Meeting at Infinity

If you have ever met me or read anything by me, you probably know that I am agnostic. I am not agnostic in a fence-sitting sort of way nor am I agnostic in an undecided sort of way. I am agnostic because I recognize that questions dealing with life, death and the universe are paradoxical, meaningless and unable to be understood by the human mind.

The existence of God is a false dichotomy as existence versus non-existence is an element of this physical universe which God is necessarily outside of since he/He/she/She/it/It/f@$%face supposedly created it. Therefore, God is not necessarily subject to the bounds of existence or non-existence. God could sort of exist like the square root of negative one, the Social Security Trust Fund or the Inquisition.

But, this is old material.

So, I was watching “I Heart Huckabees” the other day. Dustin Hoffman introduced some interesting concepts. He claimed that all matter was the same. You, me, the Andromeda Galaxy, a danish, whatever are all the same thing. Hoffman’s arch nemesis in the movie, on the other hand, claimed that we are all nothing. Is either theory valid? Can we be everywhere or nowhere?

Well, as it turns out, we are everywhere, sort of, partially. You see, an atom is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. Most the volume of our existence is really just the charge of atoms repelling each other. You don’t fall through your chair because of electron charges in your atoms repelling those in the chair. Electrons are tricky, though. They do not exist in any one place. They exist in approximate locations around the nucleus in clouds. There is a certain probability that they are close and certain probabilities that they are far. There is also a probability, albeit so small that I could never express its size with language, that one of your electrons is a mile away from one of your atoms and a probability that one of your electrons is across the universe. So, for every area of space, there is a certain probability that you exist and do not exist in that space. You are both ubiquitous and nowhere at once.

But there is more. All objects have a wave-particle duality. Observation collapses this duality. When you shoot light at two slits, light will pass through the slits, interfere with itself and produce a light-dark pattern on the wall. This displays its wave nature. This occurs even when you shoot a single photon (somehow it interferes with itself). Observing which slit the photon goes through collapses this duality and the pattern becomes all light. This displays its particle nature. Thus, observation affects existence and location. Now, say you die and are unable to observe yourself. Your nature and location are now indeterminate. You again are everywhere and nowhere all at once (though unobservable).

Dustin Hoffman at one point asks Jason Schwartzman, “Have you ever transcended space and time?”

Schwartzman responds, “Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about”

The joke is funny on a few levels, but one of them is that he is completely correct. We all transcend space and time, but also do not because we are space and time and also we are not space and time. We also do not understand this. How is this so?

Well, keep in mind that parallel lines meet at infinity, as do the ends of the universe. A line is but a circle with an infinite radius. The big bang began at the speed of light and perhaps will end at it as well, but at the speed of light, time stops and matter shrinks to an infinitesimal size.

Now, you understand why I think going to church is pointless. Of course, if you’ve ever seen the movie Event Horizon, you know that believing all points are connected does nothing except open a passageway to hell. Perhaps you religious folk are better off.