Christians & Atheists Unite!

1850 words, 8 minute read

Theology makes strange bedfellows. Fundamentalist Christians and Secular Atheists have more in common than you may imagine. For one thing, both believe something that would seem to challenge all rational credulity:

“The material universe came to be at a single moment in time and, after a calculable number of such (Planck length) moments (c. 10^60), it will vanish without a trace, leaving no residual material effect.”

Christians call it creatio ex nihilo, atheists prefer bootstrapping; either way, it’s the same phenomenon: nothing → something → nothing. For over three millennia, philosophers have been finding fault with this model:

“…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable… Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is - now, together, one, continuous… Thus coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of… It is not to be said or thought That it is not… It must either be completely or not at all.” (Parmenides, Fragment 8)

“It is impossible for there to be coming to be from what is not and that what is should be destroyed.” (Empedocles, Fragment 18)

“There is no growth…(nor) destructive death…but only mixture and interchange… Growth is the name given to them by men.” (Empedocles, Fragment 21)

“They have no constant life but in so far as they never cease from interchanging, they are forever unchanged…running through each other they become different at different times and (so) are perpetually alike.” (Empedocles, Fragment 25)

“We step and we do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not.” (Heraclitus, Fragment 49a)

“As they, different, step into the same rivers, different waters flow over them.” (Heraclitus, Fragment 12)

“We come together into one cosmos…from which all things that were, and are, and will be in the future have sprung…” (Empedocles, Fragment 25)

“Out of all things, one thing, and out of one thing, all things.” (Heraclitus, Fragment 10)

“All things are one thing.” (Heraclitus, Fragment 50)

Fast forward 2500 years: Gregory Bateson gave us a criterion to judge any entity claiming any sort of ‘ontological authenticity’: “A difference that makes a difference.”

Alfred North Whitehead implicitly incorporated Bateson’s criterion into his Philosophy of Organism when he wrote that every event begins by rejecting elements of its Actual World (difference) and ends by projecting a new synthesis (difference) into the Actual Worlds of other events.

So that’s an event, a difference that makes a difference. But then Universe, as we understand it, cannot be an event! It rejects nothing (there’s nothing to reject) and, even more importantly, it projects nothing (there’s nowhere to project it): “(It) will vanish without a trace leaving no residual effect.”

So universe can harbor events, but it cannot itself be an event; but if it’s not an event, What is it? Or more to the point, Is it? (According to Whitehead, only events are actual entities.)

And so we find ourselves at an impasse - an occupational hazard for philosophers. We have eviscerated the Big Bang/Big Burp model of Universe (above), and now we have even called into question the existence of Universe per se. Well done! But our mutual congratulations are necessarily tempered by two inconvenient facts:

Ø  The ‘discredited’ Big Bang/Big Burp model fits barge loads of scientific evidence. What seemingly can’t be (philosophy) apparently is (science).

Ø  “…Ergo est!” Universe does exist; deal with it!

Somehow, we must reconcile what must be with what can’t be. It’s a tall order…so everyone is invited to join in: Atheists, Christians, Sikhs, et al.

In such a dilemma, it often proves useful to reexamine the core proposition in question: Is it well formed or does it embed a preconceived solution, disguise a bias, or harbor a contradiction? In that spirit, let’s deconstruct our original prop:

“Universe came to be, without precedent cause, at a single moment in time, and after a measurable period of time, it will cease to be…without residual effect.”

How can this be so? Atheists must look for an answer that is consistent with their assumption that the Universe is ‘all there is’. They must find Sufficient Reason within the Universe itself.

This is admittedly a heavy lift but one which can be addressed with quasi-explanatory concepts like virtual particlesand negative vacuum pressure or… with a simple shrug, “We know what we know and that’s all that we know (Popeye)…for now.” Their God is the Gaps!

Christians have a superficially easier task. They have a ready-made explanation close at hand: “I am who am (YHWH)… I will be all in all (pan in panti)… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end… everything that comes to be comes to be through me (sophia/wisdom, logos/plan).” Ok?

Well, that depends on your point of view. For some, ‘God’ is a matter of first person experience, for some a conclusion drawn from observation and reasoning. For others, ‘God’ is evinced by testimony from trusted, reliable sources. For these folks, creatio ex nihilo and parousia (above) pose no difficulty. To the extent that they trust their own process, the problem is solved…for them.

For others, however, God is more abstract, more remote, possibly unknowable, at least ineffable. But if God cannot be known or described, how can we attribute any specific act or function (e.g. creation, salvation)?

Still others consider ‘God’ a false flag, e.g. “a concept by which we measure our pain.” (Lennon) Some cite Occam’s Razor, dismissing the ‘God Hypothesis’ as superfluous. Finally, there are those who believe that the very concept of God is logically incoherent and/or inconsistent with what we know and trust about the world.

Sidebar: Christians are often thought to be gullible, basing their convictions on faith rather than on evidence. Atheists are credited with greater rationality. But the reverse is the case. Atheists place enormous, almost mystical, faith in the principle of Sufficient Reason, in WYSIWYG , and in the power of human inquiry to discover ultimate truth. Judeo-Christians are simply advancing a minimal hypothesis (God) to account for incontrovertible data. That doesn’t make it right, just simpler.

Can we meaningfully differentiate between these two cosmologies? Ceasing to be without residual effect is logically equivalent to never having been: ‘42 – 42’ is the same as ‘0’, Mr. Adams. The math is the same for Christians and Atheists alike.

If you are not now and there is no trace of you ever having been, what would it mean to say you were? Aren’t we playing language games when we ascribe being to something that is not…or non-being to something that is?

In what sense can we say that anything was when whatever was has vanished without a trace, leaving things exactly as they would have been if it had not occurred in the first place or if something entirely different had happened instead? In what sense can we say that anything is when whatever is will vanish without a trace, leaving no residual effect?

The Universe ends the same way no matter what events it contains; all its trajectories converge… at the place labeled never having been. Therefore, Christian or Atheist, both Occam’s Razor and the Principle of Sufficient Reason require us to say that nothing is, was, or ever will be. Ergo Nihilism…unless there’s more to the story.

The Book of Revelation contains the clearest statement of this doctrine from the Christian perspective. The fulcrum of the book is the successive opening of Seven Seals. Each seal reveals an aspect of Universe: . 

“When He (Christ/the Lamb) broke open the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven for about a half an hour.” (8: 1) The material Universe ends the same for Christians as for Atheists: Nihil est, nothing is. “Nothing beside remains.” (Ozymandias, Shelley)

But Revelation does not end with the breaking of the 7^th seal. Over 15 additional chapters it presents a detailed, if highly symbolic account of the ‘transcendent’, supra-material, eternal process of Universe.

Where does this leave us…besides confused? First, there is nothing wrong with the Big Bang/Big Burp model of Universe! There is abundant evidence to support it, mainly in the halls of science, but also in Judeo-Christian scripture. Again, the secular and the spiritual converge on this model; it would be foolish not to accept it, at least provisionally.

The question is whether the model is coherent without the added supposition of Transcendence (T), i.e. an aspect or dimension of Universe that exists/operates outside of spacetime. On this subject, Nietzsche was unusually adamant, even for him:

“One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” (Twilight of the Idols) 

Take heart: acceptance of Transcendence need not lead to the dreaded Judeo-Christian God, at least not directly. ‘T’ could simply be a dimension of reality that does not have the characteristics of spacetime, i.e. that is neither extensive nor divisible. Still, some Christians argue that Transcendence necessarily leads to the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, personal and historical God; but not everyone agrees!

On the other hand, some atheists argue that accepting T on any terms is equivalent to letting the nose of a very stinky camel into your tent. They are not wrong! Realism is a useful discipline. Having to find sufficient reason in the immanent, phenomenal world prevents us from considering seriously the idea that Earth might rest atop an infinite tower of turtles; or…it could blind us to the truth.

We are in the habit of modeling Universe purely in terms of a finite number of spatiotemporal dimensions. Every event can be uniquely labeled using an ordered set of just 4  real numbers. Because these dimensions are extensive, continuous, and divisible, no two events share the same address. The resulting spacetime grid is a way to order events, a secular logos.

But this model alone is incoherent. It is inconsistent with any actual world. Call it ‘God’ or something entirely unrelated to God, there must be a dimension, T, to Universe that is neither extensive nor divisible, i.e. that is unrelated to space or time, that is universal and eternal. On that, Christians and Atheists should be united!

Dante Allegri described Transcendence in his Paradiso (and yes, he had in mind the Judeo-Christian God): “The glory of him who moves all things… the Love that moves the sun and the other stars…permeates the universe.”