I’ll put it short: it’s a creation myth. It’s a creation myth, and as such it is in no ways more of a valid explanation of the world’s creation than any other creation myths. I really like reading creation myths: it’s fascinating to see what stories people can come up with to explain things they can’t explain from experience.
I accept the scientific model of the world’s creation – you know, Big Bang and all that stuff. The beginning poses no problem to me, since every possible option is accounted for. Let’s check. (We’re talking metaphysics here.)
First: did existence (not the universe!) have a beginning? Then something (be it God or the hyperstrings) came to exist. There was nothing before that. There was no such thing as “before” in the first place. Imagine that you live within a mathematical function with a domain of, let’s say, [0, ∞[. From within the function it’s meaningless to talk about what was “before” 0. The word “before” simply doesn’t apply to 0.
Now what if there is no beginning to existence? If there is no beginning to existence, and yet I experience existing now (and that I do), then it follows that something (be it God or the physical world) must have always existed.
The next question is then of course regarding the origin of the physical world as we experience it. Was it created, or is it by itself? I don’t know. There are many possible ways that the world could have come to be (some involving God, some not), and I have no problem with accepting that something of a philosophically physical aspect (quantum soup, hyperstrings, or whatever the most recent theories came up with) has always existed.
I have no problem with living in the logical superposition of Kierkegaard’s either/or: either the world was created, or it has always existed. I have no way of knowing, and I can risk saying that there is no way of knowing “what came first” in the philosophical sense. Believing is a choice here: I could believe that the world was created or that it was not, but that is not knowing. I choose not to make that choice.
As a closing word: here, have some recommended literature:
…and some art too.
