Spontaneous Generation
When something comes from nothing
The theory of spontaneous generation held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas, could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh. — Wikipedia
Spontaneous generation was accepted as truth for centuries until Louis Pasteur disproved it in 1859. However, old myths die hard, and the spontaneous generation concept has spontaneously regenerated, this time in the form of multiverse theory.
Science-minded people today reject the God-the-Creator explanation for how the universe came into being because, in short, supernatural attributes just gum up the works. Rigorous scientific inquiry and experimentation seem the only logical course of discovery and understanding, the method that has proven amazingly accurate innumerable times. God is the default setting for lazy thinkers.
Having gotten that out of the way, all scientific speculations about the origin of universe proceed from the standpoint that there is no creator. Up through the middle of the 20th century this view was easily defended. Steady State theory, the idea that the universe has no beginning and no end, eliminated the need for a creator. But when the Big Bang won out as the most reasonable explanation for the observable state of our universe, it presented a problem of origin. Where did it come from and how?
The untidy notion of God-the-Creator had been done away with long before and now here it is rearing its ugly head again. Not lacking in creativity themselves, scientists came up with a solution: multiverse theory, which allows that our universe spontaneously sprung into being from nothing.
Scientists will defend their position of assuming no creator by stating that the existence of God can be neither proven nor verified via the scientific method, even though their darling something-from-nothing multiverse conjecture is equally impossible to prove or verify and is likely to remain so, forever.
Nevertheless, verification proves unnecessary when scientists can provide a foundation of elegant mathematics to support their array of unobservable speculations. Lauded scientific discoveries have indeed been first imagined and then proven through the application of complex math. This excellent track record of math-based speculation cum proof provides confidence that the multiverse speculation too must be true. Yet there are also plenty of examples of elaborate mathematical constructs that have borne no fruit.
A leap to a conclusion based on math alone, however, violates the strict code of scientific inquiry. Without valid experimentation to test a theory, conclusions ought to be withheld. Not that that stops scientists from advertising the multiverse speculation as fact. Scientists are only human, after all. They need to put food on the table like everyone else. And why not a little razzle dazzle?
The anthropic principle is a feature of — and likely the objective of — the multiverse hypothesis, which is a far-fetched work-around that relies upon random chance, even though random chance is an ill-defined term of irrefutable vagueness. Essentially it says if we have trillions of universes spontaneously popping in and out of existence, sooner or later one of these universes will have all the right ingredients and physical constants to support life. Roll the dice enough times and voilà!, here we are. No big whoop.
But that’s not the only outrageous theory out there. Another popular notion among brainiacs is that the universe is a Matrix-like computer simulation. This idea gets no traction because a simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. What is our universe a simulation of? It’s as lazy-minded an idea as the outer space alien explanation of the origin of life on Earth. It doesn’t explain anything. It only places the origin question out of reach. A simulation requires a programmer, and who might he or she be?
Scientists bend over backwards to avoid any conjecture that includes a creator, perhaps because it’s difficult for them to accept that there could possibly be any creative mind greater than the mind of a scientist. But quantum physics and general relativity were discovered by brainiac scientists, not invented by them. Does it not stand to reason that some mind greater than Einstein’s created the physics he discovered? Or are we too puny minded to conceive that something incredibly complex could arise from nothing?
All this leads to an insoluble conundrum, a cognitive dead end. All possible explanations lie beyond comprehension and plausibility:
1) The universe was created by God, or perhaps a programmer.
2) The universe popped into being from nothing.
3) The universe is infinite and has no beginning and no end.
My head hurts. I am ill-equipped to accept uncertainty. So I have decided that, after a couple aspirin and a nap, I will flip a three-sided coin for a hundred trillion years to see which of the three possibilities is most likely to be true.
