Creation of the Universe: New Theories & God

In the book of Exodus, chapter 3, from the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses asks God what His name is. He does this because there are many gods in this time period. God is sending Moses to the Egyptian Pharaoh to ask for the freedom of His people and Moses will need a name for the God who is sending him to declare freedom. God says to Moses to tell the Pharaoh that “I Am” has sent you. The Hebrew translation for “I Am” or “I Am That I Am” is “Yahweh”. Yahweh is the name that God has given Himself. I Am. What does “I Am” mean? My human understanding for “I Am” would perhaps be found in physics or cosmology. “I Am” to me means ultimate; eternal knowledge; foremost architect; transcending time, space, and all matter, therefore beyond comprehension of human minds and physics of the universe and possibly multiverse. That’s the best that I can describe God’s name and who He is. The “idea” of no beginning and no end, always being there, is perhaps backed up even in science by the theory of eternal inflation. While eternal inflation is a very difficult theory for the average non-scientific person to wrap their head around, it does give notion to the idea of “always there” or “eternal”.

The idea that something came from nothing is an idea that has been scientifically debated on and philosophically thought about for a very, very long time. But there are two ideas of nothing, and we who speak English are unfortunate to only have one word for nothing. Nothing can be a nothing where there is no equations, no matter, no space, no time, absolute nothing… no God. Nothing can also be a perfect vacuum- a state where there is absolutely no matter. To me, this is the real nothing. There cannot be an absolute nothing where there is no equations, no purpose, no space, no vacuum, no God. If you believe in absolute nothing, you do not believe in God. Nothing “is” a perfect vacuum, the absence of matter, where matter does not exist, only equations and energy. Sometimes in this state of nothing, energy can briefly transform itself into matter… creating “something”.

This week I was reading this debate and review of the book “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss. I’m sure that all three of the men debating the ideas of this book are much smarter than me, but I do see a problem with their debate that occurs with most all debates. One guy is a theologian, one is a philosopher, and one is a cosmologist. Some of the guys do not fully understand the other’s academics. The cosmologist is calling the philosopher stupid; the theologian is trying to describe the Christian God to a cosmologist that doesn’t really care, and the cosmologist hates the idea of religion and the Christian God from a social cliche point-of-view, having no clue who the real God of Christians really is… or even what Christianity is really about. And how could he… he’s probably never read the Bible through, doesn’t go to church or even try to have a relationship with the God that Christians know. He (Krauss) while having great ideas on the creation of the universe, is putting all religions into one category with a God and discriminating against the whole idea. It’s just chaos. But at the same time, it seems that many Christians and philosophers don’t even give science a chance to explain itself either.  And since I believe that all science comes from my transcending God, I think we should let science talk… because God can speak through anyone, and anything. Krauss is an anti-theist. He doesn’t believe in God or think that God is needed for creation to take place. And that’s a perfect fine point-of-view coming from an anti-theist, but it doesn’t disprove the existence of God… it only removes the idea that God had to physically create our universe. All Krauss did in his book is talk about the idea of “something from nothing” which has little to do with proving God or disproving God. He has a very faint understanding of God. He is basically saying God and religion are the same, according to the debate. You can listen to the debate on MP3 here.

Most cosmologist and physicist today agree that there was something before the Big Bang. In fact, many do not even believe in a Big Bang anymore. We are beginning to see that science, the universe, and God are much bigger and complex than we can imagine. Before now, people put God right before the Big Bang and said that it was God who created the Big Bang, or made the Big Bang happen from nothing. But I think we aren’t even close to finding what came before the Big Bang. I too agree that there was something before the “Big Bang”, or what we call our universe. And although I believe God is “I Am”, the beginning of all… I don’t believe that God “sparked” the Big Bang…. it’s much, much deeper than that.

One idea is that our universe is one of many that originates from the three dimensional “Branes”. Science would say that there are at least two Branes that are very close to each other, possibly many more. In between these Branes is a perfect vacuum of “nothing”. When these Branes move, they sometimes touch and collide with each other releasing energy and matter, creating a new universe. This happens all the time. Some universes might be connected, but for the most part all universes are completely separate from each other and there is no way to get from one universe to the other.

A second idea is that our universe came from a Black Whole, as did all other universes. A Black Whole is a massive star that has died and collapsed in on itself because it could not hold up it’s own mass. A Black Whole pulls in all time and matter to where the laws of physics and mathematics break down into one very small point related to the idea of eternal inflation or singularity, and explodes out the other side into a perfect vacuum, nothingness, creating a new universe. This happens all the time in our universe and other universes. So it’s possible that the multiverse is an ever-connected ”ant-hill” of universes connected by wormholes or black holes.

Yet another idea is that there was no Big Band at all, more like a Big Bounce. As a universe collapses in on itself to a point of infinity, the laws of gravity do not apply anymore. We begin looking into quantum physics (very small physics) where gravity begins to have the reverse effect and repulses itself. So in this theory, our universe came from another similar universe or a previous state of a universe that collapsed on itself by gravity until it “bounced” and repulsed itself by the quantum gravity. I think this theory might fit well into what happens inside a Black Hole.

This final theory that I am going to talk about is my personal favorite. We tend to ask what happened before the Big Bang. But if there was a singularity of nothingness, then the idea of time and before was not yet designed. There was no “before”. To understand the “beginning”, you must first understand our “end”. Our universe is expanding and will continue to disperse and expand until it cools off and begins to become a lot of nothing at all. Everything will die off and burn out until there are nothing but photons left. Photons do not have mass and cannot measure time. There must be mass to measure time. Without time you cannot have a clock or sequence of events, and without a clock the universe cannot measure how big it is- therefore cannot keep track of it’s size or it’s time. All of time, space, and mathematics is broken down into nothingness… like the beginning. So the end becomes the new beginning. Both big and small are equivalent and the end of one eon becomes the beginning of another eon.

So where does God fit into all of this. I can agree with every individual one of these theories. They all tend to make sense to me and yet none dismiss the idea of God. Even in a perfect vacuum, or nothingness, there is still energy and equations. God did not have to create the beginning. God did not have to create what we call the universe or multiverse.  God wrote the equation for it all to happen. God IS the beginning. He IS the equation. I think the problem for most people is that they don’t have a real picture of what the beginning is, or what the first equation is. And since God dwells completely outside of ALL science and is the creator of the first equation, we can NEVER understand the science of who God is. In fact, according to my perspective of God, you can never disprove the existence of God because of this. We try to describe God, and we try to personify God into a being that we can comprehend or understand. Some might believe that science can disprove or prove God. BUT GOD CREATED SCIENCE AND EXISTS OUTSIDE OF SCIENCE ITSELF. I believe that God and all of “science fact” can co-exist in perfection. And yes, it takes a little philosophy, theology, and physics for this co-existence. I do not believe you can have one without the other.

But then the average Christian asks, “What about Genesis chapter 1″? What about the seven days? Science must be wrong. Yeah I know what you’re thinking… and the blog for that is coming next.

-Aaron