What Mixing Matter with Antimatter Tells Us About Genesis 1:3

Disclaimer: The following are paragraphs, not individual sentences or phrases; therefore, picking them apart is quote mining. It’s also quote mining to raise an objection about one paragraph that already has an answer in another paragraph (or another post on this blog) because these arguments all build on each other.

Update: Some have raised objections based on the fact that baryon-antiparticle collisions do sometimes release particles other than photons. Why do they? That's right, because the energy generated converts back into those particles — and, thus, back into matter — on its own. Therefore this is actually empirical evidence supporting this.

Of all the parts of the Bible that come under atheistic attack, which one comes under attack the most? It seems like the first book, doesn't it? Why is that? Is it because they think that it somehow contradicts science? News flash: not if examined closely enough. The verse that really sticks out, based on the interchangeability of matter and electromagnetic energy, is Genesis 1:3.

According to that verse, what existed before matter? Light. Light is energy, is it not? Not only is light energy, but it's energy in its purest form. Granted, the vast majority of light is invisible — radio waves, microwaves, heat (infrared) rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays are all just invisible forms of light (some of which can be deadly, but that's another topic entirely) — but it's still light regardless. It's given off by everything from wood fires, to filaments in light bulbs heated by electricity, to explosives, to nuclear weapons, to even the ultimate in thermonuclear reactors: the Sun. Notice, however, that the more you tear matter apart (or fuse it together), the more light you generate?

Ah, that's where we come to the ultimate energy source: combinations of matter and antimatter. Antimatter, by definition, is like matter but with opposite electric charges. The antimatter equivalent of a proton, for example, is of the same mass and composition as a proton but with a negative charge. The equivalent of an electron, likewise, is of the same mass and composition as an electron but with a positive charge. When such particles — antiprotons and positrons, respectively — come into contact with protons and electrons, respectively, they completely annihilate each other, and in so doing convert each other into 100% pure energy — not 4% energy (the matter conversion efficiency of an H-bomb) but 100% pure energy. What kind of energy? That's right, light! Deadly, mostly invisible light, but still light.

If matter and antimatter are indeed convertible into energy, which they are, and if the energy that results from matter and antimatter annihilating each other is light, which it is, then isn't the reverse — energy being converted back into matter and antimatter — also possible? That scenario is exactly what Genesis 1:3 is on about. In a universe where total destruction of matter's (and antimatter's) building blocks yields various forms of light, you'd expect those building blocks to themselves be fundamentally made of light in some fashion. By doing experiments with complete destruction of subatomic particles, that is exactly what we see.

As Frank Turek says, "Science doesn't say anything; scientists do." Science on its own is just a method. It's merely a tool for scientists to use, and the scientists therefore must come up with some interpretation based on the evidence that they see. These experiments with subatomic particles are no exception to that rule, and because of the way the Bible is worded, such that light is the very first thing that ever existed according to its pages, I for one am all the more convinced of its veracity by examining the results of these experiments, which do nothing short of confirm the Bible's implication in Genesis 1:3 that the smallest building block of matter and/or antimatter is in fact a photon.