(Or
Why There is Someone Rather than Something)
Nothingness.
Imagine
nothingness.
That
nothingness which is nothing of the nothingness we are all familiar
with:
Not
that nothingness which is nothing but empty space and time
Like
when you open an empty room.
No.
That
nothingness where nothing truly exists:
Not
space,
Not
even time.
A
singular point.
Imagine
a singular point.
The
ultimate singular point that contains all possible points
In
the development of the universe
Come
out and expand
From
the birthing of time, the instance of The Big Bang,
(Which
by the way is not a large explosion, as the words imply, but a silent
rapid expansion)
Pushing
the envelope
Where
nothingness begins.
Chance.
Imagine
chance.
That
random occurrence of events:
Of
fundamental particles colliding and uniting
Or
annihilating each other, thus
Giving
rise to protons, neutrons and electrons:
Giving
rise to the periodic table,
To
compounds, both organic and inorganic,
To
macromolecules.
Billions
of years.
Imagine
billions of years.
Gone
by
And
billions of galaxies filling the sky:
Stars
and quasars and pulsars,
Planets
and comets and meteors
Willy nilly hurtling through dark matter
In
ever expanding space,
But
still inanimate.
A
single cell.
Imagine
a single cell.
Form
inexplicably so,
In
a staggeringly highly improbable way
As
carbon molecules combine,
Start
to throb and pulsate:
Chance
bringing forth life
In
a barren and otherwise
Lifeless
universe.
Consciousness.
Imagine
consciousness.
Purposive,
willful, deliberate.
Feelings.
Imagine
feelings.
Love,
compassion, hatred.
Morality.
Imagine morality.
That sense of what is right and wrong.
Imagine
all born in
An unconscious, unfeeling, and amoral universe
That came out of itself from nothingness.
It
is hard, of course,
For
after all, we are creatures of
Somethingness!
But
at this point,
You
must have seen the Point
Of
all the ramblings and turns in the trajectory of my thought,
Tracing
the evolutionary course of the universe
From
nothingness and that singular point,
That
without God
All
things are
After
all
Pointless!
.
And
so,
Let
us not deplore, as a great poet once did,
That
this world “so various, so beautiful, so new
Hath
no joy, nor love, nor light
Nor
certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…”
It
at the end we all return to nothingness.
What if anything could we ask from and expect
Of
a cold, unfeeling universe?
What?
To
give us some Novocain?
You
gotta be kidding, man!