© 2015 Antonio Moya
© 2015 Urantia Association of Spain
In a universe as vast and complex as ours, it must be very difficult for God to have completely hidden his hand. Somewhere, clues to that hand must be visible or deducible.
(Reasonings and deductions outside of faith).
In his book entitled “The Encounter with Reality,” Vicente Ferrer says the following:
Clock found in the jungle = X.
One can ask many questions about it: Why is the clock there? Who brought it, or put it, or lost it there? How did it get there?, etc. But the ultimate question is: Who made it? Who made the clock?
The clock was obviously made by a watchmaker. If there is a clock, there must necessarily be a clockmaker. A clock can’t grow on a tree.
The immense clock of the universe = X.
The ultimate question is: Who did it?
If there’s a small clock, there’s a small clockmaker. If there’s a huge clock, there must be a huge clockmaker.
You can always say that the universe is eternal and that it doesn’t need anyone to have made it.
I find it hard to believe that “no one” did it. “No one” equals “nothing.”
Without a “who,” there is no logical answer.
I often think it’s all absurd. If there were nothing, we’d be much better off. We wouldn’t have to give so many explanations.
It would be logical that there would be nothing here: no universe, no men, no God, no nothing.
But here we are. What are we humans doing in this world?
Without God, we are alone. Without God, my companion is Nothingness.
Many claim that “God doesn’t exist,” and they’re just fine with it. Not only is there no God, but there is absolutely Nobody. “Nobody” corresponds to Nothingness, right?
(Up to here the quotes from Vicente Ferrer).
There should be NOTHING here: no universe, no men, no God, no nothing.
If there is something—and there are quite a few things—it is because “something” or “someone” has been there since always (since that something or someone could NOT have arisen from nothing.)
Why is there something, instead of nothing?
There are four possible answers to why there is something rather than absolutely nothing:
Reality is an illusion. This option was ruled out centuries ago by the philosopher Réné Descartes, who said, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes argued that if he was thinking, then he must “exist.” In other words, “I think, therefore I am not an illusion.”
Reality created itself. In evolution, this is sometimes referred to as “spontaneous generation”—something that comes from nothing. But you can’t get something from nothing. Since “something” can’t come from “nothing,” the alternative that reality is something that has self-created is also ruled out.
Now, we’re left with only two options—a reality that is eternal, or a reality that has been created by something that is eternal. An eternal universe or an eternal Creator. The 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards summed up this dilemma this way:
From a scientific perspective, scientists admit that the universe had a beginning, and everything that has a beginning is not eternal. In other words, everything that has a beginning has a cause, and if the universe had a beginning, it had a cause. The fact that the universe had a beginning is underscored by evidence such as:
Today we know that no star can shine infinitely. It would run out of fuel. An eternal universe is incompatible with the existence of irreversible physical processes.
One of the scientific proofs that demonstrates the non-eternity of matter is the transformation of some radioactive elements into others. If matter were eternal, there would no longer be potassium-40, rubidium-87, or uranium-235, since they would have already been transformed into argon-40, strontium-87, and lead-207, respectively. If radioactive potassium and uranium remain in the world today, it is because the thousands of years necessary for them to be transformed into argon and lead, respectively, have not yet passed, and therefore they cannot be eternal. It is well known that half the uranium contained in a rock is transformed into lead after 4 billion years. It is also known that if uranium still exists, it is a sign that it has not existed for an eternity, since in that case everything would have been converted into lead, and there would no longer be any uranium left in the world.
Another key element that demonstrates the non-eternity of matter is hydrogen. As anyone who has studied even a little chemistry knows, hydrogen is the basis of all other elements more stable than it. We do not regress from a more stable element to a less stable one. Thus, it would be impossible for the universe to be eternal: there would be no hydrogen left. Indeed, hydrogen is converted into helium in a continuous and irreversible process. If this were to happen from all eternity, all the hydrogen still burned in the stars would have been used up by now, since the amount of hydrogen in the universe is limited, and what is lost cannot be replenished.
IF GOD DOESN’T EXIST, THEN…
If there was ever a time when absolutely nothing existed, nothing could exist now.
But something exists now.
Therefore, there never was a time when absolutely nothing existed—or to put it another way, something has always existed.
What has always existed?
We only have two options: either the impersonal universe (composed of space, time, matter and energy), or an eternal God.
If God doesn’t exist, then He didn’t create the universe. Therefore, the universe wasn’t created. So either the universe spontaneously arose from nothing, or it is eternal.
The first of these alternatives is evidently absurd, because nothing, by itself, can arise from nothing. Nothingness does not exist, and therefore cannot be the cause of any being.
(Some scientists believe that the universe arose from a “quantum vacuum fluctuation,” and that this possible explanation would make the existence of a creator God unnecessary. These scientists confuse the “quantum vacuum” with metaphysical nothingness. If this “quantum vacuum” is capable of “fluctuating,” then it is clearly something, not nothing.)
So, is the universe eternal?
How to know?
We deduced above that the universe is NOT eternal. But let’s see if we can delve a little deeper into this. First of all, it’s worth defining what the universe is.
What exactly is the universe? What makes up what we call the “universe”?
What we call the universe is an immense collection of suns, planets, satellites, and comets, grouped into very large units called galaxies. And there are thousands of galaxies in the universe.
Where is this universe located?
The universe is housed within space and time.
Everything that exists within space-time is finite (not infinite), and is temporal (not eternal), meaning that it is born, grows, lives temporarily, and disappears.
The suns that form galaxies are born, grow, live temporarily, and die.
Planets are born, grow, live and die.
Trees are born, grow, live and die.
Animals and humans are born, grow, live and die.
All are temporary and finite.
Everything that is born has a beginning. Before it was born, it did not exist. If it did not exist, it has no being of its own. Therefore, it has necessarily received it from Another.
The first suns that formed the first galaxies were born sometime in the past. Before that moment, they didn’t exist; there were no suns or galaxies in space. The universe therefore had a beginning (it’s not eternal).
Another way to test whether the universe had a beginning:
Suns and planets are continually changing; that is, they are born, grow, move, are consumed, explode or diminish, and die. Galaxies move away or closer, change shape, etc. Plants, animals, and humans are constantly changing: they are born, grow, develop, live, and die. Everything that makes up this universe of energy and matter is continually changing, from galaxies to humans.
To change is to move from a potential state to an actual state. Something that existed potentially yesterday manifests today. Yesterday it was one way, and today it is another.
Nothing that exists potentially can actualize itself.
Everything that is potential requires the existence of a Being in action to actualize that potential. Everything that is potential, therefore, necessarily has a Cause, which actualizes that potential. Thus, everything that changes does not exist by itself; it has a Cause that gives it birth, that takes it from the potential state and introduces it into reality.
Everything that changes, if we go back in time, has had a beginning, it began to exist at a point: what is today a seed and will become a tree, what is today a cell and will become a living being, etc.
If something has a beginning, before that beginning it did not exist. If it did not exist before, it does not have permanent being by itself. If it does not have being by itself, it has necessarily received it from Another. Therefore, everything that has a beginning needs a Cause to bring it into existence.
The universe of galaxies, stars, and planets changes. It has ancestors; its existence comes from Another. The universe is not a cause, but an effect. It is the work of Someone.
Is the universe intentional?
Premise No. 1: Everything that begins to exist requires a cause.
Premise #2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: The universe requires a cause.
This premise is self-evident. There is no such thing as nothing. If something had a beginning—came into existence—then something had to bring it into existence. Some try to define “nothing” as a quantum vacuum, but even vacuums are something: they have quantum energy and particles. There is no empirical evidence that “something” arose from absolute nothingness.
(At this point, opponents of monotheism ask, “Then who created God?” but this is a misinterpretation of the premise. What requires a cause is that which begins to exist, not that which exists. God is eternal, therefore, he did not begin to exist. Since God did not begin to exist, he does not require a cause.)
The author of this article does not believe in the Big Bang theory, nor does he believe that the universe was born with the Big Bang. But if that were the case,
What emerged at the moment of the Big Bang?
The Big Bang theory states that space, time, and matter were created at the moment of the Big Bang. Therefore:
All these things began to exist in the first moment.
What could have caused space, time, and matter to come into existence?
So what should be the Cause?
Dr. Craig mentions that we are only familiar with two immaterial, non-physical, non-temporal realities:
Now, abstract objects do not cause effects in nature. However, we are perfectly aware of the causal capacities of our own minds. For example, your mind can cause your hand to be raised. Therefore, by the process of elimination, we are left with a Mind as the cause of the universe. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains—no matter how improbable—must be the truth.”
“There is no effect without a cause,” or “every being that begins to exist is caused by another.”
We cannot accept that a building or a dress made itself; we would laugh at anyone who told us they appeared “out of the blue” without the intervention of an architect or a tailor.
The world is an effect incomparably more complex than a dress or a building.
That the world can be formed by blind forces seems as impossible as, for example, obtaining Don Quixote by throwing a box of alphabetic characters to the floor.
If there is a clock, there must be a clockmaker who made it.
It is absurd to attribute the marvelous order of the world to chance and coincidence, because just as what characterizes intelligence is order, what characterizes chance is disorder.
Acting at random is tantamount to acting blindly, without knowledge of the means or without the correct arrangement of them to achieve the desired end. To pretend that the prodigious order of the world is the blind and capricious work of chance is absurd.
It would be ridiculous to pretend that by randomly drawing the twelve letters of the word “intelligence” they would all fall in a straight line and in the correct order to form the word.
It would be even more absurd to pretend that this would happen every time they threw themselves.
But the absurdity would reach its peak if one tried to explain in this way the order of the thousands of letters that make up a book, without the slightest intervention of a hand and an organizing intelligence.
Well, it is much more absurd to admit that the world was made by chance, because the order in it is immensely more complicated than that of a book, an order that has been maintained for thousands of centuries.
The contingent entity is that which can be, and also not be.
From the point of view of existence, it is that which may or may not exist.
All the entities that surround us, and we ourselves, are contingent: we exist, but we could not exist.
Contingent being does not have its reason for being in itself. This means that contingent being, in and of itself, is only a potentiality for being, a capacity for being, which, depending on whether it is actualized or not, will actually exist or not.
The “potential entity” is the capacity to be; the “actual entity” is the actual being. For example, an architecture student is a potential architect, who will actually become one when he or she completes his or her studies. This also means that every contingent existing entity is a potentiality to be that has been actualized.
Therefore, if the contingent being exists, it finds in Another the reason for its existence. This means that it is caused.
Principle of causality: “every contingent being is caused.”
Therefore, the valid formulations of the principle of causality are: “Every contingent being is caused by Another.” “Everything that begins to exist is caused by Another.” “Everything that does not have its reason for being in itself necessarily has it in Another.”
Indeed, seen from another angle, if the contingent being is a potentiality to be actualized, it is clear that this potentiality to be cannot actualize itself, it cannot actualize itself.
“Being” is more than merely “being able to be,” and therefore, “being in act” is more than “being in potency.” And since what is not given is not given, and therefore the higher cannot be explained by the lower, it follows that every actualized potentiality of a being presupposes the prior existence of a being in act that actualizes that potentiality.
A contingent being is a being that does not exist on its own; its existence has come from Another. A rose that exists today and disappears tomorrow, or that might never have been born, is a contingent being. The beings in the world are all contingent. Experience teaches us that they appear, last a while, and then disappear.
Contingent beings appear in two ways:
To explain the appearance of contingent beings we have three hypotheses:
Let’s examine these three hypotheses.
Conclusion: The series of contingent beings is not rationally explained except by the existence of a Necessary Being, who did not receive being because he had it from himself, and who communicated it to others. We call this being God. This argument for the necessity of a Necessary Being is the clearest and most convincing way to prove the existence of God.
Statements by Frederick Charles Copleston, Jesuit priest, addressed to Bertrand Russell:
“A “contingent” being is one that does not have within itself the reason for its existence, which is what I mean by being contingent. You know as well as I do that the existence of any of us cannot be explained without reference to something or someone outside of ourselves—our parents, for example.”
“If there is a contingent being, necessarily there is a Necessary Being.”
“What we call the world consists simply of contingent beings. That is, of beings lacking a reason for their own existence. I say that if there were no Necessary Being, nothing would exist. A being that is outside the series of contingent beings.”
“If you add chocolates, you get chocolates and not a sheep. If you add chocolates to infinity, you will presumably get an infinite number of chocolates. Thus, if you add contingent beings to infinity, you will still get contingent beings, not a Necessary Being. An infinite series of contingent beings will, according to my way of thinking, be just as incapable of being their cause as a single contingent being.”
Opinion of Eduardo Battaner (scientist):
“I am convinced by the contingency argument: the Universe might not exist, I might not exist… that is, we are all contingent; there must be something that is NOT”.
If all things are contingent, then there must have been a moment when the first contingent thing arose. If there is no Necessary Being to give birth to that first thing, it must have come from “nothing” through “spontaneous self-creation,” which is not only illogical but also repugnant to a basic metaphysical principle: “That which does NOT exist, only begins to exist by virtue of Something that ALREADY exists.”
We find in nature things that can exist or not exist, for we see beings that are produced and beings that are destroyed, and therefore there is the possibility of their existing and of their not existing. Now, it is impossible for beings of this condition to have always existed, since what has the possibility of not being, there was a time when it did not exist. If, then, all things have the possibility of not being, there was a time when none existed. But if this is true, then nothing should exist now either, because what does not exist only begins to exist by virtue of what already exists, and therefore if nothing existed, it was impossible for anything to begin to exist, and consequently now there would be nothing, which is evidently false.
Therefore, NOT all beings are contingent, but among them, there must necessarily be one that is Necessary (that has existence by itself).
“Man is not a miraculous being, but merely the very vulgar king of a vulgar planet orbiting a vulgar sun, in a vulgar corner of our galaxy, which is nothing more than a very vulgar galaxy. Furthermore, the moment we are currently living in, although exceptionally important in our particular history, is only a vulgar moment in the history of the universe. Such moments are, were, and will be lived by a multitude of other particular histories as vulgar as ours.”
The principle of vulgarity, whenever it can be proven, is confirmed. And it has been proven a great many times. The meaning of the principle of vulgarity is that all singularity is illusory and attributable to our ignorance alone. The logic of the principle of vulgarity assumes that all knowledge, no matter how elevated, is situated at a vulgar level of total knowledge.
If we follow the principle of vulgarity to the end, this inhabited planet is just one vulgarity among millions of other inhabited planets, from one end of the universe to the other.
Everything in the universe is vulgar. There is nothing unique or special about it:
If there is one galaxy, there are millions of galaxies.
If there is one star, there are millions of stars.
If there is one planet, there are millions of planets.
If there is one moon, there are millions of moons.
If there is one man, there are millions of men.
If there is one humanity, there are millions of humanities.
If there is one inhabited planet, there are millions of inhabited planets.
And all of this… for what? There must be a very good reason for all of this, right?
Everything that happens happens for a reason, and when it seems like events or things have no explanation, it’s because we don’t yet know the reason. In other words, there is a rational explanation for every event. Let’s give an example to illustrate this logical principle:
In short, the principle of sufficient reason tells us that “everything has a reason for being”.
The principle of sufficient reason indicates that nothing can be “just because,” since everything obeys a reason.
The principle of sufficient reason does not accept that random events can occur.
The principle of sufficient reason tells us that “every object must have a sufficient reason to explain it.” Everything that exists, exists for a reason, “nothing exists without a determining cause or reason.”
Everything has a reason for being. Intuitively, we don’t accept being told that something is just because, that is, without any reason for being. If a clock appears in the middle of the jungle or on the far side of the Moon, the most bizarre explanations can be offered; one might even say that aliens left it there. The only explanation that can’t be offered a priori is that the clock is there just because, that is, without any reason for being, without any explanation.
Everything has an explanation.
We don’t need to know WHAT is the sufficient reason for something, to know that THERE IS A REASON.
The existence of the universe has a reason for being.
The presence of man on Earth is due to a reason, even if we do not know it.
We only have two options:
Or we are the product of chance (i.e., of a self-existing material universe),
Or we are Someone’s project.
Have we ever received that information?
The Urantia Book says yes. And it expressly explains this extremely important matter.
It indicates that there have been four visits from Above to humanity: The Planetary Prince, Adam and Eve, Melchizedek and Jesus of Nazareth.
If in the past we have received this information from Above, but due to the circumstances of this planet that information has been lost, or distorted, or diluted, or adulterated, we will hardly be able to recognize it today.
What’s both strange and surprising about the LU is that it pays exquisite SPECIAL attention to this matter, to these four epochal revelations. It devotes many pages to describing them.
According to the LU, period revelations can be classified according to the types of projects they promote:
1st.- The first type of epochal revelation is a cultural and spiritual revelation. Such revelation includes spiritual teaching and also addresses social, economic, and political issues. The Planetary Prince’s retinue had a college of revealed religion with a gospel to proclaim; but they also taught how to irrigate fields, trap wild beasts, choose a mate, improve tribal governments, etc. etc. Adam and Eve taught the basics of religion and worship, but they also established a school system, worked for racial uplift, and promoted cultural progress: economic development, trade relations, civil government, etc.
The first and second epochal revelations were intended to cover the full range of human needs: material, intellectual, and spiritual.
2nd.- The second type of epochal revelation, exemplified by Melchizedek and Jesus, is a specifically spiritual revelation. This second type does not involve itself in social projects or cultural advancement.
The third and fourth epochal revelations were of this type, they were exclusively spiritual missions.
What then is the reason for our existence?
According to the LU, we learn through experience and progressively improve ourselves, from world to world, until we reach the presence of God. We participate in the plan of ascension that the Father has designed for us.
(Author’s Note: When I include quotes or concepts from the LU, it is to show and highlight that the LU itself is an indication that this universe is possibly intentional).
This world we live in, even if you’ve never thought about it, is a school. Yes, yes, it is exactly that and nothing else: it is a school.
And why do I say this planet is a school? Well, it’s very easy to deduce:
What do we do here every day of our lives, from the moment we are born until we die?
Learn. Learn continuously. Learn not through theory but through experience, experiencing all kinds of situations and the most diverse problems.
We start from scratch, with zero knowledge and zero experience, and we are learning until we leave this world.
And what do we learn? Well, all sorts of things: to be children, siblings, friends, teenagers, boyfriends and girlfriends, parents, professionals, neighbors, selfish, altruistic, sociable, selfless, wise, patient, moral, ethical, experts, etc. etc. We learn a little of everything.
If this world is a school—and it is—any other planet inhabited by a humanity similar to ours will also be a school. From which it follows, by simple deduction, that all the inhabited planets that there may be in the universe must also be schools of learning.
“The whole universe is one vast school,” states the UB, UB 37:6.2.
This seems to be the purpose of our world and the universe: to be both home and school, a home where we live and a school where we learn.
This world, then, has a meaning. The meaning is to learn by living. To learn the lessons of patience, tolerance, altruism, honesty, morality, etc., that we will have to use elsewhere in the universe.
The meaning of life, the purpose of life is to learn, to learn in general, and to learn values in particular.
The fundamental questions—who am I? (identity), where do I come from? (origin), and where am I going? (destiny)—are integral to being human.
We see people born, live a short time, die, and disappear from our sight. No one knows if these people go anywhere, if there is life beyond this one. No one knows.
Without resurrection, life has no meaning. And there is no future.
It is the essential aspect of the meaning of life: resurrection, continuation.
The meaning of life must be transcendental, or it must not exist. Because if not, what’s the point of living, learning, progressing, improving, only to die and disappear? We are born empty, and we die full. If there is no transcendence, if there is no continuation, if there is no future, then what’s the point of struggling, learning, and improving? What’s the point of this life?
Science destroys the meaning of life when it claims that we are the product of chance, that there is no hope.
Only God gives meaning to life and explains the existence of the universe.
Man, without God, lives disoriented, he does not know what he is doing here, nor where he is going next.
All components of creation have a reason for being.
Everyone has a task to fulfill, which justifies their existence.
Nothing exists without meaning. Nothing is here by chance or carelessness.
Man is ascending the scale of goodness.
There is a whole movement of improvement towards a goal.
There is an ascending order that escapes chaos.
This world has a meaning.
In the world we see that there is always someone who does things: someone who makes war, someone who makes laws, someone who makes books, someone who makes chairs…
Things don’t make themselves. Nothing makes itself.
Behind a “what” there is necessarily a “who.”
Who signed the Treaty of Versailles, who declared war, who defeated Napoleon, who invented the telescope, who paid for the meal, who brought the letter…?
Who invented energy, who created space, who designed the human body…?
WHO MADE THE UNIVERSE?
In this dual universe, all things are dual.
Everything has its pair of opposites, and these opposites are of identical nature, differing only in degree: male and female, positive and negative, high and low, cold and heat, day and night, hate and love, fear and faith, imperfection and perfection, finite and infinite, temporal and eternal…
If one exists, the other exists, because everything is dual.
There is always an opposite side, a complementary one, a counterpart.
In two complementary elements, each one lacks something that the other has.
If there is thirst, there is water. Thirst is a lack of water, and thirst exists because its counterpart, water, exists. If there were no water, thirst would not exist. One cannot exist without the other.
If man exists, then woman exists. If woman (or man) didn’t exist, the existence of the other would have no meaning.
If imperfection exists, there is perfection. If good exists, there is evil. If materiality exists, there is spirituality.
If there is a thirst for knowledge, there is knowledge. If there is a thirst for friendship, there are friends. If there is a thirst for peace, there is peace. If there is a thirst for love, there is love. If there is a thirst for God…
If there is a thirst for God, it is because there is God. If God did not exist, the thirst for God would have no meaning.
Man thirsts for life, for immortality. If he has that thirst, it’s because there must be a counterpart, a reality corresponding to that particular thirst. Nothing in the universe exists without being related to its counterpart. Water and thirst form a whole. Without water, there is no thirst, and without thirst, there is no water.
Every spiritual thirst necessarily requires its counterpart, without which it could not exist. Without God, there would be no thirst for God. There is thirst for God because there is God. The counterpart exists without fail.
For if you are thirsty, there is water, if you are thirsty for God, there is God.
C.S. Lewis expounded “The Argument from Desire” as follows:
“Creatures are not born with desires unless there is a satisfaction for those desires. A baby feels hunger; for there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; for there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; for there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a need that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most reasonable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The need for God is there, because there is a satisfaction for that need.
It is a fact of experience: If I don’t have a handkerchief, I can’t give it.
Consequently:
A lower thing CANNOT give birth to a higher thing.
The lower thing only gives birth, at most, to lower things like itself.
That is why the higher cannot be explained by the lower.
The causes cannot be inferior to the effects.
The effects cannot be greater than the causes.
An effect must resemble its cause. Only the Mind can create the mind.
An impersonal, purposeless, meaningless, and amoral universe cannot accidentally create beings with personality and obsessed with purpose, meaning, and moral laws.
Lee Patrick Strobel has commented: “I essentially realized that I would have to believe that nothingness produces everything; that non-life produces life; that randomness produces synchronization; that chaos produces information; that unconsciousness produces consciousness; and that non-reason produces reason.”
You can’t give what you don’t have.
Modern science knows many things about nature. Many things.
It’s not about scientifically proving the existence of God, because the study of God is not the object of science but of theology. Science studies nature. Science is responsible for answering the “how” things happen. The “why” and “what for” are the proper domains of philosophy.
Why doesn’t science tell us if there are indications that this is an intentional universe? Because science doesn’t look for intentionality in the phenomena of the universe. If science doesn’t look for that intentionality, it can’t find it.
Science does not seek God, therefore it cannot find him.
That’s why scientific hypotheses and theories don’t consider the possibility of God. On the contrary, they pretend that everything happened on its own, that everything works on its own, that reality emerged… from nothing.
Scientists do NOT find God because they do not look for him, not because they do not have sufficient evidence to know that many things, physical or chemical, cannot be the product of mere chance.
They don’t look for intentionality in the universe. They only look for physical causes, not intentional or mental ones.
“Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator.” (UB 102:6.9)
“Neither should science discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that man’s intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, finally taking origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling.” (UB 102:6.8)
“Mindless causation cannot transform the rudimentary and simple into refined and complex elements.” (UB 130:4.5)
It is the opinion of this writer that there are scientists who are capable of supporting any of the most bizarre and unreasonable theories (even those that go against all logic and coherence), as long as they do not consider the possibility that this universe could be intentional.
The Big Bang coming from nowhere is a good example of this.
The essence of Reality, of this solid and material Reality that we see, touch and know, and that scientists, materialists and atheists say is all there is, the ultimate essence that makes up this solid, tangible and touchable Reality is —don’t miss it— invisible.
Let’s see if this is so:
Energy, the energy that underlies all material things, is invisible. Space, the emptiness in which we live and move, is invisible.
Life, that life that animates our material body - which would otherwise be dead - is invisible.
The mind, that intelligence with which we think and through which we are conscious, is invisible.
Personality, that unique and individual seal that we manifest, is invisible.
But…
No one knows what energy is, how to define it, or where it comes from.
No one knows what space is, how to define it, or where it comes from.
No one knows what life is, how to define it, or where it comes from.
Nobody knows what the mind is, nor what personality is…
If the essence that makes up Reality is invisible, what will the Origin of that essence be like?
“The universe is comprehensible and we understand how it works.”
This is the title of an article that Alicia Rivera published in the newspaper “El País” on March 5, 2013.
-“Yes, we understand how the cosmos works, its fundamental properties. The universe is understandable,” says astrophysicist Rashid Sunyaev, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
Question: “Do scientists understand how the universe works?”
Answer: “Yes. The universe is understandable, and we know its general properties, but within our horizon—that is, what we can observe, although we can’t say what lies far beyond.”
The universe is understandable because it is governed by scientific laws; that is, its behavior can be modeled. But what are these laws or models? The first force described in mathematical language was gravity, Newton’s law of gravity, published in 1687.
The world is understandable
Science assumes that things and events in the universe occur in consistent patterns that can be understood by studying them through diverse methods and different disciplines. We scientists are convinced that through the human intellect, and with the aid of instruments that extend the senses, people can discover patterns throughout nature. The knowledge gained by studying one part of the universe is applicable to others. (Dr. Pedro González)
Science also assumes that the universe, as its name implies, is a single, vast system in which the basic rules are the same everywhere. For example, the same principles of motion and gravitation that explain the fall of objects on the Earth’s surface also account for the motion of the Moon and the planets. These same principles, with some modifications over the years, have been applied to other forces and to the motion of every object, from the smallest nuclear particles to the largest stars, from sailboats to spacecraft, from bullets to light beams.
The American astronomer Harthaway said: “The cosmos is a vast array of creation and order. This creation and order can only be due to two causes: either chance, or plan. But the more complex and difficult an order, the more remote is the possibility that it is chance.”
Chance is chaos, the absence of any rule or law. “The entire history of science has consisted of a gradual realization that events do not occur in an arbitrary way, but reflect an underlying order.” (Stephen W. Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time”).
The Universe, from every angle, both in its origin and in its evolution, is governed by precise and determined laws.
Timeless Laws
The rationalist philosopher Leibniz (1646-1716) asked a question that has become a classic: Why is there something, rather than nothing? Today, knowing that in the 10-43 seconds of the universe our physical laws already prevail, perhaps the problem focuses more on the timeless origin of these laws. Then, the fundamental question could be: Why are there laws, rather than the absence of laws? The forces that acted in the first seconds of the universe are the same ones that act today; in a universe where everything has changed, they remain unchanged.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” (Albert Einstein).
Science is intrinsically reformable. Today’s scientific certainties may be tomorrow’s error. Nevertheless, the fact that there are laws—whatever they may be—and not chaos, means that the universe is intelligible. And such intelligibility would not seem subject to radical revision. Indeed, as Einstein said, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. And where better can such intelligibility originate? In a universe that is as it is by chance, or in one that is the work of a Supreme Intelligence?
The LU expressly states in this regard:
To assume that the universe can be known, that it is intelligible, is to assume that the universe is mind made and personality managed. Man’s mind can only perceive the mind phenomena of other minds, be they human or superhuman. If man’s personality can experience the universe, there is a divine mind and an actual personality somewhere concealed in that universe. (UB 1:6.7).
I asked my friend Rafa Mondéjar to break down the previous paragraph for me, so I could understand it better, and here is his answer:
“Well, I will briefly try to explain to you where my thoughts led until I reached that partial satisfaction.”
“In paragraphs prior to the one mentioned… and in others scattered throughout the Book, it is explained that a personality can only be known by another personality, or what is the same, that thanks to the fact that we possess personality, we can know other personalities… And by extension of that concept, a bird, an elephant or a dog, which lack personality, cannot understand the personality of a human being.”
«Let us now turn to the question of the phenomena that occur in the universe. When it rains, the bird, the elephant, and the dog can perceive that it is raining, but they do not understand why. Primitive man did not understand it either. But modern man does understand why it rains, he understands the phenomenon, he knows that it responds to certain laws. The moon and the planets move. And perhaps some of the animals mentioned can perceive that these lights are not always in the same place, but, in any case, they do not know the cause and probably do not even question it. Modern man has investigated and knows that the movement of the moon and the planets responds to precise laws. And these precise laws are detected by man thanks to his mind, notably more advanced than that of the bird, the elephant, or the dog. And if man detects and understands these universal phenomena or laws thanks to his elevated mind, and, in addition, he understands more and more universal phenomena or laws (quantum mechanics, for example) as he experiments, observes and reasons, that necessarily means - applying the same analogy that we applied when speaking of personality - that these laws must also come from an elevated mind, probably higher than that of man because, as has been said, man does not stop discovering new phenomena and laws as his mind grows.
«Let us now analyze, from that perspective, the aforementioned paragraph, which, in its first part, says the following:
To assume that the universe can be known, that it is intelligible (that is, that it can be comprehended or understood BY THE MIND AND ONLY BY THE MIND), is to assume that the universe is made by the mind and directed by the personality.
“Well, from that perspective, and with the clarifications you and I have made in the parenthesis, I no longer see any problem. I don’t know if you still see it.”
“Good old Einstein certainly couldn’t explain how the laws that govern the universe could have come out of nowhere.”
(My comment) - Albert Einstein’s statement: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” I think he means that “if the universe had come from Nothing, it should be incomprehensible to us. If we can understand it, it is because it was thought, designed and manufactured by a mind that uses mental models similar to ours, and that mind can only be the mind of God.”
“Every intelligent effect has an intelligent cause” (wrote Rujo, an Esperantist from Paraná, Brazil).
Antonio Moya
April 2015.