I am fascinated by the question of our ultimate origin and what science can tell us about it.
To date, the big bang theory is the generally accepted scientific account of the ultimate origin of our universe. Perhaps I am missing something, but as expressed by that theory, the origin of the world seems like the pulling of a rabbit out of a hat – except there is no hat and no magician – just a gigantic rabbit that, having appeared, quickly starts to populates space and time with a progeny of countless galaxies. Or, to be less metaphoric about it, the universe would seem to be a causeless effect. It would seem that the big bang theory leaves us with some rather large questions, some great mysteries.
The question of cosmic origins, I find, contains three nested mysteries. The first is the old metaphysical plum, why is there something rather than nothing? Of this, nothing can really be said.
The second is, given that there is something rather than nothing, how, in a universe given to inexorable entropy, did the disentropy of the early universe come about? In other words, if we think of the universe as a kind of wind up clock that constantly runs down, how did it get wound up in the first place?
And the third is, given that the universe did begin in a state of disentropy, how is it that after 14 billion years there is not only the cold background radiation, but also this novelty and complexity, such as the billions of galaxies that are still giving birth to new stars and solar systems. And, we can add, the continuing evolution in at least one of these solar systems of creatures capable of contemplating and questioning and writing about this mystery.
Like the metaphorical rabbit, the world, is prolifically creational — a great creational process. We are each a small, ephemeral, subprocess within it. This is the naturalistic equivalent of our relation to the Creator as theists picture it. The naturalistic version lacks the warmth and fuzziness of the theistic version, but compensates by being empirically and rationally creditable. And nothing stops one from adding a little poetry to this coldly rational version of things; as I look up in the night sky, I have a sense of looking at my ultimate parentage, my cosmic ancestry. The great creational process may not have parental love for me, but it has given me the ability to love; and I use some of this ability to love this world. To love it as deeply as the night sky.
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A number of scientific cosmologists have sensed something of the same problem with the big bang theory as I stated above. These cosmologists, in one form or another, have posited a multiverse, from which our particular universe arose. This gets rid of the causeless effect problem. The cause of this universe lies hidden from us in the multiverse.
Unfortunately, there is no empirical evidence for a multiverse. It is more a metaphysical idea than a scientific one. There are all kinds of interesting reasons to believe in the multiverse and interesting reasons to reject it, but here I only want to explore one aspect of the question of the multiverse that I haven’t seen well addressed in any of the versions of the multiverse I have read about it.
The second mystery of the universe I wrote of above has to do with how our universe arrives in a state of high disentropy. I don’t see that the notion of a multiverse solves this mystery at all; rather it multiplies it. It would seem that a multiverse would need to be an unthinkably large source of disentropy, perhaps an infinite source of disentropy, to be able to create the countless universes that some of these theories credit it with.
“An infinite source of disentropy.” I think theists everywhere might accept that as describing one aspect of God. Perhaps this is a point where science and theism could find a point of agreement. Perhaps, but I think theists would shy away from a God so utterly distant from human concerns, so utterly non-anthropomorphic. And scientists would shy away from an idea that can neither be verified or falsified, and that runs terribly counter to the laws of nature as understood by physics.
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In an article I published here many years, I included the following:
In Vol. 19 of The North American Indians, Edward Curtis writes: “there is a tendency, both by observers and the Indians themselves, to translate Wakónda (Wákan-tanka) as ‘Great Spirit.’ Such a translation is not borne out by the primitive use of the word nor by Siouan thought. The translation should be ‘Great Mystery.’ Without putting it in words, Siouan philosophy says, ‘We know not what it is, but we do know that it is.’”
I would suggest that the world would be a better place if people everywhere, when speaking of “God,” “Allah,” “The Absolute,” “Tao” or whatever other words they might use to refer to that which is the ultimate source and context of existence, simply recognized and admitted that “We know not what it is, but we do know that it is.”
Or, perhaps it would be a better place if we simply agreed that “God” is as good a word as any to express the miraculousness of our simply being here.
I’ll say “Amen” to either of those.
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Or perhaps, we know not what it is, but we do know what it is not.