Have you ever looked up at the night’s sky and wondered about the Creation and the beginnings of the universe, and what existed before God created all these beautiful stars, nebulae, and galaxies billions of years ago? What is beyond the edges of space, the edges of the very universe? Into what space is the Universe expanding at rates faster than the speed of light? How can the universe warp space and time to expand at such a rate, which is a supposed speed barrier in the universe?
All those are intriguing questions, but for the purposes of this article we will, for now, focus on this question: What existed before the universe erupted by the so-called Big Bang? And what part did God play in all this?
If the universe one day decided to erupt into what is now practically an infinite expanse that is always getting bigger, then there was something which existed outside the singular point that scientists theorize once contained all of the matter in the universe, a point with billions of times more mass than any black hole, all contained within a tiny, probably microscopic dot. All matter which we can detect would have been crammed into this infinitesimal space, and we aren’t going to argue whether or not this was the case, but let’s assume this was the case, which is fine with me as this doesn’t contradict anything in the Bible if you truly study what is written. I think we can then all agree that there was something that was beyond the edges of this invisibly small point, something that existed before the “Big Bang”: something much larger and older than the universe itself. What do we call this and how did it look?
Well, we currently can’t remember what it looked like, and that doesn’t really matter, but take some time to think about it and try to picture it. Imagine what space existed before the so-called “Big Bang”. What color was it? What did that tiny dot look like, if you were able to see it? Were there other tiny dots as well? Other universes? Was there any life at all at this point in time? And extra-universal life? Life that is possible outside of our universal context?
Can this expanse outside our universe have possibly existed without a consciousness to observe it? Think about this: if there was no conscious being to observe this universe before it was created, “Big Bang” or otherwise, then did it really exist? Well, according to most scientists, there was no life or consciousness before this time, so therefore what was there? The point of all of this, as they view all life as accidental and a chance happening, is that it could just as easily have not come to be, in their collective view. If life had not come to be, in any form, then would anything actually exist? If there was no one there to see, or sense in any other way, the universe, then what kind of existence would it have had? Really there could have been none.
For example, the only way the colors of spectrum exist is that God created in us these things called eyes that take the light frequencies, and translate them into what our brain interprets as color. Without organisms, or some other entity to observe these colors, they could not and would not exist.
Sound exists only because we have ears that sense pressure waves that our brain interprets as sound. Sound could not and would not exist without an observer.
The chemicals with which our noses and tongues come into contact send signals to our brains that interpret them as smell and taste. Those would also not exist.
Touch? That’s obvious. You must have physical contact and nerve cells to sense touch the way we do. You can see that those 5 senses would not even be, if there were no organisms to detect those stimuli.
So in a sense, as we know existence, the universe would not even exist without someone to observe it. There would not be any known way to perceive the universe, and as far as we, or any living entity is concerned, it would not exist. Therefore, there would be no reality. Needless to say, if there were no reality, then there would be nothing at all, which is impossible to even imagine. Can you imagine an existence without any existence? Well before the so-called “Big Bang”, without a God, this is what we would have because there would be no observer to validate and confirm the existence of the universe. All there would be is empty, void nothingness. Nothing. Nothing at all.
So what then? Is there any other way that the universe could be, without there having been a consciousness before a Big Bang? Well, have you ever heard of the great thought experiment called Schrödinger’s Cat?
If you aren’t familiar with Schrödinger’s Cat, Erwin Schrödinger postulated that if a cat was locked up in a box for one hour, isolated from observation, with an assembly set up, which has a slowly decaying radioactive material, that if even one atom is detected by a Geiger counter having decayed from this material, then the contraption would cause a hammer to be released smashing a vial of an extremely poisonous gas, which would kill the cat, we could not predict whether the cat would be alive or dead after that hour. Whether or not this material had decayed within that hour is a completely random situation, as there would be an equal chance that it would have decayed or that it would not have decayed in that hour, into the Geiger counter. Thus, there would be an equal probability that cat was alive or dead after that one-hour period.
Under the Copenhagen Interpretation of this thought experiment, the cat would be both alive and dead at the same time until the lid to the box was opened and the fate of the cat was revealed. We know, and most scientists agree, that this is impossible–the cat must either be dead or be alive. But, until the observer opens the box, in our minds the life and the death of the cat are blurred into an equal probability. Under this interpretation, unless there was a God, or until life began somewhere in the universe, the Big Bang would have both happened (creating the universe as we know it), and it would have not happened (resulting in no universe at all).
But, just as in Schrödinger’s Cat, where once the box was opened this probability collapsed into a definite state of life or death, as soon as there was either a being such as God, or life such as us, the state of our universe would collapse into a state of existence or non-existence; but, until then, we could not be sure the universe was actually existent.
Really, this is the Relational Interpretation, which says that the existence of the universe would be dependent on what the observer perceives. It isn’t a matter of the universe both existing and not existing at the same time, but a matter of existence being dependent on an observer. Of course, if it was a state of non-existence, then we wouldn’t be here discussing this topic. Therefore, at any point, for the universe to exist definitely, there must need be a conscious being somewhere to observe it.
In the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment, there was a whole world outside the box, so it was only the state of the cat that was in question, while the world kept on turning outside the box. In the scenario we are discussing, the entire universe is inside the box, and it is dependent on an observer outside the box to validate the state of us (the cat) inside the box. Thus, according to the Relational Interpretation there must be an observer observing from outside the box.
However, the Relational Interpretation assumes that there can be nothing outside the universe, and therefore, there could not be an external observer. This seems to be counter-intuitive because there must be some space into which the universe can expand, so this belief that there could not be an observer outside the known universe is merely a close-minded assumption, and this would seem to indicate that the universe did not exist until the first life began. This idea is a clear paradox, and would suggest that the universe could not exist.
Obviously, now we also have an observer inside the box as well, us, just as the cat could observe his own state, but this wasn’t always the case, and that would not work according to the Relational Interpretation. So what was there before the first physical life came into being?
The Objective Collapse Theories state that the cat, us again, could observe the universe itself and thus the quantum states would collapse into one reality. But there is a problem with this: without a God having pre-existed the universe, then the universe could not observe itself, and thus, still could not exist. If the universe didn’t exist up to that point, then life could not have begun. There had to be an observer present before the universe was formed to begin with.
So let’s call this observer God. If God existed before the “Big Bang”, then what could we say about Him? Well, being that the space into which the universe expands would have to be formless (otherwise we would keep having to explain how the next particular space was created and observed), then God would also have to be formless. This space would also have to be infinite, and God would have to be infinite. And if God is infinite in an infinite space, then He would also have to be omnipresent. If God is omnipresent in an infinite space, then the space into which our universe is expanding would have to be God Himself. And, and infinite being occupying all of an infinite space Who Himself is omnipresent, would also then be omniscient, and therefore omnipotent as well.
You cannot describe any of this without realizing that, at some point, you are going to get to a place that cannot be understood or explained by man, and therefore will seem like magic. But is it magic, or is it advanced science? It really doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you realize that there is a point beyond which you cannot explain scientifically. And if you cannot explain it, then how can you doubt it as not agreeing with science? All science and technology was viewed as magic before it was understood. If we can see scientifically that a God would be omnipresent, then all argument against omniscience and omnipresence go out the window.
Let’s continue this in a subsequent God in Science discussion, as this cold go on forever. I hope, by this point, we have established that in order for the universe to have existed for the billions of years it has, there must have been a consciousness that pre-existed it’s beginning. In future articles we will dig deeper into the nature of this consciousness.
God Bless
