I recently attended a lecture by Michael Shermer, editor of The Skeptic magazine and frequent writer for Scientific American. The basic content of the presentation was Creationism vs. Evolution. He raised many interesting points, but there was one thing that bothered me about his lecture. Although the topic was mentioned and discussed from several perspectives, he never really addressed the issue of the beginning of everything.
Shermer talked about Intelligent Design, and said that if it is logical to say that one can look at the earth and claim it must have been designed, then it should be just as logical to look at the intelligent designer and say that he must have been designed as well. Then, it would be equally plausible to look at the “superior designer” (the one who designed the designer) and infer that he/she, too, must have been designed by a super superior designer, and so on. The point he made was interesting, and it highlighted a question I have, as have many, struggled with. To wit, how did everything (the universe or whatever) begin? More specifically, is it logically evitable that something (whether it be God, a superior being, the universe, etc.) be eternal?
Mr. Shermer mentioned the idea again when he pondered, “What was before time?” or “What did the Big Bang bang into?” He acknowledged the question, but did not provide any sort of answer. He said that these were “questions with very interesting answers,” but he did not proffer any such answers. The purpose here is not to criticize Mr. Shermer, for I realize that the question under consideration is something that has been investigated for millenia. I do not fault him for failing to provide a solution to the quintessential puzzle of life.
If something cannot come from nothing, then something must be eternal. In other words, it is impossible to have a beginning. If there was a beginning, what was before that beginning? This leads us logically to the notion of eternality.
Perhaps the unfortunate reality is that, at this time, we simply do not have the mental capacity to observe, comprehend, or explain this ill-defined quandary. The two options that remain are simple: 1. Continue the search, hoping to arrive at the truth, or 2. Ignore the question completely and enjoy life for what it is. I’ll leave that debate for another time.
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