All scientists are in an existential race against their own logic. It’s a beautiful thing to see, like watching a tortoise trying to outrun an arrow. As I write they are frantically writing research papers and running massive experiments under the ground in Switzerland to better explain the universe, and put religion to bed in the process. What they are beginning to realise is that by going ever deeper into the past to discover what happened in the earliest moments of the universe they have come up against their greatest, and insurmountable, obstacle: the existence of Time.
Think about that for a moment; the actual existence of Time (it deserves the capital letter). This is not how many hours of the day there is, how many times our planet revolves around the sun or indeed has any relation to anything that is currently going on in the universe. There is no universal ‘clock’ which one day began ticking. Time should be, by definition, the oldest force in the universe, except that something must have created it to exist in the first place.
So everything that exists does so within time and its limitations. A rock is formed in time and will be broken apart by time into the individual atoms that once collected together over millions of years. Time allows the universe both to exist and to be observed. It can be warped in strange and mysterious ways, sometimes even slowing down the universe around it, but the universe never changes it, it always changes the universe. This can lead to some serious 4am drink-addled thought and that almost obligatory college student question: what was there before?
It doesn’t matter if you believe the universe was formed by the big bang or is an experiment in an aliens’ laboratory, the reality is that religion is the only one to provide an answer to this huge question. Of course this can be seen as another example of how the existence of ‘God’ can explain everything good, bad and just plain weird.
Amazing escape? That was God.
Terrible tragedy? Blame the Big Guy upstairs.
The creation of the entire universe and every sentient being within it? God, obviously.
The problem with scoffing atheists is that this last answer might very well be true - with the main evidence in support of this theory being the existence of time. The existence of the universe itself is not evidence enough, because scientists can then point to the multi-verse theory (the multi-verse theory is that there are multiple universes of which ours is just one of almost infinite others). If they start to get annoying they’ll point to the exponential growth in computers and say we could actually be living within an experiment by future human beings.
Again however, the question still applies. What was there before these alternative explanations and what brought it into being?
Actually, let’s not mince words, not what brought it into being, what created it? Because that’s what we are talking about, a creator, a higher being that we could never have any concept of and could never understand. The closest thing we can come to this is to believe in its existence, or not.
Now we are not talking about a creator that sits on a cloud, listening to prayers and handing out thunderbolts. It doesn’t even need a capital letter. This creator is simply functional. As far as we are concerned it created the matter and the laws of physics and let the universe get on with it from there (and I bet it wouldn’t even understand the Third Law of Thermodynamics.)
There is only one other thing we can infer: it exists outside of time. This has to be the case or otherwise it is simply another creation of the universe i.e. it exists within the same time as we do. As an aside, you can get wrapped up in the ‘who created the creator?’ argument but this is why the existence of time is so essential – no matter how far you go back there always has to be something that existed outside of time, and therefore created it.
So, Mr. Scientist, riddle me this and riddle me that, who is the creator that pulled time out of its hat? Don’t diverge; argue a tangent or just plain bash religious folk as silly. Tackle the question head on as if it was your final research paper.
We atheists have all the time in the world.