"Unless," Ed pointed out, "it is God."
* * * * * * * * * *
Don't take what Ed says too seriously. He's addled, remember?
Except we probably should take what he says seriously since Pynchon wrote the dialogue and every line matters, remember? That's the whole premise of this Godforsaken blog!
As we've seen, physicists, especially in the first half of the 20th Century, had no problem using the term "God" when discussing basic universal scientific laws. They didn't mean it literally (I don't think! I hope not!); it was just shorthand for the foundational laws of physics and the way the universe works. Perhaps there was a nod or an allusion to the idea of a Creator in the idea that somebody made these rules. But for the most part, it's just an easy shorthand modelled on language and culture steeped in religious belief and allusion. It's like when I stub my toe on the coffee table. I don't scream, "Fucking Universe!" I scream, "Fucking Jesus Christ!" Okay, sometimes I'm even more vulgar than that. But I've never been religious in my life! I was raised as areligious as a person can be and yet I'm still coated in the slime of religious dogma and vocabulary!
Also, Ed's entirely serious, probably. If God has to be something, why not Æther, the thing that allows light to travel? It's right there in the third most read part of the Bible (i.e., the third line). Æther is an undetectable, unproveable answer to a question that can't be answered. Could God be represented any better? Plus, the great part about Ed's line is that Æther is discarded, forgotten, and unneeded in the 20th Century. So the analogy just keeps right on truckin'.
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