We begin at the very beginning—the big bang—a very good place to start.

There was nothing. Then, from out of an infinitely tiny singularity, a dot far too small to be seen, there emerged enough energy to make this entire universe. We call its emergence the big bang. And everything about it was one. A unity. All that was then still is now. It merely keeps changing shapes.

We suppose the emergence to have been explosive. Though no watcher was standing there to confirm such supposition, the science-derived evidence—which is quite good—credibly indicates it was indeed explosive. Everything was flung outward, and is still expanding outward even unto this very day as is well proven by science’s increasingly exquisite measurements of the red shift, et cetera

Both science and religion agree that all this happened at the very beginning, but their agreement pretty much ends right there.

It was an enormous amount of energy, enough in fact for a portion of it to form itself into the alternate forms of energy that we call “matter”—i.e., multi-atom molecules and the periodic table of the elements and suchlike—which would in turn self-organize by evolving into everything that we now see across our universe. Interstellar gas clouds to moon rocks to meteorites, it’s all matter which is composed of that original energy. The energy seems immaterial and the matter seems material, though the material matter is made of the immaterial energy so they’re actually both the same thing. With this scientists can agree, though they constantly argue about details.

Where did the energy come from? Let’s hypothesize that it came from God, because, since all energy came from “outside” our universe—the universe that didn’t exist until it came—what else can possibly be surmised about such ultimate, colossal, Creation? Try to envision that in your mind: creation of a universe arising from out of an explosive big bang that emerged from a microscopic dot of nothingness—nothing at all—just like magic. Magic indeed. With this, religion can agree and in one way or another does so every day, especially on Sundays throughout Christendom.

Let’s suppose that the energy that became our universe not only “came from” God, let’s say it was God—which of course means that our entire universe is made from a part of God. Many human stories speak of God’s energy; many say God is energy. This logically implies a separation—i.e., our universe exists in a place, or at least perhaps a “condition,” which is other than—not the same as—the place or condition where God is (meaning the rest of God, the main part of God, the Godself which is not in the least diminished by sending through the big bang just enough of Godself to create our piddling little universe).  

Religion is not sure this sort of thinking is relevant to its self interests, which are considerable, and science openly doubts it, though neither science nor religion has actually thought much about it in the sensible context posited here.

If everything in the universe consists of a part of God that God sent through the big bang, then it follows that everything in the universe is God—though, logically, it must lack God’s completeness since it is now “apart from” God. Our universe thus is incomplete. What does that imply?

Since our human concept of “God” is, and intrinsically must be, an infinite and total completeness—for what else can any God concept be other than complete?—then we may reasonably hypothesize that striving to become once again complete is the universe’s purpose. With this hypothesis science violently disagrees—insisting, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, that “in the nature of things” there can be no such thing as “purpose.” A great many scientists actually believe “purpose” and “free will” are impossible ideas, even as they purposefully, willfully, drive themselves to work each morning. (Note that “believe” is a religious term; faith-full religionists “believe,” whereas scientists prefer to “conclude” and many truly believe that’s all they do.) Religions cannot be said to agree or disagree with perceiving purpose in the universe and its evolving components because, wrapped in the certitude of their miscellaneous thousands of doctrines and dogmas, such hypothesis rarely occurs to them at all.

Notwithstanding all that, and with such purpose now hypothesized and “on the table” in the methodical way science prefers, we may logically, reasonably, scientifically infer that everything in the universe—the whole and all of its parts such as galaxies, moon rocks, amoebas and ourselves, all being derived from the selfsame primal source of energy which is God—is striving to regain the completeness that was downsized when God thoughtfully, purposefully, sent only a part of Godself through the big bang. Neither science nor religion has ever considered this angle, given their preoccupations as they trundle along their separate and divergent merry ways, respectively.

From this it follows—ergo, thus and therefore—that if the universe is a living, alive part of God, even though it is now somehow and at least temporarily set “apart from” God through God’s own intention, and if the universe harbors aforementioned purpose to become once again as complete as it was before God set it apart, then all those pieces and parts of the universe—which, don’t forget, include rocks, water and grass, amoebas, squids, trees and flamingos and us—must also harbor innate purpose to raise the parts and the whole back up to the original completeness, once again, in some future destiny.

With this logical supposition that every living thing has a “raising” purpose built into its very instincts and genes, needless to say, both science and religion would quite fully disagree if such thoughts ever occurred to them, which in the main they don’t. Such thoughts are alien to their daily living customs, consensus, methodologies, manmade laws, doctrines and dogma, respectively.

The progression is to a “rising” concept. A built-in purpose to evolve toward greater completeness constitutes “rising”—i.e., ever upward, becoming more than one was before the rising. Millimeter by inch over millennia and geologic eons, progress has accumulated toward becoming more. And we see that this has always been and is now happening, self evidently, by simple comparisons—of our modern risen selves to our Homo habilis ancestors, of risen Homo habilis to the ancestors of dinosaurs, of those risen reptilians to early-life slime molds, and so on. Looking ever backwards we see clearly forward.

And, again self evidently, all this rising is indeed the case: e.g., the big bang’s hot-particle plasma rose to become atoms which, morphologically self organizing from the first, rose to become elements which self organized into gas clouds and galaxies and planets and life that arose from the inorganic Earth and further evolved to further rise from molecular biota to organic ferns, fish and birds, animalia to mammals and humanity. All this advancing complexity and diversity built up, emerged, arose, by random self organizing through the 13.8 billion years since that instant just before the big bang.

That instinctual striving to become more, which God imbued into the portion of Godself that God sent through the big bang, is succeeding. Self evidently, the universe and all its parts, including the human entity that is the most highly risen in evolution’s long trek so far, is still rising, still becoming more—though you wouldn’t notice it by following the daily news.

But evolution is not an old straight track, science will assure you, and science is quite right about that.

– more on this later –

© Sept 2022