The First Stage of the Universe: not the first moment of Existence but the first moment of Purposive
Existence
[excerpted
from the article "The Instant Universe:
And God Said: "Let there have been a big bang"]
The First Moment—from the
Teleological Perspective
With the design of the big bang ready, its creation can be
initiated. Until the emergence of a free-willed intelligent being from this
teleological designed big bang, however, everything that occurs is
preprogrammed, an acting out of the mechanistic laws of nature with some
quantum randomness thrown in. The truly “interesting” activity begins only with the onset of moral choice. Only
then the purpose of the universe can begin to unfold.[22] In the teleological
sense, Creation is completed not with the emergence of the big bang but rather
fifteen billion years later when the first intelligent moral being emerges and
decides to accept the burden of moral responsibility for its actions. With the assumption of moral
responsibility and the acquisition of free-willed consciousness, purposive
history can begin.
The Instant Retroactive Universe
Would the creation of a big bang be the most reasonable
method of creation of such a purposive universe? Creation of a big bang
involves a delay of billions of years until the free-willed being evolves and
the desired moral activity begins. It would seem that the more reasonable [2] procedure would
be the creation of the universe at the stage of the emergence of a free-willed
human being. This would juxtapose the creation of the universe with the
choice of the burden of the knowledge of good and evil.
This could be accomplished, for example, by a Divine
mental extrapolation of the big bang conditions (mental “fast-forwarding”) up to the moral stage of the
universe, followed by actual creation at that point. In this sense the
reasonable creation method is the creation of an “instant universe” at the moral stage. Thus, paradoxically, the physical
creation of the big-bang-emergent universe actually occurs not at the big bang
but with the emergence of the first moral being.[23]
This radical idea that the universe begins its physical
existence only with the emergence of a moral being interestingly finds support
and parallel in the suggestion of quantum metaphysics that the universe can
emerge into true physical reality only upon emergence within it of a conscious
being, who, according to our thesis, is a free-willed
moral consciousness. As eminent physicist John A. Wheeler states, the emergence
of a conscious being retroactively causes the emergence into reality of the big
bang itself![24]
Laws of Nature: “And God Rested”
Why create a big bang universe, with its billions of
galaxies and myriad plant and animal species? Why not create moral beings in a
small universe centered on them?
Many people have speculated on the seeming hiddeness of
God. Explanations include the necessity to protect the freedom of, and give
meaning to, moral choice. Why bother creating a small human-centered universe
for the purpose of moral confrontation if free will is compromised by the
obviousness of God’s presence? There are also aesthetic reasons for the
creation of a complete big-bang emergent ‘natural’ universe rather than a small ‘special’ universe. Constant intervention can
be reduced by designing ‘laws of nature’ to allow the universe to be self-operating.[26] For self-operation and regularity there must be
consistency and coordination within the entire universe. For this to be the case, there has to be a unifying factor. An elegant method
of finding this common denominator is to find an entity which, unified in
itself, could give rise to the desired universe. The big bang together with the
laws of nature is such an entity.
When this big bang evolves or is extrapolated forward to
produce later stages of the universe, all these eventual states are inherently
regular and synchronized since all is derived from one entity. Everything
within the resulting universe operates according to the laws of nature, and the
desired moral stage of the universe eventually emerges, this time as a unified
self-consistently-operating state of a ‘natural’ universe. It is a universe where humanity seems to arise
as the result of natural selection, but where this selection is part of the
Divine plan. As stated in the closing paragraph of
Thus from the war of Nature, from famine and death, the
most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production
of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a
few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most
beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
What Is the First Stage of Creation: the Big Bang or the
Emergence of Adam?
As stated
previously,
for a purposive universe created as an “instant universe” the first stage of real existence is when purposive
activity begins, so that the initial point is not the big bang but rather the
emergence of free-willed consciousness capable of moral choice. There is
another reason why a purposive universe of this sort would be considered as
beginning at the moral stage rather than at the big bang. Since there are many
quantum paths along which the universe could develop, including many paths not
leading to the emergence of life or to moral beings, in order to have the universe
fulfill its design it is necessary to guide the development of the big bang
along a path leading to the emergence of the desired free-willed being. In this
case the emergence of a moral being is the last stage of direct Divine
intervention in developing the universe and hence the last stage of Creation
and the first stage of the ‘natural’ existence
of the universe. Thus, even in a universe physically starting with a big bang,
it is the emergence of the moral being rather than the big bang that is the
first stage of independent existence.
From the point of view of the Creator, and in the context
of a teleological oriented creation account, the emergence of a moral being
crowns creation. Thus, from the points of view of quantum randomness, quantum
metaphysics, and teleology, the emergence of a conscious being—not the emergence of the big bang—is the first stage of the universe.
Perspectives on the Age of the Universe
The age of the universe may be considered from various
perspectives:
The non-physical teleological perspective
The universe originates with God’s decision to create or to plan its
blueprint, when time did not exist, and so the age of the universe is not
defined.
The physical teleological perspective
The universe begins with the emergence of a newly created
instant universe containing a moral being; evolutionary anthropology places the
emergence of such a being probably not more than 100,000 years ago, and this is
therefore also the maximal physical age of the universe.
The quantum metaphysical perspective
The universe emerges at the moral stage, but retroactively
from the big bang, so that at the moral stage the universe has no clearly
defined age.
The conventional scientific perspective
The universe begins with the big bang. At the stage of
containing moral beings it is approximately fifteen billion years old.
In describing the creation of a complete universe at the
moral stage, a creation account written from the teleological or quantum
metaphysical perspective might imply simultaneity of the emergence of human
free-willed consciousness with the completion of the creation of the universe
or of its blueprint.
This provides a motivation for the juxtaposition of the
creation and Eden accounts in Genesis [25].
Conclusion
As we have seen, in some sense our axiom suggested at the
outset intuitively implies the central features of the traditional model of
Creation. In this model Creation proceeds as described by tradition, and its
physical development occurs as outlined by science.
From the teleological perspective, the first stage in
Creation is to draw up the blueprint of both the desired type of moral being
and the desired type of universe at the stage of the emergence of moral beings.
Then comes a backwards extrapolation of the moral stage universe blueprint to
find the right type of big bang to lead up to this stage.
After the design of the big bang from the specifications
of the moral being and a universe that can support moral choice, the resultant ‘teleo-derived big bang’ is mentally extrapolated to the
future along all quantumly possible paths of future development. Each possible
path ends either in the emergence of a moral being, whose exercise of free will
introduces non-predictability and therefore stops the extrapolation—or results in the end of the
universe without the emergence of a moral being.
After extrapolation to the moral stage, the universe is ‘created in potential.’ In the quantum metaphysical sense
this might be through a collapse of the wave function caused by the Creator’s consciousness observing the
universe. “God
saw it was all very good.” From the human perspective, the universe is brought into
physical (human) reality by the created moral being’s exercise of free-willed
consciousness and its existential awareness of the external universe, and of
itself, as separate entities.
From among all the possible (potential) moral universes at
the pre-moral stage, one is selected—the best one for fulfilling the purpose of Creation. “God saw all that He had created, and
it was very good.”
In the instant retroactive universe everything proceeds in
the most direct, logical, and aesthetic way. The Creator can withhold
direct intervention after the ‘laws of nature’ take over upon the emergence of a
moral being. “And [all] the Heavens and the Earth were complete….and God…rested”[28]
Consequently, a natural-law-obeying
fifteen-billion-year-old instant universe emerges into physical reality
unfolded from a moral-stage-teleoderived big bang. To paraphrase Genesis: And
God said, “Let
there have been a big bang.” And it was so.
.......
[25] Furthermore the OFTEN OVERLOOKED SECONDARY “CREATION ACCOUNT” of Genesis 2:4-9 “… on the day God made Earth and Heaven…… God
formed man”
(—emphasis and ellipsis mine) imply Creation simultaneous
with the emergence of Adam.
[26] A universe without natural law would dissolve into
chaos. Stars and human bodies alike would lose their structural integrity. Natural
law also allows regularity of operation so that moral beings could know the results
of their actions and therefore be morally responsible for them.
[27] Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species”
chap. 15, last paragraph of the book. Available online
at:
http://www.literature-web.net/book.php3/originofspecies
[28] Genesis 2:1-2.