There Never was Nothing / Nothing was Never there
There is something that the human brain cannot and will never understand. As much as we try and theorize and simplify, the idea of eternity and infinity is something we cannot put our head around (If someone disagrees, please send me the picture of the person who CAN…. I want to see that head). Even mathematicians cannot find something more precise than “very large” as a definition of infinity.
Since we will never be able to understand infinity we will never understand the creation of the universe. Everything we know to date leads to the assumption that there was no creation. Even the Big Bang theory leaves us unsatisfied: What was before the Big Bang? Where did this condensed space of tiniest particles come from that finally big-banged? It could not come from “nothing”, could it? Nothing. That’s another thing we humans don’t get. The sheer idea of non-existence freaks us out. We construct abstruse ideas of an “after-life” to get around the fact that after we die we just are no more. Nothing. Finito. The same spiritual theories try to argue an existence “before life” although the same nothingness and non-existence rules there.
The Universe however is different. If we say someone dies and is no more, we mean the personality, the character, the soul. The body still exists. It will decay back into tiniest particles but these particles will “stick around” and give growth to something else. Therefore, when talking about the non-existence of a living thing we mean the actual life of this thing, the spirit. When talking about the non-existence of the Universe however, we are talking about the absolute non-existence of anything material. Nothing. No-thing. How can that be? We are stuck, stuck with two solutions that are not satisfying at all. Number 1: Before the Big-Bang there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. How the particles and energy got there to produce that massive explosion, we don’t know. Religion probably has an answer. Whether that answer is reasonable and satisfies our need for ultimate explanation is debatable but that is a different topic. Option number 2: There never was nothing (read that sentece again: there NEVER was NOTHING), or else, there always was something and there always will be. The Universe constantly expands and shrinks and expands and shrinks etc… According to that theory, there would have been an infinite number of Big-Bangs before this one and there are infinitely more to come.
So, all my theorizing has a sad outcome. To understand the origins of our Universe, we have to admit that we CANNOT understand it, as much as we might try. We have the choice between two things that we can both not imagine in its full extend: Absolute Infinity and absolute Nothingness. This leaves me with MY personal opinion.
I think that some smart species out there knows, what’s going on, but that species is not human. The human brain will reach the end of its capacity at some point and I believe that this point is not so very far from where we are right now with all this high -technology and artificial Intelligence crap. Since I am one of us (believe it or not) I also have no idea about the extent of things like infinity and absolute non-existence. However, I find it less imaginable that something originated out of utter nothingness; my scientifically orientated mind just won’t admit this possibility. An ever-occurring pattern of Big-Bangs and shrinking, seems to me as the more likely absurdity of those two. But as I said, I am part of the species human, which is less intelligent than it itself will ever admit. We are searching for constant explanations of explanations and reasons for reasons but seem to not notice that there is a limit that we won’t be able to surpass, whether we like it or not.
