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If there was a Big Bang, what preceded it? What produced what astrophysicists call the "singularity" that produced the Big Bang? If the singularity had to form, how did it do so and from what was it formed? Is it possible that there could have been nothing and then suddenly there was something--that is, the singularity? (Is it just a quirk of our language that we speak of "nothing" existing, when by definition "nothing" cannot "exist"? And can any of us succeed in imagining our "selves" not existing after our life on earth ends? We can certainly imagine ourselves existing in a heaven or a hell, but isn't it beyond our capabilities to conceive of ourselves not existing at all, inert and insensate?) Could the Big Bang have "just happened"? Did God produce it? If there was a Big Bang but no one was around to hear it, did it make any noise? Why is it called the Big Bang if we have no evidence that it made any noise? Why, today, don't earthlings hear the noise produced by the star-making and star-breaking explosions whose light we can see (albeit eons after the fact), that have occurred, and continue to occur, throughout the universe? There is detectable cosmic radiation background noise (static radio waves) emanating from the possibly mis-named Big Bang and all the lesser bangs since that time, but why no deafening din? Why the video without the audio? If there are other universes, were they produced by the same singularity-creating mechanism (or the same "just happened" phenomenon) that produced ours? If produced by God, by the same God? Having discovered that, because of the Big Bang's outward push and (possibly) the push or pull of dark energy and/or the pull of other universes, our own universe is unfathomably immense, how unfathomable to the nth power must be all that exists? (And how many fathoms must there be for something to be considered unfathomable?) Was all this immensity and complexity a necessary consequence of the universe's creation? Could a smaller, less dense singularity have produced a smaller, simpler universe? Are all singularities the same, or are they different by definition: singular? Can there be--or could God make--a variety of singularities that produce different types of universes or cosmic structures with different kinds of laws? In any case, is the immensity and complexity of the universe a necessary condition for the creation of human life on planet earth? Could humans not exist without all that other stuff out there? Is it possible for certain simple singularities to generate just a single solar system containing a planet suitable for human life? Is all the rest of the material in the universe, from a human point of view, de trop, just leftover scraps from the creative process? Or did God have in mind the production, from a single Big Bang explosion, of billions of life-holding, earthlike planets orbiting in billions of solar systems in billions of galaxies?
Were the physical laws of the universe and the logical laws of mathematics invented by God, or discovered by God, or neither? Could they have always existed in His mind without ever having been either invented or discovered? If they were discovered, where did they come from? Can God change, augment, or "reinterpret" the laws? Is a physical "miracle"--like making the sun stand still--a matter of augmenting or "reinterpreting" the laws? Is it like adding a codicil to a legal document? Can Einstein's laws of relativity explain the occurrences that we call miracles? Just as light can be both particle and wave, and just as, according to quantum mechanics, an atom can be in two different energy states at one and the same time, can physical laws apply in some instances or cases or physical planes but not in others? Is what might appear to be a miracle not really a miracle but God's overriding of one physical law by the application of another, auxiliary, law held in reserve for special needs, rather like an airplane pilot's overriding of the plane's auto-pilot system?
Intelligent Design is the belief that a higher power must have had a hand in creation because life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone; is it also conceivable that life is too complex to have been created by anyone, even God? When we say that God is omniscient, does that mean that He always had in mind the conception of a Big Bang and all that followed from it, including all forms of life, or could there have been an interval between the time that a particular idea did not exist in God's mind and the time that it did, a gestation period? Setting aside accounts in the Bible and reasoning exclusively on an abstract or theoretical plane, is it possible for there to be an interval between the conception of an idea in God's mind and its implementation? Or are thought and action one for God? Can God change His mind? Rue a previous idea or decision? Think better of it? Can God have--or can He even need--priorities? Can any one, or any thing, or any event, or any consequence be of more importance to God than any other? Is it possible for Him to pay more attention to one thing than another? Or would He be aware of all possible eventualities at all times? Does He watch over not only every sparrow that falls but also every individual living thing on, under, and above the earth and its oceans? Does He know precisely how many insects and slime molds are alive at each nano-second? (Speaking of nano-seconds, is God time-bound? If so, would His measuring sticks for time be the orbiting of our earth around our sun and the rotation of the earth on its axis, or something else happening in the universe? Or does He transcend time? Is He at one with the speed of light and therefore ageless? Is He both in time and beyond time? Can He be, simultaneously, in the past, the present, the future, and also in a timeless state?) Can God be everywhere and do everything at once? Is everything worth doing equally worth doing? Or would it be a failing on God's part not to have priorities? Should He care more about some things than about others? Should He care that Tim Tebow's team wins a football game? (To be continued, with questions about prayer, climate change, endangered species, the benefits of adversity, and the purposes of dreams and nonsense humor.)
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