Cosmic Yawn

Timeline of the Metric Expansion of Space (NASA/WMAP Science Team)

Is the universe a hostile or benign place or is it merely indifferent, presenting its inhabitants with a cosmic yawn? For there to be the kind of magnanimity that Buddhists talk about there has to be a meaning and order to things. Those who believe that everything is the way it’s supposed to be or meant to be often point to the symmetry and order of mathematics. How could there be a Pythagorean Theorem if nothing made sense? How could there be the beauty and symmetry of crystalline formations, Poincare’s Conjecture or a quantum physics without some higher force running the show? The contravening argument relates to the fact that the laws of nature whether they’re posited by Newton or Einstein are really just superficial manifestations and more a reflection of the minds of those who made them up than the reality of dark energy or dark matter. And of course we have a whole branch of mathematics which underscores the dubiety of the notion of order, i.e. chaos theory. The anti-Christ represented so eloquently by Dostoevsky in his famous chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, The Grand Inquisitor is one of clearest examples of a self-imploding universe bent on its own destruction. But one of the most interesting representations of the nature of the universe may rest with those who argue that it’s neither benign nor malevolent, but merely like the executive top man in a very large conglomerate who has no way of keeping track of all of his employees. Under this theory, even if there is a God, he, she or it is not some sort of celestial phone operator waiting to answer all the incoming calls. All forms of life and lifelessness go on, creating new paradigms that are like snowflakes, no two of which are ever the same, while what or whoever the higher order or consciousness is, simply and ineffably continues to delegate its power.