For
millennia some Christian theologians have contemplated the possible attributes
of God. Though Jesus informs us that none have seen the Father except the Son
and that if we know Jesus we know the Father (God) nevertheless a quest for
more knowledge of God and his attributes has brought theologians from Philo of Alexandria
to Thomas Aquinas to consider the infinite and realms beyond the veil of
entangled particles appearing as mass within a Higgs Field in a solid state-temporal
condition.
The
German mathematician Georg Cantor 1845-1918 was very helpful in developing
ideas on infinity. Cantor was the inventor of set theory, and taken with modal
logic it is quite simple to contemplate cardinal and ordinal infinite series as
abstractions.
Cantor
is his day was seriously academically marginalized for thinking about real
numbers. Real numbers are something akin to Platonic realism-each considers
things that seem unreal to common sense perception. Real numbers include negative
numbers and that was almost heretical in the nineteenth century among some
establishment mathematicians.
Inn
January 2014 the theoretical physicist Max Tegmark is publishing a new book on
multiverse theory structures and classification. In a sense multiverse theory
is a natural growth from set theory and transfinite series that Cantor
developed. Added to the developments in algebra and geometry during the 20th
century its easy to create n-dimensional universes and a plethora of
Universes-even an infinite array of Universes as sets within sets quite
equivalent to the way sets of infinite numbers can be encapsulated or
juxtaposed within other sets (regard each set as a Universe or subset Universe)
with particular physical boundary conditions or laws for each Universe having
some relation to the meta-set boundary conditions.
Since
mass and energy are equivalent through convertibility in ratio to Einstein’s
formula of E= MC2 one may
consider that which exists as some indefinable kind of field. The Higgs field
is a comparatively local-to-the-Universe-we-live-in medium in which particles
can tangle up and actualize. Though it is easy enough to hypothesize a
precursor field or potential zero-point energy in a vacuum before any Universe
develops through an aggregation of zero-point energy into mass the unresolved
question of where zero-point energy comes from and what relation and boundary
conditions zero-point energy in a primordial vacuum have remain.
We
like to think of God as eternal and non-temporal. At some point before the
beginning of a temporal succession of Universes cascaded into being (at least
theoretically for human beings existing in a temporal Universe the book of
Genesis indicates was a contingent field created after the fall from perfect grace
by Adam and Eve) an eternal field existed.
The
neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus wrote about The One well enough in The
Enneads. In the modern world his ideas are still useful. Theoretical cosmology
provides Christian philosophers with a theological interest quite a bit of
paradigmata to think about too.
Considering
the relationship of being to nothingness for an eternal God for whom all things
exist pre-known and created, nothingness
may be a through-the-glass darkly limitation to perception, a kind of
non-omniscient way of being enabling the appearance of temporality and vacuum
to exist. In a way the logically primary state of affairs of a zero-point
energy field would be monistic rather than pluralistic. There should be no
spacing or interval, no vacuum at all. It seems not a coincidence that the
infinities of black holes are a common thread in considering the irreducible
origin of mass in its primary form. The highest organization and least amount
of entropy in a Universe are at a singularity.
Plotinus
too considered The One as all things as a kind of singularity for whom nothing
at all needed to be extended or actualized. The paradox fundamentally was why
such a happenstance of anything existing should be made to occur. Plotinus
brought the idea of The Intelligence into being creating Universes and forms
for things to be. Plotinus drew upon Plato and his Realm of Forms (in The
Republic) as inspiration obviously however The Intelligence is also
suggestively comparable to The Spirit of God that acted upon the waters to make
the Universe materialize with substance. The concept of water as a primordial
field that when made turbulent allows things to be and become isn’t unlike the
idea of twisters, strings and such in a fundamental field. Christians however
might look to the origin of the original field or at least to its explanation
as spiritual.
Mass
as a spiritual compound at its fundamental level was developed by the physicist
and mathematicians Gottfried Leibniz. He called those one and two-dimensional
particles monads. It is easy to theorize a spiritual foundation for mass
concatenated through dimensions as readily as a holographic Universe. With
Bishop Berkeley’s Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous developing the
philosophy of idealism it became practical to consider the subjectivity of
sense data and today how sense data is interpreted by the mind phenomenally
though generally consistently by similarly constructed beings. Berkeley believe
the entire Universe could be production
created for a human mind to experience by God, and it may with an ultimate
appearance of being real.
Some
Eastern philosophers have also considered reality as a product of the mind of
God (or Brahma). The concept of the unextended eternal being (God) existing at
the heart of nature and all Universes occurring within His own infinite to the
infinite nature seems challenging to miss. A human soul then seems to be a
spirit within the mind of God Who is Spirit.