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| Existence, A Verifiable Reality |
After a Sunday of allowing myself the brief indulgence of wallowing in my perceived afflictions, I stumbled upon a special on a Discovery Channel special: Did God Create the Universe? I've always been a philosophy junkie so I was hooked immediately. The argument presented by Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our century, goes something like this: The law of gravity was the catalyst for the Big Bang Theory; the Big Bang literally spawned something out of nothing; therefore spontaneous creation is the reason that something, rather than nothing exists, that is why we exist. If this is indeed the case, there is no need to invoke the notion of a Divine Creator. Pretty radical stuff! Over the centuries human beings have been able to utilize the laws of nature to make mind blowing discoveries like learning that the Earth actually orbits the Sun and not the other way around. The laws of nature are observable and tangible phenomena that create the fundamental reality of our existence; a reality studied tenaciously by scientists in hopes of one day understanding it fully. The fact that other planetary bodies have been found orbiting stars other than our own sun also make "coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable." The Big Bang Theory marks the beginning of time in the history of our universe and if Hawking is correct, a God could not have created the universe because there would be no time reference for the universe to be created in. This theory simultaneously shreds the possibility of an afterlife. The manifestation of our physical existence is it. Are you grateful? Are you sad? Are you angry? What if this is all she wrote folks?We have three options …1) God exists outside of us; 2) God exists within each and every physical manifestation on Earth; 3) There is no God. Hawking asserts that the "Fact that we humans - who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature - have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph." In his best selling novel A Brief History of Time written in 1988 Hawking doesn’t reject the notion of a God because he reasons that if science unveils a complete theory accounting for human creation, then we can ultimately come to “know the mind of God.” If we can conceivably piecemeal a theory to account for Creation it puts us in the drivers seat reinforcing the yogic idea of oneness. Divinity rests within each and every one of us simply by virtue of our own unique existence. It is literally a full circle. Science and Faith in my view are two sides of the same coin. In understanding the makings of our universe, we can come to know more about our own creation and our own purpose and to me; the stormy search for self is contained within the stormy search for the creation of the universe. |
