Building Blocks of the Universe

Ever wonder what the universe is made of?

Your first answer probably goes to things such as atoms and photons and maybe even the undiscovered Higgs boson particle. But what the hell are THOSE things made of? Everything is made of something else, right?

So where does the trail end? (If this question seems familiar, it’s because I wrote about it in my book God’s Debris.)

I think if you could answer that question, even at a high conceptual level, you would have the answer to whether God exists, or whether we are a hologram programmed by someone else, or if all of this is just lucky random combinations.

If you keep drilling down to find out what the smallest things are made of, would you eventually find just one thing that everything is made of, guided by some sort of universal rules of physics? That’s my guess, but only a guess. It feels right.

In a longer post I could explain that such rules of physics would qualify as God. Those rules plus the basic particles eventually created the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Koran and the rest of the universe as we know it, while working in undeniably mysterious ways. If that isn’t the definition of God, what is?

I know some of you will say, “People wrote the Bible.” But that view would be based on the superstition of free will. The “stuff” of the universe and the rules of physics wrote all of our books. People were just an interim step we happened to label.

I can’t imagine that the universe is made of things that are made of other things and so on to infinity. That seems absurd. If it turned out to be true, I would favor the theory that we are a hologram and our creators programmed the truth of our nature to be forever beyond our grasp. I don’t get to that conclusion by logic. I feel this way because if I wrote the program myself, it’s the sort of thing I would do. The hypothetical programmers are presumably like us in some ways, so they might think the way we do. Therefore, if it looks like someone is yanking your chain, maybe someone is. Maybe someone like you, only real.

I’m watching the construction of the Large Hadron Collider with interest. If it works, we’d possibly unlock the secrets of the universe. If we really are a hologram, look for the collider to get stopped by legal action or an earthquake before the truth of our nature is revealed. Either that or the particles they discover will spell “hello.”

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/04/building-blocks.html