Infinity Files
1 In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.
Thus begins the book of Genesis. A
rather succinct description of how it all started.
How He did it we know not. That is
proprietary information. Who or what God might be, as yet, we know not – that
comes later towards the end of the first chapter:
26 And God said, Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
In other words, whoever or
whatever God is or was – man is made in his image, so presumably we’re a chip
off the old block, absurd though this may sound.
Now, it may look like this is a
bible study essay, but nothing could be further from the truth. We, at
g-nomeportal, are a practical bunch concerned with the simple truth, no matter
what that might be. We neither believe nor disbelieve in God or anything else,
but finding a deckchair on the beach we assume that someone put it there,
rather than conjecturing that it was the product of evolution or random atoms
and molecules coming together as, theoretically, they may have done. Occam’s
razor is sharp enough to keep fanciful theories to a minimum. When we refer to “God”
we are neither being religious nor irreligious. We are using a concise and
highly practical term to describe whoever or whatever was responsible, directly
or indirectly, for Creation, bearing in mind that creation is a lot more than a
few chance occurrences or random events. You might, in fact, say that Creation
never went away. Like the tail of a snake, it’s there somewhere behind us now,
but absolutely part of what’s now in the making.
Dear readers, you have been taught
to think intelligently, as many of you do, but unless you have been taught to become
aware of your deep-seated fears and neuroses, your intelligence, both
individually and collectively will constantly skirt around those areas of
contention, those awkward areas where things go pear shaped, where reality is
no longer linear, quantifiable or reasonable. Sooner or later every scientist, philosopher
or seeker has to confront the edge of things, sooner or later, but this cannot
be done in the way we would generally choose, by lighting a pipe as Gandalf
might, or scratching our head and thinking things through methodically, because
when you come to the edge of things, when you stumble on the suspiciously
strategically positioned banana skin of infinity, whatever that might
be, your intellect is of no use whatsoever – it fogs over like glasses when you
step inside from the cold. That's not to say nothing’s to be done, merely that
should you wish to proceed on this frictionless slope you’re going to need
another form of propulsion and steering. Allow me to suggest that it’s there in
each of us, as we are all children of dual parentage. Yes, our Father is, by
definition, God but our mother, the one we seem not to mention in polite
society, has given us the ability to navigate her side of things which, paradoxically
has no sides at all, and is thus everywhere.
But I digress. That is then and
this is now. Today we are with the Father, the one we call God, in order to
consider with a sense of wonder and reverence His incredible Creation, doing so
with an awareness that His half the cake is in some way part of us, encoded into
our DNA, if you like, as is hers to no lesser extent, and that in some respects
our purpose is to find and/or to feel and balance the two.
He has presented us with a conundrum:
how can His world of finite things be extracted or conjured from the formless
void, or what we at g-nomeportal prefer to call infinity, and once
extracted, how held in place if there is no such thing as “place” outside his
Creation. To put this another way, how on Earth do infinity and matter-based
reality mesh and interact? Tis in truth a most fascinating conundrum which will
have to be tackled from both sides, taking us into the distantmost reaches of
conscious-ness, yet starting on the right side of reason with the written word
and the elementary, yet not to be sniffed at, powers of deduction, as follows:
Before Creation of this world, or
the universe that we are currently inhabiting, there was neither heaven nor
earth, neither day nor night, neither sea nor land, neither plants nor creatures,
neither woman nor man here – in other words, there was no thing whatsoever
What does this mean? How can (or
could) there be “no thing whatsoever”? Difficult to get your head round when
all we know are things, and language itself is predicated on little
things called words exchanging information about abstract or non-abstract
named-things, in other words, wholly unsuited it is to dealing with thinglessness.
Interestingly, a total absence of
things is not, in fact, the same as “nothing”. There were no things – but
that’s not to say that there was a pure vacuum or nothing at all.
Paradoxically, a pure vacuum is also a thing of sorts: an absence of matter
and molecules, but not an absence of electro-magnetic or gravitational fields,
or energies, or dare I say it – conscious-ness. In fact, your “no thing
whatsoever” is, in all likelihood, just as full and teeming as created space,
if you’re willing to get over your deeply engrained thingy bias. Oh, and bear
in mind that space and time are things so they too were absent.
Beating a tactical retreat, to
contradict myself decisively, there was nothing whatsoever, because
there was no “there”: no where for these uncreated things to be assembled and contained.
Until God stepped in and somehow excluded infinity from the equation,
metaphorically speaking, of course.
The mind boggles, does it not? How
can this be? How does God paradigm-shift us from an ill-defined or undefinable infinity
– without bounds, without form, reminiscent of our oft conjectured quantum
field, into His “what truly matters” reality platform, or as His marketing team
put it – “the ultimate created space brought to you by definition by God,
eclipsing all else”.
Actually, Genesis is astonishingly upfront in
revealing what none of us are really able to understand. It's a paradox, is it
not? the only people who can understand aren’t bothered because it's simple
beyond words or because they’re blissed out, and say nothing, whereas the rest
of us run around like a gaggle of geese making a lot of noise. Until things
come to a head, until time trips and suddenly we find ourselves staring at the
cave wall, only to notice that in fact it’s a window and there's a beautiful
world outside. But I digress. Let us proceed with Genesis.
Let me repeat myself – Genesis
basically says it all. Yes, this sounds utterly absurd so don’t expect to be convinced
by me. You'll almost certainly be disappointed, but that's not my business. If
you have any need to know about the relationship between infinity and whatever
God created, this will make perfect sense: the book’s practically a Lego
assembly manual. If not, there are countless other activities for you to avoid
the unpleasantness of feeling like either I’m an imbecile, or God forbid, you
are.
Well, in order to create things
such as heaven and earth God – whoever or whatever that might be – has to establish
a direct perception – a witness – an observer – an all-seeing eye – if you
like. Only then is it meaningful or possible to continue as follows:
2 And the earth was without
form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters.
This may seem to be a minor matter
– but without a central or objective observer, infinity is able to slip in and
unmake or remake whatever has been created before it can register, or be
registered.
Next, we require a sense of time
for there to be sequential action. Another inroad into the freedoms of
infinity. Space and time are meaningless or impossible concepts where infinity
is concerned – for they imply divisions which are impermissible if infinity is not
to be anything less than infinite.
3 And God said, Let there be
light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that
it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day,
and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the
first day.
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