It all started when…
On a more serious line of thought, today I thought I would write about the beginning of the universe, or whatever. I recently attended a lecture by Michael Shermer, editor of The Skeptic magazine and frequent writer for Scientific American. The basic content of the presentation was Creationism vs. Evolution. He raised many interesting points, but there was one thing that bothered me about his lecture. Although the topic was mentioned and discussed from several perspectives, he never really addressed the issue of the beginning of everything.
Shermer talked about Intelligent Design, and said that if it is logical to say that one can look at the earth and claim it must have been designed, then it should be just as logical to look at the intelligent designer and say that he must have been designed as well. Then, it would be equally plausible to look at the “superior designer” (the one who designed the designer) and infer that he/she, too, must have been designed by a super superior designer, and so on. The point he made was interesting, and it highlighted a question I have, as have many, struggled with. To wit, how did everything (the universe or whatever) begin? More specifically, is it logically evitable that something (whether it be God, a superior being, the universe, etc.) be eternal?
Mr. Shermer mentioned the idea again when he pondered, “What was before time?” or “What did the Big Bang bang into?” He acknowledged the question, but did not provide any sort of answer. He said that these were “questions with very interesting answers,” but he did not proffer any such answers. The purpose here is not to criticize Mr. Shermer, for I realize that the question under consideration is something that has been investigated for millenia. I do not fault him for failing to provide a solution to the quintessential puzzle of life.
If something cannot come from nothing, then something must be eternal. In other words, it is impossible to have a beginning. If there was a beginning, what was before that beginning? This leads us logically to the notion of eternality.
Perhaps the unfortunate reality is that, at this time, we simply do not have the mental capacity to observe, comprehend, or explain this ill-defined quandary. The two options that remain are simple: 1. Continue the search, hoping to arrive at the truth, or 2. Ignore the question completely and enjoy life for what it is. I’ll leave that debate for another time.
Mercurial Musings 
Robert Lockett said,
March 22, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Gimelnus, if nothing else I wanted to balance my previous response to you in the other topic.
For what it’s worth, kudo’s on your very clear thinking here…
It defies reason to think that something comes from nothing. Since ‘nothing’ has no qualities with which to make a big bang, I concur that ‘something’ must exist eternally.
I’d like to offer some random thoughts of my own. I am not claiming that they are original. In fact, they are the only conclusions anyone can reach while staying within the bounds of logic. And I think logical bounds are quite appropriate when we consider that illogical bounds are self defeating.
Neither you, nor I, am prepared to accept an illogical or unreasonable system, as a legitimate conclusion to any given query.
I do hope we can share agreement on that.
———–
Everything created must have a beggining. Only that which is uncreated can be eternal.
Therefore anything created, must have a creator.
If we say that the material universe is eternal we have a problem. That problem… is entropy; and more specifically, that entropy is increasing.
If the material universe is essentially falling apart, how could it have existed eternally? It would have had all eternity to have completely disintegrated by now…
(an interseting aside is that it must also must have started complete in order for it to be coming apart)
I don’t know that that argument is a solid as I would like, since one could reasonably speculate that the physical laws might have once been entropically in balance in the distant past. The drawback to that criticism is that it is not verifiable. It is purely faith based. The evidence we ‘do have’ shows a devolving system (if I may put it that way).
Our sun is using up it’s fuel. Our moon is slowly exiting it’s orbit etc… And to use less scientific terms, all hell is most slowly breaking loose.
———
As far as a creator goes, what is very interesting is that the Bible gives us a revelation supposedly from God Himself.
But does it hold up?
What is more interesting is that this Biblical creator just so happens to be eternal and uncreated. Pretty good guess coming from people living ages before the ‘enlightenment’ and the age of empericism.
‘He is before all things’.
‘Through Him all things were made’.
‘He was, and is, and is to come’
‘The alpha and the omega’.
‘I am who I am’.
Those are almost astonishingly simple and yet very deep theological quotients. They have the simple beauty of e=mc2, yet also the unsearchable quality of the infinite.
If God is eternal, He is then absolute since eternity exists not just in all time, but before and after time (which by definition has a beginning and end). Time essentially equates to decay. Our atomic clocks are the most accurate time pieces and measure the rate of decay atomically.
Things that are decaying were once whole. You can’t break something down unless it was put together in the first place.
An absolute is defined philosophically as that which is complete or whole (holy). Nothing can be added or subtracted from it.
God by definition can be the only absolute, since everything in this universe is real only relative to time.
For example, while debating these things, I once told my friend that it is ‘Absolutely True’ that his Volvo is parked in his driveway. He very quickly reminded me that it is a relative truth. At ‘this’ time it is in his driveway, but earlier it was not.
I had to concede the point. In my search for an absolute, I found the only example of it that exists in this world.
The only absolute with which God can reveal Himself to man is Morality. It is part and parcel of his nature and is therefore unchanging and absolute. It is also our only real clue to who we are as human beings created in His image.
Human beings were not created to be animals but gods (little g). It’s not just that we expect ourselves to be Godly, but others as well. If we didn’t, then what grounds would you use to dismiss what I say as false? What would be the difference between a false statement and a true one?
So, if your digesting all of this, logic is tied inextricably with morality. Truth is resonable and logical. Lies are unreasonalbe and illogical.
And at the root of every sin, is a lie motivated by pride.
Soory if I was all over the park… it’s been a long day.