influence on Native Americans in Northern California (here), Christian ideology in history (here), the collapse of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (here), early Christianity in Britain (here), the First Anglo-Dutch War (here), and how Ulysses S. Grant saved Native Peoples in 1850s California (here).
Finally, Daniel Smith writes at complexamerica.org.
[1]Dr. Leston, Stephen, and Christopher D. Hudson. "From Creation to the Tower of Babel | The Age of Noah." In The Bible in World History: How History and Scripture Intersect, 31. Uhrichsville: Barbour Pub, 2011.
[2]Ibid. p. 32.
[3]The Holy Bible (NKJV) | Genesis 11:4.
[4]"CERN Plans Even Larger Large Hadron Collider to Find More 'God Particles'." Worthy Christian News. Last modified January 16, 2019. https://www.worthynews.com/38497-cern-plans-even-larger-large-hadron-collider-to-find-more-god-particles.
[5]"Large Hadron Collider." The Telegraph. Accessed December 27, 2019. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3351899/Large-Hadron-Collider-thirteen-ways-to-change-the-world.html.
