Apr 20, 2014

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. That title of a farce musical play from the 60's really points out the irony when attempting to do one thing, something else happens. When particle physicists started to look at the universe and it's fundamental content, they discovered things they never, in their wildest dreams, ever thought they would find: they found that nothing exists except energies that form relationships between one another that create bonds that then become quarks that become electrons and neutrons, and eventually become matter, stemming from intense heat, or energies. The astounding thing they discovered is that nothing really exists as such, only powerful forces so delicately balanced to a state as to be unbelievable. As Albert Einstein put it, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one!”

How delicately balanced? Well, according to all the quantum math that has been proven correct in countless experiments, the forces balance out to an impossible degree. Try one part out of 10 raised to the 120th power. That is 10 with 120 zeros after it! If there were balanced to only 119 zeroes, life would not form! That truly boggles the mind.

Now that tells us something. These balancing acts do not just happen. Oh I know, many physicists insist that there is nothing to the thought of the Great Designer (they hate that term! And they hate the term God even more!), that it comes from the infinite cosmos of infinite universes stemming from — ?. Yes, they have no answer when you ask where did THAT come from. It just always was!

So we can really start to believe that some force greater than random chance started something that led to something else, and our universe, with all its quirks and things, appeared. Yes it is messy, it is strange, but it is an actuality that can not be denied: you and I are here to observe it. At least I know that I am here, and I assume you know you are here reading something I wrote. (Yes, this can become very convoluted.) So it is true that it is really present.

So! What does that bring us? What does the universe mean, and why was it brought into existence? Well, the ancients used many stories to tell their version of how this world, as it exists, came to be. The Adam and Eve story was the Israelites attempt to explain the messy world. The major problem we Deists have is explaining why how truly messy things are as they are. How could there be a God of Love, if all of life is made by consuming other lives? How could we call that God Love? The Adam and Eve story is one attempt to explain it. By saying all was perfect before hand, and when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they were ejected into the messy world that we all find ourselves in as punishment. This is not a bad story, and it is an attempt to explain why everything is based on a violent base: the term 'top of the food chain' is an apt term: we devour everything.

It was understood by the Israelites that their God was somehow a God of Love, who loved them very much and would protect them always. They did not understand that God loves all peoples and creatures, but they understood that God loved them. But their lives were not great, and they needed an explanation that could explain away all their problems, for they realized that if their God is so great, they would have had no problems in life, as their concept was that their God was THEIR God, and no one else's, so they made a great story to fit. This is a good explanation for a peoples of a limited knowledge of the universe of almost 4000 years ago, when their story began.

But this story does not fit our times, not with all the knowledge that God has given us to understand the fundamentals of the universe. We know that there was no time when everything was perfect, so that place called paradise could not have existed in reality. We now have some understanding of life, how life is a consistent force that is self contained, not assumed, but is a force in itself. We do not understand the foundation of life, but we do know that if certain carbon based molecules come together with sufficient force and sufficient water and warmth, and some unknown cohesion factor, life is formed.

There are many students in laboratories attempting to duplicate that wondrous result, but so far no one has been successful. Suddenly from all the forces around, an amoeba was formed, and life began, over four billion years ago on earth. The primary sign of life is that it is self-duplicating, that it forms more amoebas like itself and starts to grow. That is life as we know it.

However, there is another form that some have dared to call life: that is the fundamental structure of the forces that we call matter, energy, anti-matter, and anti-energy. These forces of such intense nature, together with the quantum virtual forces, plus the dark matter and dark energy, all of which make up the known universe, which includes that force called gravity, can be considered the fundamental form of a set of Life that holds everything together that is our universe. Remember: E=mc(2) (Energy equals Mass times (the speed of light, squared).) Mass and energy are equivalent and transmutable. This holds true for all that is. Even the virtual energies that are present, as a form of mutual forces from one source to all other sources, have an equivalency in mass. All of these are present, with positive and negative forces so tightly balanced out as mentioned above, that the end result is the universe as we know it, just right for the eventual growth of life, and lo and behold: here we are, you and I, discussing the nature of Life itself.

Thus Life is vibrantly present always, and everywhere. That is the fundamental nature of string or “m” theory development, and is the hum of the universe, the “Om” sound of the universe, the background hum that echoes equally throughout the universe, all that we can see and all that exists beyond our event horizon, that is, where light traveling at the speed of light can no longer reach us. The background hum is the same everywhere, never changing, just present, coming from all directions. No matter how our radio telescopes point, they receive this same background hum.

One Way of Looking at the Nature of God

The universe consists of Life. We call God a being, and all our theologies understand God is a vibrant being filled with Life. What could be more true? How could anything be more right?

That God is Life is so fundamental that we do not even think about it. We think of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all forms of life and energy. Our prayers and worship forms are filled with this terminology, no matter what our faith background. Thus we say God is Life without saying it, and yet some are horrified when we come right out and say: God is Life!

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p style=”text-align: center;”>God is Life.(But We have no idea what Life is.)

Our universe is Life. Our universe was spun out of nothing, but it consists of Life. Nothing but Life. Our science has said this, but science has no answer to the fundamental question: What is Life? And likewise: what is the universe? Oh yes, we can tell you how old the universe is, we can tell you pretty much how it started, we can describe various phases of the universe, but can we tell you the Why and What of the universe? No! Why the universe? We have no idea, and dare not ask that question.

Well, the universe is the source of life: the actions of the universe set up the conditions that produce active life, culminating in humanity, the observer of all things. From that vantage point, the universe came into existence so that you and I could be alive today and have this discussion.

Thus it is clear, from science, that we are part and parcel of the universe, and the universe is the incubator of conscious life: you and me! And life comes from the universe, thus making the universe Life, and since all came from the ultimate force,

God is Life.

This now begins to explain our universe. All is Life, reaching out and melding to eventually reach out to produce a conscious being, that being able to observe self and ask: “Who am I?”, the ultimate question, the question that I suspect has been asked ever since the first conscious being walked this earth. I believe these emotions were felt even before words to express thoughts were created, at times when staring at stars, or other wondrous sights, when thinking was accomplished with pictures, not words.

So we now begin to see the reason for the apparent messy state of the universe. Life begets life. Only Life begets Life. Therefore to exist, life must gather its energy forces from life.

Now, I have said that everything is filled with life. Yes, rocks and the structure of the earth is filled with life. So. Why do we have to kill things like other creatures, or even plants, to live? Well, everything is life, like I said. Where do plants come from? They gather their food from the soil. Where does soil come from? Soil is the decomposed plant life, but it also comes from decomposed rock. Where does rock come from? From the core of the earth, solidified mud, the molten core of the earth, and similar sources. All of these are sources of life.

As is the gift of water, that simple source of two parts oxygen and one part hydrogen, that is the fundamental component when combined with carbon produces active life. So the products of our earth, rock and water, produce soil, which produces plant life, which when consumed by active life (creatures) become that active life, and when that active life is consumed by conscious life, becomes conscious life, you and me. And when the conscious life loses its life force, it returns to the dust it started from, the foundations of stars, and the cycle begins again.

What a wondrous cycle. Life begets Life, never ending. We see that the cycle of life, seemingly so messy, is wondrous to behold, complete in itself, as a cycle of God becoming.

So now we ask the next obvious question: why would God bother to produce this example of Life known as our universe, culminating in conscious life? And why is conscious life so messy?

I have other musings on God at my journal on God in Beliefnet.com, under Dave434.