The Meaning of the Universe, or Non-meaning – and is there anything beyond the Big Bang

An excellent article in The Catholic Thing this morning. Is there any meaning out there or are the “nones” and atheistic scientists correct that the universe is not as our cosmic home, but as an immense, indifferent, dead, absurd, hostile place – as is now the assumed background of our whole society.

If there is no God, then everything is a sick joke and we are deluded into thinking we are more than just a collection of molecules, hormones, and electronics. But the beauty is – all cultures and societies have looked beyond the molecules knowing that something infinite and personal is beyond the mere science.

I made a chart for my kids a long time ago called “You Are The Detective” to help them sort out the beauty of theism and the despair of atheism or skepticism.

The article in The Catholic Thing written by Robert Royal is entitled “From the First 3 Minutes to Us“. Here is how it begins:

One of the past century’s greatest scientists, Steven Weinberg, died last week amid worldwide acclaim. He wasn’t famous like Einstein or Stephen Hawking, but he probably did more to explain and unify notions about the fundamental constituents of matter and the origins of our universe than any other recent figure. And unlike many scientists, he could write – for technical audiences as well as for general readers. He rightly received a Nobel Prize in 1979. Weinberg stayed active in research and teaching until shortly before he died, a fitting finish for an amazingly productive life – but also a tragic life of cosmic proportions.

His death sent me back to his most famous book: The First Three Minutes. … That book, as the title indicates, is a popular account of the beginnings of the universe. (Let us leave aside for the moment how to understand those “minutes” since, as St. Augustine was aware long before Einstein, time itself comes into being with space and, therefore, the nature of time is not easy to specify.) The book is a lively portrayal of the stages scientists believe the universe passed through. From the Big Bang (first postulated in 1927 by the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître) to 10^-43 sec. – so-called Planck Time. If you’ve forgotten the math, this means:

1 sec. /10 followed by 43 zeroes — An inconceivably short time.

(Picture: Einstein and Lemaître)

For that brief space, whatever had come into existence was undifferentiated, or at least we can’t see back further. At 10^-37sec. the universe expands faster than the speed of light (impossible now) and material forms with which we are more familiar started to appear. According to Weinberg – the remark was perhaps meant to be humorous – “After that [the first three minutes], nothing of any interest would happen in the history of the universe.

Or perhaps it wasn’t a joke. He was also famous for saying, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Like many scientists – and an increasing number of ordinary people who know little real science – the approach that modern physics makes to the world, ruling out value questions and almost all relations that cannot be expressed mathematically, which inevitably results in a vision of the universe not as our cosmic home, but as an immense, indifferent, dead, absurd, hostile place – is now the assumed background of our whole society. It’s no wonder so many of our young people say it’s “science” that has turned them into “Nones.”

And that’s the tragedy for Weinberg and us, despite the indisputable genius. I want to ask figures like Weinberg questions such as: but doesn’t the fact that you can know all this mean we are something other than just another physical structure of cells inside our skulls?

For the conclusion of this excellent article (which makes me proud to be a theist and Catholic), click HERE.