A Universal Creed

I originally called this “A Personal Creed” because it reflects my own thoughts.  But it belongs not to me but to everyone, because it really is universal.

Well, “creed” is a bit of a misnomer since I do not ‘credo’ anything.  Except nothing.

To believe is to define.  To define is to limit.  To limit is to control.  To control is to corrupt.

Belief is not humble; it is aggressive.  Belief is not an sign of submission; it is an assertion of domination.  Belief makes itself superior to that in which it believes by controlling it through the very act of belief, and thus is blasphemy.  Belief is vanity.  Belief is futility.  Belief is the very antithesis of faith. 

To have faith, one must surrender control.  To surrender control, one must abandon limitation.  To abandon limitation, one must give up definition.  To give up definition, one must let go of belief.  To have faith, one must neither believe nor disbelieve; one must unbelieve.

* * * * *

The following statements are not of belief but of hard fact.

I am a Terran, a citizen of the world.  The whole Earth is my home, and all its people my brothers, sisters, and cousins of the One Human Race.

The dominant species on Earth, Homo sapiens, has been around just 200,000 years.  The sole remaining race (subspecies) of H. sapiens—H. sapiens sapiens—is only 30,000 years old.  The entire primate genus Homo has existed only 2.8 million years.

A single human is, on average, 664 billionths (0.000000000664 or 6.64x10^-11) km³ in volume, with an average lifespan of 67.2 years.

Planet Earth, which provides H. sapiens sapiens and all other faunal and floral life forms their home, is 1.12 trillion km³ by 4.54 billion years.

Sol, the star that is the center and basis of Earth’s planetary system, is 1.4 quintillion km³ by 4.56 billion years.  The Solar System, including its Oort Cloud, is 1.7 duodecillion (1.7x10³⁹) km³ by the same 4.56 billion years.

The Milky Way Galaxy, which hosts the Solar System, is ~8 sedecillion (8 x 10⁵¹) km³ by 13.2 billion years.

There are ~200 billion stars in the Milky Way.  Of these, ~40 billion are capable of supporting Class-M planets.  At least 8-10 billion of those have sapient life, meaning that there may be 61.6 quintillion (61.6 x 10¹⁸) sapient beings in our galaxy alone.

There are ~500 billion such galaxies across the Universe.

The Universe is ~213 duovigintillion km³ by 13.8 billion years and expanding ever outward.  It is just one of innumerable such bodies making up the Omniverse (aka Multiverse), but is currently the only one of relevance to us H. sapiens sapiens.

The Universe is formed of a single matrix of four basic dimensions, three spatial and one temporal, called spacetime.  All four of these dimensions flow to and from and define the point in the spacetime continuum at which we are at any given moment. 

Each of these dimensions has two aspects, two directions along which energy may flow.  But these two directions in each dimension are only relevant to the individual.  Only from the point we occupy does height have an up and down, length have a forward and back, and width have a left and a right, time have a past and future.

Past and future have relevance only to the present, our name for when we are at this instant.  In truth, the future has already happened, and the past is yet to be, and the moment where we are now is the beginning, and the end, and every moment in between.  That now is where we exist.

Gravity provides the cohesion for the physical Universe in a relationship with the dimension of time that is correlative if not causal.  Without gravity, there would be no time; without time, there would be no gravity.

Everything in the Universe that is not of the matrix of spacetime is composed of energy.  Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only change forms.  All matter exists as alternate forms of energy; everything that exists shares and is made up of the same energy.

Spacetime and energy, therefore, are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe and of all that is in it, the emanations from which all creation evolves.

This phase of the Universe, currently at 13.8 billion years, is finite, and will come to an end, even if the interim between beginning and end is far more vast than humans can comprehend

In ~2 billion years, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide and merge into one, altering the structure of everything in them.

In ~5 billion years, Sol will enter its red giant phase, if it has not been destroyed in the above-mentioned galactic collision, destroying any remaining life on planet Earth.

The next Big Crunch facilitating the next Big Bang will be in ~60 trillion years, destroying our Universe so that another may be born anew in the same manner our own Universe was formed.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and again, and again.

There is no Divine Creator, especially not an anthropomorphic and anthropopathic God such as humans have repeatedly created in their own image with whom to have an illusory personal relationship.  Each and every one of those “gods” is nothing but a myth. 

In nearly every culture on the planet, the word translated into English as “the world”, meaning Planet Earth, also translates as “the Universe”.  To the ancients, they were one and the same. A few examples are ‘kosmos’ in Greek and ‘ha-olam’ in Hebrew, and, for that matter, ‘the world’ in English, which derives from Old English and literally means ‘age of man’ but is also used for ‘eternity’.  That is the cosmology hosting every god or ultimate reality of every human religion on Earth since religion first began.

Every form of Ultimate Reality conceived and believed by human religion or philosophy, all of which are geocentric and anthropofocal, is too small for our Universe. 

Even in the very rare instances in which humans have perceived the Ultimate Reality as something genuinely Other, they have then proceeded to append to that insight intermediary realities to connect it to our own in order to believe, define, limit, and control, sometimes reducing fairly advanced concepts to mere ideological dogma.

If there is Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of Time, with Time here being defined as the lifespan of the current Universe, it is beyond personhood, beyond being, even beyond effability.

If there is Something, it produces yet claims no possession; it redeems yet requires no gratitude; it sustains yet exercises no authority.  It has no need of obedience, worship, prayer, praise, adoration, supplication, benediction, love, or even respect.  It just is.

If there is Something, it is both perpetual and ever-changing.  It flows through and animates all that is throughout spacetime and beyond, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal.

If there is Something, it has no name.  It has no need of a name.  Since it is the one and only Something, there is no other Something from which it needs distinguish itself.

If there is Something, it is the Source of all that is, the Force energizing the manifestation of all that is, and the Way guiding the manifestation.  From our perspective, these are different things, but in reality they are One.

If there is Something, it is One.  It is neither male nor female.  It does not take sides, nor does it have sides.  From it emanate both  light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction, everything and nothing.

Each of those antitheses is defined by its opposite.  Without their counterpoints, none of those qualities can exist.

Without death, therefore, life has no meaning.  The essence of all existence, especially on our place of existence in our Universe, of is change and evolution.  Nothing that is static is living.  In fact, nothing of the Universe is static, for of it stasis is impossible. 

Stasis is a nonexistence beyond even death.  Stasis is only possible in the void beyond.

For the individual, birth and death define the boundaries of life.  Even if there is a form of life after death for individual beings once the organic shell has been shed and existence on this plane ends, humans debating questions on life after death are like fetuses discussing questions on life after birth.

There is no payback for good deeds or ill.  The only thing for an individual to do is try to be a good person.  The way to be a good person is to love every other person as you love yourself, both on Earth and across the vast expanse of extraterrestrial space, and do not do to any other person that which you would not wish them to do to you.

No philosophical or theological view vis-à-vis themselves alone, including the hypothesis that nothing exists beyond observable reality, is any more or less valid than any other, except when those propositions state they are the only ones that are correct.

Everything you have just read could be completely wrong, except that part where no one is right.