Let us explore the idea of God. To disassemble the idea completely, let us first understand the idea as a whole. So, what is God? This point is argued all around the world, and some believe that this is even begging the question of God’s existence. However, let us not argue about the existence of God at this time, for this argument.
Getting back to the definition of God, although the details of this entity are argued all around the world, there is common consensus that God is “the creator.” From this, we may assume that, if nothing else, God creates and is a creator. Now let us further break down the concept: what is a creator? Something that makes things. But, once again, we have not reached a dead end: what are things made of? Their constituent parts and this we may hold true for all objects. For example, humans are made up of organs, which are made up of tissues, which are made up of cells, which are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of protons and neutrons and electrons, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and so on and so forth. A chain such as this could continue on indefinitely, ending only with the bounds of human knowledge, but which also leads us to the question, where do these constituent parts come from. Through physics we know that in a closed system (the universe, in our case), matter and energy are neither lost nor gained, only changed about. Therefore, our constituting parts must simply come from other things. It may seem as though we’ve come to an impasse (stuff from stuff from stuff, etc.) in our breaking apart of the idea of God, but, alas, we have not. How are the constituent parts used in creation collected from other objects? Destruction. To create, one must first have the necessary materials, and to gather these materials, one must destroy the compound that they are currently part of to get to them.
Take, for example, a growing human. The biomass that they are constantly adding to their body does not come from nowhere; it comes from the food they eat. To access the carbon stored inside of the plants and animals the human is consuming, the human must first break apart the food being ingested. What we call digestion. When the whole to which those parts originally belonged is no more, they parts are able to be used by the body for its own purposes.
Which brings us to a logical observance: things may not be created without something else first being destroyed, or; for creation to happen there must first be destruction. I cannot find any instance in which this does not hold true.
The two most powerful objections to this that present themselves are as follows: (1) ideas need not destroy anything to be created, and (2) the big bang did not destroy anything, and yet it created everything we now know. In response, I would like to look at the first objection from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Though it is not necessary that prior ideas or experience be destroyed to create a new idea (and some would argue that this is the stuff of new ideas), I say no, still something must be destroyed. Ideas are created by neurons firing in a specific pattern. The firing of neurons, however, does cost energy. This energy would be acquired, ultimately, from the food eaten by the thinking human. And as discussed earlier, digestion is in fact destruction. To address the second objection, we must examine what the big bang was. The big bang was the expansion of the known Universe from an infinitely dense point of matter that existed only before the big bang. This thing existed before the big bang and does not exist now; consequently, it must have been destroyed. As was explored before, things cannot simply cease existing as there can be no net gain or loss of mass in a closed system. So, ultimately, the universe did destroy something to become created.
This brings to light the interesting question, does God need to destroy in order to create as well. I believe so. Though others would argue against this, there is no evidence to the contrary. Finally, let it be summarized that, it is well known that the universe is in an ever changing, static state. No one would argue this point. Therefore, I must conclude that destruction is necessary.
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