The Right of The People To Not Be Shot: An Examination of The 2nd Amendment.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Many people will look at this amendment and see that it clearly states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Others will look at this same amendment and see that well regulated militia’s have the right to keep and bear arms. No matter what side of the debate you are on, I’m going to take a serious look at both arguments and examine why the question should not be “Why are they trying to take our guns away?” and instead be, “Why do you have the right to possibly shoot me?”

Now if you believe rhetoric like the kind from the mouths of NRA members, they will argue that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is absolute. That means that under no circumstances can this right ever be abridged. They will also state with absolute certainty that the 2nd amendment was an individual’s right to bear arms and not the right of a well regulated militia. So let’s examine those two issues to start.

In order for a right to be absolute, a country must recognize, and so the government, that under no circumstance can that right ever be abridged for any reason. That means no one can ever take that right away from you for any reason whatsoever. People who argue that the Bill of Rights apply in just such a way, are quick to point out for instance, that at no time can anyone take away your right to speak freely. Now to be fair, I myself, have argued this point for a long time, however it is not something that the government is comfortable doing just yet. In fact, it is well documented that your right to freely speak has limitations, and as such it cannot by definition be absolute.

For instance, I cannot publish a work of non-fiction on a particular person sighting that this particular person molests children, sells illegal drugs, or steals from the elderly, if I know these statements are false. Doing so would cause me to be libelous, and a person could seek damages against me for such statements in a court of law. It’s also true that I can’t walk into a crowded theater and scream “fire!” if I know full well there is no fire. Doing so, may cause injury due to the panic associated with such an action. There are also many instances where lying to certain persons would cause a perjury charge to be filed, even though if my right to free speech is absolute as these people believe, I can say anything I want without repercussion.

The reason that rights can be abridged deals with a possible instance when one person’s right to something conflicts with another’s, and it’s in these cases that things become muddled. For instance in the examples above, my right to write a book on someone that states this person to be a bad person, conflicts with their right to not have their name and image tarnished. It is also true that screaming “fire!” in a crowded theater is a bad idea because my right to do it, conflicts with the rights of those people to not be injured as a result. There are clearly many other instances where this applies over and over. For example, you can’t walk up to someone you don’t like and simply hit them, or do worse harm to them, even if you feel justified in doing so. Justification, meaning a good reason, is by no means valid when causing harm.

Imagine, for just a second, what kind of country this would be if we were allowed to do this? It would be chaos, and as a means to stop just such chaos, laws are written to protect, which may conflict with your rights. And just as a matter of thoroughness, the 4th amendment which deals with unreasonable search and seizure has been routinely abridged as a matter of public policy in matters of public safety. Consider the FISA court which authorizes the government to secretly search people’s properties without their knowledge if they believe they are committing acts of terrorism. Also consider that people are routinely arrested and incarcerated without trial, if they believe them to be a danger to society, a clear violation of 6th and 14th amendments.

So now that I have dealt with the issue of absolute rights, let’s deal with the issue of that comma. In the second amendment, it can easily be interpreted that either a well regulated militia has the right to bear arms, or the people in general, depending on what side of the comma you fall on.

You can make an argument that the first line before states with certainty that a well regulated militia has the right to keep and bear arms; they are after all the people. This would be a means for the founders to sight with clarity that the people who form state militia, for the protection of this nation, do so with a non infringing right to have weapons. Imagine for a second that time in which this document was written, 1789, only thirteen years after the declaration of independence was written and voted on, and only eight years after our final battle with the British in 1781.

Invasion was a very real threat, a well regulated militia would be necessary to protect the freedom of the inhabitants of the United States, so a second amendment that gave militia’s the right to carry weapons was a good idea. The intention is worded right in the amendment, “…being necessary to the security of a free state…” That line implies that in order to prevent a country from invading ours, we authorize those militias to keep and bear arms. It does not imply that people, in order to protect themselves from tyranny, have the right to carry weapons, as many gun enthusiasts might suggest. This is a ridiculous assumption after all, when this document was written there was no belief that any such occurrence would take place even if they had just fought a war of independence.

Remember again, in this instance that the United States was a new country and could have easily been overwhelmed by another country or maybe a few, with enough force. Giving the right of the people to form militias allows, when necessary, people who are not ordinarily militant to become so, in cases when need arises, to protect the country for instance. It is hard to imagine for most people invasion as a real possibility, it rarely happens, however it happened all the time hundreds of years ago, and going back further, entire empires were built on this action. For example, Britain built an empire entirely by invading other countries, are we to assume that, the United States was in no real danger of such a thing, considering the nature of the world a few hundred years ago?

Now to be fair, it can also be argued that this amendment is two parts, indicated by the comma. It can be argued that, a well regulated militia is necessary; however the right of the people to keep and bear arms is also necessary. The issue I have with this assertion is that it’s unnecessary to state the obvious. If they really were saying everyone should be able to carry weapons, than its unnecessary to include the militia in that amendment at all, and instead keep it simple saying that “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” It is an unnecessary inclusion if you are stating the obvious, militias after all, are made up of the people, not dogs for example, but more so by the language, not made up of non-citizens of the United States. So I believe this argument to be a moot point, if you have a brain and are capable of using it, than a logical inference is that a well regulated militia being necessary to secure the freedom of the state, shall carry weapons and no one can take them away.

Now this is where the argument should end if that is all there is, but there is more. Many gun owners will argue that arms means just about anything. For example, if you take the 2nd amendment as being absolute, its interpretation to mean anyone can carry weapons, than there is no limitation to what that can be, hand guns, rifles, assault weapons, bazookas, tanks, nuclear weapons, etc. After all, if they are correct than the position of the government should be that any citizen should be able to carry any weapon. Now imagine again for a second, you live in 1789. Percussion-cap weapons were not invented until 1825, and the colt revolver, not until 1835, so all you have are flint-lock weapons.

That means that you have to load the barrel of your weapon with a projectile, and load the pan of your weapon with a spark in order to even fire it, a process which takes several minutes. Because of the nature of projectile not being designed with precision, and a tumbling effect, rather than spiraling effect, gun barrels were required to be very long to allow the projectile to follow a straight path longer before exiting the end to make it more accurate. That meant that guns were big and heavy and designed to be used sparingly. So it’s easy to see how a second amendment could be applied to a weapon such as this, but to assume that the founders meant all weapons is quite a stretch.

To be fair again, it is easy to assume the amendment was limiting to the weapons of the time, but to argue that the founders could not foresee innovation, is slightly ridiculous. In the 13th century when the Chinese invented gunpowder they used it by filling long tubes and firing projectiles, a kind of rocket. In the hundreds of years since, they would have easily realized that innovation would have produced better weapons, clearly seen by the invention of the first gun in the 14th century and the subsequent improvements over the years.

So I am not so naive to believe the founders could not have imagined better weapons, however they could not have imagined anything like we have today. People base their imaginations on the technologies of the time, and apply such technologies to conform around them. For example, the first science fiction novels written hundreds of years ago depict the technologies of the future, although certainly forward thinking, still applied a very real at the time, modern technological spin on things. Rockets to the moon were flung into space by giant sling shots, or the use of steam.

Although people are capable of envisioning future technologies, they must have a basis by which their imaginations have something to build on. The founders living in 1789 had no way to envision nuclear weapons, or even automatic weapons because the idea of such a thing was not pervasive of the time. It is conceivable that anyone creating laws in just such a time, who could foresee a future hundreds of years later with technologies so far advanced one would think them alien, might want to create some restrictions. It is the lack of such restrictions that can lead you to either conclude that they meant that this right was absolute, or it was not, and if it were absolute than any such restriction would be unnecessary. It is however, more likely to conceive that the founders were simply unable to foresee a necessity because they could not envision technologies so advanced, and because of this, we should take pause when considering the 2nd amendment just on this basis alone.

If taken as an absolute law, and written with no restriction of arms, than it is the right of the people to carry all means of weapons. However, most people would agree, anyone allowed to carry a nuclear weapon, or even a bazooka, is something that should not be allowed. And it is this consensus of the people that show we ourselves do not hold this law as absolute.

So if the consensus of the people is that gun control is necessary, why are we a nation filled with guns with a system that so easily allows anyone to get one?

The simple answer to that is that even public safety has a price. As I’ve stated many times, public policy is a matter left to the greedy and not the health conscious. Our elected officials bow to corporations, the kind who make guns and the kind that use them and money is the currency of the greedy.

Government exists for only a few reasons as illustrated by the preamble to our constitution:

 “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

We can take from this text that a government’s existence is merely to protect its people. This is accomplished through the process of law. We create laws to protect people from other people, whether it is foreign or domestic. This is further reiterated by the establishment of the Bill of Rights and Constitution as a whole. Our government was designed to be a regulating body, like all governments. That means it protects us, by establishing laws and enforcing them. So it is hard to believe that gun regulation cannot even be considered by our government, if said government’s existence is merely to regulate?

We regulate a lot in this country, from the food we eat, to the cars we drive to even the kinds of things we put in our medicines. We do this for the purpose of protecting people from themselves. It sounds like a ridiculous notion; however in general people do many stupid things that without regulation might cause more injury than it does. For example, until the 60’s cars did not carry safety belts. I think you would be a amissed to find anyone that would argue that cars should feature no such safety devices, or for that matter roller coasters,  child safety seats, baby strollers, or shopping carts. Or that we might decide that we need no FDA to regulate what food manufacturers put in our bodies or drug companies, the drugs we take.

Regulation allows people to feel safer about the products they use and in general the society they live in. For example, people feel safer knowing that laws have been put into effect that prohibits minors from drinking alcohol. This is mainly due to the fact that a minor can legally drive at sixteen but must legally wait until they are twenty-one to purchase alcohol. The same thing is true of mothers who buy baby formula for their infants. Imagine if that industry was not as heavily regulated as it is. People often take for granted the regulations that have been put in place as a matter of public safety.

So why is it that with all this regulation on everything else in this country, guns are something we cannot regulate?

Again, in matters of public safety, greed can overwhelm morality.

So let’s talk about the arguments that gun enthusiasts like to make for why their right to carry a gun outweighs the public right to be safe. Most gun enthusiasts believe they need to have guns for home protection, hunting, and recreational shooting.

The argument for protecting one’s home admittedly is a good argument, after all, in a society where we value our things above our lives it makes sense that we might want to protect said things. Or maybe you don’t agree, maybe you believe it is your life that is more valuable than your belongings. Well if you believe that, than you are on the wrong side of this argument, because carrying a gun in your home for protection is more dangerous to you and your family than it will ever to be to an intruder.

Research has shown that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of your family than an intruder, furthermore the very act of bringing a gun into an already violent situation is more likely to get you or a family member killed by said intruder than had it not been introduced. The reality of the situation is that an intruder that has broken into your home to take your things is unlikely to want to commit a violent act against you, and is likely to take what they want and leave without incident if they are left to do so. And if you really do believe that your life or the life of a family member is more valuable than your property than the argument for a having a gun in the home is not a valid one.

The argument that guns are needed for hunting at first seems to be valid, after all people do hunt for game and having a gun makes it a lot easier to take a target like a deer down than using for example, a bow and arrow. On this premise alone, they almost have me, however if this argument is meant to be taken seriously, than we should require a serious examination of what is actually needed to hunt game. I have heard the argument many times why assault weapons need to be legal, and someone always tells me they need them to hunt. However, I feel it necessary to mention the only valid reason for hunting with an assault rifle is if you are hunting humans, lower animals do not have the ingenuity to resist any kind of weapons fire, so something as sophisticated as an assault rifle, it can be presumed, is only useful in hunting humans.

Having said that, many might make the argument that the bigger the animal, the more powerful a weapon that is needed. For example, let’s say you are stupid enough to try and hunt bears, and if you are I don’t feel sorry for you if you are mauled by one. Bears are very large, built with lots of bone and muscle, and these two things alone determine the effect a bullet will have on them.

For your average size bear of a thousand pounds, a small handgun is not going to do the job; they simply do not carry enough kinetic energy and maximum potential force to do any real damage to something so large. So what caliber of handgun would do it? A .357 magnum, and higher like .454 and .500 certainly have the ability to take a bear down and they are all handguns. But even if you want to use something more accurate like a rifle at long range, you can find this caliber of rifles capable of taking down a bear at any gun store. So the argument for assault rifles as a means of hunting begins to sound a little absurd.

And what of the argument that having guns available for recreation is a valid reason?

Well like most people who have fired a gun, it’s an enjoyable experience. I have fired several different types of rifles and handguns and enjoyed doing so with each opportunity. However, this when I begin to think about it, is a little disturbing. 

What is it about guns that we enjoy so much?

For me, I enjoyed just firing the guns. But for some it’s the feel of the gun, or the sound it makes, or the force it has, in any case although these all seem valid, we should all consider something.

I imagine for a murderer, it feels nice to strangle someone, to hear the sound they make struggling to breathe, to feel the life leave them as their body goes limp.

So the question should maybe be: Why do we as Americans like our violence?

And what about the argument that guns don’t kill people, people do?

Well that is true, people do kill other people. But that doesn’t mean that we do not regulate the means by which criminals facilitate their crimes, all the time. For example, carjacking tools are illegal in this country. We also try to regulate the distribution of materials that could be used to for example, make home explosives. We are also quite careful to regulate biological, chemical, and nuclear materials in this country, which by themselves could be used nefariously but also used in a more benign manner.

And while we are on the subject of criminal activity, why is it ok to allow someone who is predisposed to violence the ability to facilitate that violence so easily with the purchase of guns?

Or for that matter, why is their right to purchase a gun, more important than my right to not be shot by one?

Remember when I talked about how the only time we abridge rights is when they conflict with the rights of others, or the rights of the public to be safe?

When a mentally disturbed person is able to purchase an assault rifle and a thousand rounds of ammo on the Internet without regulation, other than a criminal background check, there is something wrong. Someone who is predisposed to violence through no fault of their own, should no less be protected from committing violence against others as he would be protected from committing violence against himself. It should be the position of every rational person that no one who hears voices telling themselves to stab someone in the face should ever have an opportunity to do so if it can be prevented. And it is in this area that things become harder to regulate. Because restricting the rights of a group of people based on mental illness violates the constitution’s 14th amendment’s equal protection clause. However, as a matter of public safety, in times of necessity, rights can and are abridged.

And once you realize that ultimately you are comfortable with such an action, than the reality is you have already decided that the second amendment isn’t absolute and because of this unnecessary.

In the world we like to consider ourselves at the top, on legal and moral issues. But reality simply does not fit this notion. In the rest of the civilized world, gun control is a necessity government’s place on their people, not as a matter of moral high ground, tyrannical control, or principle, but as a matter of public safety. The fact is, less guns, means less gun violence and there is never an argument that could be used against that. The fact is most violence committed with a gun, is done so with a legally purchased gun, and in places where gun purchases are mostly restricted, gun violence goes down. You can’t argue with reality.

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The Dark Knight Rises: A Worthy and Satisfying Conclusion

I've seen a lot of movies based on comic books over the years, and I've learned to spot the good stuff from the crap pretty easily. There seems to be a simple rule when making a good comic book film and that is that you need not only a great director, but a fan of the genre or specifically the hero of the comic the film is going to be based on. This is important, because to do otherwise is to show a disservice to the genre, and the fans who love it.

Recently I saw the new movie the Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of the Spider-Man movies, with new stories, new characters, and new actors. Now having seen all three Spider-Man movies made by Sam Raimi and being a huge fan, I was hoping this movie would at least live up to those movies in some way. It didn’t take too long to realize the chemistry that made the Sam Raimi films so amazing, just wasn’t there. That spark of whatever, was missing. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a terrible film, but in no way did it stack up to the Sam Raimi films.

It didn’t really make sense to me, after all, here was a genre that is pretty much laid out for you ahead of time, you merely need to pick a story and go with it. But that is really the difference between a comic book and film isn’t it. In the comics, you have a drawing depicting the look of the character, and the words to go along, but everything else, including the personalities, it all has to be imagined. The comic plays out in your head, in the voices you give the characters, talking with the accents as you hear them in your head. In film, your imagination is usually silent, as everything is taken care for you ahead of time. When you enter the theater to watch the film you just paid for you are suspending your own imagination for a couple of hours to allow the imagination of the writers and directors to come through.

In this case, first time big movie director Marc Webb was given the helm, in retrospect, clearly a mistake. Apparently, the long list of music videos and one independent film the man has made over the years has given him license to handle something as big as Spider-Man, at least that is what Marvel thought. Sorry to say, but when you hand the reins of something as great as Spider-Man over to a newbie, you get a newbie quality film, and it clearly shows here. Don’t get me wrong, it was exciting at times, and the story was ok, but the director seemed more interested in POV shots than telling a quality tale, and that comes completely through. In this case, the imagination of the director seems to suck a little. But what does this have to do with Batman, a completely different character, in a different world, and made by a different comic company. Well let me tell you, get yourself some quality writers, a quality director, quality actors, and you too can make a comic book film masterpiece.

Back in 1989 all of us were treated to a masterpiece of cinema by a master of his craft, the genius that is Tim Burton.  Tim Burton took a character that had always been limited on the screen to comedy and cheesy effects and turn it into something special. Tim Burton introduced us to a darker world, a Gotham that more matched the comic book Gotham, a strange city where the criminals reigned terror and the police seemed unequipped to stop it. This extraordinary place would give birth to one of the most iconic characters to ever come from a comic book, the dark, twisted, but likable Batman.  Batman is the story of a boy by the name of Bruce Wayne who witnesses the murder of his parents, feeling weak and powerless to stop it, he vowed to never feel that way again. When Wayne grows up, he uses his vast resources as a billionaire to create his alter ego Batman, and provide Batman with the technologies to stop criminals.

Now what is great about Burton’s vision is his remarkable ability to tell a story and to use great actors to do it. Most people believe that Michael Keaton, the actor who played Bruce Wayne in Burton’s Batman is the best actor to ever dawn the costume of the caped crusader, although I personally believe that Christian Bale may have knocked Keaton off that high perch with his portrayal in the last three movies by Christopher Nolan. Keaton would reprise his role again for 1992’s Batman Returns and Burton would again take the reins as director. The film turned out to be another masterpiece, even getting most people to believe that it was better than the first one.

In the first movie, Joker is portrayed by Jack Nicholson, one of the best portrayals of a villain ever seen. His ability to play the wildly insane is unmatched by most people, and you wonder when you see him in roles like this if Nicholson might be a little touched himself. In the sequel the character of the Penguin is played with absolute perfection by the immensely talented Danny DeVito, and the character of Catwoman is played by the lovable Michelle Pfeiffer. All of these actors portray their characters with a style that befits these epic films. In the end, this would be the last Batman film we would get from either Michael Keaton or director Tim Burton, and although many sequels were made none of them could live up to the splendor of those two films.

In the years since, we’ve been given flop after flop of trashy comic book movies, but it wasn’t until Sam Raimi best known for his work on the Evil Dead trilogy chose to take on the Spider-Man franchise that we would know great work again from this genre of films. In 2002, we would be introduced to Spider-Man as we had never seen him before. Anyone who has seen the older movies and the cheesy way in which Spider-Man had been portrayed knows how terrible they were.

Instead of telling us a story of a guy who gets bit by a spider and fights crime, we are introduced to the complex story of a troubled kid who’s destiny is chosen for him when he sees the murder of his Uncle, the man who raised him, at the hands of a man who he could have stopped, and it’s that tragic torturous thought that creates the Spider-Man. At this point, although Parker has been bitten by the radiated spider, and has all the abilities of Spider-Man, he wants nothing to do with crime fighting, he only wants to use his powers to make money, impress the girl and maybe stop the occasional bully.

It is only with the death of Uncle Ben and the words of his dying uncle to haunt him, “With great power comes great responsibility” that Parker finds the courage to do what is right. It also helps when the script is written by Stan Lee, and the main character is portrayed by a great actor like Tobey Maguire, who’s memorable work in Pleasantville, Cider House Rules, and Wonder Boys got him this role. Audiences loved the movie, and made it the biggest successful movie in this genre ever, that is until 2004 when Raimi once again takes the reins for the sequel Spider-Man 2.

At the time when it was released, with few exceptions, not many people could watch that movie and not find that it was the best superhero movie ever made. Sure there are those hardcore Batman fans who loved Burton’s film so much that nothing could ever compare, but unlike movies before it, this movie got people that never watched superhero movies to come, hand over their money, and thoroughly enjoy the next 2 hours of their lives.

The same troubled kid we see in the first film who ultimately triumphs over his tortured thoughts is back again to find a world that is just a little bit harder for him than when he was a teenager. Now ready to live in the world as an adult, Parker finds New York is not the best city to live in, people are hard, and his life as Spider-man conflicts with his life as Peter Parker. He finds the life he wants as Peter Parker cannot exist in the same universe with the life he has as Spider-man and makes the choice to sacrifice Spider-man in favor of the life he wants. Again Parker seems faced with the decision to either do what he wants or do what’s right, and we are fortunate enough to get a glimpse of the story as it unfolds.

In 2007, Raimi returns to direct the final entry in the Spider-Man saga he has created, and although the film has its flaws, I believe it stands up as a great film and certainly a wonderful entry in the genre of comic book films.

Now before I talk about The Dark Knight trilogy as I will refer to it, I want to stress that taken as a whole I believe this trilogy is ultimately stronger than the Spider-Man trilogy that Raimi gave us, and although you can make many arguments, I believe these films are also stronger than even the two films Burton gave us with Batman.

Many of us were introduced to the work of Christopher Nolan through a little movie called Memento, released in 2000. It was a tragically dark tale of a man suffering from brain damage that causes him to lose the last 24 hours of his life each time he falls asleep, a condition called Anterograde Amnesia. This condition is caused by damage to the hippocampus of the brain, the region responsible for converting short-term memory to long-term storage.

In the film, the man uses pictures, notes, and tattoos he leaves to himself as a record of the clues he finds in the search for the man he believes murdered his wife and gave him this amnesia with a blow to the head. Besides a unique tale, Nolan pushes the envelope by depicting his story in two converging lines, one tale told in the past moving forward and one told in the future moving backward. It’s truly one of the best films ever made, and a glimpse at the creative nature of Christopher Nolan.

Nolan is also responsible for such movies as the Prestige and Inception, both of which are truly amazing films if you have not seen them. What makes Nolan so great at his craft is that besides being the director he also does most of the writing himself, giving him a unique insight and creative vision that allows him to  see the film he wants to make before he even gets to make it.

Coming off directing success of Memento and 2002’s hit Insomnia, Nolan decides to take on Batman and in 2005 audiences are introduced to a new Batman, surprisingly darker than even the Tim Burton version, with Batman Begins.

In Batman Begins, a child falls down a well and is tormented by bats flying above him. So afraid is he, that he develops chiroptophobia, the fear of bats. Later, the boy, Bruce Wayne sees his parents gunned down, powerless to stop it and afraid of the man who commits the atrocity. Later as a young man Wayne attempts to overcome his fear and exact vengeance by shooting the man who killed his parents, but he is too late. Wayne tries to tell his childhood friend Rachel, the girl he loves, what he wanted to do but Rachel recoils, and Wayne flees Gotham.

Bruce travels the world looking to learn of a way to overcome his fear, and find a way to overthrow the corrupt Gotham criminal underworld. He finds a group of assassins, League of Shadows and learns their ways. He has a falling out with the group and flees back to Gotham. Now years later, Gotham is completely overrun by criminal syndicates, and a Bruce must find a way to return the city’s power to its people. He returns to Wayne Enterprises and meets Lucius Fox who shows him some technology the company has been working on; giving Bruce what he needs to fulfill his destiny.  Bruce takes the armor and the vehicle Lucius shows him and creates his alter ego Batman. He chooses the symbol of the Bat to strike fear in the criminal element that has taken over Gotham and at the same time allow himself to overcome his own fear of the bat by dawning the costume.

The story of Batman Begins is a story of overcoming fear. What took most people by surprise was that most of the movie is spent telling the story of Bruce Wayne, showing very little of Batman until he becomes his alter ego. The film is filled with references to the fear theme, one of its primary villains Scarecrow uses fear to persuade and torture, and we continue to see the theme played out in Wayne’s fear of losing Rachel and the city of Gotham to his old friend’s the League of Shadows, hell bent on destroying the city.

Ultimately Wayne overcomes his fear, saves Rachel, and takes on his old leader Ra's al Ghul. Although, Batman never kills anyone, he allows Ra’s to die, instead of saving him. Batman reveals his true identity and love for Rachel, but she is unable to love him back. She cannot love him and the Batman, and Bruce cannot choose one or the other at this point. Having saved the day, Batman becomes the hero Gotham needs, striking fear into the criminal element, and a Bat signal is created atop of the police building that can be used to signal Batman when needed.  Lieutenant Gordon who Batman becomes friends with throughout the film, shows Batman a Joker card and tells him it’s a calling card being left at various crime scenes. Batman tells Gordon he will look into it.

Nolan is able to tell an amazing story of how fear can hold a person back, but that ultimately courage wins out if you face your fears.

As I’ve said, I believe Christian Bale’s portrayal of Batman is the best anyone has done even beating out Michael  Keaton’s Batman, but I believe that it isn’t until Dark Knight, that he comes into the role and makes it superior in every way. Bale’s portrayal of Bruce Wayne is certainly better than that of Michael Keaton’s, for one Bale appears younger than Keaton in the role which helps, but he also seems more comfortable being the philanthropist playboy type the role calls for.

One problem is that Keaton’s idiosyncrasies come through in both Bruce Wayne and Batman to the point that anyone with sense who knows Bruce Wayne, could figure out who the man under the mask is. And although everyone has these kinds of problems, Bale portrays the two characters as completely separate people, even intentionally altering his voice when he speaks as Batman. Bale as Wayne, is a completely different person than Bale as Batman, and it’s that kind of diverse acting that I think puts him over the top. That’s not to say that Keaton isn’t a great Batman, because he’s fantastic, but I believe Bale makes a better Bruce Wayne, and as a whole I think Bale just does a better job with both.

The other important part of this movie and one that is continued throughout the sequels is to tell the tale not from the POV of Batman alone but to tell a tale that involved many complex characters and of course the city of Gotham, as a character as well. Of course it helps not only to have a great script, but an amazing cast of actors to fill the roles you have written, and Batman Begins certainly does that.

From Gary Oldman to Michael Caine, and Katie Holmes to Morgan Freeman, they are all amazing actors in a supporting role; it’s crazy how good they are in this movie. I think Cillian Murphy who plays Scarecrow steals most of the scenes he is in, and although he doesn’t have large parts in the sequels, Nolan loved him so much he tried to get him in each of them.

When it was released, it was both a critical and commercial success, begging for a sequel, and after the end of Batman Begins, audiences were dying to see where Nolan might go with the Joker character in 2008’s The Dark Knight.

When it was rumored that Heath Ledger would be getting the role of the Joker, many people cringed at the idea, believing there was no way Ledger could do justice a role that Nicholson had immortalized. I myself didn’t think he was going to be able to pull it off, and when the first images of Ledger wearing the makeup emerged, my doubts turned to giddiness, the kind a child has when they find out they are getting a toy or some ice cream. He looked fantastic, and twisted at the same time.

The demented first images of Ledger as Joker left little doubt of the direction Nolan would be going with the character. Although Burton’s story was a dark one from the previous light-hearted Batman versions of the past, his Joker was a twisted take of a classic comic villain who depicted Joker as the insane, villainous, murdering man with the smile he was.

Now years later, Nolan was taking on this same character, but audiences had grown to known what the Joker was suppose to be, based entirely on the character Burton created and Nicholson portrayed. It would be very hard for Nolan and Ledger to copy the character and get away with it, so they didn’t even try. Instead Nolan and Ledger would create a character that is so evil that it’s by far the best film depiction of a comic villain ever, and that is saying a lot considering what Nicholson did with the same character just 19 years before.

In the summer of 2008 audiences were treated to two and a half hours of one of the greatest films of all time, and Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker earned him, in one of his final roles, an academy award, posthumously accepted by his family.

If the theme of Batman Begins is fear, than the theme of The Dark Knight is chaos. In one of the craziest opening sequences I have ever seen on film, we are introduced to the Joker who robs a mob bank taking a large amount of money. The mob now seemingly overrunning Gotham, Batman and Gordon enlist the new District Attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, in their plan to take down the mob. Dent is dating Rachel, who is now portrayed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Bruce believes that Dent may be the answer to his problems.

In Batman Begins we learn that Wayne is unable to choose Rachel over Batman as long as the city of Gotham needs a hero. In the Dark Knight, Bruce’s plan to replace Batman as the hero of Gotham with Dent would allow Wayne to be with Rachel, and so Bruce has a fundraiser for Dent to try and get the city on his side. By now the Joker has busted in on a mob meeting and offered to take down Batman, solving all the mob’s problems, in exchange for half of the mob money stolen by one of the mob associates.

Joker issues an ultimatum asking that Batman reveal his identity or he would kill someone every day that he does not. Joker begins murdering city officials as promised, and at the fundraiser Wayne sets up for Dent, the joker shows up with his entourage looking for Dent. Bruce hides Dent, and returns as Batman. The two duel in a battle that results in Rachel being tossed out a window. Batman lets the Joker flee, choosing to save Rachel from falling to her death. At a funeral for the murdered commissioner, Gordon jumps in front of a bullet meant for the mayor, and Bruce decides it’s time to reveal his identity. Batman tells Dent of his plan, and Dent doesn’t like it.

He believes the city needs Batman to be the hero and Batman tells him the city already has a hero, alluding to the fact that Dent is his replacement. At the news conference Wayne stands in the back waiting to step forward as Dent talks about Batman, but just as Dent tells Batman to come forward, he then reveals he is Batman to protect the truth, a common thread. Dent is taken away in handcuffs, and as he is carted across the city, the Joker pursues him. Suddenly out of nowhere Batman appears in pursuit of the Joker and Gordon believed to be dead, appears driving a truck. There is an insane crash scene and the Joker is apprehended. However, in all the madness Rachel and Dent go missing.

When Batman confronts the Joker at the police station, it is revealed that he has taken both of them and put them far away from each other in buildings filled with explosives. The Joker tells Batman he can only save one. Batman chooses to save Dent, and tells Gordon to save Rachel. Dent and Rachel are able to communicate and Dent tells Rachel Batman will come for her and save her and she believes him. When Batman shows up to save Dent, Dent is unhappy, screaming, and Rachel accepts her fate. The buildings blow up, just as Batman gets Dent out of his and as Gordon arrives to save Rachel, but he is too late, she is killed. Afterward, the Joker uses a bomb to escape police custody.

Later at the hospital, badly burned in the explosion, Dent is confronted by the Joker who convinces him to take out his anger on the people truly responsible for Rachel’s death and Dent’s disfigurement. Dent leaves the hospital intent on killing everyone involved. After leaving the hospital the Joker places explosive on two ferries, one with regular citizens of Gotham and another filled with criminals.

He gives to each ferry a trigger that he tells them will blow up the other ferry when pressed, and one of them must press the button or both ferries will be blown up at midnight. Batman asks his friend Lucius for the use of a program he developed that uses sonar bounced off cell phone signals to track the whereabouts of the Joker. Batman uses the program to find Joker and fights through Joker’s men to get to him. The ferry passengers on both boats refused to push the button restoring faith in humanity, and Batman apprehends the Joker. Even as Joker hangs on a rope Batman ties him up with, he tells Batman that Gotham will lose their faith once they see what Dent, their new hero has done.  Batman flees the scene leaving Joker hanging there for the cops.

By now Dent has killed a few people involved in the death of Rachel, flipping a coin to decide their fate, and now he has taken Gordon and his family hostage at the site of her death. Gordon tells Dent to let his family go and punish him, because it was his fault she died, not theirs. Batman shows up and Dent decides he, Batman, and Gordon are equally guilty of her death and flips a coin to decide each of their fates. He flips the coin, sparing himself, shoots Batman and flips the coin to decide the fate of Gordon’s boy who will pay for Gordon’s crime. Just as he flips the coin Batman tackles Dent, tossing him off the roof to the ground below.

In one of the best written sequences of the movie, Batman discusses with Gordon his intention to save Harvey Dent’s reputation by letting people believe he killed those people, and he killed Dent.

Batman: You'll hunt me. You'll condemn me, set the dogs on me.  Because that's what needs to happen. Because sometimes... the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

Gordon's Son: Batman? Batman! Why is he running, Dad?

Gordon: Because we have to chase him.

Gordon's Son: He didn't do anything wrong.

Gordon: Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we'll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

The film features many themes but its most haunting theme is the idea of sacrifice, which Bruce Wayne makes first when he decides the city of Gotham doesn’t need Batman anymore hoping to sacrifice Batman in favor of Harvey Dent as a replacement as the city’s hero. The theme continues when the Joker wants Batman to reveal his identity and Wayne appears at the news conference intent on doing this, only to have Dent sacrifice himself in favor of protecting Batman. Next Batman sacrifices the woman he loves to save the hero Gotham needs and deserves. And finally Batman again sacrifices himself to save the reputation of Harvey Dent, giving Gotham a true hero and someone they can put their faith in.

In an earlier scene we see Rachel telling Wayne that she can’t choose him over Dent if he’s Batman. Wayne tells her he will give up Batman. She writes a letter that she wants Alfred to give to Wayne just before she is killed. The letter tells Wayne that she chooses Harvey, and Alfred burns the letter to save Wayne’s fragile state, after losing the love of his life. Alfred tells him nothing. This is a pivotal scene because when Wayne decides to give up Batman in favor of saving the reputation of Harvey Dent, he believes that Rachel would have chosen him. He was fulfilling her wish as well as saving Gotham’s true hero. Fulfilling the promise of the first film, giving up Batman for her and for Gotham.

The Dark Knight is the reason why people go to the movies. It’s just one of the finest films made in the last 20 years and the best comic book film adaptation ever made. The problem with the Dark Knight for Christopher Nolan is when you make something so good; it almost makes it impossible to achieve anything better. I’ve seen people compare the Dark Knight trilogy to the original Star Wars trilogy, and I must admit there are some similarities.

For one, most people would consider Batman Begins and Star Wars on their own great films, but when compared to their sequels they are simply blown away. With the exception of a very limited bunch, most people would consider The Empire Strikes Back a masterpiece and the best in the series, and the same can be said of The Dark Knight. And much like it was back then when Return of the Jedi was released, people wondered how Lucas could ever achieve the success of Return of the Jedi that he had with The Empire Strikes Back, and people will wonder the same of The Dark Knight Rises.

Once you have created perfection there isn’t anything higher, and so the only place to go is down, and so I’ve heard many people say things like, “It was great, but it lacked the spectacle of the Dark Knight,” or “Good Film, just not as good as The Dark Knight.” And I think for one it’s not fair to compare the two movies. You don’t hear anyone comparing the Dark Knight Rises to Batman Begins, and you didn’t hear anyone comparing The Dark Knight to Batman Begins either. That is because the second was better than the first, so much so that there was no way Nolan could reproduce the success he had.

But does he have to? I don’t think so. If you take each of these films on their own, you find each one is a fantastic piece of cinema and worthy of its praises. I sat through all two hours and forty-five minutes of Dark Knight Rises and I was enthralled the entire time. Not once did I find myself displeased in any way. It’s unusual to be able to watch a movie that long and not find your attention lost at some point, and that never happened throughout the film.

Now I’m going to talk a little bit about the film, so there will be some tiny spoilers so if that bothers you, you should see this film first before you continue.

In the last installment, this film’s major theme is pain. In this film Nolan returns to the roots of Batman Begins by returning us to the character of Bruce Wayne and his struggle. It’s now been eight years since the events of The Dark Knight, Batman has vanished, and Bruce Wayne is a recluse. Wayne holds dinner parties and invites loads of people, but never shows up to the parties himself, choosing to spend his time hiding in his mansion. His body has not aged well, he sports some injuries, no doubt a result of the battle with the Joker.

Since the events of the Dark Knight, in the eight years since, new legislation has passed in Gotham called the Harvey Dent act that allowed the criminal element to be jailed indefinitely with no real cause. Because of this, all major crime has stopped, and the city has no need for heroes anymore. Gordon now much older feels guilt and believes it’s time to tell the truth about Batman and Dent. Unfortunately for Gordon, a criminal by the name of Bane, played brilliantly by Tom Hardy, has other plans and Gordon finds himself in the middle of seeing something he should not have seen.

Selina Kyle is played by Anne Hathaway, and she is fantastic, seeing her in this role I cannot imagine anyone else pulling it off, a truly amazing actress. This is a reimagined role of the Catwoman and although it’s clearly her by name, she is never referred to as the Catwoman. For my money, Julie Newmar is still my favorite Catwoman, but Anne Hathaway plays her so differently that you forget the characters are meant to be the same person.

I won’t go into too much detail about the story except to say that you will not be disappointed. It never stopped for me until the credits rolled. I was on the edge of my seat the entire film, and it kept me involved the entire time. It’s a story that is full of characters we all know and love, along with some amazing twists and turns that keep you guessing and wonder ultimately how it will all end. In my opinion this has one of the most satisfying conclusions of any film I have ever seen, and certainly probably the best of any trilogy, even Star Wars, which is certainly up there. In some films when I get to the end, I feel cheated, especially if I know there will be no more sequels, and when this film ends you feel entirely satisfied.

Pain is certainly a recurring theme throughout this film, and each character has his or her own pain to deal with. Bruce Wayne suffers physically by the events of the past, walking with a cane, but he also suffers mentally as well, unable to be happy living without the only woman he ever loved. Gordon suffers as well with the guilt of lying to the citizens of Gotham about the truth of Harvey Dent and the betrayal of Batman.

In the years since those events eight years before, his inability to cope has cost him his family who has moved away from Gotham. Alfred feels the pain of having to watch Bruce suffer, knowing that Rachel chose Harvey and Bruce sacrificed everything for her, and also knowing he can’t tell Bruce about the letter he destroyed.

Selina Kyle steals, and kills bad people but ultimately she wants to escape her life and disappear, unable to do so, for fear of retribution. She has to make choices that cause her terrible pain, because although she is often portrayed in film as lacking empathy, Hathaway’s portrayal of her, leaves her quite human and her decisions cause her terrible internal torture. Bane the main villain of the film is also revealed to be in terrible pain, and although it is only seen once, his pain is crucial to understanding the tale in its entirety.

Although pain is a major theme, I don’t believe it’s the only one, and although illustrating too much would reveal major plot lines, instead I’ll say that for me this is a story of how the lines of good and evil are about choices, and the things that define us are mostly about doing the right thing when the opportunity arises. Overcoming obstacles and rising above adversity are there as well. For me one word sums up this film: hope.

OH AND FUCK YOU ******WORLD THEATERS!

Oh and I forgot to mention one thing, when talking of pain I forgot to mention mine. Yeah that's right, although I have nothing bad to say about the film, I am disgusted and appalled by the state of movie theaters today. My friend and I who went to see this movie had to endure 20 minutes of commercials, prior to being able to see the film. And I know what you're thinking, 20 minutes of previews isn't terrible, however I didn't say previews, I said commercials. Before the film even started we had to watch 20 commercials that varied from car commercials, to ads for shit products no one will ever buy.

Commercial after commercial and finally a preview 20 minutes later, and another preview and then the movie. I'm used to three or four commercials, four or five preview trailers and then the movie, this was absolutely fucking horrendous. I felt like the movie ticket should feature a discount based on the amount of commercials I was forced to sit through or at least let people know when the movie will actually start so they can come later and skip all that shit.

Look I understand the movies are getting expensive, but you already charge people $5.00 for the equivalent of 50 cents of popcorn, and $5.00 for the equivalent of a $1.00 worth of soda. If that still doesn't do it for you, charge another dollar for the ticket and tell people why you have to do it. I'd rather pay that extra dollar than watch all those shit commercials.

When you force consumers to watch that kind of shit it gives people a reason to not want to go to the movies anymore, and instead simply download the movie they want to watch, commercial free. There is a fine line of what is tolerable and for me a few commercials and few trailers are ok, anything more is obnoxious, and for fuck sake, the movie was 2 hours and 45 minutes by itself, adding another 20 minutes and change to it with that shit made it so much worse.

Most of us grab a soda and by the end of 2 hours its time to pee, but 3 hours i feel like I want to pass out, and for a movie like The Dark Knight Rises, I wasn't going to get up and miss something, I'd rather have just pissed on the floor and left a note saying, "Next time lose the fucking commercials, and I'll be able to make it to the bathroom." I won't say which theater it was, but if you know me and know where I live, you know which theater I'm talking about, on JF Highway.

Ok done ranting for now.

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Why “The God Particle” Needs no God?

In 1964 a British physicist by the name of Peter Higgs along with many others wanted to explain the origin of mass in elementary particles. The Higgs mechanism as it’s called proposes that all particles gain mass through the interaction of a quantum field in space called the Higgs field. The elementary particles that are associated with this field are called Higgs boson.


In particle physics, particles are divided into two major groups, the fermions and the bosons. Fermions are particles that take up space and are often referred to as matter particles. Fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state, which means fermions cannot exist in the same space at the same time. Bosons are particles and are often referred to as force carrier particles and are in direct contrast to fermions because they can occupy the same spacetime.  Bosons are responsible for the interaction of the forces like gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism.

The Higgs boson was proposed as a particle that was responsible for giving other particles mass and would have been responsible for all the matter in the universe today.  For the last 50 years scientists have been looking for the particle with no luck, but recently scientists at CERN in Geneva have announced that they have discovered the Higgs Boson.


You may have seen the media talk about this discovery and refer to it as “The God Particle” alluding to some religious implication. However, if anything, this discovery may be one of the early nails in the coffin for the concept of a God-creation event.

The term The God Particle came from a 1983 book on particle physics by a physicist by the name of Leon Lederman entitled: The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?

Now the use of the term The God Particle in the media is a misnomer and one that no one seems apt to correct at this point. First Lederman has stated on countless occasions the original title of the book was “The Goddamn Particle” because of the illusive and villainous nature of the particle, and great expense that it was causing to find. The publisher refused to accept the title and renamed the book. My guess is that a book entitled The God Particle is more likely to sell than one named The Goddamn Particle. Second, there is nothing about the Higgs boson that suggests it has anything to do with a God; to the contrary it suggests that a God is unnecessary to spark existence.

I’ve heard the argument a thousand times.  If there was a big bang than who started it?

For every argument involving the creation of something new, there is a suggestion that existence is required to create further existence. It seems reasonable after all to assume this. For the everyday person sitting in their home, watching their television or driving in their car, they see things going forward, existing in response to something. They understand cause and effect. It’s the old chicken and the egg argument, and for some people the best answer is to just say God did it. After all, you can’t really win that argument can you? If there were a God and he could do anything, than any argument that arises would eventually lead to the use of God as a means of victory. It’s sort of like a game of rock, paper, scissors, except anytime you like; God can be tossed in to win.

A concept most people may never get their heads around is the idea that something can come from nothing. The reason why such a concept is so hard for the average person to understand is that you can see something, and you can’t see nothing.

Nothing is nothing after all or is it?

There is an entire scientific field dedicated to the study of nothing called quantum mechanics. But this is a very subjective term, nothing. Nothing implies that when you observe something, it is not there, and in quantum mechanics this is true. However, it is also true that in quantum mechanics that it can be there and not there simultaneously. In fact, in quantum mechanics, it can be there, not there, or somewhere else entirely, simultaneously. Now this kind of thinking would seem to contradict reality, after all, it’s hard to imagine anything that can exist in many places simultaneously. However, when we shrink things down to the scale of the quantum universe that’s precisely how things work.

It’s hard to look at our universe as grandiose as it is, and believe that it could have ever been infinitely smaller than the smallest particles we can see, but it once was. Even someone who doesn’t understand how chemistry works can understand how chemicals change state from solids to liquids to gas and back again. Most people for instance know that heat when applied to a liquid like water causes it to change its state from a liquid to gas when it becomes steam. But understanding how and why this happens is really the most important part.

When things are cold, I mean real cold, they tend to be solid. Freezing points and boiling points can be different for different things, but for everything there does seem to be an absolute zero, the temperature at which atoms no longer move. It is at this point, that entropy is at its lowest point, nothing moves forward, it is cold and dark. That is our ultimate end, but to understand that, we have to take things into reverse. If something can reach a state at which point all matter ceases to function, atoms cease to move, they become solid, they become super cold, then there must be an exact opposite at which all matter becomes super hot, and its state changes into a form that contradicts the nature of something solid.

We know that if we take an ice cube from the freezer and apply heat to it, the atoms in the water begin to heat up and move. As they get excited the state of the water changes form into a liquid, and if we continue to heat it up, the matter changes form again into a gas. But what happens if we continue to heat things up? What will it become then? When you continue to heat a gas up, some of it begins to ionize, the particles become electrically charged, and the gas is converted into plasma.

As things heat up, something interesting happens; matter starts to break down into simpler forms. First it breaks into simple molecules, and then into atoms. And if we continue to turn up the heat, even the atoms break down into neutrons and protons. But we are not finished yet, we continue to turn things up and suddenly around 10^27oC things get really strange and the neutrons and protons break down. What we are left with is a field of electrically charged quarks and other sub-atomic particles.

So now imagine that the entire universe has been super heated to this point, well you’ve just imagined what it was like a fraction of a second after the big bang. In terms of how simplicity becomes complexity, it’s as easy as understanding how things go from hot to cold. Because in a super hot universe, complexity isn’t possible, and only in a cold universe can complexity happen. How cold, you ask?

Well understanding that absolute zero is around 273^oC and space is around 270^oC you begin to understand just what kind of temperatures I am talking about. Now of course, Earth isn’t nearly as cold, in fact if it were life would never have formed, the objects conform to the space around them, and as the universe cools, it allows the objects to form at the temperatures they need. A universe that isn’t as cool, is a universe where other things do not form, so the temperature of everything is precisely where it needs to be, much like the porridge in the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.

So now we are left with this super heated electrically charged plasma of quarks that has inflated into our universe, but it begs the question still what was the catalyst for the bang, the expansion of the universe?

For thousands of years humans have been measuring time, first by the use of the rotation of our Earth on its daily axis, to the rotation of the Earth during its yearly orbit around our Sun, and later by the use of clocks. Time has always been measured by the predictable repetition of things to measure something in a quantitative way. Measuring the rotation of the Earth on a sundial humans were able to divide the day into hours, and discover that there are 24 hours in each day. Time is something that moves forward with us, it has always been like a free flowing river that cannot be stopped, or turned back on itself.

For a long time, space and time were believed to be separate of each other, that is, until a young patent clerk working in a Swiss patent office, maybe inspired by the patents he saw for clocks, realized a new radical understanding of time. For hundreds of years, time had always thought to be this thing that consistently moved forward and that time for everything was the same everywhere you go.

Established by Isaac Newton himself, no matter where you are, time would move forward at the same speed. But Einstein realized Newton was wrong. Einstein realized that space and time was the same thing, something he called spacetime, and that velocity through space ultimately determined the passage of time. Einstein believed that objects at rest passed time normally, but objects in motion moved slower, because an object that shares space and time can only increase one, if the other is decreased.

In 1971, scientists flew an atomic clock around the world and when they landed, compared it to one stationary on the ground; to their astonishment as Einstein predicted the clocks were no longer in sync. Something else Einstein considered was what he could see of the effect that gravity had on space, and he knew that if space and time were the same, than by definition gravity would also have an effect on time as well.

Although it’s almost impossibly hard to imagine if you ascended to the top of the tallest building in the world with an atomic clock, and compared it to a clock at ground level, it would most certainly not be in sync, because gravity is stronger toward the center of the Earth. It is routinely found that astronauts who spend a lot of time on the space station orbiting the Earth who bring time pieces with them find they are completely out of sync when they return.

So what does this lesson on time have to do with the big bang?

I’m getting to that.

Black holes are the best example we have of an ultimate gravitational field. So strong is the force of gravity from a black hole that nothing can escape its grasp, including light. Black holes are created when massive stars die in large explosions called supernova. Throughout its life a star’s fusion process creates helium atoms by fusing two hydrogen atoms together; there is no other process in the universe that can achieve this. This process creates the light and heat that a star gives off.

Stars are massive, even the small ones like our Sun, and because of this mass, they have gravitational fields. That gravitational field is constantly pulling the star toward its center, but the fusion process that stars create is in direct contradiction with that gravity, a kind of teeter-totter effect. As long as the star burns, the gravity pulling itself inward is counteracted. But fusion has its cost, all the hydrogen that was used to form the star is slowly converted into helium over time, leaving less and less hydrogen to fuse.

Eventually when enough hydrogen is gone, the star begins converting into heavier elements, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen. As the star begins its death throes, it begins to create even heavier elements, but it’s when it begins to fuse into iron that the end is near. Shortly this star will collapse, because the process of fusion is more costly than the production of the fuel needed to keep the gravity of the star at bay. The star’s core shrinks and continues to shrink until it turns in on itself, exploding in a massive blast. The massive core continues to shrink until it reaches an infinitely dense point in space, a black hole.

These black holes are the only place we know of where space and time no longer matter, at its center, the singularity. Now although singularities are massively dense amounts of matter and energy, that would prevent the normal interaction of anything in reality as we know it, they have no impact on the quantum world. When we shrink down to the smallest particles we expect that inside that singularity those particles have no idea they are there.

If we go back to the beginnings of the universe, left with that hot mess of particles floating about in an electrically charged plasma field, and begin to shrink that to a single point, the big bang, we find we have a singularity. That suggests the conditions of the big bang prior to the actual explosion are similar to the conditions inside a black hole.

Now remember, the massive stars that create these black holes are tiny compared to the galaxies around them, and even the galaxies are tiny compared to the universe. So that tiny star in that tiny galaxy amongst billions of tiny stars and billions of tiny galaxies, is found inside that massively large universe, all of which came from inside that big bang. So you can imagine the amount of energy that is created when the big bang first explodes.

As Einstein predicted gravity has an effect on spacetime, so imagine you decide to get into a space ship and fly close to the event horizon of a black hole. The closer you get to it, the slower time moves. The effect of time dilation is a relative process, meaning that if two clocks synchronized were placed in different locations, one aboard the ship getting close to the black hole and one aboard space station orbiting a planet far away from the black hole, to the observer of each clock, the speed at which the clock moves never changes.

However, to the observer farthest from the black hole where gravity is not an issue, the ship approaching the black hole would appear to be moving in slow motion, getting ever so slower the closer it got it. To the observer on the ship approaching the black hole, time would pass unchanged, however if he could observe the station far away from the black hole, things would appear to be moving in fast-forward. To the observer on the ship closest to the black hole, looking at his clock, he may see that an uneventful few hours of travel around the black hole, and another few hours home to the station may have passed on his clock. However, when the observer aboard his ship reaches the station he may be shocked to find out a hundred years, maybe a thousand years have passed and the observer on the station has long since been dead, maybe replaced by his great-great-great grandchild.

So we see that time is a relative measurement determined by space, and can be greatly affected by gravity. But if getting close to the center of a black hole slows time down, what happens if you enter it?

If you manage to survive falling into the event horizon of a black hole, you would find that time itself stops. Under gravity so intense that a singularity has formed, space and time are meaningless, they do not exist. Remember that time can only be measured by the motion of space, since there is no motion inside a singularity, there is no time and since those effects work hand in hand, since time does not flow, space has no motion.

So all the way back to the big bang we go, all that matter and energy that would create the universe compressed into an infinitely dense, infinitely small point. So it is at this point that a discussion on the premise of a creation-level God can be talked about, however spacetime does not yet exist, and it is because of this that God cannot exist at least not in any sense that any religious person would imagine. You see there is no time, there is no space, and so the only thing as you know that can exist are quantum fluctuations, particles that pop in and out of existence, so small that such things have no effect on them.

At this point spacetime does not exist, and so there is no time for a God to create the universe. Remember when I talked about the changing of states of matter from plasma to gas, gas to liquid, and liquid to solid. The universe works in the same way, as spacetime expands and moves forward, as things cool, the simplicity that exists, begins to gain complexity. It is the nature of things to go from simple to complex, and it is a pattern that started with big bang and continued with the formation of quarks, atoms, stars, galaxies, planets, even all the way down to life. Things go from the simple to the complex, and scientists believe that one law of physics that has an effect on it is entropy. Entropy is the nature of injecting chaos into order. When things are simple, nothing happens, but when entropy takes over, complexity forms, a process that continues today and will continue until the universe goes black.

So you see once again, inside the singularity of the big bang, where only very simple quantum fluctuations exist, no sense of time or space, there is no complexity. Entropy begins with the introduction of time, as time passes, things break, they die, but before then nothing exists.

So the religious are faced with a problem, because God was either created after the big bang at least when it was possible to do so, or God is as simple as a quantum particle, incapable of the kind of complexity responsible for making life. If God is a quantum particle, he does not do things like write books, or generate floods, or create DNA, or cause the rain to fall, or cause your team to win the superbowl.

If God is a quantum particle that existed prior to the big bang, than like other particles he popped into existence and out of existence some 13.7 billion years ago, never amounting to very much. But if God was created after the big bang, than he must follow the laws of physics, meaning if we want him to be somewhat complex, he would have needed to wait at least a few billion years to form into some kind of complex life form.  To have the kind of intelligence and complexity that humans have to start with he would need to have formed on a planet with lots of other life forms, and advanced to a form that could travel to us.

Assuming that he has mastered light speed travel, something he must conform to since he existed after the big bang, when the laws of physics formed, he would have to travel a long time to find a suitable planet with which he could seed with life. This is sounding a lot more complicated than the genesis story told in the bible, but I guess I’ll continue. Since we have a fossil record that dates back billions of years, we know that this God would have had to leave the building blocks of life on a primordial Earth, and wait an awful long time to see what happens. So I guess that’s possible right?

OH SHIT. I forgot about entropy. That’s right, this God has a problem, the more time that passes the more entropy that occurs and the less likely that such a God could exist or even live long enough to do all of that.

If I take a deck of cards that are all in order and toss them into the air scattering the cards about as they fall, entropy dictates that there are more possible incorrect stacking outcomes, than correct ones. That means any time I toss the deck of cards in the air, I’m more likely to have cards fall out of order than in order again. And that is the problem. No matter how much we try, the more random and harder things get. It is if the universe is bent on destroying itself, and sadly it is. It is the nature of everything. Everything exists for a short time and then it dies, nothing can escape its fate, not even the universe, and certainly not some fictional God that would have been created in this universe.

I said earlier that it would be far more likely that any God would have been created post big bang, and that is true, the first accounts of any such deity likely came with the first written languages of the Sumerians.  In effect, God was created when man could write about him, and spread the belief to others.

So what does any of this mean to the Higgs boson?

The Higgs boson is a quantum particle responsible for giving all other particles their mass, but to describe it as The God particle is almost an insult to people who believe in God. The Higgs boson is important, but it’s not the only important thing. Like all other simple particles, if any one of them did not exist, maybe nothing would be here today, maybe just empty space. Every particle that formed into a more complex form and continued for billions of years played its part in getting the universe to where it is today. But some might think that this order of things suggests a creator, and it’s actually not that ordered. Remember entropy? Well complexity is a result of chaos; complex life like humans is a result of replication, mutation, and adaptation.

So where does it all go?

Everything lives for a short time, and then it dies. The universe is no different, and although it may seem like the universe is old, time is only meaningful to those who measure it. When the universe began, its giant explosion tossed everything into existence with great speed expanding over time. If the universe is like a car, you press the gas and the universe expands after it explodes. You hold it until it clears its inflation period, and then you release the gas pedal, and suddenly the car begins to slowly decelerate over time, until finally it stops.

When scientists went looking out into the universe that’s pretty much what they expected to find, some evidence for the slowing down of the expansion of the universe. To their surprise, the universe wasn’t decelerating, it was accelerating instead. The more the universe expanded, the faster its expansion. Scientists have dubbed this mysterious phenomena as Dark Energy.

When we look through telescopes and peer deep into space at distant objects, we are not looking at the objects as they are but as they were when the light began its long journey to reach us. We see the light of objects in our galaxy close to us as they might have been say a hundred thousand years before, or objects farther away in galaxies millions, maybe billions of light-years away that may have long since disappeared.

This is true of anyone living in any galaxy on any planet orbiting any star in our universe. The light needs to travel a long distance to reach anyone, and there lies the problem. In a hundred billion years, the accelerated expansion of the universe will have pushed all galaxies so far away from each other that the light from other galaxies will never reach each other, and anyone anywhere in the universe looking up into the sky will form an incorrect opinion of the universe that it’s the size of the galaxy of stars that surrounds them. They will search for all the questions of the universe they live in, and derive all the wrong answers. It would be like trying to put together a puzzle with 99% of the pieces missing.

As the stars in those galaxies burn out and the supply of hydrogen available runs out, no new stars are formed until one day the last star dies, and all the light in the universe is gone forever.

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