Everything Exists!

1100 words, 5 minute read

Was it a million years ago or just yesterday? As usual, my 5 year old grandson is debating with his older brother. The proposition this morning? Resolved: That Santa Claus exists. I won’t take you through the intricacies of the argument, but jumping to the conclusion, the younger one ends the debate with, “Everything exists! QED” (Ok, so I added the QED part; I mean, he’s precocious but even that has its limits).

In an earlier article on this site we discussed the Dark Universe. No one knows what it is. That’s why we call it dark. But most everyone agrees that it does exist. But according to Stevie Wonder (1972), “When you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.”

We are used to reasoning from a known cause to a projected effect. Depending on the precision of the projection, we are talking infinitesimal chance, real number probability, or super-determinism. 

In the case of the Dark Universe we reason from a known effect (gravity) to a retrojected cause. All that we really know is that we can’t account for observed topology relying solely on the Standard Model of Particle Physics. There’s got to be something more, even though we have no idea what. There’s always got to be something more! A fancier bottle of wine, a faster car, a fatter 401k. 

Once upon a time, there had to be gods to account for celestial motion and the processes of nature, there had to be empty space (a receptacle) to permit the emergence of matter/energy, there had to be a universe-pervading aether to hold things together, and there had to be hidden variables to account for ‘spooky action at a distance’. (Einstein) Except, as far as we know, there are none of these things…and we’re ok with that, now.

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Imagine you are God. According to the English language translation of Genesis 1:3, you said, “Let there be light and there was light.” 

According to most interpretations, there was void and the word of God created energy/matter. But the full text also supports a minority interpretation: There was an insensible, chaotic medium out of which God culled related elements, which he labeled ‘light’, thereby injecting primal order into primordial chaos. The remainder of Genesis 1 details the unfolding of that order into the many splendored worlds we love.

Defenders of this minority view have found themselves on the wrong side of Roman Catholic dogma: i.e. creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.  But that doesn’t have to be so. The eminent 20th century theologian, Bill Clinton, summarized the dilemma: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” 

Is chaos something…or nothing? Without order, does anything exist? We believe, for example, that entropy (disorder) was minimal at Big Bang and that it will be maximal at Heat Death. We have no problem saying that nothing (nihilo) existed ‘prior’ to Big Bang, not even time itself; we should have no problem saying that nothing will exist ‘after’ Heat Death. Therefore, maximum entropy can be synonymous with nihilo and so the two interpretations of ontogenesis converge…in orthodoxy.

Light exists because God said it exists. Same for sky (1:8), earth and sea (1:10), plant life (1:11), celestial bodies (1:14), and animal life (1:24). In Genesis 2, God shares his power of creation (i.e. ordering, naming) with humans, resulting in speciation (2:20) and socialization (2:23), in other words, the world as we know it today.

The Dark Universe exists because we say it exists. Light, etc. exists because God says it exists. Society exists, again, because we say so. Working with God, we too inject order (local) into the chaotic medium (universal); we are co-creators. 

The Dark Universe exists, God exists, Santa Claus exists! We know they exist because we see their effects. Gravity exists, the universe exists, and once every year presents appear under the Christmas tree. We know nothing of the Dark Universe, God, or Santa Claus per se. We only know that there are phenomena we cannot currently account for in any other way.

Most adults will tell you that they don’t believe in Santa Claus. They say that because they believe they can account for the annual appearance of presents under a tree by other means. They cite an unholy (secular) trinity (Family, Amazon, and MasterCard) to explain the unmistakable phenomena we know as Christmas. 

They might just as well say, “Of course Santa Claus exists. What we call ‘Santa Claus’ is a confluence of kinship, commerce, and finance.” But out of respect for Occam’s Razor, they don’t. But in 1897, Francis Church, looking at exactly the same phenomena, did! He famously wrote, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound…” 

Mr. Church looks at a confluence of love, generosity, and devotion and chooses to call it ‘Santa Claus’; other adults look at the same phenomena and find no reason to ‘name’ an additional entity. 

Likewise, folks who ‘don’t believe in God’ claim they can explain the existence and character of our universe without hypothesizing a responsible entity. They combine physics, chemistry, biology, and cosmology to account for “Heaven and Earth and all things, visible and invisible.” (Nicene Creed) 

The Dark Universe poses a slightly different problem. There are currently no proposals that convincingly account for cosmic phenomena based solely on today’s catalogue of particles and forces. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be. 

So my grandson was right, the younger that is: everything does exist! The Dark Universe, God, and Santa. The challenge is defining what it is that exists. When we use language to describe reality, we arbitrarily shatter the uniform glass sphere into a million shards.

In the end, it doesn’t much matter how the crystal crumbles…as long as we can reassemble the pieces to recreate a smooth globe. A jigsaw puzzle might be an even better analogy. One image, divisible into indefinitely many, randomly shaped pieces that can be reassembled to recreate the image on the box.

We, i.e. intelligent agents, aka ‘God, his angels, and (us) his saints’, decide what exists (Dasein, Heidegger). But defining what ‘what exists’ is (Wassein) – that’s another matter entirely. 

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Rembrandt’s 1632 oil on canvas uses dramatic chiaroscuro to depict a scholar seated in a vast, sun-drenched interior, symbolizing the light of human reason amidst the shadows of the unknown. The composition is anchored by a prominent winding staircase that suggests the complex, spiraling depths of philosophical thought and the search for hidden truths. While a second figure quietly tends a fire in the background, the painting remains a profound meditation on the internal struggle to understand the nature of existence and the divine.