Set Theory, Multiverse and Theological Speculation

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

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 20^th 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.