When in science you face new evidence you discard or revise your old theories no matter how much you have grown to love and cherish them. This is what happened to me lately, but first let me to tell you about my theory and how I came to love and cherish it for many years but must discard it now.
It all began one day when I threw my hands up in the air and asked in despair: "But why does God need someone like you to tell me about Him?" I was yelling at a Jehovah Witness who aggressively proselytized where I worked and got under my skin and the skin of everyone else.
It also happened that this was a time when I was beginning to formulate a theory about existence, and the experience with the overzealous Jehovah Witness served to speed up my thought processes and to move them along.
Like everyone else, I began my spiritual, philosophical and scientific journey with the view that because there is a Universe, there must be a Creator who put it all together. But concurrent with this view, I was aware of the fact that men who said they were in charge of telling humanity about God were characters that did not display saintly qualities. This situation, together with the activities of the religious co-worker prompted me to discard the spiritual approach and to concentrate more on the philosophical and scientific ones.
To formulate a coherent view of existence I had to answer two important questions: First, how can there be a creation without a creator? Second, what was there before the Universe began – that is, before the Big Bang? Eventually, I managed to construct a model that answered both questions, and here is how my thinking evolved.
A child discovers the law of conservation of matter at an early age. It realizes that a toy does not appear out of nowhere and so if there is a toy, it must be that mom or dad brought it from somewhere. The child also realizes that a toy does not disappear into thin air by itself. Therefore if the toy is not seen, it must be that it is hidden somewhere.
When older, the child goes on to generalize that if something exists, someone must have made it. As adults, such notions become so ingrained in us we end up believing that nothingness is the normal state of things. It follows that because the Universe exists, there must be a God to have created it.
Extending this line of thinking further, some people then ask: but where did God come from? At this point the few who anoint themselves experts on religion step forward and respond that God is eternal; He has always been and He will always be. Because God has these attributes, His powers are absolute and they are boundless.
But then comes the admission that despite all of that, God needs intermediaries like themselves to tell the rest of us about Him and to do His work. And while the self anointed characters do the work, God stays hidden from humanity for no reason that can be explained or made to look and sound reasonable. What is going on?
In the face of this apparent absurdity, I was left with only the philosophical and scientific options as the means to answer all questions relating to the origin of the Universe. I began with a notion that was advanced by scientists decades ago, one that said a single particle or a bundle of energy having the right characteristics could have been responsible for all that exists.
The thing exploded in a Big Bang and evolved into the Universe we observe today. After much elaboration by physicists and by mathematicians, the notion became a full blown theory and was formulated under a myriad of names such as Unified Field Theory, Super Symmetry, String Theory, Theory of Everything, et cetera.
To express these formulations, the scientists worked backward in time with equations that eventually broke down as they approached the moment of the Big Bang. Thus, the scientists never said what was before the Bang or where the initial particle/energy came from. And to this day, these questions stand as two puzzles that beg to be resolved by science or by something else.
For a time I thought I had solved the puzzles because one day, I was hit with an idea that seemed to answer both questions. I thought that mathematical probability must have been here before the Big Bang, and the probability was fifty/fifty that either something existed before the famous Bang or nothing existed.
However, since time stops when there is nothing, the nothing never really existed for any length of time because the time it took for the nothing to exist would have been measured as zero. Therefore something must have always existed and, contrary to the instinct we grow up with, existence and not nothingness must be the normal state of things.
And then I went on to theorize that something could have existed for less than a nanosecond and disappeared to be replaced by something that existed for more than a hundred trillion years and disappeared to be replaced by something that existed for any length of time and disappeared, and so on for ever and ever.
Each of those things may or may not have had the required characteristics to evolve into a universe such as the one we inhabit today but at some point a particle/energy possessing the right characteristics came into being and exploded in a Big Bang to evolve into the Universe we have today – which is what the scientists theorized long before me.
Thus, to my way of thinking such as it was at the time, we had a Universe that created itself by probability alone, a Universe of which we, humans were but a small part. And this was enough to make us both the creator and the creation rolled into one.
The consequence of this theory was that we were suddenly free of the notion that God needs intermediaries to stand between Himself and the rest of us, intermediaries like the much despised characters who reap heavenly rewards as they live in luxury here on Earth.
Furthermore, no longer was God delegating power and authority to mortals, or handing out perks to those who are more likely to turn devilish than turn saintly. In fact we, humans, had it within us to rise to the level of the divine by being ourselves, or sink to the level of the devil by pretending to speak for a God that insists on being hidden from us come hell or high water.
Thus you can see, dear reader, why I cherished this theory and loved it for a long time. Alas, I must discard it now because new evidence has come to light which indicates that there was something before the Big Bang and before probability.
I don’t know what to make of the observation or how it may fit into the scheme of things, but what I see and cannot ignore is that Bill and Hillary Clinton were here before the Big Bang and before probability.
Thus, what these two need to do now is develop and radiate the sort of grace which will lift them to the level of the divine. This act will prompt the faithful to worship them in the manner they always wanted to be worshiped.