Science tells us that the fact that we exist is a pinpoint in infinity . . . a random accident . . . a happy coincidence. Other than some kind of exponentially rare chance occurrence . . . or infinite universes that offer up infinite possibilities and we just happen to be in this one . . . it appears that it is 'impossible' that we are. 'Impossible' refers to the lack of any credible scientific explanation, and is in quotes because we are here . . . me, you, Beethoven, Shakespeare and Einstein.
Ironically, through the brilliant discoveries of the precise mathe-matical constants included in the equations that describe the physical reality of the Universe, it is science itself that provides us with the evidence that explains how the Girl with a Pearl Earring . . . or something very much like it . . . is inevitable.
While the Universe within which we exist is almost impossible according to any law of materialistic scientific inquiry sans chance or infinite universes/infinite possibilites, Ilya Prigogine, the chemist-physicist-recipient of the Noble prize in Chemestry, put it this way:
'The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.'
That we're here by chance is absurd.
Within this Universe, science has determined that there are very specific principles - laws - that govern or organize and make possible all that we see, all that we are, all that is. Six of the equations that describe the laws determening the physical reality of the Universe include incomprehensibly precise mathematical constants, and are the subject of Sir Martin Rees's book Just Six Numbers.
Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, argues that six numbers underlie the fundamental physical properties of the Universe, and that each is the precise value needed to permit life . . . and that, in fact, if any one of the numbers were different ‘even to the tiniest degree, there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life’. Ervin Laszlo suggests that there may be as many as 36 of these constants.
From physicist Paul Davies:
'The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see, even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life - almost contrived - you might say a ‘put-up job'.
Rees has stated that 'The physical laws were themselves 'laid down' in the Big Bang,' but admitted that: 'The mechanisms that might 'imprint' the basic laws and constants in a new universe are obviously far beyond anything we understand.' Indeed. Rees' six numbers are found in the Universe’s smallest and largest structures. Two relate to basic forces, two determine the size and large-scale texture of the Universe, and two fix the properties of space itself. They are:
1. E (Epsilon) - The strength of the force that binds atomic nuclei together and determines how all atoms on Earth are made.
2. N (newton) - The number that measures the strength of the forces that hold atoms together divided by the force of gravity between them.
3. Ω (Omega) - The number that measures the density of material in the Universe - including galaxies, diffuse gas, and dark matter.
4. λ (Lambda) – The number that describes the strength of a previously unsuspected force, a kind of cosmic anti-gravity that controls the expansion of the Universe. It is sometimes referred to and the cosmological constant.
5. Q - The number representing the amplitude of complex irregularities or ripples in the expanding Universe that seed the growth of such structures as planets and galaxies.
6. D - The number of spatial dimensions in our Universe – 3.
Each of these critical numbers signify a precision upon which, if any one of them were not precisely as it is, the Universe as we know it would not exist . . . we do not exist. The precision of each one of these numbers also means that the chance of our being here to witness all of this is infinitesimally small.
If each of the six numbers Rees has identified were dependent upon the others . . . that is, if the existence of any one of the numbers was inherently related to any of the others . . . the chances of this Universe being just as it is would still be infinitesimally small. But this is not the case. ‘At the moment, however,’ says Rees, ‘we cannot predict any of them from the value of the others.’ Further, each number compounds the unlikelihood of each of the other numbers. If a one in ten chance is given to each of these constants happening by chance (an absurdly low number), then the chance of all of them happening randomly is obtained by multiplying 1/10th x 1/10th x 1/10th x 1/10th x 1/10th x 1/10th = one chance in 10 billion – and there may be thirty-six of them.
Another way of saying this, well within the scientific mind, is that if a from-nothing, briefly existing molecule is absurdly unlikely, a from-nothing, nearly 14-billion-year-old observable Universe based on very precise, particular limits (the six numbers, etc.) is vastly less likely.
This means that this ‘unlikelihood’ is compounded exponentially, meaning that the chances of this Universe happening accidentally just like this is comparable to the relationship of a pinpoint in the midst of the infinity that, scientifically speaking, the Universe appears to be.
A pinpoint.
Further, there are some twenty factors that have been discovered to be essential for the existence of complex, carbon-based life forms – us. Apparently, all of these conditions have to exist simultaneously for complex life to exist . . . and, like Rees's six numbers, none of them can be predicted from the value of the others. They include:
• Liquid water.
• The distance of the planet from the star it orbits (the Goldilocks zone).
• The kind of star . . . Sun . . . necessary - a main sequence G2 dwarf star.
• Protection from asteroids and other projectiles from outer space by giant gas planets (Jupiter and Saturn).
• A nearly circular orbit.
• An oxygen/nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
• The correct mass.
• Orbited by a large moon.
• A magnetic field.
• Plate tectonics.
• The correct ratio of water and continents.
• A terrestrial planet (rocky land masses).
• A moderate rate of rotation.
• The right location within the galaxy (various factors).
Dr. William Lane Craig, a Christian apologist and philosopher of science, from The Privileged Planet:
‘If you deny the process of cosmic design [the Creator-God of orthodox, organized, religion] you’re basically left with two alternatives: either this fine-tuning is a result of physical necessity, that is to say, there is some unknown theory to explain why these constants and quantifiers have to have the values they do, or else you just have to say this just occurred by chance alone. That is, the result of sheer accident. Well, that first theory doesn’t seem too plausible because there just isn’t any theory that would explain why all these constants and quantities have the values they do. They appear to be just arbitrarily put in at the creation as initial conditions.
With respect to the second alternative . . . chance . . . most theorists recognized that the odds against the Universe being life-permitting are just so fantastic that chance simply cannot be faced unless you say that our Universe does not represent the only roll of the dice. And so what many theorists have been driven to is multiplying our probabilistic resources by saying maybe our Universe isn’t the only roll of the dice. Maybe there are out there parallel, unseen, undetectable universes, and that our Universe is just one in this cosmic crapshoot in which there is an infinite number of other worlds in which the constants and quantities vary randomly and so by chance alone somewhere in this infinite ensemble of universes, our universe would have appeared by chance alone, and here we are, the lucky beneficiaries and recipients of this chance hypotheses. So in order to rescue the chance hypothesis, physicists have been driven beyond physics to metaphysics, to this extraordinary hypothesis of a world’s ensemble of an infinite number of randomly ordered worlds in order to explain away this appearance of design.’
While Craig says that these constants 'appear to be just arbitrarily put in at the creation as initial conditions’, no mention is made as to who or what may have put them there . . . yet the implication is clearly that this was through the 'process of cosmic design' . . . that is, a cosmic Designer – the Creator-God. This is essentially the best that orthodox religion or science can do . . . it's one of three choices:
1. The familiar 'Creator-God' has always been a handy way to explain away this miraculous grandeur we live within – some version of 'It's God's Will'.
2. An unknown and unlikely scientific theory explaining away the precision of the constants. There is no 'law' that could possibly explain all of the 'coincidences' required for you to be reading this right now.
3. Infinite universes offering infinite possibilities . . . an 'infinite number of randomly ordered worlds' - ours being the one we happen to witness.
Faced with such overwhelming improbability, cosmologists have scrambled to offer an explanation. The simplest is the so-called brute fact argument - the weight of an endless supply of possibilities finally offering up the world as we know it. ‘A person can just say: ‘That's the way the numbers are. If they were not that way, we would not be here to wonder about it. Many scientists are satisfied with that,' says Rees. Typical of this kind of thinking is Theodore Drange, a professor of philosophy at the University of West Virginia, who claims it is nonsensical to get worked up about the idea that our life-friendly Universe is ‘one of a kind.' As Drange puts it:
‘Whatever combination of physical constants may exist, it would be one of a kind.'
Yah . . . well . . .
Rees also objects, drawing from an analogy given by philosopher John Leslie. ‘Suppose you are in front of a firing squad, and they all miss. You could say, 'Well, if they hadn't all missed, I wouldn't be here to worry about it.' But it is still something surprising, something that can't be easily explained. I think there is something there that needs explaining.'
Well . . . yah . . .
Infinite universe's offering up infinite possibilities is science's only stab at plausibility for this Universe happening by chance . . . and it’s metaphysical at best.
But there is a fourth possibility regarding Martin Rees’s six numbers upon whose ‘impossible’ precision our Universe depends.
John Wheeler, the renowned professor of mathematics at Princeton for nearly four decades in the mid-1900’s, said that ‘. . . every it - every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself - derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely - even if in some contexts indirectly - from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits.’
He envisioned these yes-or-no, one-or-zero, questions as the most basic way the ‘apparatus’ worked. Wheeler: ‘Not until you start asking a question, do you get something . . . the situation cannot declare itself until you've asked your question. But the asking of one question prevents and excludes the asking of another [that’s to say, as the process proceeds, it learns].’
The initial, quantum-level questions are asked and answered in entangled zeros and ones . . . learning happens . . . and evolution proceeds.
Stephen Hawking stated in the 2011 film Did God Create the Universe?, along with Martin Rees, that he believed that the laws of nature are fixed and always have been . . . ‘laid down’ at the Universe’s inception. Yet:
'The mechanisms that might 'imprint' the basic laws and constants in a new universe are obviously far beyond anything we understand.'
The mechanism is the evolution of consciousness in the Universe.
I was shocked to learn that the most famous and influential theoretical physicist and cosmologist in today’s world, the late Stephen Hawking, had abandoned his belief in these fixed laws in his later years. On the Origins of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory chronicles the 20-year collaboration with Belgian cosmologist Thomas Hertog during which this turn-around happened.
In a recent article for The Guardian, Hertog tells us that Hawking told him ‘I have changed my mind. My book, A Brief History of Time, is written from the wrong perspective.’ In the article, he goes on to say:
'Stephen and I discovered how physics itself can disappear back into the Big Bang. Not the laws as such but their capacity to change has the final word in our theory. This sheds a new light on what cosmology is ultimately about.' According to Hertog, the new perspective that he has achieved with Hawking reverses the hierarchy between laws and reality in physics and is 'profoundly Darwinian' in spirit. 'It leads to a new philosophy of physics that rejects the idea that the universe is a machine governed by unconditional laws with a prior existence, and replaces it with a view of the universe as a kind of self-organising entity in which all sorts of emergent patterns appear, the most general of which we call the laws of physics.'
In other words . . . the laws of the Universe are learned and they change and evolve.
A word must be said here, before going on, about the extraordinary humility and open-mindedness of the late Stephen Hawking. He was a once-in-a-lifetime genius who witnessed the gradual disintegration of his own body from within that body from the age of 21 until his death at 76 . . . until he could not even speak through a machine . . . until, as Adyashanti stated so eloquently about the evolution of consciousness in the Universe . . . there was ‘only awareness remaining’.
Stephen Hawking sought the Truth . . . and was willing to sacrifice his own reputation to the joy of finding it . . . as his thinking evolved.
These physical laws, and the finely-tuned constants they depend on, appeared at the genesis of our Universe with so much certainty and precision because they were learned in an unknown history of attempts at universal expression eons-long ago in the past.
Imagine nascent consciousness in Meher Baba’s ‘beyond-beyond’ state of oblivion having its first viable ‘thought’ . . . the Stillpoint portal leading to a dualistic universe unknown eons ago where these yes-or-no, one-or-zero, questions can be asked . . . and finally, through this eons-long learning process, creates the Universe we live in, where fully awakened, evolved, consciousness is capable of creating a solar system to accelerate this evolution - or, as Ervin Lazslo describes in Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything:
‘In the course of innumerable universes, the pulsating Metaverse realizes all that the primeval plenum held in potential. The plenum is no longer formless: its surface is of unimaginable complexity and coherence; its depth is fully in-formed. The cosmic proto-consciousness that endowed the primeval plenum with its universe-creative potentials becomes a fully articulate cosmic consciousness – it becomes, and thenceforth eternally is, THE SELF-REALIZED MIND OF GOD.’
If, say, our own Universe is driven by the purpose to awaken, originating through a singular point of creation, the Stillpoint, then all universes evolve through this Stillpoint – the six numbers are learned as consciousness evolved.
The theoretical biologist Rupert Sheldrake hypothesizes that the ‘laws’ of nature are in fact habits . . . that is, the laws as we experience them evolved through an interaction of growing awareness and experience. In the spirit of ‘as above, so below’, it is only logical that evolving consciousness learned, through eons of attempts as universal expression, how to create a universe that would allow complex, self-aware, life forms to exist – allowing the evolution to continue.
Within our own solar system, there are at least 13 ‘coincidences’, involving phenomena both fixed at the solar system’s genesis, as well as phenomena relating to the uncanny timing found in the GUIDANCE section, as well as at least 5 spacial and temporal empirical facts regarding the creation of the Great Pyramid in THE STILLPOINT PYRAMID section . . . 18 total . . . [there are many more, but the point is made] all of which are not related to each other.
As with Rees’s six numbers, even if one gives each ‘coincidence’ an absurdly low 1/10 chance of occurring, multiplying each unlikely empirical fact by the next 18 times: 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 110 = 1e-18 . . . or 1 over 1 with 18 zeros behind it. The likelihood of a solar system like ours happening by chance is ‘impossible’.
Our Universe . . . driven by the purpose to awaken . . . was born from countless unknown attempts at universal expression . . . finally manifesting as the observed Universe we see today because awakening awareness learned how to create the empirical phenomena (photons, electrons, atoms, molecules, DNA, etc.) required for evolution to proceed.
Further, evidence suggests that our particular solar system, within this infinite vastness . . . was created intentionally . . . by an evolved higher intelligence for the acceleration of the evolution of consciousness in the Universe.
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