Rumours of Grace: The real Arkenstone

A while ago I helped put together a debate on whether or not God exists. I do believe that God exists and is up to many wonderful things. So staging a discussion about his being around at all seems to me now to be like wandering around the film set of The Book of Negroes and suggesting that author Lawrence Hill doesn’t exist.

The debater claiming that God does not exist said that God was not needed to explain the origin of the universe. “We now have,” he said, “the Big Bang.”

What he meant was something like this: In pre-scientific times people didn’t know what we know. They didn’t understand that the universe is the product of impersonal energies and that its origin is something like a big explosion. That explosion – not a disorganized event but something that proceeded according to the applicable laws of physics – resulted in the immense universe we now observe and provided the conditions for the development of galaxies, stars and planets.

We can see from this that a story of a God who created the universe – the Christian God – is not necessary. In fact, it would only falsify our knowledge.

At one point in the debate, there was a brief discussion of what the pre-Big Bang state of the universe was. The philosopher arguing against God said he didn’t care what it was – it could be a lump of shale.

But anyone who thinks seriously about what the pre-Big Bang state of the universe was must realize that whatever that state, it must have been staggeringly impressive. It might have been the size of a baseball, as some have suggested. If so, it would have made the baseball-sized Arkenstone look pretty lame.

Arkenstone, the name of the much sought-after stone in The Hobbit, is based on the Greek word for origin or supreme. This supreme beginning stone must have been shimmering with power and patterned energies that allowed it to give birth to the web of galaxies and energy fields that make up the universe.

Where would it have come from? This is the crucial question. The answer that it came from nothing or that it did not have a cause does not seem plausible. It seems completely unlikely that something that is part of the cause-and-effect universe that we observe has no cause.  

For many centuries, Christian philosophers and scientists have been saying that the real beginning of the universe can best be understood as a being who is not caused but can cause all things that are caused.  That’s not an approach that convinces everyone, but it seems to me more intellectually responsible than to claim that our cause-and-effect universe has no cause – that it came from nothing. I don’t think that anyone seriously believes that anything can come from nothingness – true and utter nothingness.

The universe’s Arkenstone would have to be a fabulously powerful item with incalculable patterns and physical laws to have produced our universe. So, it would seem designed. Actually, our whole world seems designed by mind or mind. The more we discover through the sciences, the more patters we uncover and the deeper they run.

For this reason, science proves God. But that of course is saying too much. Science affirms God for many people, as it does for me. It suggests God. Or – to be more accurate – the world science is uncovering suggests God.

And affirms him.

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