Yesterday at lunch we had a big "War in Iraq" discussion. It was actually pretty good, but I realized there was a lot of stuff I didn't know, so I decided to do some researchin' on the internet. I don't remember exactly what read, so I won't put links, but I found it interesting to search on "Iraq Oil Interests". I at least have some idea now about what interests France, Russia, China, and Germany have in Iraq. It's amazing to me that a country that is literally floating on top of the second largest oil reserves in the world is in such a bad state.

I had some interesting thoughts recently sparked by my most recent geeky science reading, The Constants of Nature. Also spurred on by some of Nate's posts.

Consider the basic forces of nature: gravity, electro-magnetic (E-M), and the more exotic strong and weak forces. First of all the revelation that electricity and magnetism were really the same thing was pretty impressive. It is now also known that the Weak force (responsible for decay of certain particles) is just another type of interaction of this same force, called the Electroweak. It turns out that as you increase the energy of particles, data and theory suggest that all of the forces actually merge together into one unified force. This means that although gravity and electro-magnetic forces seem to be very different, affecting particles with different strengths, this percieved difference of "kind" is largely based on the conditions that we are observing under.

Now I don't mean to be claiming any great insight here, but this is just something that popped into my mind. What about faith and works in the Christian life? There is a kind of paradox between these two principles. A Christian is saved (by grace) solely on the basis of faith and not by works (following a set of moral codes and rules). The paradox takes shape when you go down the road of .. "So I can have faith and be saved without any works?". Well.. not exactly.. Faith without works is dead, so without works there is no real faith. So you're saying I need works to be saved? No! You're saved by Faith..etc. etc. There is a kind of symbiotic relationship between faith and works where one tends to produce the other. What I was thinking about when reading this science stuff is that maybe you could think of faith and works as actually being different forms of the same thing. They play out differently in our environment, but just like with the physical forces, if you heated them up enough they might actually be the same thing. Perfect prefall world there is no distinction between faith and works.. they are seen clearly as the same faith-works force?

What does this all mean? Wow, I don't know.. anyone who reads this is gonna think I'm a little nutty, but really 27 inches of snow and some good physics can make this stuff run through your head.