The Answer To Life, The Universe, and Everything

This isn't necessarily a critique, just some deep thoughts about the universe and God. As a Mason, I continually challenge myself to pursue this of all subjects, reading about science, exploring the cosmos, and how religion fit in. Some say science and religion should stay far away from each other. I don't, dogma aside, I think they fit just nicely.

Remember when Einstein used to say things like "God does not play with dice"? He was able to keep God into the scientific mix so well and always made us wonder. He showed that yes, science is limited to what we can observe or theorize based on existing facts and calculations. But what IS beyond that?

Not long after that, Hubble showed that the galaxies were moving away from each other. This gave us the first notion that they must have been closer together and even closer ... and even really really close -- that they formed a singularity and exploded into the Big Bang.

So they've recently calculated that our universe is 13.7 billion years old, that it is expanding exponentially (or perhaps like the Fibonacci sequence ???).

There are theories like Cosmic Inflation that say the universe will continue like that forever into a cold dark spance or that it will reach a point that gravity will pull it all back into the Big Crunch and maybe it all starts over again, because total energy doesn't change.

So in one sense, the universe is finite because it is expanding, in another it is infinite because we'll never know or see the end of it. But that's because of human limit, from our ego, from our limited mind.

So if our universe is finite, then what's beyond that?

What about multiple universes? If there are multiple universes, then they must be finite otherwise they would all be one in the same. Think about a bunch of bubbles that get bigger and bigger, but what's between them? Nothing? Do they collide? Do bigger ones swallow smaller ones? So what's holding all these universes? Another universe? And what holds that? Now were into infinity again. Whew.

Now let's go the other way. Nuclear physics continually explores smaller and smaller things. Everything is made of something smaller. We're made of cells and our cells are made of things like mitochondria, then DNA, which is made of chemicals, which are made of elements, atoms, protons, quarks, ... it just keeps going.

So will we ever come to the end? Science still does not explain everything, and perhaps it never will as long as things are infinitely large and infinitely small. It seems when atheists use science as their mantra, they can only go as far as we know.

Stephen Hawking is another well known physicist whose explanations on black holes, the universe, light, gravity, time, quantum theory, string theory, relativity, are fun to read and understandable. He, much like Einstein, does not count out God in the equation. In fact, he says that's what we're doing with discovering theories and exploring science -- is knowing the mind of God. What motivation!!!

Because when we ask "Why are we here?", who do we expect to answer this question? Is it chance that we're here, or IS there a reason?

So now the question is, "Is God playing with dice, or is He blowing bubbles?"