Continuing Creation: On the Origin of the Universe and The Operation of Its Processes 

I maintain that we do not and cannot know if God/Substance/Nature created the universe because we ourselves cannot stand “outside,” or see “before,” the universe. It is possible that our universe was “born” out of the collapse of another universe.

The earliest things we have scientific evidence of, which “Froze out” of the Initial Singularity very, very shortly after the Big Bang, are:

• Space-Time (Space and Time)
• Fundamental particles of matter (such as quarks and electrons) as described by the Standard Model. However, many physicists think that all the particles in the Standard Model may be made up of vibrations of minute one-dimensional “strings.”
• Dark Matter. Inferred but not yet detected.
• A unified force shortly “separated out” into The Four Fundamental Forces — the Strong Nuclear Force, the Weak Nuclear Force, Electromagnetism, and the Force of Gravity. (At the time of this writing, we’re still not sure Gravity “froze out” in the same way as the three.)
• Dark Energy. Inferred but not yet detected.
• The Laws of Physics (and therefore of chemistry), which humans sufficiently understand to put them to use in technology, but which still hold considerable mystery.

I think that those six things have interacted to create all the objects and events we perceive in the universe.

I also hold that if there is some guiding force, pattern, or Consciousness that created the universe (or all universes), there is no evidence that it consciously controls specific events, that it intervenes in human lives, or provides counsel to individual human beings.

— J.X. Mason, 4-18-23