An Introduction

 It seems that something exists.

Therefore, something must have existed without being generated by something else: there must be some thing that is self-existent: which just is.

There is a whole lot of stuff that is visible to our senses, which appears to stretch out for a long way in space and time. I call this the ‘universe’ with a small ‘u’. Once upon a time, it was common to think of this as the self-existent thing. But nowadays, since Fred Hoyle is dead, I can’t think of anyone well known who would say this; it looks like the universe is finite in space, and that it had a beginning in time. It also seems finely-tuned – to have properties that if they were a very very little different we would not be here to observe it, which makes sense if it is one of a gazillion other similar things with a range of properties but not if it is the one self-existent thing which happens to be just so.

Thus, I assert that the observable universe is not the self-existent thing. 

I base this assertion on three things:

1) The finitude mentioned above

2) The ‘fine tuning’ mentioned above

3) Historical humility. As new information has come in, the ‘universe’ keeps getting bigger than we suppose; around the stars orbit worlds like ours, and there is not just one galaxy, but a whole lot of them. It does not seem credible that the limits of our knowledge are the actual limits of all that exists.

Cosmologists agree with me and embed the universe in something larger- a ‘multiverse’, or some greater reality of gebits or branes where some sort of mathematical law applies, that somehow spawned the universe. This postulated ‘universe + 1’ in turn may or may not be the end of the story; the true nature of ‘all that exists which is not self-existent’ – which I like to call the ‘Universe’ may be many more levels removed from ‘universe + 1’.

Thus, my second assertion: There is no way for us to reason our way from our position within the universe to an understanding of the Universe. 

And my third assertion: There is no way for us to reason our way from our position within the universe to an understanding of the nature of the ultimate self-existent thing.

So, the only way we could know anything about the ultimate self-existent thing would be, hypothetically, if it could communicate with us.

We cannot discount this possibility on a priori grounds because we do not, and cannot, know anything scientifically about what the self-existent thing is like.

Where we cannot assess hypotheses on the basis of their utility in predicting the results of experiments in the universe (what I call ‘primary utility’) we should judge between them on the basis of their utility in other matters (what I call ‘secondary utility’). 

We have two hypotheses before us:

(1) The self-existent thing interacts with us like the God described by Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Khaldun, and Maimonides, and has communicated to us information about His nature;

(2) The self-existent thing does not interact with us in such a manner.

Which of these two hypotheses has the greater utility?