Did God Create the Universe?

     God did not create the Universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book. In The Grand Design (co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow), Hawking says a new series of theories made a Creator of the Universe redundant (Times-Newspaper, Extracts published on Thursdays). "Because there is a law such as 'Gravity', the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason that there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist," 

  We have made tremendous progress in cosmology in the last hundred years. The General Theory of Relativity and the discovery of the expansion of the universe shattered the old picture of an ever existing and everlasting universe. Instead, general relativity predicted that the universe, and time itself, would begin in the big bang. It also predicted that time would come to an end in black holes. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background and observations of black holes support these conclusions. This is a profound change in our picture of the universe and of reality itself. Thus, general relativity on its own cannot answer the central question in cosmology: Why is the universe the way it is? However, if general relativity is combined with quantum theory it may be possible to predict how the universe would start. It would initially expand at an ever-increasing rate.

   “Einstein's General Theory of Relativity unified time and space as space-time, but time was still different from space and was like a corridor, which either had a beginning and end, or went on forever. However, when one combines General Relativity with Quantum Theory, Jim Hartle and I realized that time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.” This means one can get rid of the problem of time having a beginning, in a similar way in which we got rid of the edge of the world.  If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was what happened before the beginning? What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing Hell for people who asked such questions? The problem of whether or not the universe had a beginning was a great concern to the German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant. He felt there were logical contradictions, or antimonies, either way. If the universe had a beginning, why did it wait an infinite time before it began? He called that ’the thesis’. On the other hand, if the universe had existed for ever, why did it take an infinite time to reach the present stage? He called that ‘the antithesis’. Both these thesis and the antithesis depended on Kant's assumption, along with almost everyone else, that time was Absolute. That is to say, it went from the infinite past to the infinite future, independently of any universe, that might, or might not, exist, in this background. This is just an image, a picture, in the mind of scientists today. But, the Vedic doctrines are clear enough as to the ‘nature of the creation, its sustenance and dissolution’. The Veda begins with the doctrine of ‘neither’- this or that, here or there, ‘existence (sada) or non-existence (asada). That means ‘nowhere’ and ‘nothing’, only later became ‘now and here’ (space and time), and all things existed in ‘nothing; and became manifest later! Thus, only Supreme Power (paramatman) existed in unmanifest state in the beginning! Agama Shastra invoke a Deva Narayana in the form of embodiment of pure Consciousness on the screen of which this entire universe moves as if a movie film! The universe is His ‘Will’, chittavrutti, mentation, images created in His own form! It is said, “God created man and man created God”. The sculptors cut the images in the sandal wood, marble, shalagrama stone, or mould in liquid metals of gold, silver, copper or five alloy metals (pancha loha). All these are images carved out of imagination! There is no doubt as to what the universe is and who the God is! But, in science, everything is a hypothesis, theory, postulation, and a probability, at the most. Even the visuals of images of stars and galaxies, the distances calculated in mind-bogging ‘Light Years’ (1 LY- 186000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.6 miles!) make no sense to ordinary people. The Sun is more massive and intrinsically brighter than 95% of stars in our galaxy. The red dwarf stars — M-class stars — which are no more than 40% the mass of our Sun, make up 3 out of every 4 stars that are out there. What’s more than that, our Sun exists in isolation; it is not gravitationally bound to any other stars. But that is not necessarily how stars exist in the galaxy, either. The universe is a vast infinite space which includes the earth and all the heavenly bodies in the sky (akasha). Space, akasha, the sky contains galaxies, stars, the Sun, Planets (their moons), asteroids and all that. In this sense of the term, akasha is said to be brahmn- kam brahmaa, Kham brahmaa |.  So also the living beings made of all the five elements including akasha is brahmn. 

   The primordial matter is invisible, that exists as an effect rather than a cause, and rather, the cause holds the effect within it , or cause and effect exist together’ in the beginning! The effect becomes manifest (vyakta) while the cause remains unmanifest (unmanifest)! This is the reason why we search for the cause. The planet earth is formed out of the solar flares that condensed gradually into gross earth and as such the hot gaseous matter of the Solar flares (Helium caused by fission and fusion of Hydrogen). Today we find the earth, while still hot and molten underneath is covered by Water 78 % and Rocks- Sial (Si+al) and Sima (Si+mg) crust 21%. There is enormous heat within the earth and molten material, along with gases, is emitted through vents, cracks, fissures, and volcanoes even today. The interior of the earth is a hard Nickel and Iron (Ni + Fe) core subject to fluctuations. Magmatic material constitutes the outer core of the earth. The inner core and outer core are separated by a shell that prevents any passage of seismic waves!  Origin of Life. The first image from a distant of the biological life forms that emerged in a jar devoid of living substances altogether. We know that the basic spiral of DNA has all of the basic aspects of Fibonacci or golden mean. That’s everywhere in nature, in the shapes of Nautilus shells, plants, and even our own bodies. This suggests that the Phi Ratio is the fundamental characteristic of the wave, and that DNA is emerging from the Phi Field of creation that is flowing through all of space and time. The protein in forming a protective cover to the cell containing gene and chromosome without which they would fall apart is an important stage in evolution. As the organism or jiva gets aged this protective cover also becomes weak and unable to reproduce, thereby causing decay and death. There are also stages when the organisms had to adapt to changing environment and resources available such as Sulphur and iron by mutation. This mutation has led to higher organisms, such as hominids. The giant apes mutated to begin a new lineage, roughly about 4 million years ago!. The early four stages to humans are marked by macaques, orang-utans, gorilla, chimpanzee (4 to 5 m. y) and other higher mammals, primates, developed in the course of evolution due to mutation. The last specie spread rapidly everywhere as the Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis and the Homo sapiens and coexisted. It is now human history and, the earliest fossil remains of this are dated 130 000 years. This estimate may also go beyond a million years!