Regardless of your scientific or religious bent, you have some sense that the universe as it is had some form of a start. True, you might think that science allows you to think eternal universes, but that’s irrelevant. Even in the instance of a couple of branes banging into each other to form a new universe in a multiverse system, the universe you know had some sort of start. The Big Bang is one kind of beginning. Creation by a Creator is another. Again, in either case, the key word is beginning. And if I may put on my Neoplatonic hat, I believe I know what both beginnings have in common. Give me moment.
Evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature as we know it (from two satellites, COBE and WMAP) tells us that the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago—as I like to say, give or take a week. A count of years by Bishop Ussher’s researchers, gives us a different starting point: 6,000 years ago. So, neither has a common start if we check how long the clock’s been running. Nothing common there. Where else can we look for commonality?
By your own life you know that the universe is a bit different today from the universe of yesterday. Your grandparents’ grandparents had their moments of joy and sorrow that are long gone. Your similar moments are part of the current universe. Obviously, the universe is a place of change. And for those who would deny that there were life-forms like dinosaurs living and becoming extinct long before humans walked the planet, the same changing nature of the universe should still be evident. After all, we have the bones of the critters that no longer walk the planet we walk. Forms that were and that no longer are.
Now, I’m not trying to convince either side to accept the other’s view of the beginning. I think it’s important to note that both sides will acknowledge the one constant throughout the history of the cosmos, the constant of change. Forms—here’s that Neoplatonic thing—come and go. And all forms current and past had some beginning and some change. So, what is it that regardless of our scientific or religious bent, we can recognize in a beginning?
The potential for new forms.
And that brings me to your personal cosmos. In your present, you provide the capacity for new forms to exist. So, does that make you a Creator of sorts? Yes, because the things you do in the present, which is all the time you really ever have, are the beginnings of what is to come. You are currently setting things in motion. Your grandparents’ grandparents did their creating, making a world and setting in motion the unfolding of a cosmos that included your form. And in some distant future, your grandchildren’s grandchildren will look to that beginning that dates to you.
Whatever you do sets in motion the existence of some future forms, forms of any kind: Physical, intellectual, social, spiritual. Every present is a beginning. Every present is a creation. Every present sets in motion processes that lead to new forms.
Let’s adopt the anthropic view for a moment. If anything in the makeup of the beginning were different, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading it. It was a very delicate balance in the beginning that allowed the fulfillment of potential forms that compose the current cosmos. I’ll borrow from John Leslie here. In Universes, Leslie writes about the fundamental forces:
“…force strengths and particle masses are distributed across enormous ranges. The nuclear strong force is (roughly) a hundred times stronger than electromagnetism, which is in turn ten thousand times stronger than the nuclear weak force, which is itself some ten thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity.”*
He says with regard to stars, “Gravity…needs fine tuning for stars and planets to form, and for stars to burn stably…It is roughly 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.”** Know what he is saying? At the outset, the cosmos (the Creation) had to be balanced precisely for the forms that now exist to exist.
And so also with the personal cosmos you create in your present. Any “imbalances,” any ratios with greater or lesser numbers will result in a “different” cosmos. You really have a great responsibility. Here you are in the here-and-now establishing the rules for forms, setting up the potential for a future than can exist only on the basis of what you do today.
You are the future’s Big Bang, the future’s Creator. You won’t be around to see all you put in motion, but you might still want to consider carefully what you do. Each of us stands at the beginning. Each of us establishes the potential for forms to exist—or not to exist.
*Leslie, John. Universes. London. Routledge. 1989, p. 6.
**p. 5.
Evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature as we know it (from two satellites, COBE and WMAP) tells us that the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago—as I like to say, give or take a week. A count of years by Bishop Ussher’s researchers, gives us a different starting point: 6,000 years ago. So, neither has a common start if we check how long the clock’s been running. Nothing common there. Where else can we look for commonality?
By your own life you know that the universe is a bit different today from the universe of yesterday. Your grandparents’ grandparents had their moments of joy and sorrow that are long gone. Your similar moments are part of the current universe. Obviously, the universe is a place of change. And for those who would deny that there were life-forms like dinosaurs living and becoming extinct long before humans walked the planet, the same changing nature of the universe should still be evident. After all, we have the bones of the critters that no longer walk the planet we walk. Forms that were and that no longer are.
Now, I’m not trying to convince either side to accept the other’s view of the beginning. I think it’s important to note that both sides will acknowledge the one constant throughout the history of the cosmos, the constant of change. Forms—here’s that Neoplatonic thing—come and go. And all forms current and past had some beginning and some change. So, what is it that regardless of our scientific or religious bent, we can recognize in a beginning?
The potential for new forms.
And that brings me to your personal cosmos. In your present, you provide the capacity for new forms to exist. So, does that make you a Creator of sorts? Yes, because the things you do in the present, which is all the time you really ever have, are the beginnings of what is to come. You are currently setting things in motion. Your grandparents’ grandparents did their creating, making a world and setting in motion the unfolding of a cosmos that included your form. And in some distant future, your grandchildren’s grandchildren will look to that beginning that dates to you.
Whatever you do sets in motion the existence of some future forms, forms of any kind: Physical, intellectual, social, spiritual. Every present is a beginning. Every present is a creation. Every present sets in motion processes that lead to new forms.
Let’s adopt the anthropic view for a moment. If anything in the makeup of the beginning were different, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading it. It was a very delicate balance in the beginning that allowed the fulfillment of potential forms that compose the current cosmos. I’ll borrow from John Leslie here. In Universes, Leslie writes about the fundamental forces:
“…force strengths and particle masses are distributed across enormous ranges. The nuclear strong force is (roughly) a hundred times stronger than electromagnetism, which is in turn ten thousand times stronger than the nuclear weak force, which is itself some ten thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity.”*
He says with regard to stars, “Gravity…needs fine tuning for stars and planets to form, and for stars to burn stably…It is roughly 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.”** Know what he is saying? At the outset, the cosmos (the Creation) had to be balanced precisely for the forms that now exist to exist.
And so also with the personal cosmos you create in your present. Any “imbalances,” any ratios with greater or lesser numbers will result in a “different” cosmos. You really have a great responsibility. Here you are in the here-and-now establishing the rules for forms, setting up the potential for a future than can exist only on the basis of what you do today.
You are the future’s Big Bang, the future’s Creator. You won’t be around to see all you put in motion, but you might still want to consider carefully what you do. Each of us stands at the beginning. Each of us establishes the potential for forms to exist—or not to exist.
*Leslie, John. Universes. London. Routledge. 1989, p. 6.
**p. 5.
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