God, the Universe, and Other Utterances

The views below are my alone. I do not wish to impose my personal views on anyone so please don't take offence, afterall, this is my blog. I am not arguing for one view or the other (i.e. religion vs atheism), but just professing my incredible confusion over everything. 


This may appear to be nothing but paragraphs of pseudoscience mixed with philosophy, and I am sure that professional physicists and cosmologists might scoff (if they ever come across this blog entry). But I write this in all seriousness, and please keep in mind that I think physicists are the sexiest people on Earth. 

I wanted to start off this article with an elegant artist's depiction
of the universe, but then I thought that the rest of the article
is so serious, we might as well have a laugh first.  

Every once in a while, I am gripped with fear and anxiety, and start having such dangerous thoughts (not dangerous to society, but dangerous to my health). I keep thinking about vast things which should not bother me, and I get sort of philosophical.

You might decipher this from the rest of the article if I do not tell you now, but let me tell you anyways - I dislike philosophy. I don't dislike other philosophers, of course, since certain things are important to look at from a philosophical perspective. Rather, I dislike thinking about philosophical notions myself. I only like discussing things from a strictly scientific perspective, and do not appreciate the vague and wishful thinking which results from philosophical questions. But every once in a while, I get so agitated and nervous, that I cannot stop these floods of philosophical questions from plaguing me. I start thinking about God and the universe, and I know how self-indulgent I sound here by using these cliche terms, but it is true, and it is tormenting. I feel sick with anxiety and desperation, and I need to utter out these thoughts, or else I might go mad.

Firstly, think about the universe. I am sure you have a nice mental image of vastness in your mind, and of a sort of closed bubble in which everything which we could possibly experience exists. And now think about God. If you are following a monotheist religion like me, then you will be familiar with the idea of God creating the world in one blast of energy, and then creating Man out of clay, and so on. I do not follow Christianity, so I do not follow the "6000 year old universe" concept either, so for me the universe is around 13.75 billion years old. For the sake of this article, the main concern is only the idea of God creating the universe, and nothing else. With both these ideas firmly implanted in your mind, let us journey through the rest of the article.

Everything in our lives has a certain purpose - even when we waste away two hours watching repeats of True Blood, the purpose is still to entertain one self. Now, we have this incredibly vast universe, or perhaps even other universes, and we are not even sure if it is finite or infinite. When does the system completely close? In ye' olden days, our Universe was considered to be a closed system, which was either expanding or contracting. But of course problems emerged, such as our inability to explain exactly what gravity is and where it comes from. So now there are all sorts of theories about forces leaking in from other universes, colliding bubbles, membranes, strings and what not. All these forces, all this matter, sub-particles and this vast amount of energy - but what purpose does it have to exist?

The traditional monotheist view is that God created everything to place us in it. But why? Why create something so profoundly large and incomprehensible for something as inconspicuous as human beings? And then imagine a world without God, where the universe came about due to some theory of Physics, whichever it is, and that we find the complete closed system (i.e. all that can ever exist) and we have proven how it came about. But what purpose would it have to come about?

For such an ancient superstructure as our universe, we demand of it to have some purpose. What is the point of vast clouds of gaseous particles, encircling to give birth to a star, if there is no one there to explore it. We can observe anything which is near enough for it's light to reach us, but the universe is so much more vast beyond that. We might perish before we even become aware of any of it. What purpose is there for something so unimaginably massive to even bother to come into existence? Or perhaps there are other observers, perhaps stars and galaxies are conscious like us. It may be that they observe each other. Perhaps everything in the universe is teeming with life, from an ant hill on Earth, to a barren dying star at the very edge of the universe.

But what is the edge of the universe? What is the universe contained in? Say that we prove a theory which states that the complete system is that of a Super-Universe, which contains countless universes in itself, including our own. But even that Super-Universe has to have an edge, and be contained within itself. And beyond that edge is what - nothing? What is nothing? Is it a completely blank state which does not contain anything at all (no forces, no particles, antimatter, energy, etc) - but even that empty space is something. Is it perhaps an edge beyond which we simply cannot move any forward, or a point after which all fundamental laws of physics break down and absolutely nothing can function or continue to exist.

Let us take a simple thought experiment: you send a spaceship to travel to this very edge. Once the spaceship reaches that edge, does it simply turn around when faced with an impregnable 'wall'? Because the nothing region does not have any attributes of this Super-Universe, which the spaceship relies on to keep moving, hence it is physically impossible for the ship to move beyond that point, and it has to turn around.

 Or does it go through it, but then ceases to exist and becomes nothing? Surely if none of the attributes of the Super-Universe exist in the nothing region, the spaceship, which completely relies on all these attributes, will simply cease to exist (e.g. there is nothing there to support the concept of atoms, so all the atoms of the spaceship will cease to exist).

But still, how profoundly nauseated I feel, just to think of nothingness. How can such a thing exist? What is nothing? Surely everything is contained in something else? To think of Nothing makes my head spin. There are of course other theories, of other worlds or other universes, all in bubbles that collide and slide. But still, even those have to be contained in something. There has to be an absolute, complete and closed system. Or perhaps the human mind just cannot grasp such concepts. We want everything to be contained in some larger structure, like how we know that the Earth is within the solar system, the solar system is within the galaxy, and so on. Hence, the idea of infinite nothingness is incomprehensible to us.

Of course, there is Physics, our true Mother and the Queen of Nature, the most beautiful and graceful science there ever was. How it is omnipresent in all situations, and governs the course of all things. It is enthralling and brings chills to my bones.

There are theories that life forms naturally, through processes that are governed by physics (i.e. no intelligent design - just physics). But it is this beauty of physics which has enchanted me but also left me in such a turmoil. All those years ago, reading about quantum physics, and about other worlds, waves, particles and things even smaller than the sub-atomic ones, the serenity of entanglement, the multitude of dimensions - they left my mind in such a turmoil. By that time they had only taught us the most basic of things in school - the structure of the atom, electrons orbiting, etc. Never in my life could I  have thought of such simple complexity to exist in a science - it was powerful and it was frightening.

Now things are being discovered at an even more accelerated rate, all these alien elementary particles, which are hypothetical, yet without them the universe does not work. All these theories almost seem like philosophy (which I hate, for being all sloppy and inconcrete), but of course it is not philosophy. It is proven (most of it) and agreed upon by Phycisists all over, and engraved as a full science. Not only does it work when you put it in equations, but some have been proven by experiments (e.g. entanglement).

Why, why, why - what reason would they have to exist? The stars, the immense galaxies and the entire universe, so far away and unfantomable by even the most creative of minds. Why would such an immense landscape exist, for infinity? Why would it have a reason to come into being at all? I am sure there must be countless philosophers, scientists and theologians who have pondered these questions since the dawn of our era. We have arguments on what is existence and why we are here, as well as beautiful theoretical physics on mother membranes, many worlds, frozen time, colliding universes and bursting bubbles. So elegant and so charismatic - but they don't stop you from feeling so profoundly alone. No matter how much we study things, it doesnt change the fact that it is impossible to explain why these things come into existence. What purpose could they possibly have? What was that first initiative, at the Singularity, which made the universe want to come into existence.

Physics provides us with so many answers and so many theories on how our universe came to being. But not why. Some scientists have moved on from the Big Bang and the Singularity, and gone onto colliding bubbles and such, but there is no root to the problem. Why should the universe exist at all? Why should anything exist at all? It is incomprehensible for something to take up so much energy and matter simply for the reason to exist. To be there for no other reason than to be there.

Every time there is a new theory, it is just like staring at a fractal structure and not knowing it. You keep looking and looking, but there is no beginning or end. You cannot grab hold of the root, and there is no such thing as the "big picture" - you just keep zooming in and out, ad infinitum.

Imagine what it would be like, for there to be no God, but only Physics. Everything would exist because of natural processes, with no divine intervention. Such misery it would be, to not understand God. How profoundly alone we would feel. Without God, why should all these things exist?

Furthermore, the universe is so vast and ancient that in our fleeting eyes, which are filled with myriads of purposes and the concept of an inevitable death, the idea of infinity has no purpose. Certainly we can appreciate it, but we cannot fully grasp it in our minds. The idea of infinite anything which concerns the physical world is inconceivable. You can put infinity in mathematical equations and such, but you are just using it in an abstract way, away from reality (and mathematics is great for that - for abstraction of real life situations to make calculations much easier).

Whether or not you are religious, there is always that idea of infinity after death which is so haunting. Say you are religious and you believe in the concept of heaven and hell. After you die, you go to one or the other; or go to hell for a while, and after you have repented, go to heaven for eternity (as is the case of my religion, but only if you are monotheist). But can you imagine, being in a place for eternity? For an infinite amount of time you will be in this place - immortal, away from disease and any oppression, forever with God. Even as a child I found such a concept rather stifling and abstract. How can you even comprehend eternity, when you are so used to the fleeting pass of life? And then childish notions come to your mind - wouldn't you get bored? What would you do for eternity? It's so suffocating and strange. Heaven is more frightening than hell - at least in hell you know that there will be an end to it. But heaven is forever, an eternal bliss.

Say that you do not believe in God and/or an afterlife, and that death is the end of all. But can you imagine what it would be like? Imagine, at the point of death, when the last of your life leaves you and your brain and body functions shut down. What happens? Does your consciousness cease to exist? It would be like falling into a black endless abyss, with your conciousness and thoughts snubbed out in an instant and you just don't exist anymore. Isn't it rather stifling to think of such thoughts? One moment you are there and you exist, and the next moment - nothing. It is that nothingess that frightens me the most, I cannot comprehend it, even for a second. You are so used to existing and occupying space, not just physical space, but a mental space, a stream of conscious thought and a place to voice your views and talk to yourself. Call it consciousness, or your soul or mind, or whatever - but how can such an incredibly personal thing cease to exist? Maybe it doesn't, maybe our consciousness becomes one with the soil, just like all the atoms that make our body. You wouldn't know until you have died.

There are logical parts of my mind which scream for me to think about God in a rational way, devoid of emotions. The idea of a woman being created from the limb of a man, the temptation from a snake and then being thrown out of paradise to labour on Earth - everything seems like a rather convenient way to explain all the ills of our lives. The idea of a grand place from which we were thrown out, and to which we will return one day (if we do enough good in our lives) is very typical of other creation legends used throughout human history.

But when I think about having no God, I feel a sickness of the soul and I fall in despair. To have nothing to look forward to in life, other than the abyss of death, is too profound of an emotion for me to bear. I need that connection with something higher than me, some abstract concept of a being, as a form of escapism. All those questions above: the ideas of infinity, existence and nothingness, they all seem unanswerable without God and suffocate me.

Sometimes I feel so ashamed to be thinking of such concepts. I want to be a concrete scientist, to build theories and test them. But I feel so overwhelmed by all these thoughts, that I always dwell on them. How torturous it would be, to have perished without knowing all these truths of nature. All these everyday concrete tasks of breathing, making money and giving birth to children - all are so obsolete and almost disgusting when compared to the grace of the rest of the universe, and how insignificant we appear in front of it. It overwhlems me and makes me feel nauseated.