Hi Angela,
Yup, the universe does have a wonderful sense of humor – often at our expense. And I see exactly where you are coming from.
Okay, this is out of left field, but maybe fun. A friend and I had a thought experiment a few years ago (when I started questioning my own beliefs), regarding the first cause of the universe. It’s very simplistic and personifies God, but was interesting none the less.
I don’t assume for one minute there was a personal God in the beginning but there obviously was a force at work or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it now. So it goes like this:
There is nothing, no time, no space, and no universe – suddenly a self-aware consciousness springs into being from this nothingness. It’s you. Now you find yourself alone in a vast nothingness, eternally – What would you want? Maybe to be surprised? Maybe to have some company?
So you split your consciousness into many, thus creating space, after all you can’t have separate conscious entities without space to separate them. This process continues and continues till we get to the physical manifestation of matter – which in reality is dense localized energy – and all the physical structures of the universe start to form. From this thought it looks like God is simply dreaming the universe and we are that dream. It doesn’t address what caused the “first cause”, just can’t get there from here.
Like I said, I don’t see it as personified like above, but I think a similar process must have occurred and is on going today. A branching and splitting of a singular unified whole – which ironically is still contained in the whole (universe).
For me it’s quite fascinating that a person can operate as a singular being, when the being is made of millions of separate cells that die all of the time and are continually replaced. Look at your hand. The skin is not the same skin as last year, the cells from last year are long dead. Yet you retain your individual identity. Think about this. Say you visited an old friend last year and shook his hand. The hand you have now actually never touched that person.
The minerals in your body that make up your bones are about the only part of you that is unchanged. The calcium in your bones was formed in the stars that preceded the formation of this solar system. The parent star or stars that exploded to form a nebulous cloud from which our sun and planets came from - and is millions, perhaps billions of years old. To me that is simply amazing. Part of you is older than this solar system. All the heavy elements came from the demise of the first stars.
Okay, I have rambled some more, my bad. My mind works like this all of the time.
Take care,
Shannon
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