10This is my little essay about what I think about that topic. I am a Roman Catholic, and yes, I believe in God. And yet, I still believe in the scientific theories in the world, including evolution, and the Big Bang.
Yes, I believe that science and religion can mix. If you think about it, the center of all religions is a Supreme Being, be it God, or Christ, or Allah, or whatever else the religion chooses to call the Supreme Being.
In religions, how does the world start out? It starts when the Supreme Being creates the world, or just calls it into being. That's not scientific, you might point out.
In science, the universe starts with the Big Bang. Sure, you might think, where's the religion in that?
In the Catholic Bible, the creation of the Universe lasted for seven days. Well, I prefer to think of that as a symbolic way of telling about the Big Bang. The creation of the universe started with darkness anyway, and God said, Let there be light!
The Big Bang, as far as I can remember, started out with an immense amount of energy packed into an extrememly small pinprick of space. Then, the energy just burst out into the universe, hence the name, Big Bang. Up until now, the universe is still continually expanding at the edges.
I have a big question though. Where did the small pinprick of space, with all that packed energy come from in the first place?
Have you heard about the Big Crunch theory? It's another theory that states that if the universe has enough mass in it, it will collapse back onto itself, hence the name, the Big Crunch. So, smart scientists out there, that energy probably came from a previous Big Crunch. But where did the energy for that previous universe come from, and the one before that, and the one before that. The only logical way to answer that question is that all that matter came from somewhere. And so we just must conclude that that somewhere came from another somewhere as well. And so on. It will not end, unless we logically conclude that there must be some Supreme Being out there, somewhere.
We know that we are alive right now. Our knowledge in itself that we exist at this moment is already a miracle. We are conscious. We know. And we learn. Of course, you might argue that we are conscious as a product of many ages of evolution, and our brains are complicated enough to think this way. But look around. We know that we are where we are, we are who we are, and we know what we are supposed to be doing. Isn't that already an amazing thing in itself? I really do think so. The harmony in this world is breathtaking.
When we die, do we just blink out? I don't think so. We are conscious beings, but do you remember any time at all when your mind has not been working? Sure, when I'm asleep, you say. When I'm unconscious, you might add. But how about dreaming? Our minds are never truly inactive. When we are dreaming, are we truly unconscious? No, because there are many instances in our dreams when we know what's happening. So when we die, we become nothingness? We cease to exist? This is why many religions believe in life after death. What if after our bodies stop working, the consciousness from our minds live on? Our souls, as many religions might refer to it.
Our universe is approximately 8 to 12 billion years old. Of course, we are right now at the present. And yet, we know that before us, there was a past. And I front of us stretches the future. If you go back and back in time, there exists an infinitely large past as there exists an infinitely large future. We are not sure if there really was another universe before ours, and yet it is possible. And before that, an infinitely large number of universes have already existed. That in itself is proof that there must be somewhere that all came from. Leading once again to some hope that there is a Supreme Being. And there must have been intelligent lifeforms that have existed before us. What were their missions as a species? What is mankind's true mission? To multiply and multiply, and get advanced enough to populate other planets, then other solar systems, then other galaxies, then multiply again? We are not entirely sure. Why does everything exist in the first place? It all goes back to religion. We must be in harmony with everyone else, and be good, or else the world will be destroyed somehow. What will happen if the world had no order? It might have been destroyed by nuclear weapons years ago.
Religion helps us to keep ourselves organized. Somehow, we know what's good and what's bad. If we did everything we wanted to do, the world would be a terrible place to live in. Just think of all the chaos. Crime everywhere. But no, our conscience tells us when to do the right thing. And where did our consciousness come from? Years of evolution? The Big Bang? And yet, it all boils down to that somewhere that everything came from once again. Yes, I do believe there is a Supreme Being.
It's up to all of you what you want to believe.
~*~