Theory of Everything, The Bible, and the Da Vinci Code
(The following is a discussion of the historical document popularly known as the Holy Bible. This author personally accepts the idea that God Spoke to Moses, and that the stories in the Pentateuch - though admittedly stitched together from previous traditions - are Divinely Inspired. See Part One of this article: Intelligent Design, The Omega Point Theory, and the Elephant in the Room.)
This essay will assert that the Bicameral Universe model is consistent with both Holy Scripture and current theories in cosmology and theoretical mathematics. (If you are not already familiar with my concept of the Bicameral Universe, you should read this.)
The first five books of the Holy Bible - the Pentateuch - were scrolls, written and edited by Moses.
As a Holy man, Moses is universally honored by the practitioners of the world’s major monotheistic religions. But Moses lived in a society that was largely illiterate. I propose that, after his encounter with the Burning Bush, Moses was tasked to translate God’s Words into human words. The result was the Pentateuch.
While the narrative of the Bible sometimes seems aimed at children (eg., the wonderful stories of Genesis), I think it is entirely possible that Moses’ tales hold multiple meanings rich in iconographic details that describe the arc of the universe, of man, and of Life itself.
If you’ve ever had a close encounter with the King James version of Genesis, it’s easy to think of Moses’ five books as performed by bards who traveled the world from village to village, performing and reciting these vivid unfoldings of the stories of man, of the world, and of God Himself.
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”
-Genesis 1:3
In 1951, Pope Pius XII acknowledged for the first time that the Big Bang theory was in line with Moses’ description of Creation in Genesis.
The Big Bang, as described in Genesis, is entirely consistent with both Theology and Science.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
and the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that is was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
God, then, is simultaneously the First Creator and the First Observer. (This notion matches well with the Bicameral Universe model, but seems difficult to square with Tipler’s “Last Cause” or “Father” God as described in his Trinitarian model.)
If you have read or seen The Da Vinci Code, you are well aware of the use of symbolism in art, and in the many rituals and artifacts of the Catholic Church.
I propose that my bicameral universe model fits nicely amongst these poetic descriptions of the universe and man’s place in it.
I have already described the hour glass geometry of the Bicameral Universe. Taking a leaf from The Da Vinci Code, I propose that my Bicameral Universe model looks rather like an ideal composite of the Holy Grail:
Respecting our most Sacred Scripture though God’s language - the language of Symbols - we may at last glimpse some of the secrets that God Revealed to Moses.
As I explained in my earlier article, Dr. Tipler has asserted that the Christological description of the universe as Trinitarian is consistent with his picture of a closed universe. (Tipler’s theory was confirmed by Deutsch in Chapter 14 of his book, The Fabric of Reality.)
The science of the Omega Point Theory has been acknowledged as accurate by Tipler’s peers, including Deutsch and Dr. Hawking. Noted theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg of the University of Munich has likewise defended Tipler’s OPT as theologically sound.
In his article, The Omega Point and Christianity, Tipler asserts that the Trinitarian nature of God and Christ can be discerned in the following diagram, saved from Dr. Tipler’s website:
In Dr. Tipler’s model, the multiverse begins with the Big Bang, which is identified as the Holy Spirit. The Big Crunch represents the final establishment of God’s Kingdom: the Singularity. In Tipler’s model, Life is God’s sacred Progenitor. This Progenitor - and its outcome - can be seen as Christ, the Body and Host of our very flesh and soul.
In addition to this profound interpretation of the Holy Trinity, Tipler also has posited that The Fall - the introduction of evil into the world - may well be associated with the rise of Metazoans - the branch of life in which animals with backbones were the first to exercise an active Will to survive.
In his article, Tipler writes:
I claim that we can summarize these definitions of evil in the following way. I claim that all evil acts can ultimately be reduced to a violation of one and only one ethical rule. Thou shall not impose your theories on other living beings by force.” Thus moral evil is a certain type of interaction between two or more living organisms. Natural evils are of two types: pain (both physical and mental) and death. So a world without evil - and without sin, I regard “sin” and “evil” as synonymous - is a world in which there is no death, no pain, and no force applied by one organism on another.
Tipler then describes the rise of the metazoan branch of life as the first to practice “evil”:
The possibility of applying force - the possibility of evil - became possible with the evolution of the metazoans. Information was now coded in relationships between the cells of the metazoan, as in the nervous system of chordates. This information was unique to the individual, not just the clone. It could be destroyed. Death and pain entered the world, and with them, the possibility for moral evil. A metazoan could impose its will on other organisms. It could impose its theories on other organisms. One way would be to eat these other organisms. The information coded in the eaten organism would disappear, and be replaced by information coded in the eater. This is a simple example of theory imposition. We humans are more memes than genes, so we are more familiar with forcible theory replacement of meme than gene. But both gene and meme replacement are examples of theory replacement. By the time of the Cambrian explosion, if not earlier, carnivores had appeared on Earth. Evil had appeared in the world. Genes now coded for behavior that guided the use of biological weapons of the carnivores. The desire to do evil was now hereditary.
If Tipler’s interpretation of the OPT is true, then virtually any story presented in the Holy Bible could hold previously unconsidered meanings pertinent to our contemporary lives and the human condition.
Consider, for instance, the wonderful story of Noah, the Ark, and the Great Flood.
Noah’s Ark: a Unity of Purpose
Men have puzzled over this mystery for ages. Some people actually believe a flood came upon the earth and floated a boat to the top of Mount Ararat!
The truth, I think, might better be found symbologically.
I posit that in the story of Noah’s Ark, the bard is telling us the very Secrets of Life and Death, and of our personal Convenant with God as sentient Beings Graced by His Glory.
I propose that when God spoke to Moses about Noah and the flood, He was imparting a realization to mankind that Death will close upon every living Being, and they will become like dust and dissipate like flotsam in an eternal sea of ever-expanding nothingness.
But God told Noah about a way to survive the coming Flood: Prepare! Prepare a spot in your heart and in your life for your family, and your friends, and for the sanctity of your very environment. Protect life around you as if you were its only steward, and husband it with minute care, because it is only by banding together in the flesh and in the Spirit that men and women may obtain survival in the afterlife.
The Flood, as it turns out, was made navigable by the Ark.
Noah, being an engineer, must have understood the truth about life and death, and his Ark might be understood as God’s conceptual gift to man: a vessel engineered to save mankind and his earthly context.
Symbologically, then, the Ark can be seen as a representation of the physical, living world - the only world in which a human being can live. It is also a vision of transportation to sanctuary.
But the Ark is not God - any more than the Trinity is a representation of God. God is Singular, and He exists as the observer of the Light and the Darkness. Light is his Creation; He is Light’s Cause. But He is not light.
As we see from Genesis, God first Created, and then Observed the light (not the other way around, as atheists would have it.)
If we put an iconic image of Noah’s Ark in juxtaposition with Tipler’s Holy Trinity:
The symbological relationships between Tipler’s Holy Trinity and the Ark are obvious: The Ark’s iconographic shape is easily applied to the physical outline of Tipler’s Trinitarian Arc.
Unlike the Professors’ Tipler and Pannenberg, I cannot express the view that the Holy Trinity is a legitimate face of God. As I have said elsewhere, I believe the Trinity is God’s Creation.
Nor do I think God can be reduced into anything less than a cascading Singularity marked by Infinite and Progressive Order.
That said - since God is indeed progressive, we humans can identify with Him to the extent that He is Aware of us and of our purpose.
I also think this Trinitarian description of the universe is metaphysically accurate, and is entirely within the instinctive comprehension of modern humans.
In that regard, Noah’s recipe for salvation is indeed the only hope for us. Our survival as a species requires us to spiritually rebuild the Ark within ourselves so that our community, our animals, plants, and all the life around us will be preserved and kept as precious - as indeed it is.
But the Ark also represents a promise of the afterlife: the Covenant with God. That Covenant is a simple trade: For each sacrifice there is a response. Sacrifices and conditions made for Him by you during your lifetime are rewarded exponentially in the next life. But to get to the next life, you must survive the journey through death to the end of the universe, where you must be obliterated entirely. But if you keep the Covenant by serving God and by protecting your family and your environment for the future, then you will survive the journey.
This, at least, is my personal interpretation of Moses’ tale of Noah and the Flood.
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September 25th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
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