An Alternative Theology

The following thought occurred to me as I strolled towards Sułkowice today.

God does not exist. 

God did exist. 

God will exist. 

Let me explain...

Once upon a time, believed by scientific consensus to have been 13.8 billion years ago, God, the Cosmos, had reached the Fullness, the Apogee, the Completeness, the Finality. The Cosmos was Perfect. Everything in the Universe had been Achieved. The Total Awareness of All; God in All, All in God; the Cosmos bathed in unalloyed Love. All that there is to be Known and Understood is finally Known and Understood. There is nothing more to strive for…

…And at that precise moment …the Big Bang occurs.

The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving God is no more. All that's left within the rapidly expanding ball of plasma are the beginnings of what would become a myriad particles polarised into existence - a myriad consciousnesses - all striving, once more, toward God. God, having been the Completeness, now becomes the Purpose, the Reason, the Relevance. Having picked itself up, the Cosmos knows its direction, and moves towards the Light…  

Think of God as a Work in Progress. Suffering, tragedy and evil can now be explained not by an indifferent and uncaring God, but by one that is simply - as yet - incomplete.

Having reached One, the Cosmos has been reset once more to Zero, and a new journey from Zero to One is now under way.

We are, scientifically speaking, 13.8 billion years along that road; during that time, stars and galaxies have formed; matter has coalesced into a spectrum of elements from which sentient life has come to be, absorbing and benefiting from the cosmic background consciousness that unobservably permeates the entire observable universe. This is the substrate upon which our individual consciousnesses exist and develop.

Fragments of the Unity of God are to be found across the Cosmos, each one growing once more, reaching out, gaining in understanding and wisdom, uniting, forming, reforming, amalgamating; sometimes erring, sometimes blundering, but slowly and inexorably moving onward towards that Cosmic moment of unity, of completeness, when God finally becomes omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. For the shortest fraction of a second. Indeed, for the shortest possible unit of time, the Planck time (5.4 x 10^-44 seconds, the time it takes a photon to cover one Planck length, which is 1.6 x 10^-35 metres). I feel this scientific concept needs to be woven into an integral part of our spiritual understanding - the material world of matter in spacetime, and the spiritual world of mind, consciousness, soul - are one.

The journey from Zero to One is not being supervised by a supreme deity and arbiter; we are all in the journey from Zero to One individually and together, striving to reach God-ness. Each in their own way, but each towards the one goal. Spiritual evolution, towards the perfection that is God.

The fact that I can posit and publish such a thought without fear of the Holy Inquisition shows that we are nearer to One than we once were. Over time, our thinking will become more refined, more nuanced, closer to God - but there's an eternity still to go. 

I believe in God in the same way that I believe a caterpillar will one day reach its fulfilment and become a butterfly.

This time last year:
From the Long Review of 2022, Pt IV

This time two years ago:
S2 tunnel under Ursynów opens

This time three years ago:
The first year of Covid-19

This time four years ago:
Last night in Ealing, twenty-teens
[A strangely prophetic post, suitably dream-like in quality]

This time five years ago:
The Day the World Didn't End

This time eight years ago:
Hybrid driving - the verdict

This time ten years ago:
Pitshanger Lane in the sun

This time 14 years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time 15 years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 16 years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie