How It All Got Started

I've been thinking that this post as originally posted would probably offend some people, so on Dec. 5, 2011 I am editing out much of it. I apologize for the parts that were probably needlessly offensive. I've also added a few parts, during the Dec. 5 editting.

Let's assume, in this discussion, that there's Time and it goes in one direction. We usually think that things happen earlier or later along the Time scale.

Some people think there's a beginning of Time. Then the Time scale is like a point and an arrow: The arrow starts at the point; the point is the beginning, and Time goes along in the direction of the arrow.

Another possibility is that the Time scale can be imagined as a line that extends infinitely in both directions. Then it's like a line with an arrow-head on both ends, representing that it goes on forever in both directions. But Time itself could still be supposed to flow in one direction along that line. We can look backwards in time to talk about what happened in earlier times, but Time itself keeps going in the positive direction along the line.

Yet another possibility is that the Time scale is like a circle. Time goes along the curve of the circle, in one direction around the circle.

Those three models are about as far as my imagination takes me, but I wouldn't be surprised if some mathematicians have yet more possibilities to consider for the nature of Time.

I feel more at home with the Time line which extends forever in both directions, with no beginning nor end. But I don't know whether that model is any better than the others.

Now here's my best guess for what things were like, at the very beginning (if there was a beginning): Before there was a world like this, there was something simpler, and before that, there was something simpler than that, and so on, such that the further back in time you go, the simpler things were. Suppose there was a starting point (and that's where Time started, and there's no "before" that). Then at that starting point, things were at the very simplest they could be. I imagine that simplicity as a "Void", or one could imagine it as a "Void with one blob of stuff in it".

I think everything evolved from that simplest state into more complex states until eventually it looked like what we see around us now; and here we are, as part of it, and here's God, also as part of it. (I suppose that God evolved by the same essentially basic processes by which objects and people evolved.)

My notion of what evolution is is a very simple concept. (It has to be, because I've never taken a course in biology. But I mean that as a joke. My notion of evolution is not just biological. It's more encompassing than that. It exists in physical and spiritual dimensions. For my own convenience, I imagine it as a simple physical process.)

All it takes is (1) an imperfection or a blob to get started, and then (2) the quality that some things tend to last longer than other things. The blob, being imperfect, eventually fails to hold together as one integral thing, and then there are two blobs, and so on. Blobs float around and keep subdividing (by the principle of imperfection which means that sometimes they fail to remain perfectly intact). Blobs bump into each other and may stick to each other or form relationships such as coming closer together or moving further apart. This is how I imagine things get more and more complex.

There's a computer game called "Conway's Life" in which a set of simple rules naturally begets things, a few of which become self-reproducing objects. I think that's a good model for how evolution works.

One could ask: Where did the initial blob of stuff come from? Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question. But I imagine that there was no guarantee that the Void would be kept pure and clean, and that an imperfection was in there simply because there was no housekeeper sweeping things up all the time.

What's likelier: perfection or imperfection? Imperfection may be as likely as perfection. This universe we are in may have come into existence as easily as falling off a log. It may be the most likely to occur, of all conceivable universes.

To us, on this planet, it may seem we are surrounded by a marvelous complexity. However, the way I see it, we are surrounded by an immense universe in which, by fairly random processes in an enormous expanse of time and space, an occasional speck of life will on rare occasions appear and then disappear. Of all the immense number of locations in spacetime, the vast majority of those locations don't produce any thought about their condition, but during the relatively brief existences of the specks of life (such as our planet Earth) there are thinking beings, such as ourselves, who may only notice what's close around them and think that's what the universe is like at large; but no, really what they're noticing is the exceptional speck of life. Most of spacetime seems relatively bleak and uninteresting, in my opinion, just thinking about it.

I read somewhere that empty space has the quality that it forms things in it all the time: Out of nothingness, there naturally arise two opposing particles which balance each other out. As these pairs of particles wink in and out of existence in the Void, at any given instant in time there are a lot of pairs that happen to be in existence. Is that less likely than a nothingness which somehow remains a pure featureless nothingness? I don't know.

Of course, since I wasn't there at "the beginning" of the universe, I can only guess that it happened this way.

There's at least one alternative theory of how everything began, but I leave it to others to explain that or those.

(1) I've been told "You have to start somewhere." In my theory, "you have to start somewhere" is implemented as starting from the simplest imaginable state. That's the Void, or the Void with the blob in it.

(2) In my theory, the development of the universe proceeds according to the simplest rules imaginable.

(3) Supposing that you are not partial to simplicity, your starting condition could be something more complex. But I think that starting complexity would raise more questions that it answers, and would obscure more than it clarifies.

-John L.

The Three Standard Questions About God

I have long thought I would be interested in "philosophy". (But why?) However, I've never studied any existing formal "philosophical" disciplines. As of today (Nov. 27, 2011) I've never taken a philosophy course. Today I think I'm really more interested in being happy, making my own personal philosophy, and finding people who think similarly to it.

This morning on the internet I looked up "philosophy" on google, selected the wikipedia article about philosophy, scanned the list of different branches of philosophy, and selected "philosophy of religion" as one in which I'd be interested. (But why?) Then, again in google, I found www.philosophyofreligion.info. That website poses this sequence of three questions:

1. "Is there a God?",
2. "If there is, then what is he like?", and:
3. "What does that mean for us?".

I shall answer these in my own way, below.

1:

"Is there a God?" Yes.

(But one may ask other questions such as: How would I know? And: Why are we even asking whether there's a God? It may be that many important questions are being left out of this sequence.)

2:

"If there is a God, then what is God like?" I don't know much specific about God (though I'll often opine, and think I know as much as the people around me). To me the word "God" means the highest, best thing or personage. My brief fleeting experience of God the personage was that God is the sort of person who says: "It's okay" and is comforting. I think God is like my parents James and Kathie, who didn't actually say "that's okay" but got the idea across somehow, and who, it seems, encompassed what mattered to me, for a while anyway when I was much younger.

3:

"What does that mean for us?" It means two things for me:

(i) Not much, in normal living and normal thought, because the benignness of the universe (of which God is a part, because "universe" means "everything") is more important than the existence or nonexistence of God.

(ii) When the moment comes when I dare to look reality and God square on, such as a time when I might as well die anyway, or when the moment comes that I'm so desperate that nothing else will be enough, then for me God can be a comforter which transcends (or, in a way, overpowers) everything else. I might have said this about the benignness of the universe, but God's more personal at such a moment, and one usually feels better being comforted by a person than by an inanimate fact, especially if that person encompasses or transcends all the facts.

I believe that God the person does not require worship, and neither saves nor condemns because of worship or the lack of it. I do feel that sincerity counts with God (somehow).

As for the "us" in the question: I don't know what the rest of us think. It's probably better if they answer for themselves rather than me attempting to answer for them.

The answer to both of my "But why?" questions above is: These are the vocabulary or frameworks that I grew up with. It's cultural.

-John L.