"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." Albert EinsteinThe entire universe is in perpetual motion. Every motion is relative to another motion. Every frame is relative to another. This is true at both the level of astrophysics and at the quantum level.
Motion is measured in relation to relative stillness. The runner of the hundred yard dash is in movement, and his movement is observed in relation to the still track field. His time is measured in relation to the distance between the fixed starting blocks and the still finish line.
Of course, the track field is only relatively still. It is upon the earth, spinning at thousands of miles per hour. A plane might set its path in relationship to the north pole. The fixed north pole is its reference point. Yet the north pole is also moving, as the earth hurtles through space circumorbiting the sun. The sun itself is moving in the Milky Way Galaxy.
At the atomic level, the electrons circle the nucleus which is their relative still center. The still center is only relatively still, because the atom, with its nucleus, ( say, on the wrist of the runner in our example) is in motion.
1. Everything is in motion.
2. At the quantum level and at the astronomical level, things move around a still center. The earth revolves around the sun. The electron circles the atom. The bicycle wheel spins around the hub. The hub is still. Yet as we know it is only relatively still.
Logic dictates that the universe itself revolves around a still center. Physicists who dare not violate causality and empirical common sense will not say that the universe is an amorphous mass, though I can see that that is where they may go with plasma fields. Instead, they speculate (and because it cannot be validated or proved false, it does not even rise to the level of conjecture) that the earth began with an exploding singularity from which it is now expanding in all directions. Thus the universe's center is said to be somewhere billions of years ago.
This incredibly dense mass magically appeared from somewhere, though space and time could not yet have existed, and then exploded in a big bang. Somehow, even though there are some black holes from which nothing can escape including light, somehow everything was able to get away from the gravity of densest mass that ever was.
Either it will keep expanding forever; or it is stable (which would be a most remarkable astro-engineering feat of random chance); or it will fall back into itself.
Right now the steady state is not popular, though those who wish to deny the existence of God would be happy to just say the universe has always been there. Either of the outcomes of ever expanding or falling back into itself is undoubtedly okay with atheistic and positivistic scientists and philosophers, as well as agnostics, who deep down just don't like the idea of God.
Dr. Stanley Jaki, eminent historian of science, has shown that science was still born over and over again in cultural settings which subscribe to an eternal universe--eternal in Hellenistic terms, or eternal in terms of endless cycles.
There are many reasons why this idea, coming from a pantheistic or primitive worldview. is an infertile ground for sustained scientific development. I cannot elucidate them here; I refer you to Stanley Jaki's work. But I will say that the idea of an eternal universe is at base pessimistic and lends itself to superstitious and fanciful notions. It gives nature an air of unknowability, and all the more so when a deity is ascribed to material creation itself.
Collectively and individually, such cultures, with a world view of eternal cycles, shrug their shoulders and say "what's the use." Either the world is shrouded in mystery and unknowable, or seeking to understand things is not worth the candle.
Christianity introduced a very nice alternative to a pessimistic or animistic world view. For the Christian, there was a beginning and there will be an ending. Moreover, the spiritual and the natural are knowable. Created in the image and likeness of God, we have reason and the capacity to discover, deduce and infer. And our very rationality makes us aware, at a very basic level, that if God exists, He is rational. And He likes math and science.
He even sent His Son to explain His ways to us, so that we could know the Father.
If anyone is to be accused of a deus ex machina, it is the current crop of physicists and astronomers who just have to insist on a big bang from a mass that magically had always been there until it suddenly blew up, or else it suddenly appeared, again magically, and immediately violated the laws of physics by somehow permitting all of itself to escape the most dense density that ever was.
The universe had a beginning. But it was not a big bang. It was a big whoosh. This article is for the purpose of introducing the unmoved Mover, and taking another look at Thomas Aquinas. I address the creation mechanism elsewhere.
Here I will just say that there are two images to keep in mind (Einstein thought in pictures when he made some of his discoveries).
The two images to keep in mind (either one will do) when contemplating the creation of the universe are the hurricane (which NASA generously provides many pictures of online). The hurricane revolves around a still center, and storms form at the periphery (they still don't know exactly how hurricanes form, though there are viable theories). The image of the winds circum-orbiting the still center is useful when thinking of how God began the universe.
The other image, and a beautifully haunting one, is that of the spiral galaxy, especially the spiral galaxy with arms. These images are illustrative of the orbiting and spiraling motions of which God is fond, and are a simple way of picturing in your mind how the pre time force began to circle around the still creation center.
Now I must return to my topic at hand.
My reason tells me that there was abd is a still center for the universe, and this center exists just outside of time, in pre time moving stillness, the darkness of the deep before there was light.
This pre-time force, pre-time wind, circumorbs the still center, moving faster and faster with an ever increasing circumference until suc
h a point is reached that the smallest matter comes into existence. This matter is like the eddies or whirlpools in a river. The river represents the pre time force moving at incredible velocity until little eddies swirl out, develop their own center, like a gyroscope, and like the eddies in a river (which cast a shadow), acquire a sort of solidity.The whole universe was set in motion and came into existence with this first matter. It takes matter lagging in the time stream to make distance and thus space, and time is also created as matter lags behind the faster moving river of force.
Matter begins to clump and larger structures are formed. Moving spinning matter creates magnetism, and magnetism begats electricity. The pressure of the time wind upon its newly created little matter is the beginning of gravity. Larger structures experience more pressure from the pre time force wind, and large bodies experience compression.
All of the motion, from which all phenomena, including magnetism and electric fields, came from a still center--at the circumference of the force orbiting around the still creation center.
All motion came from this relative stillness. This stillness, the pre time stillness out of which came pre-time motion, is itself relatively still. It is relative to the Creator, Who is the Ultimate Stillness. From His heavenly abode in the timeless realm, He willed action, and expressing Himself in love, He initiated all the movements we see around us.
At this very moment, He is still creating and still sustaining space time in which we live and move and have our being. The pre-time wind still blows and its force comes from all directions, enveloping the creation, in all its forms and motions. Even the spin of the protons and electrons, still spinning after all these years, is sustained by the ether wind which touches creation at the interface where time and timelessness, where matter and the mother field touch.
We cannot measure the timeless field, but we, as humans with a still soul which belongs to the timeless realm, can sense the movement of time, which comes from timelessness.
