So this is actually something I wrote on a friend's post, but I decided to share it here as well. Don was asking about the Big Bang, or God, and generally the beginning of everything as we know it.
"Whether you are dealing with science or theology, two terms which are not as mutually exclusive as many people think, you always end up in the same place at the beginning. More precisely, you end up in one of two same places. Either something came from nothing, or there is something that has always existed.
Big bang: What happened before the big bang? We have theories about a singularity, or a big bounce, or any number of other strange quantum physics exercises that wrap your brain in more dimensions than a hypercube on steroids. If the big bang was the start of everything, then where did the bang come from? If the bang came from a singularity, where did that singularity come from?
Did the singularity always exist? Did the singularity come from nothing? Did something else cause the singularity?
If we go with the big bounce causing the singularity, where reality is infinitely expanding and contracting, you still end up at the same starting point. The bounce had to start somehow. It started in an expanded form, a contracted form, or somewhere in the middle. Did this form come from nothing, or does it have no cause, and is thus preexistent? The bounce theory seems strange if you try to claim that part of it was preexistent. Why did it start bouncing?
The same thing happens with God. Either God came from nothing, and as such is part of reality like the rest of us, or God is preexistent and is the cause of everything else.
We are arguing from the middle of the chain, trying to figure out the beginning. We know that we exist, that reality exists. We also know that the reality we see is not permanent, therefore it cannot be preexistent. If God is preexistent, then God is permanent. God does not exist within reality, and does not follow typical scientific laws such as entropy. There is no point at which God will not exist, no point at which God cannot be God.
If God is not preexistent, and simply springs into being from nothing along with reality, then God is part of reality itself. We know that reality is not permanent. You end up in a place where each reality, assuming bounce theory or anything similar, has a different god, and that god is simply an aspect of reality. In this case the ‘god’ of a reality may or may not be sentient. The ‘god’ could simply be science, the laws that govern that specific reality until it ends.
Personally I subscribe to the preexisting God theory. If given the choice between believing that at some point everything sprang from nothing, or that there is some core piece that exists and has no beginning, I find it easier to believe in a preexistent piece.
As Michael’s (another person in the initial conversation) “Schrodinger's universe” theory goes, we are trying to observe the universe. If God comes into existence at the same time as the universe, then we should be able to observe God. In that case, we would be looking for the guiding principles of reality, which is really science in pure form.
A preexistent God, however, cannot be proven by anything within existence. God can only be hinted at by what we can see and what we can deduce. The only way we would have proof is those points where God directly interacts with creation, and even then we could come up with multiple explanations. Imagine if there was a race of people living inside a tennis ball that is being thrown around. They know that the ball is moving, and they can make guesses as to why, but that’s the best they can do without leaving the tennis ball itself.
And this is all way before you get to anything specifically involving Christianity."
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Stephen Mayo lives in Montana with his wife, daughter, corgi, and three cats.
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