The First Stage of the Universe: not the first moment of Existence but the first moment of Purposive Existence
[excerpted from the article "The Instant Universe: And God Said: "Let there have been a big bang"]
The First Moment—from the Teleological Perspective
With the design of the big bang ready, its creation can be initiated. Until the emergence of a free-willed intelligent being from this teleological designed big bang, however, everything that occurs is preprogrammed, an acting out of the mechanistic laws of nature with some quantum randomness thrown in. The truly “interesting” activity begins only with the onset of moral choice. Only then the purpose of the universe can begin to unfold.[22] In the teleological sense, Creation is completed not with the emergence of the big bang but rather fifteen billion years later when the first intelligent moral being emerges and decides to accept the burden of moral responsibility for its actions. With the assumption of moral responsibility and the acquisition of free-willed consciousness, purposive history can begin.
The Instant Retroactive Universe
Would the creation of a big bang be the most reasonable method of creation of such a purposive universe? Creation of a big bang involves a delay of billions of years until the free-willed being evolves and the desired moral activity begins. It would seem that the more reasonable [2] procedure would be the creation of the universe at the stage of the emergence of a free-willed human being. This would juxtapose the creation of the universe with the choice of the burden of the knowledge of good and evil.
This could be accomplished, for example, by a Divine mental extrapolation of the big bang conditions (mental “fast-forwarding”) up to the moral stage of the universe, followed by actual creation at that point. In this sense the reasonable creation method is the creation of an “instant universe” at the moral stage. Thus, paradoxically, the physical creation of the big-bang-emergent universe actually occurs not at the big bang but with the emergence of the first moral being.[23]
This radical idea that the universe begins its physical existence only with the emergence of a moral being interestingly finds support and parallel in the suggestion of quantum metaphysics that the universe can emerge into true physical reality only upon emergence within it of a conscious being, who, according to our thesis, is a free-willed moral consciousness. As eminent physicist John A. Wheeler states, the emergence of a conscious being retroactively causes the emergence into reality of the big bang itself![24]
Laws of Nature: “And God Rested”
Why create a big bang universe, with its billions of galaxies and myriad plant and animal species? Why not create moral beings in a small universe centered on them?
Many people have speculated on the seeming hiddeness of God. Explanations include the necessity to protect the freedom of, and give meaning to, moral choice. Why bother creating a small human-centered universe for the purpose of moral confrontation if free will is compromised by the obviousness of God’s presence? There are also aesthetic reasons for the creation of a complete big-bang emergent ‘natural’universe rather than a small ‘special’ universe. Constant intervention can be reduced by designing ‘laws of nature’ to allow the universe to be self-operating.[26] For self-operation and regularity there must be consistency and coordination within the entire universe. For this to be the case, there has to be a unifying factor. An elegant method of finding this common denominator is to find an entity which, unified in itself, could give rise to the desired universe. The big bang together with the laws of nature is such an entity.
When this big bang evolves or is extrapolated forward to produce later stages of the universe, all these eventual states are inherently regular and synchronized since all is derived from one entity. Everything within the resulting universe operates according to the laws of nature, and the desired moral stage of the universe eventually emerges, this time as a unified self-consistently-operating state of a ‘natural’universe. It is a universe where humanity seems to arise as the result of natural selection, but where this selection is part of the Divine plan. As stated in the closing paragraph of Darwin’s The Origin of Species:[27]
Thus from the war of Nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
What Is the First Stage of Creation: the Big Bang or the Emergence of Adam?
As stated previously, for a purposive universe created as an “instant universe” the first stage of real existence is when purposive activity begins, so that the initial point is not the big bang but rather the emergence of free-willed consciousness capable of moral choice. There is another reason why a purposive universe of this sort would be considered as beginning at the moral stage rather than at the big bang. Since there are many quantum paths along which the universe could develop, including many paths not leading to the emergence of life or to moral beings, in order to have the universe fulfill its design it is necessary to guide the development of the big bang along a path leading to the emergence of the desired free-willed being. In this case the emergence of a moral being is the last stage of direct Divine intervention in developing the universe and hence the last stage of Creation and the first stage of the ‘natural’ existence of the universe. Thus, even in a universe physically starting with a big bang, it is the emergence of the moral being rather than the big bang that is the first stage of independent existence.
From the point of view of the Creator, and in the context of a teleological oriented creation account, the emergence of a moral being crowns creation. Thus, from the points of view of quantum randomness, quantum metaphysics, and teleology, the emergence of a conscious being—not the emergence of the big bang—is the first stage of the universe.
Perspectives on the Age of the Universe
The age of the universe may be considered from various perspectives:
The non-physical teleological perspective
The universe originates with God’s decision to create or to plan its blueprint, when time did not exist, and so the age of the universe is not defined.
The physical teleological perspective
The universe begins with the emergence of a newly created instant universe containing a moral being; evolutionary anthropology places the emergence of such a being probably not more than 100,000 years ago, and this is therefore also the maximal physical age of the universe.
The quantum metaphysical perspective
The universe emerges at the moral stage, but retroactively from the big bang, so that at the moral stage the universe has no clearly defined age.
The conventional scientific perspective
The universe begins with the big bang. At the stage of containing moral beings it is approximately fifteen billion years old.
In describing the creation of a complete universe at the moral stage, a creation account written from the teleological or quantum metaphysical perspective might imply simultaneity of the emergence of human free-willed consciousness with the completion of the creation of the universe or of its blueprint.
This provides a motivation for the juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts in Genesis [25].
Conclusion
As we have seen, in some sense our axiom suggested at the outset intuitively implies the central features of the traditional model of Creation. In this model Creation proceeds as described by tradition, and its physical development occurs as outlined by science.
From the teleological perspective, the first stage in Creation is to draw up the blueprint of both the desired type of moral being and the desired type of universe at the stage of the emergence of moral beings. Then comes a backwards extrapolation of the moral stage universe blueprint to find the right type of big bang to lead up to this stage.
After the design of the big bang from the specifications of the moral being and a universe that can support moral choice, the resultant ‘teleo-derived big bang’ is mentally extrapolated to the future along all quantumly possible paths of future development. Each possible path ends either in the emergence of a moral being, whose exercise of free will introduces non-predictability and therefore stops the extrapolation—or results in the end of the universe without the emergence of a moral being.
After extrapolation to the moral stage, the universe is ‘created in potential.’ In the quantum metaphysical sense this might be through a collapse of the wave function caused by the Creator’s consciousness observing the universe. “God saw it was all very good.” From the human perspective, the universe is brought into physical (human) reality by the created moral being’s exercise of free-willed consciousness and its existential awareness of the external universe, and of itself, as separate entities.
From among all the possible (potential) moral universes at the pre-moral stage, one is selected—the best one for fulfilling the purpose of Creation. “God saw all that He had created, and it was very good.”
In the instant retroactive universe everything proceeds in the most direct, logical, and aesthetic way. The Creator can withhold direct intervention after the ‘laws of nature’ take over upon the emergence of a moral being. “And [all] the Heavens and the Earth were complete….and God…rested”[28]
Consequently, a natural-law-obeying fifteen-billion-year-old instant universe emerges into physical reality unfolded from a moral-stage-teleoderived big bang. To paraphrase Genesis: And God said, “Let there have been a big bang.” And it was so.
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[25] Furthermore the OFTEN OVERLOOKED SECONDARY “CREATION ACCOUNT” of Genesis 2:4-9 “… on the day God made Earth and Heaven…… God formed man”
(—emphasis and ellipsis mine) imply Creation simultaneous with the emergence of Adam.
[26] A universe without natural law would dissolve into chaos. Stars and human bodies alike would lose their structural integrity. Natural law also allows regularity of operation so that moral beings could know the results of their actions and therefore be morally responsible for them.
[27] Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species” chap. 15, last paragraph of the book. Available online at:
http://www.literature-web.net/book.php3/originofspecies
[28] Genesis 2:1-2.