Where did the universe come from?

Where does the matter of the universe come from? The first question to answer is what matter really is. Matter is really “frozen” or condensed energy, like a ray of light that’s wrapped up upon itself like a phone cord SNAFU. Energy comes in two forms: kinetic, and potential.

One form of kinetic energy exists as the free wave/particle dual entities we call photons, which in empty space can only travel at exactly the speed of light relative to all other observers. This means photons can never exist confined in atoms.

Another form of kinetic energy is bound up as particles with mass, which always travel below the speed of light. Under certain conditions particles are formed from the kinetic energy of the collision of other particles.

Kinetic energy is momentum, and momentum is mass times velocity. So whatever excess energy is left over after the creation of these particles is carried away in the velocity of the resultant particles, which we experience as the heat of a nuclear reactor, for example. Heat is really motion.

Potential energy is stored by the relative position of two particles within each other’s gravitational field. It is a negative number that exactly equals the kinetic energy that would be released if the particles were allowed to collide. If you have a rock on the top of
a hill, it has potential energy, and when it rolls down the hill and strikes a wall, the force it delivers is a positive number exactly equal to the negative potential energy that rock had when it was sitting up there on the hill. So the sum of these two energies is zero.

Now if you add up all the kinetic energy of the universe which is in the form of light, matter, and the motion of that matter, and then subtract all the potential energy from the gravitational fields of all that stuff, the total sum of the energy of the universe is zero. That is, NOTHING!

The universe is nothing, it comes from nothing, and if we see something it is only a temporary blip, like a vacuum fluctuation but on a much larger scale.

A difference which makes no difference is no difference

Roman Catholics like to claim there is a strong streak of rationalism on their side of the Christian Church, because Aristotle’s precepts were embraced by St. Thomas Aquinas, and even Paul said (Romans 1:20) that a person could so readily conclude that God exists by examining the things of Creation that there was no excuse for unbelief.

Catholics go on to say those truths which were revealed directly to the Church such as the teaching authority vested by Christ in his Apostles are not a faith issue but simply a matter of obeying that which was handed down to our generation through those same Apostles and their alleged successors the bishops.

Even the issue of the resurrection of Christ is not taken solely on blind faith, say Catholics (and I was one of them until the boy butt sex scandal), because many early Christians died rather than deny the resurrection, and it is human nature that people are not likely to be willing to die as a martyr for a hoax.

After Galileo showed the clergy of the Catholic Church the error of their inerrantist ways they no longer speak of the sun orbiting the Earth, and even embrace deep time and a modified form of Darwinism where their god still has some skin in the game. But when we get to the central devotion of Catholicism, which is the Eucharist, or the Blessed Sacrament, all this rationality goes right out the stained glass window.

Other denominations such as Lutheranism and Methodism believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but Catholicism alone embraces a particularly hardcore version called transubstantiation.  It is the last thing to be believed by a convert and the first to go in a lapsed Catholic.  The basic belief is that in every mass there is a miracle where bread and wine are literally transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus, which is then eaten by the parishioners.

That the flesh of Jesus still sticks to the roof of your mouth like any cracker, and the blood of Jesus still tastes like a chardonnay or a blush or a red (depending on what color carpet is installed in the sanctuary) is explained in a word salad thus:   The substance of the wine changes into the substance of the blood of Christ by transubstantiation, and the body, soul, and Divinity of Christ become present by concomitancy.  The accidents of the bread remain, while the accidents of Christ’s body are hidden, but not from the eyes of faith.

If you place a consecrated host under a microscope, you will see cells of wheat, complete with chromosomes of wheat DNA.   These cells are part of the “accidents” which remain.  The human DNA of Jesus’ body are also there, according to the dogma, because it is one of the accidents of Jesus, but they are hidden, but not from the eyes of faith.  Obviously you are not using eyes of faith if you put a consecrated host under a microscope.

When I attended St. Philomena our priest was an alcoholic, but undergoing treatment.   When he consecrated the Eucharist, the part that he was supposed to drink was not the wine we would drink, but non-alcoholic grape juice, by order of the archbishop.   When he first took over the parish and did this thing which was quite out of the ordinary, he assured us, “Don’t worry, this works.”    From this I concluded that even the alcohol in the wine is one of the non-hidden accidents that remain, along with the wheat DNA.

That got me wondering, what exactly was the substance of the wine that was transformed, and why do they call it the substance when it is the only thing about the transformation that cannot be substantiated?

After a few more Sundays of this, which hit right about the time in 2002 when the dioscese was using some of my weekly contributions of “sacrificial giving” to pay jackpot payouts to young men who were sexual abuse victims, I said to myself, “You know what girl?  This is all bullcrap.”  And that was that.