Physicist, or perhaps more aptly ex-Physicist gadfly(?) Lawrence Krauss released what some tried to promote as a groundbreaking book in 2012 called “A Universe From Nothing”. It purported to clear up, once and for all, why there is Something rather than Nothing. It failed to make a dent in this age-old riddle, despite Richard Dawkins‘ (who isn’t even an ex-Physicist) half-cocked back cover blurb review declaring the now certain and indisputable removal of deities, religions, Creation, or Theism of any sort from any future human contemplation. Krauss’ main rhetorical maneuvers in his argument involved monkeying around with the definition of ‘nothing’ while relying upon Physics man-splaining to obfuscate the obvious. This story happens a few years later…

Prelude

A Seeker sat in an armchair staring at a blank space on a wall between an Andrew Wyatt painting, a print of course, and an Edward Sherman Curtis 1895 photo of some Apache braves crossing a wild Arizona expanse. The Seeker had just finished a book by Lawrence Krauss trying to show how unremarkable it was that a universe — the universe — arose from nothingness without any external agency. Trusting his intuitions and inner sense of truth far more than Krauss apparently could, he felt deeply dissatisfied with the book’s perceptiveness. He pondered on why so many heralded intellectuals failed to grasp reality, by his sights, and let the question resound long in his mind: Why is there Something? Anything?

Scene One

Ghost of Stephen Hawking: The Universe just is!

Seeker: (startled) What? Who said that?

Ghost of Stephen Hawking: It’s me, Stephen Hawking. You can’t see me. Because my being no longer interacts with light waves or photons to make impressions upon your retina.

Seeker: (slightly less startled) Umm. You mean cause you’re dead?

GSH: Well no, not precisely. More like disembodied.

Seeker: Well, the news websites said you died. A few years ago. Said you were a genius. But I remember you best from that episode of The Big Bang Theory.

GSH: Oh that! You frickin’ read Krauss on Cosmology and not me? And then you reduce my previous life accomplishments to an acting role in a comedy show?

Seeker: You were really funny! Outsmarted Sheldon, the wunderkind.

GSH: Sheldon Cooper was an idiot! The real genius was Penny! (longingly)

Seeker: Hmm. She had talent, for sure. Look — I bypassed your book cause from the cover materials it did not seem to directly address the ontological question. The Origin of Everything. I could be wrong… Hey, how come your voice is so normal in my inner ears? Not mechanically synthesized?

GSH: I told you — cause I’m disembodied now. I no longer have any bodily malfunctions. Or any bodily functions. (somewhat embarassed) I seem to be… (haltingly) a-a-…a-physical.

Seeker: (laughing) Yes that must be a humbling turn of events for a world-class Physicist materialist athiest.

GSH: Don’t celebrate yet. A group of us up here are working on some promising new theoretical lines involving elementary sentience particles too fine to detect with earthly instruments. To reconcile physics with disembodied existence.

Seeker: God in Heaven! A group of you? You mean to tell me that even now, conscious after death, yot cannot see the limitations of a purely natural worldview?

GSH: Yeah — group. No lightweights either. Weinberg’s up here. (ASIDE: Using “up” figuratively.) And Higgs — the boson-meister. Fred Hoyle. Some other notables a bit less known. Even Hitchens pops in and out. He’s got no Math chops though. Plus he’s usually pissed off. We’re working on stuff, I assure you.

Seeker: Wonders never cease. Hey, what about Einstein? Always liked him. You know, fiddle player and all.

GSH: (with dejection) Albert’s ascended! That’s what they call it when you go full ‘spiritual’. A huge disappointment to all of us. So many wanted to talk shop with him. But one of the older guys, Kurt Gödel, was a good friend of Albert’s and he left behind vague rumors about how Einstein couldn’t conceptualize matter properly anymore. Instead was always talking about spiritual entities he was encountering and higher spheres of cognition. Word is he stopped using telepathy to communicate near the end but spoke instead in undecipherable combinations of light and melody. Gödel’s half-gone too now. Hard to get anything concrete to formulate a theory.

Seeker: Wow! So where are you, then? If I can put it that way. Are you in some lesser ‘sphere’?

GSH: We don’t precisely know our coordiantes. Spacetime is different here. Some of us speculate we are inside or partly inside a black hole.

Seeker: (snorting with derision) You simpleton! Has it not occurred to you that you are in a spiritual rather than physical locale and that your level of cognition has some connection to what spheres you can perceive or experience? And anyway — why are we talking here? What is your goal?

GSH: Hang on! No need to get personal or be insulting! I am just reporting what I see. And yes, there is a particular aim I have in appearing within your sensorium.

Seeker: (more accomodating) Sorry, my bad. Well please then — do tell!

GSH: Alright then… So, we are in a space or condition the religionists refer to as Purgatorio, a la Danté. And from time to time we receive impulses, voices within us, which compel us to perform certain tasks by way of assisting the development of alive earthlings.

Seeker: How interesting!

GSH: Yes. And in my particular case these assignments, which are rarely not involuntary I assure you, have to do with acting as a foil or oppositional interlocutor for persons in moments of genuine heartfelt questioning about… well, about reality I suppose. But we only come when these moments reach a specific intensity level.

Seeker: (intrigued and humbled) OK, please proceed.

GSH: Already did. The universe just is!

Seeker: (reflecting) I see. So, the whole something-from-nothing thing doesn’t disturb you then… (pausing) Look, mind if I make some tea? I’d offer you some but you seem without organs. It will help relax me into a less combative state.

GSH: Yes ok, but be quick. As I mentioned I do not have alot of volition in these matters and if we do not engage the fundamental questions soon I might be yanked. And don’t worry. I cannot taste the tea, it’s true. But I do have the capacity to savor your savoring of it. I perceive non-physical aspects of your experience. Like pleasant taste bud sensations.

Seeker: (dashing off) Ha! Another strike on the dartboard of materialism. BRB my good ghost.

CONTINUED NEXT TIME…

_______RS

Image : an artist’s rendition of Purgatory.

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