DrW wrote:Getting back to the question of energy required for Moroni, Jesus and God the Father to travel back and forth to Kolob, here are some thoughts on the subject from a post I made over at MADB a few years ago.
• According to Mormon belief, Kolob is either the planet on which God lives, or the star nearest to the planet Oliblish on which God lives. (If you can figure out for sure which is correct, please let me know.)
• God the Father is a glorified being of flesh and bones. “ The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's…” (D&C 130:22)
• God works only through natural laws: --- whatever it may be that is done by the power of God is in accordance with natural law. " J.F. Smith
• All spirit is matter. "All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter" (D&C 131:78).
• For Joseph [Smith] that which has no physical existence has no existence at all. (WJS, 60).
• The closest star outside the solar system is Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri), which is 4.22 light years away. No star, including Kolob, is closer.
- Neither matter nor information can travel faster than the speed of light.
Now consider:
- If God accomplishes his work in accordance with natural law, as the Mormon prophets assure us that he does, then his speed of travel is limited to the speed of light. Nothing moves faster than the speed of light, including useful information.
- Kolob must be at least 4.2 light years away from earth. Therefore, a round trip from Kolob to Earth and back would require at least 8.4 years.
- Prayers are comprised of information (we tell God our problems and wait for answers). Information cannot travel faster than light. Therefore, the process of sending, receiving, and answering prayers from Earth to Kolob and back is, you guessed it, 8.4 years. Anyone on Earth who thinks that they receive answers to prayers from God on Kolob in less than 8.4 years is certainly mistaken.
- There was not enough time for the Angel Moroni to return to Kolob between his various visitations with Joseph Smith between 1823 and 1829. (Perhaps Moroni just hung out here on Earth and waited for Joseph to finish with the plates. If so, the fact that Joseph Smith just covered his face with his hat and didn't even look at the plates while translating them was no doubt was disturbing to Moroni.)
- God the Father and Jesus Christ would have had to leave Kolob sometime in late 1815 (Earth time) in order to appear to Joseph Smith in 1820.
And, the conclusion least damaging to Mormonism among several possible damaging conclusions is: the Kolob concept is patently ridiculous.
(At least orthodox Christianity has the good sense to say that God exists outside of space and time and is "incomprehensible" to humankind, thereby avoiding the possibility of having their claims tested scientifically or logically.)
One big mistake that Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery and later Brigham Young and Joseph Smith Smith made in constructing the Everlasting Gospel is that they made God a god of flesh and bone, who is subject to "natural law". In the light of modern science, this leads to some amusing inconsistencies in the Mormon belief system.
Once God has a body of flesh and blood (or flesh and bone), wormholes, tachyons, quantum entanglement and other apologist "alternate theories" cannot help him exceed nature's speed limit. (Each is easily refuted but that is another story.)
Unless a Mormon prophet is now willing to assert that natural law is what the Church says it is, the claim that mankind does not know enough about natural law to understand how God works is no longer valid. While BKP has come close to such assertions in his "faith must supersede fact " proclamations, it is clear that J.S. Smith and other prophets took natural laws (such as the law of gravity) to mean natural laws as determined by science. The speed of light as a universal speed limit was not known to the early prophets (God forgot to mention it to them I suppose), but now it is known to stand alongside gravity as one of nature's fundamental laws.
In J.F. Smith's day, the assumption was that mankind did not know enough about natural law to understand how God performed his miracles. Today mankind does know enough about how nature works. We know, especially in the case of the Kolob issue (or idiocy), that natural law does put severe limits on what can be claimed as the Mormon God's power and capabilities.
The "information" about the spin state of a particle such as an electron or a photon that is "communicated" between one particle and its entangled partner is "quantum information" not "classical information" (or in fact useful information). It does not matter whether such particles have mass or not. Photons (no mass) and electrons (small mass) can both be created in pairs and can thus be entangled.
It is possible to entangle two particles in terms of their relative spin states, and determine that the states are later complementary in every case no matter which particle spin state is first observed. However, it is not possible (theoretically or practically) to use this quantum entanglement to transfer classical or useful information at speeds faster than light.
To see how this works (or doesn't work) you might try a quick Google search of the terms "classical information channel" and "quantum information channel”.
Explanation (only for the extremely interested or extremely bored): The two main postulates of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity are important here. The first is that the speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of their relative speed. The second is that the laws of physics are the same in every non-accelerating time frame of reference. That is, they are the same for God on Kolob, or when he is traveling through space at a constant speed, as they are here on Earth. This pretty much negates the idea that God could enter a situation where all time was collapsed. Remember, traveling near the speed of light, the laws of physics to him are the same as they are to us and things work just fine in his frame of reference.
The complete form of Einstein’s equation, E = mc², used when working with particles traveling at relativistic speeds is: E = mc²/√(1-v²/c²), where E is energy, c is the speed of light and, v is the velocity or speed of the particle.
The √(1-v²/c²), term is related to "gamma" as described below. To see what happens to energy of a particle at the speed of light, enter the speed of light, c for the particle speed v, and note that the denominator term goes to zero. Mathematically, of course division by zero yields infinity. The standard interpretation is that the energy of the particle with mass becomes infinite at the speed of light.
Travel at speeds near the speed of light (termed relativistic speeds) entails some non-intuitive phenomena such as time dilation. For objects traveling at relativistic speeds, time “slows down” compared to that for an object moving at lower (non-relativistic) speeds. Time does not stop or go backwards. There are two other interesting effects of relativistic speed travel. The momentum of an object increases (this can also be thought of as an increase in mass). The length of an object contracts at relativistic speeds. These latter two effects are not really relevant to this discussion (except to underline that relativistic speed travel is a big deal).
Photons (zero mass particles) travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. Some of the faster nonzero mass particles observed in particle accelerators, for example, travel at 0.99999999995 times the speed of light. Even at such speeds, things work out fine for particles. Relativistic equations derived from the basic equation above for determining energy, mass, and speed are used to interpret accelerator particle data. These are pretty much like classical equations except that a term known as gamma must be introduced to determine the correct elapsed time, speed, and rest mass in both the particle and laboratory reference frames. Time in our reference frame slows down, but does not "stop", for these particles.
So, if God could travel at the speed of light (and because he is comprised of particles with mass he can only approach that speed limit asymptotically), he would require infinite energy and gain infinite momentum and therefore become infinitely massive (probably not a good thing).
The Big Mistake for Mormon theology as far as science and logic are concerned was making a God of flesh and bone who is subject to natural law.
DrW,
I've had intuitions about the implications of God, a being with a physical body, living within the physical universe, and have had many of the same thoughts - how can God travel a great distance faster than the speed of light? how can God answer prayers instantly if information, in any form, can not exceed superluminal velocities? Mind you, my education in physics comes from reading Scientific American and a few books by Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawkings, so I was never capable expressing myself the way you have.
I've got to admit, I've got a bit of a man-crush going on with respect to this post, Doc. If possible, I'd nominate this for Post of the Year - at the very least, I'm saving it in Yojimbo so I never lose it.
Thanks so much,
H.