He’s also a devout Christian who I met through mutual Christian friends about 25 years back, at Highlands Presbyterian. His sister Alice sang in the choir and was (is) a sweet girl, now a mother of three. Anyway, last week, Brendan and I fell into a discussion on the ear in Gaza. Brendan defended the Israelis, conflating them with Jews with ancestral rights, and I played the devil’s advocate. To be clear, I do not support the ethnic cleansing of any people from territory whatever the justifications. We all came from somewhere else at some time, and God didn’t promise anyone anywhere specific. Fact, not fiction.

Moving into less contentious waters, I asked Brendan what he thought of evolution, knowing his Christian background. Not surprisingly he adopted the position that many intellectual Christians prefer: Intelligent Design. Evolution was guided by a creator and, in Brendan’s case, negating the need for speciation from a common ancestor altogether. I threw in the usual counter argument about feathered bird-like dinosaur fossils and dinosaur-like birds. He looked a bit uneasy and just shrugged. He’ll get there.

“Look Brendan,” I replied. “It’s okay, I’ve been where you are once upon a time. Personally I do believe in a Creator, or creative force, who one might think of as God. It put everything in motion at the Beginning of time, perhaps the Big Bang, perhaps something else. The universe is unfolding accordingly.” Or words to that effect. He appeared sceptical. Another thought dawned on me.

“What do you consider the biggest realisation of the last one hundred years? In a philosophical sense?”

He grinned and shrugged. We were in the car park now and it was nippy, so I didn’t press him too hard.

“The expansion of the universe stupid,” I replied, grinning in turn. But the truth is that I meant it.  If the steady state universe model had proven to be true it would have told us nothing about the nature of time. Our best estimates of the current age of our expanding universe are around 13.7 Ga (billion years). Whilst an enormous, incomprehensible timespan, it is still finite, which tells us something. See my post on the nature of Deep Time which a few people enjoyed and commented on.

There seems to be a consensus amongst leading physicists and cosmologists that time is meaningless without stuff happening, more specifically meaningless without entropy. Stephen Hawking famously dubbed it the Arrow of Time if I’m not mistaken. From the commencement of the Big Bang it has been increasing. It is a measure of the disorder of a system.

Most of us now think of time in a relative sense, in weeks, days, months and years. Or we might relate it to an event – a certain moment in time when something momentous (or otherwise notable) happened. We do it all the time, more often than not, subconsciously.

However we divide up the years and months given to us in this lifetime, we can extrapolate backwards a finite number of times to the beginning of the known universe. To me this is profound. If you are lucky enough to live to be a hundred, then you have effectively lived for 13.7Ga/100 = 1/13.7x1e10 ths of known time in earth years, where e simply indicates raising one to the power of ten. While this is still an enormous number it is finite.

So what is remarkable to me is that we can also use our imaginations to conceive of a preceding universe or universes that may have been either shorter, equal to, or longer-lived than our own. Although hypothetical, it is a possibility. Some say we will never know due to constraints imposed by physics and energy, but regardless, we can still think about these possibilities, and what it might mean if they are true.

Personally, the idea of a universe predicated on fluctuations in energy in the precursor medium, was maybe the most powerful idea originating from the BBC series on the Universe. Truly thought provoking. The idea being that these fluctuations in energy imprinted themselves on the early expanding universe and created the macro-architecture of our universe, only now being appreciated by deep cosmic observation, akin to many million-light year strings of galaxies, or super-clusters thereof.

Following from this is the idea that each universe begins like a bubble from this primordial soup of fluctuating energy. Each may be slightly different, and the evolution and development of each may be determined simply by the initial state. What a thought.

At a profound philosophical level we might even consider it a necessary interrogation of all possible outcomes in a model involving a finite amount of energy expressed in terms of particles and forces.

We are, possibly, at 0 yrs + 13.7Ga, the most profound expression of our particular universe. Possibly not. The next most profound milestone, philosophically speaking, will be whether or not intelligent life exists elsewhere in our universe. If it does, as I expect we will discover, then it will say something profound about our model universe. If we can somehow prove that we are alone, that would say something equally profound. It wouldn’t prove the existence of a Creator, but would most certainly be interpreted as such by many theologians I’m sure.

Another idea stemming from this version of the multiverse is that a Creator may be tweaking his or her model universe at each iteration. But what a patient player they must be! At billions of years a pop, or more, impossible for us to comprehend. But then again, without knowing the limits in terms of time and energy we can only speculate!

These are wonderful times to live and speculate, because we humans have embraced investigation, science and the pursuit of knowledge, not as a means to an end but simply as a means. And, as such, to remain humble in the face of such enormity and unknowing.

It’s not too late to sign the petition against Israel’s participation while these questions remain out in the open. All who care about Europe’s ideal to be a place where law and order and human rights are held in the highest esteem, should think long and hard about Israel’s participation in this popular event.

Here’s the petition. Please sign it.

https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/eurovision_no_stage_for_war_crimes_loc/

With the final this Saturday time is running out!

I recently joined Bluesky, an upstart rival to X, formerly Twitter, developed by the creator of the former aforementioned App, now X, Jack Dorsey. Yes, take a moment to get your head around that seething mass of clauses! Why do I mention it? Well, because I went there out of protest against the megalomaniac owner of the “other place”, as Bluesky users like to refer to “it” (X). And boy did I find them en mass. Threads filled with MAGA-bashers and Elon-haters, giving each other the sustenance and support that “the other place” was evidently failing to do. Some even say as much.

And that’s all good and well, but this could be problematic in the long run, because as distasteful as Mr Musk and his acolytes are, X is still the direct descendant of Twitter, the de fact Town Square of the Cyber-verse. It still commands an enviable diversity of users of all political and economic persuasions. I fear that liberal voices may be retreating into an echo-chamber that is cosy but ultimately self-defeating. I go there for a bit of therapy but we need to take the fight to the enemies of free speech and democracy, even if it means allowing them to construct the arena and dictate the rules. Yes Russell Crowe, I’m channelling the spirit of Maximus Decimus Meridius in his battle with Joaquin Phoenix’s evil Emperor, Commodus. For, although the Emperor skews the game in his favour, Maximus fights with the fervour of the righteous, both die and justice is served! Oh god, did I just make a case for a glorious martyrdom? Perhaps history is cyclical after all.

I didn’t intend to write this post when I began, but there it is. Channelling too the spirit of John Crace and Marina Hyde of the Guardian. I do enjoy their satirical takes on UK politics. Perhaps I should confer the monikers Meridius Crace and Maximus Hyde, slayers of illiberal politicians and their nefarious cronies. Last, but by no means least, in my light-hearted analysis is my Instagram handle, one which I’ve had for as long as I’ve been signed up to the platform – ten or twelve years I imagine. It’s @blueskies_22. How about that!

Click on the post above for further information. Alternatively go to Amazon via the link below or Books2Read to find more eBook vendors.

Our host for the series is well known to the British public: the genial and no-nonsense Professor Brian Cox, medium height and slight in stature but looming large over all things physical and galactic on the public broadcaster.

As it transpired this 5 part documentary series attempted to throw a rather large net over the Cosmos, past and present. It begins with the current state of knowledge as regards our own star, the Sun (subtitled God Star) before zooming out to look at the search for exoplanets, firmly in the public eye after the staggering success of the Kepler Mission in the earlier part of the last decade. A broad look at the Milky Way, our home galaxy, is followed by an episode on those mysterious beasts known as Black Holes, and is rounded out by one entitled The Big Bang: Before the Dawn, in my view the most tantalising of the series.

Our host for the series is well known to the British public: the genial and no-nonsense Professor Brian Cox, medium height and slight in stature but looming large over all things physical and galactic on the public broadcaster. The last time I saw him on British telly was back in 2014 when I was last resident in the UK. A bit like his visage in Madam Tussaud’s in London, he remains enviably youthful despite being near on 54 years of age. To be fair a few extra grey hairs grace his healthy mop, but he is otherwise unchanged.

Okay, so what did I learn? I did not after all intend this to be a synopsis or critique of the series. For one thing I have been around long enough, and interested in the subject long enough, to see that the state of observational astronomy and the science behind it, has gathered pace since my childhood days digesting National Geographic magazine articles on these topics. Each episode incorporates actual footage of various probes and satellites blasting into space from various launch platforms around the world, mostly NASA and ESA missions, spliced with CGI animations of rockets zooming beyond the confines of our planet’s mottled envelope of air and cloud, accompanied by a suitably dramatic soundtrack.

Amazingly, conventional thinking amongst today’s cosmologists is that the Big Bang was in all likelihood NOT the beginning of time, but simply the beginning of the observational universe.

To be honest the pace of delivery of the current state of the science takes a back seat to the CGI animations of the probes deploying and unfurling solar panels and lengthy sequences of stars imploding, black holes enveloping stars and planets and even other black holes, galaxies swirling and primordial nebulae bursting into life as nuclear fusion first commenced billions of years in the past. The CGI stuff is cleverly interwoven with the real world Professor Cox moving sedately through various landscapes delivering his spiel on the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, exoplanets orbiting fiery stars in our cosmic neighbourhood, and the nature of the short-lived, massive blue stars which first populated the gaseous clouds of the early universe.

From a philosophical perspective, never mind a scientific one, there is much to chew over. Take for instance the beginning of time as we know it. I’ve read this elsewhere, for instance on Ethen Siegel’s excellent Starts with a Bang blog (Forbes online) where he tackles the debate from various angles. Cox discusses the latest thinking on the Big Bang and events around it in the final episode. Amazingly, conventional thinking amongst today’s cosmologists is that the Big Bang was in all likelihood NOT the beginning of time, but simply the beginning of the observational universe. Yeah, get your head around that.

At the heart of it is the idea of an early inflationary universe, around since the 1970s or 80s but the implications of which have, it seems, taken time to permeate through to the wider community of researchers and thinkers in the field. I want to explore the philosophical implications of this idea in a subsequent post, but for now do go and watch that final episode or read Ethan’s piece on how Physics erases the evidence of the beginning of our universe.

Till then, adios space farers!

The essential point being that subscribers to Simulation Theory (or rather, the hypothesis thereof – abbreviated to SRH) believe that the observable universe, from what you are seeing in front of you right now, to the furthest investigated objects billions of light years from our planet, have been engineered by an unspecified superintelligence, using an unfathomably powerful computer. It should be obvious why this is only a hypothesis, and begets various questions, such as –

• What sort of computer is this?
• Where is the CPU located?
• What are the bits and bytes being computed?
• And, most critically for me, what is the temporal and spatial relationship between the Creator (read, Superintelligence) and us, the created?

The basis of the SR view is a logical argument, one which is firmly anthropocentric in its fundaments. It goes like this: at current rates of technological advancement the execution of computer programs which aim to simulate some part of our lived and experienced reality (think The Sims franchise, Grand Theft Auto etc) will become indistinguishable from our ACTUAL reality. Conceivably, entities living within these simulations, humans included, will become sophisticated enough to develop consciousness and self-awareness. These entities will not know that they are in a simulation unless we choose to inform them, ergo we ourselves are most likely living in a simulation generated by superintelligent beings (relatively speaking) one rung higher in the hierarchy of realities. Because such simulations may be recursive, there could be an infinite number of hierarchies following some kind of exponential or geometric function. (see links at the end for further reading).

The SRH rests on the premise that computer simulations will become more and more realistic, will develop the ability to simulate matter at an incredibly high fidelity (think quantum level particle physics and phenomena like entanglement) and that human level consciousness will itself be simulated. I don’t believe in the argument/hypothesis for reasons that I will come to, but I can see the allure of it. From a logical perspective, its main strength is the observation that we humans are developing increasingly lifelike simulations of the world we observe, empirically speaking. In an age where conventional and traditional religious beliefs are in decline in most parts of the world it also gives adherents a sense of place and purpose. Whilst we might not live in Base Reality, as Elon Musk and others think incredibly unlikely, we are just as likely to be able to one day figure out who the simulators are and ‘break out of the Matrix.’

To my mind the SRH compliments the human ego, much as the Victorian view of the world did in the 19th century, whereby the belief that mankind was ordained by God to manipulate nature to his advantage, was ascendant. This is expressed in an emotive scene in the film The Heart of the Sea where the captain of a 19th century whaling ship, The Essex, proclaims:

“We are supreme creatures made in God’s own likeness. Earthly kings, whose business it is to circumnavigate the planet bestowed to us. To bend nature to our will.”

BENJAMIN WALKER as Captain George Pollard

I argue that conflating the exponential growth in human knowledge and understanding of our universe and the basic laws which govern it DOES NOT inevitably translate into the ability to fully and comprehensively re-create the lived experience of one human being, let alone the entire collective species. Let me break that down:

1. As I understand it the heart of a classical computer is the CPU or Central Processing Unit. It contains a semi-conductor chip imprinted with millions of logic gates which can be switched on and off connected by channels along which electrons whizz at incredible speeds (close to or at a significant fraction of the speed of light). The digital output of the chip is then translated via a user interface, through our speakers or our screens, using light or sound as an output. Based on the nature of the output the user can then interact accordingly using various devices (keyboard, mouse, touchpad, joystick etc) creating a responsive system capable of manipulation within certain limits as determined by the hardware.

My question to the SR believers is this: ‘How do you manipulate the smallest levels of our observed reality – the subatomic particles and forces like bosons and gluons, quarks and antiquarks? What is the architecture of the CPU which can do this?

For this reason I will stick with the empirical universe, the one that is measurable. After all it yields the simplest and, to me, the most logical explanation, one that has compelling mathematical and theoretical rigour. I refer of course to the theory of the Big Bang whereby our universe emerged from a singularity, a infinitely tiny, infinitely dense, region of spacetime which detonated some 14+ billion years ago. Cosmologists have pushed the mathematics of of this creative event back to within a miniscule fraction of time since the Big Bang singularity. Something of the order of the Planck constant (10⁻⁴³ s).

Without further evidence of an external superintelligence manipulating our observed reality we must conclude that we are living in a universe that came into being at a finite time in the past. The computer (or going a step further, the CPU) that the SR believers hypothesize IS nothing more or less than the universe itself and the bits and bytes with which it computes are the fundamental particles and forces as described by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Thus, to summarise, Simulated Reality is an interesting philosophical conjecture and metaphysical question but not one that can be assessed scientifically. It is both stimulating and exciting to take such hypotheses seriously but at the same time to see them for what they are – hypotheses. It seems to me from the buzz around the whole idea of SR in recent decades that it has also been conflated with worries over the existential threats perceived to emanate from advanced AI. Hence the self-proclaimed Technoking of Tesla, Elon Musk, has allegedly been spending millions on contingencies should a post-AI apocalypse come to pass.

Anyway, I digress. Serious science will be dealing with the search for a unifying theory of physics whilst serious philosophy won’t. But the latter could provide fertile ground for the next generation of cosmologists, physicists and mathematicians to develop robust models and experiments to further our scientific knowledge and understanding of the universe and our place in it.

The YouTube presentation by Sabine Hossenfelder below which I watched only AFTER writing up this post, gives an excellent and more detailed critique of SRH, reiterating my core argument and expanding on it an eloquent and accessible way. It’s definitely worth watching! Links to further reading below.

In my next post I will return to the philosophical realm with a riff on the anthropic principle and some of the many possibilities which it throws up regarding the nature of us and the universe we inhabit, both now, and FOREVER

Links:

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix
• https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/15-irrefutable-reasons-we-might-be-living-in-a-simulation.html
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2016/10/13/elon-musk-and-friends-are-spending-millions-to-break-out-of-the-matrix/?sh=581ac7405ce1
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

I concluded my previous post, a lead-in to this one if you will, concluding “I would say that it takes a fool or a madman to contemplate the nature of a God who was here since the dawn of time and was anything like us at all.”

This is a philosophical position I take here which I’ve arrived at via the use of empirical observation and scientific reasoning. Specifically, the earth appears to be ancient (geochronological, cosmological and biological inferences), ergo the creator of (this) universe must be ancient, ergo the nature of the creator must be quite different to our own.

This conjecture can be obviously be rebuffed by religious dogma or faith-based reasoning. From personal experience I tend to dismiss the former out of hand, whilst I am open to the latter, when taken in the context of personal revelation, known otherwise as a spiritual experience. I want to make clear that by personal revelation I do not specifically refer to the type often often invoked by Christians proclaiming to be born again in the spirit or revelation of the divinity of Jesus Christ as saviour of the world or revelation of God’s word via the Holy Scriptures, because these sorts of revelations are usually conflated with some type of religious dogma i.e. the Bible IS the word of God, or Jesus Christ WAS God-made-flesh.

I am quite comfortable saying that because what we have direct access to is the material world around us and not, at least collectively, a direct line of communication with a creator or general superintelligence of some kind or other. Those who claim to have such powers of communication have not provided compelling evidence on a general level which would constitute an empirical truth, only on the level of personal faith.

However, for the sake of argument, let me consider the case of the believer, of whatever religious persuasion, who is convinced of a personal God figure who can be communed with through prayer. If such a God does exist, one who is accessible and willing to intervene/intercede in Earthly matters, then this God contradicts the deductions I arrived at in the first post (summarised in paragraph 1).

There are only two ways that I can think to reconcile the two ideas:

1. God is an emergent entity: he/she/it has evolved alongside us and by extension is neither omnipotent (all knowing) or timeless. This is the sort of God figure espoused by one of the figures in author John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, a set book for my GCE O-Levels 25 years ago. Here is the quotation I had in mind.

They haven’t God’s word like they thought: God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive

― John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

2. God aka The Creator, is a universal superintelligence, but not of the type who sat out several billions of years waiting for observers like ourselves to emerge. He/she/it is running some kind of universe-scale simulation whereby we are given the impression that we are living in an ancient universe, but in actual fact, it was all initiated at a time T_x, which by scientific deduction, is T₀ (the Big Bang) + x years.

This is one interpretation of a theory of simulated reality that has been around since at least the time of French philosopher and scientist René Descartes but which was most recently updated and extended by the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom in a much debated paper entitled “Are you Living in a Computer Simulation?” A good summary of simulated reality can be found on Wikipedia. The question of whether or not this universal superintelligence was emergent or pre-existing I do not find meaningful nor important in this context.

Until we have any evidence of us living in a simulated reality (or realities) then it would be prudent to declare the scientific deductions regarding the age of the world and the universe as being quite real i.e. the earth is c4.5 Ga (billion years old) and our universe some 10 Ga older again. Rather than a simulated reality, I find it more plausible to think about an actual reality nested within in an infinite number of possible ‘evolutions’ of a universe with our particular set of physical laws. The anthropic principle states that

The Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage.

Physicist, Brandon Carter

So, following my train of thought, the question of the origins of God, as someone open to the possibility of a creative force/superintelligence, is less important in a philosophical sense than the question, what is the nature of reality and can it accommodate a God figure?

It should be obvious from history that science can inform religion and religious dogma has indeed been refuted on the basis of scientific discovery (think Galileo and his refutation of the Earth as the centre of the universe based on observation of the motion of the planets). By contrast religious dogma cannot inform science because its methods are incompatible with the scientific method. Thus science must surely be the foremost tool to answer the grand questions about our universe and our place in it. Or is it?

Not if you’re a philosopher, it isn’t. Just Googling the string what is philosophy? returns about 666 million results. Yes, 666, the number of the beast (cue ironic chuckle).

In case the image text is too small for your eyes to resolve, the Wiki definition above reads

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. 

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

If I could go back to university (and no one’s saying I couldn’t, but I won’t), I would seriously consider doing a philosophy module. While science gives us the tools to investigate reality in an empirical sense, philosophy surely gives all systems of belief, including the scientific method, religion and spirituality, a container in which they can be lived out and evaluated.

So to recap: the universe (and planet Earth) are observed to be inconceivably old by human reckoning, ergo God aka the Creator, should they exist, must be of an age equal or greater to this observed age. My personal belief is that there is a creative force behind the existence of our universe, a philosophical belief AND not a religious one.

I return to the conclusion of my previous post, that this Superintelligence/God/Creator is of a nature that we cannot currently conceive of in out present state of being, whether individually or collectively, in the cosmos.

I return to the conclusion of my previous post, that this Superintelligence/God/Creator is of a nature that we cannot currently conceive of in out present state of being, whether individually or collectively, in the cosmos.

So naturally, drawing from this conclusion, any inspiration or insight I might make regarding the purpose of my life or the interaction of it with my Creator/God is a matter of personal faith and philosophy. I will do my best to state them plainly below:

• Everything written and debated about in the Existentialist school of thought should be considered, explored and expanded upon from one generation to the next.

The way that I see it, authenticity appears to be an inherent part of the fabric of existence. Modes of living which conflict with one’s inherent sense of authenticity either amplify or intensity feelings of misery and despair AND lead to a instigation of opposing corrective forces. These corrective forces or ‘forces of opposition’ can act both at the level of the individual and at the level of society, on a regional or even global scale. I would like to elaborate on this concept in another post.

• Life appears to be absurd (see Absurdism) but I do not believe it is. My logic leads me to believe that the apparent absurdism of the human condition is simply a result of our lack of scientific knowledge. I have some measure of confidence that greater understanding of quantum physics will assist in unifying such seemingly unrelated fields as the nature of human consciousness, general level consciousness, understanding gravity at the quantum level and number theory (and specifically the nature of primacy).

• There can be no purpose or meaning to our lives if it is not lived and shared with other people. Social isolation will inevitably lead to despair, in the worst cases self-annihilation, and at best to a mode of living that is less-than-authentic. We proceed together or not at all.

• As a statement of faith I believe that our individual consciousnesses will be subsumed by greater, collective intelligence upon our deaths. I do not know whether I will be reborn as another human being after my death, as another living entity, or even something inanimate, but I find it a more plausible idea than that of the human soul in Christian dogma which persists into eternity. That I find completely absurd. Any rational philosophical mind must surely dismiss it on the grounds that 1) there are no plausible indications that this is the case and 2) there is no ‘justice’ nor balance of forces (of the type mentioned in the first point) in this scenario.

I always think of the end points of existence in trying to answer these sorts of questions. The life blighted by abuse, poverty, war and other misfortune cannot have repercussions for all eternity. Conversely, a life of material privilege, good education and loving support cannot be ‘rewarded’ by life everlasting in a heavenly dimension.

In Conclusion:

I have touched on a whole range of topics here from statements of personal belief, to schools of philosophy to branches of scientific investigation. I’ve glossed over many things that are worth examining in more detail. My hope is to give the casual reader encouragement to do their own questioning and further research on one or other of these ideas. If I can engage just one person through writing these words then I will consider it time well spent, even if it was at the expense of other things (read family!). Quite simply, May you find purpose in being.

As a classically educated geologist I am absolutely, 100% convinced by the empirical investigations of generations of committed scientists from many different fields, that we live on an ancient planet

Acceptance of these empirical ‘facts’ – if you want to know more there are plenty of good accounts in various textbooks, internet sites like New Scientist and Scientific American and other sources – brings me into conflict with a fair number of decent people, some of whom are actually quite central to my existence, my partner being one of them. It is not that she disagrees outright with the notion of deep time, but she finds it too uncomfortable to dwell on seriously. It is the cases like hers which I think are most prevalent in so-called progressive, Western societies (she is from a Dutch family background).

Mirjam, and I say this with much affection and concomitant resignation, is from a conservative, religious family who espouse Biblical literalism and observation of the Old Testament Law most especially. Actually, I’m very fond of them as a family, because they are warm people and willing to entertain a complete non-conformist like myself, living in a non-matrimonial union with their daughter. It is only that we disagree on some points of fact. Principally, that the creation did not occur in the literal sense as outlined in Genesis. I do not believe in the 7 day Creation story, lumping it with other creation myths put forth by various religions across the world through the ages.

Apart from the comfort and reassurance that comes with an explanatory tale like the creation story in Genesis, which frames events in a progressive series of steps with man (and woman) as the apex of the creative process, what other factors contribute to this non-scientific mindset I’ve often pondered? There are a few possibilities, no doubt elucidated by others – I’d be most pleased to be pointed in their direction – which I will touch on, at the risk of repeating them imperfectly, or at least, less concisely.

The first and foremost of these is the fear of a God who is incomprehensible to us and thus inaccessible.

The first and foremost of these is the fear of a God who is incomprehensible to us and thus inaccessible. Taking the scientific viewpoint that the Earth is 4.5 Ga, any attempt to get a feel for this passage of time, its duration and enormous periods of apparent inactivity or very gradual change, comes to nought. We just can’t contemplate a mind which could endure this preposterous length of time without going quite mad. And since most religious notions of a God figure presuppose that he/she/it created us and comprehends us, most religious followers assume that he/she/it reflects some human qualities – love, mercy, wrath, benevolence, anger and jealousy, being some of the many human qualities attributed to the Judeo-Christian God portrayed in the Bible.

If indeed God does manifest one or more human emotions or characteristics, it is impossible to imagine he/she/it harbouring them for all those billions of years prior to our existence without being an entity quite fundamentally alien to us. If there is anyone else out there who, like me, has experienced the sort of formless pain and sense of detachment derived from periods of social isolation – then you will have little trouble in conceptualising my point. I feel this way by virtue of my brief experience of 42 years of life, how impossible to extrapolate that to 4.5 Ga!

If indeed God does manifest one or more human emotions or characteristics, it is impossible to imagine he/she/it harbouring them for all those billions of years prior to our existence without being an entity quite fundamentally alien to us.

Actually, this point is THE point I wish to make here. I’m not going to go any further in this post except to follow my own train of thought relating to this idea. From a scientific perspective, there is not much to say here, because scientific investigation has failed to prove the existence of a God, or God-attributed manifestations of creation. Any speculation from the science-community in these regards is mostly relegated to untestable, unfalsifiable, faith-based argumentation.

That said, I find the logic of Thomas Aquinas and his notion of a Prime Mover a powerful concept. When things we can perceive come into being or action – babies, storm-clouds, a rolling billiard ball – it is only a matter of empirical investigation to determine the origins of the phenomenon. The accuracy may vary but the idea is sound. By extension the earth and indeed the entire universe itself are the manifestation of forces of creation by a Prime Mover, God.

I haven’t studied Aquinas, other than having been the recipient of his ideas in Catholic Confirmation class, but his idea impressed me. Nor have I read any scholarly criticisms or counter-arguments to the idea in the 3/4 of a millennium since he died. One that seems to jump out at me is the assumption of the concept of linear time in framing this philosophical argument. What if time is circular? No beginning and no end and therefore no need for a Prime Mover? This notion also helps to deal with the very disquieting idea (outside of the God framework) of an infinite universe on the linear scale, one in which there is no beginning. Just a thought.

What if time is circular? No beginning and no end and therefore no need for a Prime Mover?

The idea of circular time also presupposes that it exists in a framework that wholly satisfies all other physical possibilities, and I’m not sure that holds water so to speak. The idea that there is something rather than nothing forces us to contemplate the idea of creation regardless of one’s view of time as being linear rather than circular. Hence I have just provided a counterargument to my previous assertion!

Another thought: If there is a creator of our universe – a possibility which we should at least consider – then he/she/it may ‘think’ and perceive the passage of time in a way quite different to us. After all our perception of time is coloured by a combination of elements i.e. the speed of neurochemical reactions and signal transmission times in our brains within a framework of physical experience, memory formation and anticipation of subsequent physical experience. Remove any of those elements from the framework part and you have an entity which is less-than-human. Assuming that a God entity displays these qualities, possibly amongst others, then how could we reconcile he/she/its experience of Deep Time with our own scientific conjectures?

I would say that the sense of anticipation is the most obvious candidate for ‘tweaking’.

I would say that the sense of anticipation is the most obvious candidate for ‘tweaking’. As a Creator of some description, putting something as vast, diverse and weird as the universe we appear to inhabit into physical existence, requires enormous powers of conceptualisation. Just take a moment to ponder the detail of the atom, the fundamental forces of nature, the precise wavelength of light emitted by an electron orbiting the nucleus of a hydrogen atom whether here or at the edge of the observable universe, and it is conceivable that this was indeed all preconceived. A statement of faith. Unproven. Yet, as an exercise in logic it would seem to me that the sense of anticipation of such a super-sentient God entity in the position of Prime Mover would be endowed with an equally God-like quality of anticipation – an ability to wait things out over the course of billions of years. Our rapid evolution and exponential technological and scientific development destabilises us, gives us a kind of vertigo. We reel and try to take stock.

For many it is easier to lose ourselves in the distraction of the sensory world of the present, whilst for others religion gives a sense of comfort and guidance. I would say that it takes a fool or a madman to contemplate the nature of a God who was here since the dawn of time and was anything like us at all.

Most likely I didn’t meet anyone who has been made critically ill but I can imagine how severe it could be for some of them if they were to contract the deadly pathogen. I think especially of several elderly members of the free-living community Avalon-Elfi in the province of Toscana (Tuscany) who I wrote about on my sister blog.

” I think especially of several elderly members of the free-living community Avalon-Elfi in Tuscany “

My thoughts too lie with Pius Leutenegger and his team of staff at the Centro d’Ompio on Lago d’Orta in the foothlls of the Alps in the province of Novara in the Lombardy region, the worst affected by the Covid19 outbreak.