When I was young, my father had one phrase that he kept using with me: “You don’t get nothing for nothing.” He had trouble with English and didn’t know about the problem with double negatives. What he meant was that you can’t get something from nothing. Apparently, many Americans never heard that same information.
Today, I see many Americans expecting something for nothing or at least for a discount. Today half of the American families pay no state or federal income tax. They expect to receive all government services for nothing because it is coming to them. Seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare say they expect it to take care of them forever because they paid into it and deserve it. The fact of the matter is that most received more benefits in one year than they paid in 30. They didn’t work hard and even if they did it was to be paid at the time not so that the government will take care of them in their last 30 or 40 years.
The hard working also want something for nothing. Corporate CEOs and Wall Street brokers expect to receive millions of dollars a year even if they fail, to get multi-million dollar golden parachutes if they are fired for accomplishing too little and then a low tax rate on the money they never really “earned” to begin with.
We also have people who come here illegally wanting all the benefits of American citizenship while still declaring their loyalty to their beloved homeland which they left because they couldn’t stand living there. We have naturalized citizens who don’t learn English expecting all government services from passports to voters pamphlets to be also in their native language if that language is Chinese or Spanish.
We have fellow Americans who can trace their ancestors’ residence here back to the 1700’s expecting to live on government benefits without working because their distant ancestors worked too hard under terrible conditions. We have people who contribute nothing to the country expecting to get as much medical treatment as possible for free because they don’t buy insurance and know that American hospitals must take of them regardless.
But now there is a new twist to the something-from-nothing theorists. It comes from the worlds of theoretical, particle, cosmological and quantum mechanics physics. Stephen Hawkins, who has the best reason in the world to be an atheist, has theorized that the world could exist without a creator because everything comes from nothing and there was never anything before nothing since nothing has no time or space. ( And yet he also says he does not believe in philosophy). Other notable physicists have come up with varieties of the big bang theory (also the name of the funniest comedy on T.V.) with many supposing that it all started when nothing exploded into something causing a chemical reaction which then created all the planets and every element found on earth today including hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and even gold and silver. They say our bodies come from exploding stars. All of it they say was born from nothingness.
One group of quantum mechanic physicists is coming close to what sounds like the right answer. They believe that the universe is one big quantum mechanical computer system which creates the universe the way a quantum mechanical computer can create different realities. This begs the question: where did the universal quantum computer come from? The answer is not China. Another school of theoretical physics, a very small one, believes that it is all just in our minds and that we have created the universe. If that is true, I want to make some big changes in the universe that I have created, starting with better weather, good health and fewer insects.
I believe that physicists should stop trying to justify their atheism and see creation as something close to the quantum computer analogy. Here is my theory.
I believe that the universe is driven by three basic realities: the infinite is finite (as above so below); everything has and is consciousness (making the infinite finite and the finite infinite, while every outside has an inside); and that everything that begins must end, also known as entropy.
To the theist this translates to: G-d is infinite and finite and His consciousness creates the universe. There was nothing before consciousness because nothing can precede it. Like the Zen koans - “what is the sound of a tree falling in the forest if no one hears it?” and “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” What both are saying is that without consciousness, nothing can be said to exist.
Physicists are slowing coming to these conclusions. They already have endorsed the notion of entropy being life’s way of changing energy (consciousness) without ever losing or gaining energy in the universe. It has also found the existence of fractals which are infinite iterations of form within all objects. So a leaf, which is finite, has an infinite number of fractals - the infinite is finite, the finite infinite. And now some theoretical physicists have realized that everything is conscious - from sub atomic particles to single cell organisms to the earth, outer space and the entire universe. They are about to realize that everything is and has consciousness. The Zen Buddhists call this big mind, small mind - the latter being part of the former. In Vedanta, G-d is said to be Sat, Chit Ananda or Truth, Consciousness and Joy.
My theory makes all the theoretical physics theories also correct. The world is in our minds because our minds are part of the universal mind. Everything did come from nothing in the sense that consciousness in not a thing but the space that contains and creates all things. The universe is like a quantum computer and is creating everything because this computer is consciousness. The big bang was the originating cause of our universe because it was what happened when consciousness created the objects of its awareness, like a brain getting great ideas.
So something comes from a nothing that is the source of everything as well as its constant companion.
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