The Universe et-al is nature at work. Immutable laws govern every aspect of it, from sub quantum to galactic events. Scientific observation consistently and with growing precision, confirms these laws are the same in the entire known Universe.
A deviation from these laws has never been scientifically recorded.
With our capacity to imagine, our very existence in the framework of natural laws unleashes feelings of fear and loneliness as to what it all means, if anything.
Logically applied reason concludes we are the end result of incredible chance but many harbour a different viewpoint. They rationalise the evidence to fit their psyche and accept as true any clues that point to an outside design. They consider these clues as self-evident even though more valid explanations have greater plausibility.
The only reasoned conclusion able to be drawn, is that if an outside force exists, it has never been recorded as interacting with the Universe and we cannot make assumptions for it or about it.
We know that nature is indiscriminate and impersonal in rewarding or punishing its own components.
Again we can only conclude that if there is an outside power, then it is devoid of concern for its suffering creation, it is cruel on purpose or we are ignorant of such purpose. These are not tenable propositions, especially in a moral sense, and are reasonably conclusive evidence against the existence of such an outside power.
The arguments for accepting an outside force were somewhat stronger when explanations by science were basic and unknown. It would be injudicious to consider that we have not evolved with a propensity to accept those arguments by retention of long practised evolutionary traits and generational education. A study of other cultures shows this to be true very clearly and very unambiguously.
We find ourselves as being a conscious part of a system that has regard for only natural laws. Science recognises four basic natural forces and finds no evidence of a supernatural force. History supports this without contention.
When reason is used it can only be concluded that nature just is and no other conclusion can be reached.
The universe was once nothing and now it is everything. Nothing has therefore a propensity to be something or we would not be. Nothing does not, so it seems, mean a state of inactivity or nothing as we understand the word. This is a language difficulty of our own making to explain a concept of absence of anything. It is a concept and our understanding of that concept is obviously incorrect beyond daily observation.
The universe is comprised of “matter” separated by distance, or space. Before the “big-bang”, there was nothing or no space, only a predisposition for space and something. Hard to imagine as this is, that we exist is proof of it. That we violently erupted from nothingness is a fait accompli argument that the precursor of nothingness allows for it.
Nothingness is evidentially something-ness even though its definition and explanation elude us.
As far as it is known, the circumstances that brought us into being as a species has not been repeated anywhere else in the cosmos. Some un-contactable and distant part of the Universe may tell a different story, but this remains unknown. It therefore can be concluded from this that we are reasonably unique or most likely alone in the vastness of space.
The universe began approximately 15 billion years ago. Whether it will eventually implode or end in an ever expanding state of entropy is still unknown. Time is dependant on the existence of the Universe, but nothingness is not. Nothing existed before the “big-bang” and will exist after the “big-crunch” or similar. This state of nothingness is most likely the antecedent of a continual number of universes existing in progression or in a state of differing dimensions.
The mystery of all this will most likely forever remain, but it is not too much of a guess to suggest that some kind of infinity is at work. It is a definite possibility that an infinite number of universes have, will or do exist even though that phrase in itself is nonsensical using present knowledge. The point is that an infinite number of universes are very likely to be the nature of Nature.
Initial life is the correct combination of chemicals and energy in the appropriate environment. The chances of this fortuitous occurrence happening and then evolving into a conscious us are mind-bogglingly huge. That we exist is only evidence that it can happen and not how often it will. Given an infinite number of universes, life is therefore not only a possible result, it is an inevitable one. How many universes have failed experiments in this regard is open to imagination, but it may be billions of billions. Seemingly in paradoxical fashion, life will also be produced an infinite number of times.
Humanity has limited itself by introducing a “God” as the alpha initiator of this Universe. In doing so, it has also restricted proper and ever expanding reasoning processes. As a result, our true position in an infinite nature has been stifled and misrepresented.
With our incredible uniqueness at last recognised, heralding the utilisation of reason as a replacement for the gods – a new era of peace and happiness would begin.
Recognising the true nature of existence is therefore a vitally essential component of our mental evolution in this our one and only Universe.
By David Nicholls