I am not normally one to talk about my beliefs, since they seem to be severely lacking, but I do want to explore this strange universe we are, and I think there's a good indication that there was indeed a creator of the universe, or at least a creation.
Let's assume first, that the Big Bang is not axiomatic. What caused the big bang? How does time and space compress like that? Most attempts to answer are either to dismiss it as irrelevant, or dismiss it as invalid. It really is hard to start talking about the creation of something when at the 'time' of its creation, time itself was compressed down as much as space was. At the moment of the BB in theory there was no time at all.
But let's put aside the decompression of the universe for now. It's all based on redshift and cosmic background radiation anyway, who knows whether we have the right theory for explaining those facts? We don't have to go back that far to prove that an 'unusual' event, one unlike any other, happened at some point in the history of the universe. We only have to go back a few minutes.
Imagine a teacup falling from a table. Thermodynamics dictate that it will move toward the lower energy state downward, then shatter irreperably, sending steam and hot tea everywhere. And without incurring great expense, which has a higher thermodynamic cost than what is gained, the teacup will never be together again, on the table, with all the tea and steam and heat once again inside. It's possible sure, but here's the problem.
Thermodynamics assumes that every possible event, every configuration of atoms and gluons and stuff in a moment of time, all have the same probability of occurring. Each of these configurations is called a 'microstate'. They don't have any meaning of themselves, just are one possible way for the universe to be.
When we quantify these into real world phenomenon, we observe what are called macrostates. Macrostates are categories, or general descriptions of a set of states. A set of microstates. Take for example the system of "6 coins being flippped." A macrostate for that system would be "Exactly 3 coins are heads up." or "2 or 4 coins show tails, and 1 coin lands on its edge." They don't say the exact configuration of the coins, only a category under which several configurations may qualify. A microstate for that system would be "Coins 1, heads, 2, tails, 3, tails, 4, heads, 5, heads, 6, tails." It doesn't have any information on what kind of state that is, only one example of many equivalent microstates. The macrostate is the kind of microstate being observed.
Flipping coins is boring of course, but some other examples would be "shattered teacup": macrostate. "<insert positions and momentum of all atoms in one example of a shattered teacup at one moment in time>": microstate. "Death": macrostate. "One particular way the steering column penetrates the body cavity to interrupt homeostasis": microstate.
The third law of Thermodynamics states that if you add up all the microstates that fit under each macrostate, then the macrostates that involve increasing disorder, or 'entropy' will have more microstates than the ones that involve increasing order. That's the lopsided nature of the universe. There are a lot more ways for something to fall apart than for it to fall together. You can wait around for eons, billions on billions of years watching the microstates of shattered teacups, and chances are you will never happen upon the microstate that involves the cup falling back together, simply because such microstates are very rare.
That means no matter what you do, every action, every moment increases in disorder overall. Local increases in order are possible (fixing the teacup) but only at a greater cost somewhere else (your muscles, drying glue, heating water for more tea, dissolving tea leaves). Life is an increase in order, but without the sun's incredibly fast and expensive increase in disorder, life would have no means to grow, to become more ordered. And of course some things not even the sun can fix, like say for instance, teacups or death.
There's something intriguing about all this though. What state was the teacup in before it fell off the table? You might think it obviously was placed there by a human hand, or perhaps a machine put it there. But those are both assumptions based on prior knowledge, value judgements. Let's pause for a minute and consider all the possible ways the teacup could have gotten on that table to fall.
There are all the ways a human hand, tray, machine, etc could have put the teacup there. It could have fallen from a higher place. It could have even risen from a lower place. Or perhaps it just coelesced from the quantum foam, spontaneously becoming a cup of tea?
There is exactly one past we remember. One way the tea cup was placed on the table. One way we saw it fall. But there are a mondacious amount of ways the teacup could have gotten on the table other than that one single way. We could be remembering wrong. Our memories could be fabricated. We could be living in Plato's cave. We might not have been watching how the teacup got there. It turns out that each of these ways for the teacup to get on the table is exactly as likely as the one we remember. They are nothing less than microstates.
Entropy is not time's arrow, as Brian Greene would say. The laws of thermodynamics are pretty much just Newton's laws plus statistics. There is no temporal direction to any elements of the theory, and none emerging from thir combination. According to Thermodynamics it is more likely that the teacup, your memories, you, and the universe all spontaneously formed out of random chance in the quantum foam at that very moment that the teacup started falling. And in fact the most likely past, the most likely macrostate, is that the universe was going in reverse, the teacup did fall together, the tea did gather, and your mind rewound back to the point of seeing the teacup fall. And then it fell.
It's kinda weird though, if the past were (most likely) a mirror of the future, perhaps not the exact same future, but under thermodynamic laws reversed, why would we have any memory of a false past at all? It's one of those things that makes sense, but is totally useless. We can't observe this mirroring, we can't predict it, or draw anything useful from it. In fact, we can't even really exist without a past. The moment you finish this sentence will be the only real moment you ever experienced. Most likely.
So let's put that aside too, and see if there isn't a more satisfying and non-trivial way to describe the universe's past. I have never seen a process spontaneously decrease in entropy. Not for lack of looking that's for suce. If you do see a process spontaneously decrease in entropy do let me know. But perhaps there was at least one time a spontaneous decrease occurred. One time Thermodynamics didn't apply as we observe them today.
If we assume that there was one, ar many events in the past that increased the order of the universe, then everything follows from there. The past becomes real, the future no longer a mirror of it. We simply assume that at some point a highly unlikely spontaneous ordering occurred, and given that the past we remember becomes 100% likely. Well... at least 99.9% likely.
I don't know why Entropy never spontaneously decreases, or why it's so rare. It would be my assumption that entropy would stay the same, just like energy. But such is not the case, at least in my lifetime and my ancestors' reproducible records. Nevertheless, for the past to exist at all, in a higher state of order than the present, there must have been an event that brought about a higher state of order than even the past has.
The Big Bang is the lowest entropy our universe has ever had. The expansion, the cooling, the spreading out, the clumping, all that happened afterward decreased Entropy just the same as the laws we live and die with today. What could possibly cause such an incredibly improbable state of order to occur, one so lacking in disorder that even billions of years afterward there is still useful energy running around? The current theory is that it's simply coincidence, that billions of billions of our universe's lifetime passed, and then came the Big Bang, just like the teacup falling together. But perhaps that assumption is just something we cling to comfortingly so as not to have to question whether there was a Big Bang at all? How do we resolve the mystery of the redshift, of the background radiation, without relying on assumptions like that spontaneous ordering?
It just leaves so many questions. Why wasn't the Big Bang smaller? Why not bigger? Why was there only one Big Bang? Why is spontaneous order just so darned unlikely? Are we missing something, some 'leak' of information out of our universe? If not, then why did the Big Bang happen at all? What was different about it than the rest of the universe's lifetime? Why is it that in all our meticulous measurement and experimentation we have only discovered one single monolithic and huge increase in order, all other moments and events not even increasing in the slightest? Isn't it more likely at least that there was more than one small increase in entropy, than just one big one? Yes, but how do you explain redshift/background radiation then?
I dunno, but at least with current theories based on the assumption that the Big Bang is necessary to explain everything, then there was definitely a event in the history of our universe that went contrary to every other observation we have made. A moment of creation that was different than anything else. Could it be that whatever created our universe subsequently left, and abandoned it? That whatever property was responsible for the Big Bang was alse destroyed by the Big Bang, replaced with what we measure as the laws of Physics? What was going on back there, and why only back there?
One thing's for sure, it wasn't some arrogant goatherdshepherd god that did it. That's just ridiculous. Well, okay not entirely but certainly contradictory. I don't know whether JVH exists or not, but I give that deity the same consideration I give Freddy, Jason, Hannibal, The Easter Bunny, The Care Bears, and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. They're all fictional, that is, there is no evidence that they exist in the real world, or way to perceive them outside of works of art created by the hands of humans who didn't know any better than I do what's going on, but were more inclined to lie (in the Bible's case) and say they did.
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