Origin of the Universe
Everything I can see, touch, hear, find in fossils or discern in the extreme reaches of the most distant super galaxies and quasars all tell me that everything changes according to “cause and effect”.
Cause and Effect.
Everything.
The best theory of the universe right now is called the “Hot Big Bang”. It says that about 17 billion years ago, all the space, matter and energy of our current universe started as a single point and exploded.
At first, the temperatures were so intense that there was no matter, just energy. As space expanded and the energy was drawn out to that larger volume, the temperature went down and quarks, matter, formed from that energy. Expansion continued and the quarks started joining to form neutrons and other sub-atomic bits of matter. Before long, atoms started to condense.
The Universe’s is less than a few seconds old at this point.
Much is yet to happen.
Those atoms gathered together in denser and denser clots and some of them became stars which, in their deep internal regions, they started combining simple atoms into heavier atoms. Eventually, those early stars exploded as super novaes and, quite literally, spewed those heavier elements into space where, again, they collected into new stars, planets, and so forth.
Our star and solar system are youngsters. Indeed, the atoms that make up the very hair on the back of your arm were made in the furnace of some unknown and long exploded star, perhaps even several generations of such cycles.
Carl Sagan said, “We are star stuff.”
But everything I see and know says, “Cause and Effect”, so I have to ask, “Where did the Hot Big Bang come from? What caused it?”
One theory says the universe is cyclic, that the result of the big bang will expand to some maximum extent and then start collapsing. And when it fully collapses back into a single point, it will explode again and a new universe will begin. Presumably, this could go on “forever” – but I have to put that word in quotes since time, at least as we know it, could be one of the things the big bang defines (creates).
Assuming the universe is cyclic, it’s still “Cause and Effect” – what caused the “Bang!” Where did the laws come from that said, “If you put this much energy in this size space, it’ll have this temperature and it’ll go Bang!” Who made it that way?
And as soon as you ask that question, you might as well ask, “Well, if everything is ‘cause and effect’, then where did God come from? Who made God?”
“God” – notice the quotes – is the way out of this endless succession of cause and effect.
The concept of “God” is that there is something, someone, some X that caused the original cause, and that that “thing” (God) is infinite, that God is not subject to cause and effect.
My take on all this is that the universe, because it is all cause and effect, must itself have some origin, and that if we chase that back far enough, at some point we have no other choice but to admit there is something that must be outside of time, outside of our space, outside of our way of existence.
And because it is outside of all that, we can only describe it as “infinite”.
I am calling it “God”.
(And the absolutely mind-boggling part of this is that I see and feel God’s intervention, His interaction, His “parenting” in my life on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis.)