Sometime
ago, I wrote in this space an Introduction
to a Still Unwritten Book.
For several years before and since, I have been pondering
consciousness, cosmology and quantum physics in what I like to think
follows in the tradition of natural
philosophy.
While I am not a scientist, I believe that the ultimate questions
are essentially unanswerable but – following Saint
Thomas’ finger
– the proper subject of a reasoning intellect. It seems to me
that the most fundamental question remains one that has haunted all
philosophical and religious traditions: why is there anything?
Science alone cannot shed light on this. Current science points to a
Big
Bang
some 13 billion years ago. Today’s quantum physics and cosmology
can say much about the
first few moments
after that event and the subsequent
evolution of the universe and life.
But we cannot say much about where the Big Bang came from and even
less about why it might have occurred. Nor can we explain –
without positing an infinity of less comfortable parallel universes –
why our universe seems so right for us.
So
the ultimate questions – why should there be anything, why should
there be us – remain unanswered. It would seem that nothing
is the more natural state because it would need no explanation. That
there was nothing and always would be nothing would require nothing
to be done or said about it. That nothing
somehow
gave way to something, anything, would have required a departure from
the most simple state of nothing to greater complexity. The universe, in which we find
ourselves a part, exists, it is something.
Furthermore, it seems to have been fine-tuned
insofar as it expresses a particular set of physical laws that seem
designed
to make life and intelligence inevitable.
We live in a Goldilocks’ reality, not too cold, not too hot, but
just right for us. The apparent design that gave rise to our
existence must inevitably imply a
designer.
But
granting all this, this still leaves two fundamental questions.
Where did the designer come from and why might it have designed and
launched the universe we inhabit. The possible answers to the first
question appear to converge on two possibilities, that the designer
always was – i.e., that something always existed and there
never was nothing – or that there was an original act of
creation (or self-creation) that led to the existence of the
designer. Both of these “explanations” essentially define what
we might call God. One of them must be true.
The
second question, why did the designer enact the particular act of
creation that led to us, could have a myriad of answers. It might
have been from boredom
– as an eternity of nothing but self might eventually wear thin –
perhaps in the form of a cosmic-scale version of a computer
SimUniverse. It could be the night’s sleep of a very
rationally-minded dreamer. It could be an experiment of some kind,
or a simulation set to explore possible design parameters. It could
be an act of love. Whatever the possible reason, the act of creation
implied a kind of consciousness (even of the sleeper) and some
version of a conscious choice. The designer must have been a
conscious entity, perhaps even consciousness in its rare form.
Whether the designer always was or was somehow created, the form it
had or took was consciousness. In either case, consciousness
was primordial,
coming before the creation of our universe, before matter, before the
Big Bang. The primordial consciousness – what might be called God
– was the designer.
A
fascinating aside about following this chain of thought is the
seemingly inescapable conclusion that the designer was or felt
constrained to create a universe capable of being apprehended by
scientific reason. The universe is not just some stage set on which
we players play our parts but an intricate mechanism that obeys its
own complex, intrinsic laws. This suggests that the designer was
using – for whatever reason – a given toolbox that provided the
means to form the
particular set of physical parameters
manifested in the Big Bang.
Still,
why us? What are we and what were we made for? I lean toward the
notion that the cosmic consciousness designed a reality that it could
then enter, whether out of loneliness, curiosity, love or some
combination of these.
TBC...
