Evidence of G_d

What does science - what does experience and evidence tell us about the essential nature of the universe?

Firstly we can say that we have never experienced anything bringing itself into being by itself. Everything we see being created is created or caused by something else. That is significant because rationally speaking it suggests very strongly that the universe itself cannot logically have brought itself into being.

Let's take as a basis the idea of a finite universe because science currently understands the universe to be finite. Where is the universe? When is the universe? It cannot be anywhere finite because that just creates the problem again of where and when within infinity a different finite entity might exist. Of course, if the universe is finite, as we suppose, there must be something outside of it and beyond it in terms of time and space precisely because a finite universe has edges - it runs out. What is beyond that? You might say "nothing" OK - so there is an infinite nothingness outside of the universe.

Now this infinite nothingness is the setting for our finite universe.

Returning to the original question, what was the catalyst that brought our finite universe into being? It cannot logically have brought itself into being because in order to do so it would have had to have existed before it existed in order to be able to bring itself into being and that is a contradiction. So the finite thing must have somehow been brought into being from outside of itself by something outside of itself. If we decide that the entity that brought the universe into being was another finite entity, we have to keep going back until we get to an uncaused cause - a prime mover - an infinite entity. Given that it brought the universe into being, it is fairer to perhaps call this infinite nothingness a somethingness but it doesn't matter a lot - it is infinite and we are not. Religious folk call this uncaused cause God. He has many names, not of all of them male. A Hindu saying states "there is only one truth but the wise speak of it in many different ways". We know He cannot be more than one because if He was more than one, none of them would be infinite - each would have limits of some kind.

Now let's quickly address the concept of an infinite universe. Personally I think this is another reasonable proposition, at least theologically. We know that all matter is energy moving at a given speed. The faster energy goes, the closer it is to light and the slower it goes, the closer it is to matter. Light energy alone is both wave and particle. It is the stuff of the universe. This tells us that everything - everything is light. Everything is energy. Nothing is really ever created or destroyed it only changes into something else. Such an infinite universe has simply always existed and will always exist, changing ad infinitum. Everything in such a universe is part of one big energy field manifesting in all manner of permutations of finite distinct entities including ourselves. In such a universe everything is the same as God is the same as the universe. We are one and distinct at the same time but ultimately there is nowhere and no when for us to go outside of the universe because it goes in forever in all directions ad infinitum. Such a universe is in itself at least as sentient as the sum total of the beings it manifests itself as, and possibly more so, perhaps having the benefit of collective as well as individual simultaneous consciousnesses. Even if we decide that there is a finite amount of energy or matter in such a universe, it is set within an infinite space and so we just need to include that space within our definition of what constitutes the universe.

Believers in a finite universe have a theological problem with the second thesis because it proposes that the universe itself breaks the rule of nothing being able to bring itself into being. This would be a problem if the universe was finite but if the universe is synonymous with G_d it wouldn't, which is why I don't have too much of a problem with it.