In the Beginning, God...

Let us assume that God existed before the creation of the universe. I think most religions would agree with that because God is assumed to always have existed and to always exist. In the Bible in Genesis it says "In the beginning, God..."

By the same token, if we assume that the universe has a finite existence, we assume that God will still exist after the universe has ended. "In the beginning, God..." is balanced by "In the end, God..." We assume the general acceptance of the Big Bang theory of the universe: the universe started at a finite point in time. It is more argumentative whether or not the universe will end in a Big Crunch or will continue to expand forever ending in a heat death: matter will have become so spread out and the average temperature so cold that no life could exist. I happen to believe that the universe will end in a Big Crunch because of symmetry and the esthetic consideration that a neverending universe consisting of space junk is not pleasant to contemplate.

What Happens After the Universe Ends

From considerations of symmetry again, I assume that God will be in the same configuration after the universe ends as He was before the universe began. Looked at in this light, the universe is simply God's experiment. I assume that before the universe began, God was One or unified. After the universe ends God will be the same One. During the course of the universe, I think that God has changed form and actually become the universe, but this assumption is not necessary to my thesis that individuals will cease to be individuals by the end of the universe since, if God is all that there is, the existence of individuals in some form would be extraneous. I think that the universe is God's experiment with individuality. We have individal agglomerations of matter, individual life forms etc. In particular human beings take the form of individuals. So the question is do we survive as individuals in some form after we die and after the universe dies? I would say no since then God would have created something which is eternal the same as God is and I don't think that God needs to have anything that's eternal other than God Himself. Therefore, I think that when the universe ends or when an individual life ends, it gets reabsorbed back into God. If the universe and life within it represents God in a different form than the form He was in before the universe began and after the universe ends, then the universe and everything within it will simply change form and become God again in the form He was in before the universe began. Therefore, our life as individuals may end when we die, but our life in some sense may not end since we may be reabsorbed back into God.

Comments

[Pat]

Your thoughts are very interesting. Truth isn't changed by what we believe. What happens if what you believe isn't true? What if the truth is that there is a God who desires to have a personal relationship with you? What if there is an afterlife that can be obtained by accepting it as a free gift? What if you have been blinded to truth simply because to believe otherwise doesn't make sense to you?

As a teen I decided to become an atheist because I could not reconcile God being good if he was going to send people to hell. I maintained this belief for years without even considering the fact that declaring that there is no God does not make God (if there is a god) disappear.

Later I studied further and even prayed, "God, if you are there, reveal yourself to me." Now, after years of study I am convinced that there is a God, He created us with a longing to know him and that we can know that we can spend eternity with Him. Blessings ~ Pat