The Ekpyrotic Theory: Looking for God at the End of the Universe
It recently dawned on me why so many religions are so threatened by a few branches of science. It’s because certain branches of science, like SETI, cosmology, evolutionary biology, and astronomy are all basically looking for God. They are looking at the origin of the Universe, and the origin of the human race, and even if they aren’t actually looking for God … this is where God is supposed to be in so many religions. Yes, at the origin of the Universe, we should find this big glowing bearded white guy on a plinth, saying “Let there be light.” Well, there might be, but him and his plinth exist in five to nine dimensional space and don’t look like anything our feeble brains can even conceive of. In any event, this is a background and conclusion post to some of my long promised posts about God and the origin of the Universe and how the Universe created itself. I skip over a lot of details here because they would make the post too long, and more importantly, if people can follow my logic here, it will be far easier to go back and clarify in future posts. Also if it turns out I have made some glaring mistake, best to find out now and correct it later, assuming it can be corrected.
Now, where were we? Nine dimensional God, right. Fortunately there are humans whose brains are nimble enough to think about five to nine dimensional space, cosmologists and mathematicians for one, not to mention nuclear physicists. And they seem to have come up with a pretty good, experimentally verifiable, logical theory about what is on the “other side,” so to speak, of the Big Bang. Things are actually pretty exciting in these rarefied realms of science now, but one wouldn’t know it from the popular press. So anyhow, there seems to be a logical and scientific origin for the Big Bang. And not only was the Big Bang logical, it was also inevitable, it was in fact a natural consequence of the nature of reality itself. The universe we live in is only a slice of reality, a slice created by natural events in background reality. Which has always existed. In other words, if God did indeed create everything, he created a reality where the Big Bang and the creation and evolution of our Universe were natural and inevitable outcomes of the nature of reality.
In other words, if God exists, he created a reality so perfect and self sustaining, that no God is required. In other words, (yeah, will be saying that a lot as I try to understand and explain this,) if the Ekpyrotic Theory pans out … there is nowhere left for God to hide. Now of course this theory doesn’t explain everything, in fact it’s clear now that reality is so complex by definition there will be things we can’t explain, but it does explain how we got here. Reality has always been here, the Big Bang wasn’t the “‘start” of anything, it was just another event in the seething mass of five to nine dimensional quantum reality for lack of a better name. Well, I think cosmologists call it the “bulk” but that’s both singularly tepid, and also inaccurate. There’s incredible things going on “out there,” our universe being only one example.
Now there’s two things with the Ekpyrotic Theory that make it particularly attractive as explaining the origin for the Big Bang. For one thing it eliminates the need for a singularity as the source of the Big Bang. What’s a singularity? Um, it’s where you cram a large amount of mass, say up to a universe, into a dimensionless point. Some trick, eh? Well, no longer needed, since the Ekpyrotic theory says the Universe started as a cosmic string, and that has dimensions. What’s a cosmic string? A topic for another post, trust me. Secondly, the Ekpyrotic Theory does away with the need for the Inflationary Epoch to explain the early hyper fast expansion of the Universe.
So the Ekpyrotic theory, to sum it all up now, not only explains the origin of the Big Bang, it makes the Big Bang Theory an even more elegant and therefore robust theory. And this will all be tested on the Large Hadron Collider, because if one can look at the basic structure of the Universe at a fine enough scale, predictable effects from these proposed “outside the Universe” realities bleed through so to speak. This is what I meant when I said scientists were going to look for God by weighing “tiny pebbles.” Well, no, much smaller than pebbles. Tiny little bits of our reality itself hurled to speeds not seen since the Big Bang. And at this scale things should be effected by forces “outside” of reality. Well, outside of our Universe, a universe that is but a slice of a much greater vaster reality that has always been here.
No God required is my final analysis. At the very least the “Well, everything has to have a creator” argument is demolished. Reality has always been here quietly (well, it’s probably a noisy process in a manner of speaking) spawning universes, ours being just one of an infinite number of them. And if one still wants to believe in God, well, he was clever enough to create a reality that appears to have always existed and doesn’t require the hand of God at any point to work. God’s day of rest so to speak lasts forever. So if you see a big glowing bearded white guy sitting on a beach chair in Cabo with a drink with a tiny umbrella in it, tell him to get back to work. Pretty sure though he’ll just point to his t-shirt which has “Not My Problem Anymore” printed on it.
(The above image may help some understand other dimensions, pictured is a hypercube or tesseract, a cube in four dimensions. A tesseract is to the cube what the cube is to the square. Notice there are eight areas bounded by six sides, eight “cubes” if you will. The one on the interior, the big exterior one that encloses them all, and the six that surround the inner core. All eight of these cubes are exactly the same size and consist of all right angles, but of course we can only draw a poor three dimensional representation of a tesseract in our reality. Oh, it’s a public domain image too. It future posts I will expand on cosmic strings, brane theory, problems with the Big Bang and other supporting elements of the above, if people are interested.)
Doug's Darkworld 
Cool, I guess if we don’t find God, we will at least assume we know where he is not. And finding proof of God may not be a good thing for us right now, can you imagine all the religous crazyness that would occur if they found
“a big glowing bearded white guy sitting on a beach chair in Cabo with a drink with a tiny umbrella in it”
I think people would not believe it even if he stopped time and made it rain popsicles, for most people the Idea of God is far better than what the reality of God may be.
Peace
pyrodin
June 23, 2010 at 6:51 am
This adds a little more weight to the feeling I’ve had for a few years now that, even if God/a god did/does exist, it simply(?) doesn’t matter. As time passes (an ironic phrase, given the topic at hand), I not only no longer feel the need to question the existence of a higher power, I feel a lessening need to even deny any such existence. God is either irrelevant or obsolete. Or both.
And to respond to “…if people are interested,” yes, very interested.
Geoffrey Rose
June 28, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Oh, I exist all right. Just waking up.
Peace,
Ik
Ik
July 19, 2010 at 3:48 pm
sooo like you just circled around the problem… you cant just say that we exist cuz other forms of reality existed before us.. where did those realities come from?
like I believe in God, but if I didn’t then I would believe that everything has a “beginning” I mean I love all your posts, because I damn sure don’t have a readily proven answer to whats going on, all i can pretty much say is God did it lol. But yeah, this didn’t do much to answer my question, i have the same question with a deeper meaning now.
But thanks for the condensed version of millions of pages of articles lol. Keep up the good work!
kaleb
October 1, 2010 at 11:26 pm
There is only one underlaying reality, it’s always been here and always will be here. It’s spawned an infinite number of universes in the past and will spawn an infinite number of universes in the future. It’s a robust theory and appears to be testable. If God created reality he created it in a way that it has always been here and always will be here. The Ekpyrotic Theory doesn’t disprove God, but it does pretty much demolish the cosmological argument for God. :) —Doug
unitedcats
October 2, 2010 at 4:45 pm
How would you test the validity of this theory?
kaleb
October 2, 2010 at 9:18 pm
“At least one empirical test of the ekpyrotic theory may soon be possible. The test would examine gravitational waves, the radiation produced when massive objects accelerate.
Big Bang plus inflation predicts that gravitational waves can have extremely long wavelengths, while the ekpyrotic theory does not. Long-wavelength gravitational waves would leave a distinctive fingerprint on the cosmic microwave background.
Future experiments with a new generation of space, balloon-borne, and ground-based telescopes may be able to detect that fingerprint, says Ovrut.”
From When Branes Collide —Doug
unitedcats
October 3, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Some interesting points. Especially that God created a universe so perfect it doesn’t need God. Although, based on that point, I have to say, we don’t know what the agenda of God is anyway and why would he want to hide? I believe that God is the ultimate scientist and the idea of creationism and evolution go hand in hand.
Andrew
January 8, 2011 at 6:07 am
The fact that people who claim to not have any belief in God (no need to bring in the minor players, in order to convince your readers that you are not discriminating against God the maker of everything that is not God Himself) is proof that they do take Him very seriously.
And since they cannot move Him out of their heart and mind, they resort to mock Him, instead of really taking the serious labor to think about Him as to face the reality of His existence, and accept Him.
Arnaldo Blondel
Arnaldo Blondel
July 1, 2011 at 11:12 pm
What an amazing and original theory! You should really write a book.
Zandoren
July 2, 2011 at 7:09 am
Nice try, but I have a couple of objections:
– “[…] is proof that they do take Him very seriously” -> no. What we take seriously is intellectual integrity, which requires reasonable grounds for a belief, and evidence for certitude. Secular reasoning is not the process of closing one’s eyes to a reality one does not want or could not bear to see and resort to a belief based on cheap and antique wishful thinking instead. It is quite the opposite: opening one’s eyes to the truth, challenging it until it is established, and, once it is, having the courage to accept it, as depressing as it might be.
– “[…] they resort to mock Him” -> no. We resort to mock people who, in spite of the appalling and exponentially growing number of contradictions and refutations of religious claims, still believe that nonsense, without any valid ground to do so. A deity does not take offense, people take the offense on behalf of their imaginary friend(s).
– “[…]the serious labor to think about Him as to face the reality of His existence” -> how does that require any work whatsoever? It takes work to reason, to doubt, to challenge, to look for evidence for and against the claims made. Believers in most deities have always made doubt and skepticism a sin, and blind belief and obedience a virtue. There is nothing easier and less challenging to the mind than believing what you hear and doing as you are told. Besides, what is there to “face” ? No deity has ever been established to be real. And finally: how can you use the phrase “to face a reality” in that context? What you have to believe if you are religious is that mankind holds the keys of eternal bliss and joy if they follow some simple rules and rituals, and that we are made in the image of an almighty, perfect, omnibenevolent deity. What would there be to “face” if that was true?
Being an insignificant, arrogant species, living on a tiny bit of cosmic dirt in a perfectly normal galaxy in a random place in the cosmos, that is a truth you need to “face”. Not unlike your own mortality. Or the fact that bad people won’t necessarily be judged for their deeds. Or the fact that innocent suffering is not part of a plan and will, in many (if not most) cases never be redeemed. Or the fact that you need to give your own life a meaning, and live it to the fullest, because you really only have the amount of time form your birth to your death, and not a second more.
Those are truths you need to “face”. Harsh ones ? Yes. But if you claim to be looking for truth, you must be prepared to accept it, whether it suits you or not. And that is precisely what I mean by intellectual integrity.
Peter Lee Duff
August 11, 2012 at 5:35 pm
This is my story….
I believed in God as a child because I didn’t have any ground to understand why some people would deny his existence. As I grew up, I struggled to logically conceive the idea of “Godism” like all religions teach.
However, as a grown up man, I felt so strongly that I should understand things before I believe or reject them and also that I need to make a decision that would affect the way I live my life. I often heard that we won’t be able to figure out the existence or non-existence of God. But here is my question; should I form a supposed eternally consequential decision on ignorance? Is it responsible to base my choice on the fear of “it could be true”? Would God condemn me for rejecting what I do not understand? I thought that if there was a God, he created my intellect and would not be offended if I objectively explore its reasoning capabilities. Rather, he may be offended if I fail to reason or be honest intellectually. I consider that it is ultimately irresponsible and stupid to establish important beliefs on universal ignorance or age-long presumptions and traditions. But that would not make me an atheist. It is a worse choice.
Atheism is a firm belief in the fact that “there is no God”. It is affirmatory without reasonable scientific proofs. A belief extremely simplistic and established on possibility of two outcomes- God is and God isn’t. It condensed this universally important question into null and alternative hypotheses while ignores the statistic. It couldn’t find the proof of God’s existence, so it concludes the alternative. This is escapism, a violation of all scientific attitudes. Science teaches us not to form conclusions unless facts have been established through search, logic, experiment and observable outcomes. Atheism does not have a single proof for its beliefs. It is established on its inability to find supportive reasons for the existence of God. Moving from hypothesis to conclusion, without testing, is intellectual laziness.
Since I noted that atheism is not objective enough for its beliefs, I would be guilty of the same thing if I chose its direct opposite. It’d be simply unscientific. In the light of our present level of understanding in physics, astronomy, cosmology, biology and the like and the high possibility of other dimensions that fall outside of our frame of thinking, it would be hasty to answer the question of God’s existence. The fact that we don’t even understand what connects life with non-life (death), where thoughts come from and other more complex unseen realities tell us that science won’t explain everything.
Don’t think I am being short-sighted or ignorant when I said that science won’t explain everything. Science is based on logic. Whenever a process of discovery becomes illogical, it is no more scientific. We definitely require a new realm of search where we do not need to strictly follow the rules of logic as we know them. The person we are trying to find supposedly created logic. He is probably superior to it.
Also, the possibility of human mind to receive knowledge without the involvement of senses is clear to everyone. This is a less explored territory. Is this territory constrained by the rules of logic like the sense realm is? We know little. For the benefit of doubt, let’s consider a statement from the Christian’s bible:
“God is a spirit” (John 4:24)
Hmmm! I think we should strip ourselves of our modern-day scientific pride because it’s clear we don’t have the answers. What I previously explained as out-of-senses dimensions is probably the same thing being referred to in that quotation as “spirit”. That word offends most scientists. Condensing reality to five senses or four dimensions is overly simplistic. Continuous scientific discoveries about the things that we have previously concluded on show the limitlessness of reality. It makes no difference what amount of knowledge and discoveries we have amassed; it remains an insignificant proportion of the limitless whole. This is where spirituality, not religion, comes in.
Man is capable of establishing contacts with forces outside of realm of scientifically observable existence. The behaviours of these forces reveal characteristics that are reflective of personalities as we know them. If we extend our thoughts in this direction, the idea of God will not be difficult to conceive. I have done it, I have personal experiences along this line and I have an unchanging believe in the existence of God.
James A.
September 21, 2012 at 9:05 am
All I shall say is to quote J.B. Phillips: Your God is Too Small.
God is likely a multidimensional power that we diminish by anthropomorphizing.
Hydrangea
May 17, 2012 at 12:38 pm
@James A.
“Atheism is a firm belief in the fact that “there is no God”. It is affirmatory without reasonable scientific proofs.” -> No, once again, it is not. You show an utter (and yet quite common) misunderstanding of the word “atheist”. Virtually no one is “just” an atheist. In most cases, people adopt a scientific methodology in their discovery of reality, which leads them to certain conclusions. Certain trains of thought lead to atheism, others lead to a-toothfairy-ism, others lead to Darwinism, and so on and so forth. Atheists don’t hold a belief, they are atheists because 1) the burden of proof lies on the one making a positive claim and 2) the positive claims of theists have never been corroborated with ANY evidence whatsoever. Again, I am as much an atheist as I am an a-bigfoot-ist, an a-father-christmas-ist, an a-witch-ist and so on. I do not need any evidence to establish that Bigfoot, father Christmas and witches do not exist, simply because, to quote the Hitch, “what is asserted without proof can be rejected without proof”. It really is as simple as that.
” A belief extremely simplistic and established on possibility of two outcomes- God is and God isn’t.”-> this is dodgy theological acrobatics at it’s finest. You are implying that God is even above the concept of existence itself, not unlike those funny little people who love to argue that “God has created the universe in spite of not existing”. Let us be very clear here: there is no middle ground between existence and non-existence. Even the most curious natural phenomenon, the virtual particles popping into and out of existence in a vacuum, are existing at t1 and cease to exist at t2, but at no point are they “half existing”. Saying that “there are things that exist which are too complex for us to understand” is a valid statement and might very well be true. Saying “there is stuff that neither exists nor doesn’t” is absurd.
“We definitely require a new realm of search where we do not need to strictly follow the rules of logic as we know them. The person we are trying to find supposedly created logic. He is probably superior to it.” -> First of all, no serious scientist is “trying to find a person” that would happen to fit the description of your particular imaginary friend. The very notion of “logic” is inseparable from that of a thinking mind, and holds no meaning in a universe without any consciousness. If we weren’t there to talk about logic, the universe would not care about it, and would certainly not need it. What we call “logic” is in fact our way of putting together the data we have about our environment, which we obtain through our five senses. It has evolved (just like our organism) from very basic logical reasoning (if I hit an animal with the blunt end of my spear it lives, if I hit it with the pointy end it dies, therefore, I should hit it with the pointy end) to our more advanced logical capacities. The problem with illogical reasoning is that is instantly loses any coherence, and you might therefore draw any conclusion from any premises that do not even need to be true or coherent themselves (I like apples and it is raining skittles, therefore the Loch Ness Monster must be a redhead). Have a lot of fun writing papers based on that, but I would definitely refrain from asking any serious scientific publication to print them.
“It couldn’t find the proof of God’s existence, so it concludes the alternative. This is escapism, a violation of all scientific attitudes.”-> I refer you back to my first point, to which I would add the following: 1) No scientist is looking for proof for the existence of any deity, because at this point it is not even a valid hypothesis. There is NO reason to even conjecture that such a being/thing exists. 2) Escapism would be to conclude thusely without any evidence on the opposite side. However, we now know that what was once attributed to a deity (creation, death, natural phenomena of all kinds, etc.) can now be accounted for, partly or totally by science, and that given sufficient time, we will eventually know all we can. As for what we can’t know, it is a huge fallacy to conclude “I can’t know, therefore there is a God”. THAT, in turn, is highly unscientific.
” Condensing reality to five senses or four dimensions is overly simplistic. Continuous scientific discoveries about the things that we have previously concluded on show the limitlessness of reality. It makes no difference what amount of knowledge and discoveries we have amassed; it remains an insignificant proportion of the limitless whole. This is where spirituality, not religion, comes in. “-> Again, no. It is immensely probable that the universe contains stuff that we can’t perceive, neither directly nor indirectly, and that this will remain hidden from us. And if it does, it remains hidden to all of us. If there was a consistent, universal perception of a realm of the supernatural, we might be able to discuss it, and to find ways to study it. Religion however shows all symptoms of a purely human invention based on fear, ignorance and wishful thinking, the most obvious symptoms being that theists are constantly wrong and, while maintaining that the earthly realm is quasi meaningless, still clutch onto every bit of influence and power they have on earth and rarely live according to the principles of their own dogma.
“Man is capable of establishing contacts with forces outside of realm of scientifically observable existence.”-> That is yet to be corroborated by any evidence (who is unscientific again?). However, human beings are very good at one thing: deluding themselves and fooling others. It is very likely that all deities, fairy tales, illusions and delusions are products of our own complex mind to the same extent, and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
” I have done it, I have personal experiences along this line and I have an unchanging believe in the existence of God.” ->You could really have cut your speech short mate. “Personal experience” proves exactly nothing, because you have to bear in mind that you might be deluded or mistaken. Not unlike the hypochondriac, who is convinced to have all diseases BUT hypochondria, the theist is convinced that he is anything BUT deluded and mistaken.
To be fair, the “God is beyond logic” argument is probably the theist’s best shot, since no logical argument can lead to the conclusion “there is a God”. Other than that, not much more to say here.
Cheers.
Pete
Peter Lee Duff
November 22, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Very Interesting to me also, although this reads like somewhat of a basket of fruit and veggies to me. A compilation of ideas/theories meant to give us some grasp of the whole. The greatest square has no corners.
What has been stated was that it can run itself. Bravo! Bravo!
What was omitted (or assumed) was that here on this speck of dirt at least, it all seems to our benefit and our existence for the most part! As if to say, “things really are going our way!”
The Bane and Membrane Theories are a new Theories to me and may actually stem from Steven Hawking as he once said, ” “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,”
It got people to thinking that perhaps the old math was holding them back and developed a, “new type of math”, recently surfaced proposing the Banes theory and the Membrane Theory which I think are different. I accept the former because of the lower right hand section of Cecropia Moth wing I found one day. There are others, this is just the one I was gifted with. In real life it seems to mimic the Banes theory as I understand it. It pictures what may be only one universe, however there are 3 other wings.
The idea of multiple universes is a separate matter. To my way of thinking they came before the Big Event (there probably was not a “bang”) pictured on the wing. This supports the idea of multiple universes, however, they collapsed, so that we could see.
As for God, I immediately see a bridge in my minds eye from reality as we experience it and the unexperienced reality, the Great Unknown.
The idea of entanglement is another subject discussed here but not named. The idea of which lets one separate event cause another immediate event that is similar but seemingly disconnected event. And at a distance! At least this is how the experiments describe it.
I like this site very much.
naturestan
Stan
January 28, 2013 at 10:53 am