I
previously have suggested that the universe seems
to have been designed
and that this therefore
implies a designer.
Following this supposition further leads
to two fundamental questions: where did the designer come from and
why might it have designed and launched the universe we inhabit.
Subsidiary questions might include what materials and tools did the
designer use and what can be said of the designer? We
might also
wonder if the designer watches or cares for us or has any of the
other attributes humans have often associated with their gods such as
being infinitely powerful, wise, kind, all knowing, loving,
good
etc?
Before
taking a stab at these questions, it is worth noting that physicists
and cosmologists are also trying to peer behind the curtain of
creation. String theorists are still seeking – despite a lack of
any experimental evidence offered by current high energy physics –
to reconcile relativity and quantum physics and thereby explain the
menagerie of observed elementary particles and forces. Recently,
they have found a set of one
quadrillion
possible solutions to string equations within a ten-dimensional
spacetime that have “the
same set of matter particles as exists in our universe.”
But
there remains no experimental evidence or process for deciding which
of these quadrillion, if any, may be applicable to the observed
reality.
Also,
for
the past decade or so, cosmologists have been looking at alternatives
to the inflationary
scenario
of the post-Big Bang
universe. Inflation explains features of the cosmic
background radiation.
However, it does not explain from where the Big Bang itself arose
beyond the suggestion that it came from some quantum
fluctuation within a primordial singularity.
An attractive alternative to having to explain any sort of a
beginning
is to assume that the Big Bang was simply our side of a “bounce”
or “collision”
between
universes.
All
these efforts to explain what might otherwise appear to be an amazing
Goldilocks
universe
– in which all the elemental particles and forces seem to lead to
the evolution of complexity and the
seeming inevitability of life
– must in the end still suppose something unexplained and just
given:
a
multidimensional
universe beyond ours, a singularity just sitting there at the
beginning of time or a series of bouncing universes just following
one another. (This latter leaves aside
the
issue of dark
energy’s apparent speeding up of the expansion of our universe
so that it never reverses into a big crunch. Instead, it
seems that eventually
– in some enormous 10 to the 100th years – matter will have
broken down and even black holes will be warmer than space and
radiate away with a final pop.)
It
might also be worth pausing to wonder why the universe would have to
be designed rather than simply “wished” into being as befitting
an all-powerful “god.” Put another way, why would a creator need
to design a universe using materials and processes that we would find
understandable as laws of physics? Was the designer constrained in
some way – perhaps by some preexisting Platonic
Forms – to act through means such as singularities and Higgs
fields?
Occam’s
Razor suggests to me that we simply acknowledge that our universe
seems to have a design discoverable
by science
and wonder about the designer. Following
this line of inquiry, I
return
to considering where
might have
the
designer come from and why might it have designed and launched the
universe we inhabit?
It
seems to me that there is no way to answer the where
question. One must either posit that
there
never was
an
original moment of creation or accept that there was such a moment
and recognize it as an uncaused first cause. Which
came first, the chicken or the egg? Either the designer was caused –
by what, from where? – or was itself the First Cause. This seems
to me the unanswerable question behind all others and thus the
essential mystery at the bottom of all science, religion and
philosophy.
The
why
question may be somewhat
more
amenable. Consider that the universe does appear to have been
designed and put into action according to the physical laws thereby
built into it. Could it be a grand simulation to
test theories of good and evil,
a
complex and especially vivid dream or simply a
work of art? Might
it be a majestic theater on which a countless number of actors play
our parts and then disappear off stage thus making the designer a
cosmic Shakespeare? Or might it have been set in motion for the
consciousness behind the design to dump itself into to avoid an
endless eternity of loneliness and
thereby undergo an almost endless series of experiences acted through
everyone and everything?
I myself drift toward the last suggestion
and to the
possibility
of a universe in which consciousness
is primordial and attaches
to everything with mass (a kind of panpsychism).
Life
would offer the most interesting existence. So perhaps the designer
looks out through the being of everything, in a sense making us all
“children of god?”
One
last question, does love come into it at all. Does the designer love
its creation or any part of it, such as us? If the cosmic
consciousness is in everything, then it may be essentially a matter
of self-love, even when we “love” one another. I believe we
exist as individuals and we love as such. Our capability – indeed
need – to love suggests it is somehow built into the design.
