MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD

First point – the question of whether there is a Creator and the question of the existence of Jehovah are entirely different from one another.  (In these discussions, I shall use the word Jehovah to stand for the God of Christians, Jews, and Muslims since, to the extent I postulate the existence of this being, I believe there is only one being with various names.)  The God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad is not the Creator.

Second point – the question of whether there is a Creator, and whether the Universe was created, can never be answered by any mortal being.  This is entirely a matter of faith.  The reason for this will become clear once one understands what the Universe is.

As scientists now understand it, the Universe came into existence in an event called the ‘Big Bang’.  Prior to this event the Universe did not exist; from our point of view there was no existence.  This was a nothingness that is impossible for us to imagine.  This was not the same as the nothing that is in an empty box, for the reason that the box itself exists. When we try to imagine nothing, in fact, the only nothing we can imagine is the absence of something, since we exist within the Universe, and cannot conceive of a condition where there is ‘nothing’.  In the case of creation the ‘box’ itself did not exist.  It was not a case of matter appearing in otherwise empty space.  Space itself did not exist.  When the Universe began it replaced the ‘nothing’ with a ‘something’.  One minute our entire plane of existence was not there, the next instant it was there.  A tiny ball exploded into existence, containing all the matter and energy that would ever exist, packed into a space the size of a bowling ball at a temperature which would make the raging heart of a star seem like a frigid and quiet spot.  But perhaps more amazing is that it was not just matter and energy that was created, but time as well.  Einstein’s equations tell us that space and time are not separate things at all, but one unified fabric called space-time.  So all of time, all matter and all energy, was created in that instant.  So, not only was there no Universe before the Big Bang, but all of the Universe, from edge to edge and from beginning to end, existed in its entirety from that first instant.  At one point nothing existed, and in the next microsecond everything existed. 

We are part of, and exist within, the Universe and can travel from place to place, and are also traveling through the time dimension, but always in a forward direction.  As far as we understand the physics, we are limited to the forward direction only.  This limit applies, actually, to all four of our dimensions.  We think we can retrace our path through the three ‘physical’ dimensions, but in fact this is not so.  Because space and time do not exist independently of one another, we can never return to the same point in space, because the original point no longer exists!  It has moved forward in what we call the time direction.  Our perception of the Universe is limited to here and now.  It is believed, by the bye, that ‘here and now’, as measured along what we perceive as the time axis from the Big Bang, is about 15 billion years after the creation. 

Having said that, let me point out once again that the Universe was complete when created, having within the fabric of space-time every single bit of matter or energy (which are interchangeable) and all of the possible events and interactions which all of the bits of matter and energy might engage in throughout all of time.  Our minds rebel at the sheer magnitude of the number involved in this concept.  In fact, in an infinite Universe the number of possible occurrences is also infinite, but this is quite possible, and I will address this seeming paradox next.   

Some have trouble understanding how the Universe might be infinite, since from our perspective it had a beginning.  This is based on what we see from the inside, that the Universe is a three dimensional object travelling along the time axis, but this view ignores the unity of space and time.  If infinite, it was infinite, and as explained above, complete in all four dimensions when created.  All of space-time, along with infinity itself, was created at the moment of creation.  Even if it were only finite, the Universe is vast beyond our comprehension.  We can reduce the Universe to numbers, of course, and say that there may be a billion other galaxies, each with billions of suns, but the numbers themselves are so large as to exceed any attempt to grasp the scale.  We can write them down as numbers and exponents, but they have no real meaning to our minds. 

We can see but a small fraction of the Universe.  If one were to travel to one of the increasingly rare places on our planet where the view of the night sky is unimpeded by light pollution, one could see perhaps only six thousand stars.  There are so few, in fact, that early humans imagined patterns of connections between them that do not really exist.  We call these imagined patterns the constellations, but the groupings are an illusion related to our particular viewing point.  In reality, all of these groupings would be unrecognizable if viewed from the side, as the individual stars are often of immensely different distances from our little planet.  Even with our most sophisticated instruments, we can see only a limited selection of the actual Universe.  One reason for this is that we are imbedded in a dust cloud which restricts our view in the visible spectrum.  We have developed instruments with which we can ‘see’ the sky using other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but these often yield nothing but blurry images when used at great distances, so ‘seeing’ is a relative term.  More importantly, we absolutely cannot see anything off our planet as it really exists, because of the time it takes for light to travel from the object to us.  In our solar system, of course, this delay causes us no difficulty in our everyday lives, since the distances are such that the delay is measured in seconds.  But when looking at more distant objects, the speed of light becomes significant, such that we see objects as they were in the past.  The star system we call Alpha Centauri, for example, is some four light years away, which means that we see Alpha Centauri as it was four years ago, not as it is today.  A star in this system could have exploded as a supernova last month, and we simply would not know for another four years.

As noted above, some models of the Universe postulate that it is infinite.  Let’s explore what is meant by infinite.  The first thing to understand is that there is more than one kind of infinity.  As explained by George Gamov in his book, One, Two, Three, Infinity, the type of infinity with which we are familiar is referred to as aleph-0; the infinity of whole numbers.  If our Universe is infinite, it is an aleph-0 infinity, since space-time is made up of discreet units.  However, between each whole number in the infinite aleph-0 string there are an infinite number of whole fractions.  Between 0 & 1, for example, there are ½, ¼, 1/8, and so on, while between 1 & 2 there are 3/2, 5/4, 9/8, etc.  This can be thought of as infinity squared, and is known as aleph-1.  Then, between each and every whole fraction, is an infinite series of irregular decimal fractions (ones that are repeating or unending).  This is infinity cubed, or aleph-2.  In his book, Mr. Gamov explains yet another level of infinity (aleph-3 or infinity to the fourth power) that I do not have the math skill to follow, much less explain here.

So there is the Universe as I understand it.  Vast far beyond my ability to grasp as anything but a meaninglessly large number; so enormous we cannot see or experience even a tiny fraction of it.  As one of the 10 to the trillion to the trillion, etc. possible beings which will ever exist throughout the Universe, we are so ephemeral as to be practically non-existent.  Humans in their current form have been around for perhaps one hundred thousand years.  That’s a little less than 7 millionths of the current age of the Universe.  What’s more, if there was a map of the Universe marked ‘You Are Here’, that spot would be on a miniscule speck of rock circling a rather modestly-sized star in a dusty corner ‘way out near the edge of a fairly insignificant member of a small group of galaxies.  Of course, on a map that included even just our own galaxy the ‘You Are Here’ sign would be far too small to see.  Our little world is less than one tenth of one percent of all the matter in just our small and insignificant solar system.  The proportion between our world and the entire Universe is indistinguishable from zero.  And humans inhabit only the thinnest of habitable skin clinging to the earth’s surface.  And in that thin skin we are hardly the most numerous nor the greatest portion by weight of all of earth’s inhabitants (the insects have us beat both ways).  Relative to the Universe, we hardly can be said to exist at all.

As I implied at the beginning of this article, I choose to believe that the Universe was, in fact, created.  I have absolutely no basis for this belief, and I am further convinced that no one can ever can have any such basis.  More importantly, I also believe that it will never be possible for me or any other being that is a part of this creation to ever know the reason for the creation, to say nothing of being able to prove the act of creation.  This is because the Creator must by necessity exist outside; above, if you will, the Universe, and there is no point of contact between the inside and the outside of the Universe.  The reason for this should have become clear as you read through the explanation of the structure of the Universe.

To have created the Universe, the Creator must be able to manipulate and create our space-time, which means that the Creator must exist outside the Universe, above it if you will, in another dimension altogether.  By the way, it does not matter whether our Universe is finite or infinite.  The Creator, of necessity, will be of a higher order of infinity than our Universe. 

So my God is bigger than your God.