What
are we and what were we made for? For some, this question may be
neither important nor interesting. That we exist is its own reality
and sufficient explanation. The universe exists because it has
always existed, no need to consider any creation story.
One such person, a good friend, suggested after reading my previous
post
that I read Why
Does the World Exist
by
Jim Holt. I had
that on my bookshelf and reread it along with some
Roger
Penrose.
These led me down some rabbit holes and thus this interlude, which I
hope will eventually connect to the rest of my “conclusion.”
So,
what about the Big Bang, doesn’t that seem to be a beginning
requiring explanation? How can a grand explosion that became our
universe be squared with an eternal universe that always existed?
Well, our Big Bang might
be just the most recent of a series without beginning or end, maybe
one of a multi-verse of such. Perhaps “chaotic inflation” out of
some “quantum fluctuation” created our universe from a tiny burp
in the vacuum that “arose spontaneously from sheer nothingness.”
Or
why assume, as I did in my previous, that “nothing is the more
natural state because it would need no explanation.” Perhaps the
universe exists because it has always existed and because nothing
is itself not possible. The universe exists so why posit nothing
as more natural? In
any case, before
the Big Bang, there was not nothing because there was no time,
therefore no past. The singularity assumed to have exploded in the
Big Bang was matter and energy infinitely compressed (just as it is
in a black hole). Infinite compression of mass and energy means
spacetime doesn’t exist so before the Big Bang there was nothing
and no time. Therefore,
the Big Bang requires no history.
Or
perhaps the universe came
into being through
being observed by us. In other words, because we are here, it had to
be.
None
of these possibilities account for why they might have
been
the case. They do not explain why they should be true or what was
their First Cause. But one could
argue that any explanation of existence that leaves itself
unexplained simply means that the ultimate wall has been reached and
not that it is wrong. All explanations must end in such a explanatory
wall.
Just
accept the one you choose.
Holt
notes one rejoinder to this (Arthur Lovejoy, 1933) that if the
universe existed as an accidental – it’s just-there – world –
“uncertainty would infect the whole; anything...might exist and
anything might happen, and no one thing would be in itself even more
probable than another.” Indeed, the simplest alternative to
Nothing is Everything, i.e., all possible worlds. In a multiverse of
all possibilities, why not an entire universe – even ours –
simple turning
into chocolate cake?
Much
more can be said about these conflicting positions. But as Holt
notes, one way to escape the ultimate inability to provide
a First Cause simply
is
to assume a self-explanatory something
that
would have to exist in
order to
explain everything else.
That
something would have to be
eternal, infinite, powerful and – since the universe is ordered and
includes intelligence – intelligent. In my last post, I suggested
that such a thing
is “what might be called God.” I should make clear that I would
not suggest using that term as it carries a load of baggage that
seems to me beside the point (more on that next time). I prefer to
talk simply of a design and a designer.
For
myself, I find the bare acceptance of a universe without explanation
to be an ultimate abandonment of reason and intellect. We are capable of
considering the infinite even if we cannot understand it. And
I reject the notion that the effort to follow St. Thomas’ finger –
science and reason – to consideration of a fundamental design and
a designer is just
an expression
of a religious impulse. Man has
long sought the answer to his Being. Religion
did grow out of that but so has science and philosophy.
