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"The Cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." ~Carl Sagan—Cosmos, 1980~

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Believe it or not, I intend to question Sagan's ideas here, and actually debunk the Cosmos. Contrary to public belief, not everything you hear from a "scientist" is actually science, as this quote is actually a philosophical statement. Sagan has absolutely no proof to back up his claims, and thus it falls not into the realm of "religion" as most profs will label it, but rather philosophy, which is still a noble art in and of itself. The problem is, in their minds, that religion has turned into the "enemy"of "science"; however, what they don't realize is that their "science" is really a religion in and of itself. However, that's a completely different topic... This is about the Cosmos.

First, I'd like you to watch this introduction from the TV series The Cosmos:



What does he say in here? It's pretty packed, but I want you to retain two important things: 1.) he makes the claim that the "Cosmos" is eternal. 2.) He claims that he will follow the truth no matter where it leads. Now, I'm going to look at the first question.

Is the universe eternal? There are only two possible answers. Yes, No. There is no middle ground on this question according to the law of non-contradiction. You cannot have it be both at the same time. I'm going to use an inverse proof to show that it is not eternal.

Let us suppose that the Universe has indeed been around for infinity number of years. According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics (1), however, this would have to mean that the universe started out with an infinite amount of energy in order that there would still be some left. The problem with this, however, that you cannot get down to regular numbers by subtracting numbers from infinity. Thus, the idea that the universe (Cosmos) is infinite is illogical in nature (sortof like saying, "I can't speak a word in English", or "What's your name, David?"). It's a self-defeating statement, along the lines of a man who says that he is a poached egg.

The second reason is a bit more in depth. If the universe is indeed infinite, that would mean that there are an infinite number of years that have taken place before this moment. So, placing the present time as 0, the total time span of the cosmos would look like this:

<--------infinity--------------------------0-------------------infinity-------------------->

The arrows mean that this line continues infinitely in both directions. Now, I want you to do something. Count by 1s and get to infinity. Can't do it? Ok, count by 10s. Still can't do it? Count faster. hah. No, try counting by 1,000,000,000s (1 billion). Still can't get there? How about if you keep squaring google (1 x10¹⁰⁰)^x? I think you see my point by now... You cannot get to infinity by using the number system. Basically, this means that the present time would not exist, because the infinite number of years before this one have still not added up to this. Or, another way of saying this would be to say: When infinity number of years exist, the individual years become meaningless, and thus time itself is meaningless. For those math junkies out there, this is essentially what Einstein said in his theory of relativity.

So, if universe isn't eternal, that means it must have had a beginning. However, the problem then arises: What caused the creation of something from nothing? Or rather, why is there something rather than nothing? Again, we are left with only two options (I like to keep it simple). Either the universe created itself, or it was created. Now, it is logically impossible that the universe created itself. It is not possible for something to come out of nothing. Thus, something must have caused the universe to exist. What caused this? We'll look at this question in the next article.

Before I end, however, I want to make a point. Many people, when they hear a topic such as this coming up in conversation will shy away from it. It looks really intimidating and it annoys people to have to think on such a large scale. The reality is, we cannot understand fully the nature of the universe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The question of origins is one of the most important questions that everybody will have to answer at some point. Those who don't think about it are like the ostrich with its head in the sand. We cannot hide from the awesome nature of the world we live it. Let it inspire you. It truly is amazing.

-Cheers

(Postscript: I know this is rather deep, but here's the kicker: if you can understand this, at least in part, you're doing better than most people out there who don't even think about this in the first place. At least you feel like you got your money's worth.)