In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God.
St John 1 : 1
Remember the Jewish word for God means “The Great I am”. It is just everything that exists. By its definition, its existence is hardly disputable. Whether the whole of existence is intelligent is another question. Certainly, St John believes it is so, and so do I. As so do many people who call that omnipresent being God. As the saying goes, God is everywhere. There is nowhere you can hide from him.
However, different religions have different names and different criteria for this unique deity.
To others, this does not seem obvious I decided to write this short logical explanation in the hope that more people will find the joys of enthusiasm, literally being, or living, in God. The use of the present tense for St John's belief is intentional. I believe that he, like you, has eternal life. Another point I will explain later.
What most people do not realise is that this first verse is meant quite literally. Both a lot of scientists and the Bible state that the Universe and all that we think of as the physical world is, in fact, a totally abstract existence. For a formalised explanation of the scientific view, I quote Max Tegmark:
The only difference between what physics teaches us and what the Bible teaches us is that science limits us to mathematics and the Bible limits us to words, and it is the words that give life meaning.
In English, a word is defined as “a symbol used to share meaning”. As defined, it does include things that most people do not consider words. For instance, roadside signs, such as the various speed limit signs, are symbols that are used to share meaning; so they are words by this definition, even though most people would not consider these signs as words. There is also an unstated expectation of most people that words are only used by humans.
In this context, I am introducing a new name for all these extra words: A capitalised Word is a shared symbol used for communicating any meaning. I use it to show that it includes every symbol used for expressing every conceivable nuance for any living thing. Capitalised Words are the generalised group of symbols and their meanings. So the group of all Capitalized Words is The Word, as defined earlier, which is always capitalised. Each individual word, whether a human's word or a bumble bee's is a capitalised Word.
For example, the letters ‘a’ to ‘z’ are symbols with a shared meaning translating a spoken sound to a written word and back again. So they are capitalised Words, but removing the word “letters” from normal conversation would totally lose the meaning of the word “letter” and would be less exact. The point is that all letters are Capitalized Words, but not all Capitalized Words are letters.
Words become more useful when you include punctuation, grammar and capital letters. Where written sentences can transmit ideas over great distances of space and time; more capitalised Words.
Quite often it does not matter what the symbol is whether it is a gesture, a spoken word, a picture or a written word or something we cannot as yet imagine, so long as it has the same shared meaning. There are two other essential features of every word:
- The meaning attached to the word.
- The often overlooked feature is the desire to share knowledge. Whether that is gossiping with a friend or crying out in anger and pain at what someone else is inflicting on our community or us.
Symbols can be used to mislead, but almost all of them are invented for cooperation. I use a capitalised Word to indicate the use of this flexible and all-inclusive definition of the word.
Let us look at “The beginning” based on Words. “1 + 1 = 2” is as true today as it was at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. It will be true after the Universe ceases to exist. It is always true and has always been true and has never not been true. This logical truth is a part of abstract existence. The meaning of this equation has always existed and has never not existed. It was true at the “beginning” and indeed before the “beginning of time” itself! It will still true at the end and beyond the end of time.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,” says the Lord, “who is and was and who is to come, the almighty”
Revelation 1:8
Was there ever a more serious clue that God exists in abstract existence and not physical existence.
The truth of this statement is truly eternal and lives in abstract, not physical existence. It has no dependency what so ever on the Universe. The converse is not true. Without mathematics the Universe as we know it would be a very different place.
However, the symbols we use to write “1 + 1 = 2” are totally replaceable “Un plus un égual deux.” translates that statement from mathematical symbols into French, just one of many similar sets of symbols humans use to represent this meaning. There is one for each human language. While the symbols are very different, the meaning is the same. It is this logical meaning that has existed since before the beginning of time, the shared symbols only have a context within the time in which they are used by the individuals who share the meaning.
However, Saint John does not say in the beginning was the number, and the number was God. Why?
Mathematics does not contain lies. The set of everything that exists, The Great I am, does. It includes false statements and paradoxes, and until these can be logically and exactly described by a pure language, we can have no theory of everything. To have a theory of everything we need to include capitalised Words. The set of everything that exists must contain the complete set of Words and all the combinations and permutations of Words, including lies and paradoxes.
I will make a digression into one example of how much is not included in mathematics to show how incomplete mathematics is at describing “Everything that exists”, “The Great I am”.
People talk of binary logic, but logic is not binary, it is infinite.
“This is true or false.” is a paradox. A single statement within which there are only two possible logical underlying states true or false, and it is logically in fact neither it is something new and different, a paradox.
In fact, the paradox has only one logic state, and that is neither true nor false, it is the simplest form of paradox. This state is what I will call paradox level 1.
However, it is not the only type of paradox. These statements can easily be constructed for the next level just by making the statement that it is not any of the predecessors. As an example:
“This statement is neither true, nor false, nor paradox level 1.” Has to be a statement of paradox level 2 because now there is one more logical condition, which makes it a more precise definition.
This is proof by induction, that is you start a list by the first item in the list and then show how to create the next item in the list to create an infinite list, in this case of paradoxes. This shows the list of different forms of paradox is infinite. As it happens, there are as many paradoxes in this list as there are whole numbers.
Some may think that the in-depth study of paradoxes has nothing useful to add to knowledge.
However, classifying what sort of paradox we are looking at and understanding what truth is clashing against another is all part and parcel of solving any logical problem. This is the goal of problem-solving "To improve our understanding until all the apparent paradoxes disappear, and we are left with the simple truth."
Sometimes we can solve them and sometimes we cannot. It is useful to know the difference, and so focus the mind on which logical knots can be unravelled in any logical problem and focusing on those is a small step in accelerating our search for all knowledge.
All this study of paradoxes is not yet included in mathematics. However, each paradox has a logical state of indeterminacy, which is specific, and each paradox level has now a shared meaning, and so is now a new capitalised Word. This is why we need to go further back to a more fundamental, more flexible definition to the capitalised Word to be the fundamental Foundation of the theory of everything.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was the Great I am and the Word was with the Great I am.
St John 1:2
So we have found that “The Great I am” is based on the Word and so are all our thoughts.
How can we be sure the words are the foundation, and there is not something deeper?
Intrinsically there is something more fundamental than words, and that is symbols that can be used either to form false or true statements. But symbols are only symbols if they are used to share meaning. A symbol has to be used as part of a word to be a symbol, it is intrinsic to the definition of a symbol. You cannot have a symbol without the meaning it is used to share. So while it is a part of the word, it has no existence without the rest of the word.
Similarly, meanings are a part of any word, but meanings are made up of more words.
So words are the most fundamental thing in abstract existence, which is the foundation of all existence.
Even in the totally logical existence of noughts and ones of the binary world of computers, or in the infinite points, lines an surfaces as described by mathematics, every thought or idea has a meaning. Every existence we know of or can think of is based on abstract existence, including dreams, computer games and the physical universe.
And why was the Word with God?
*See footnote.
Because all words are defined by other words and the relationships between them; father and son; sister and brother. You never find words on their own.
The vast majority of this existence is made up of permutations of Words we just would not use: “Ann an Anne aunt pig fury wild snoop” is a combination which makes no sense to anyone. We humans use grammar to reduce the flood of possible combinations to just the ones which make sense. So we come from the realms of what is the thoroughly infinite depth of nonsense to words we can understand and share.
We also use our free will to exclude thoughts we do not want to think:. “The loving mother murdered her son.” is a horrific combination of words which makes no sense to us so in the vast majority of cases. We would never ever think them. So, while that combination of words inevitably exists, our free will usually exclude them from physical reality, and the words remain a horrific thought that I hope all of us would exclude automatically.
And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.
Matthew 16:19
As has already been mentioned already, a letter maps a sound to and from a written symbol and has a shared meaning so can in this context be considered as a capitalised Word. In English, these “letters” define what we would usually call words, which are also capitalised Words in the more general sense. Sentences contain words and as symbols that have a shared meaning become capitalised Words in the broader sense too. Paragraphs, chapters, books and even libraries are no less, bigger and bigger capitalised Words made up of their respective parts. This containment within containment is infinitely nested and goes on forever. We are part of an utterly infinite existence. This makes the Universe appear to be a tiny dot in the whole of existence and the Great I am.
And so the Word was with God! Because the Word is not just a single Word, every Word is made up of other Words and so “It is” and “It is also with itself.” All these relationships are described and defined by words in a dictionary, which is yet another capitalised Word. There is nothing which is not a capitalised Word. Capitalised Words give existence its consistency or inconsistency; there is nothing more fundamental. Similarly, our everyday words give consistency or inconsistency to our lives. This is why if you want a consistent, stable life, it is better to be consistent with your words not to lie and live with integrity in your life.
As mentioned in the initial philosophical statement:
“Without words, we have no thoughts nor reason. Without reason, there is no philosophy nor mathematics. Some theoretical Physicists hold that: “The Universe is nothing but pure abstract mathematics.” If that is so, without words nothing exists, with them, everything exists.
The whole of mathematics is just a tiny subset of capitalised Words, and the mathematical view of the Universe is an infinitesimal subset of mathematics. One mathematical model with one set of initial conditions, which have developed into the Universe we see around us, which has been moulded and changed by communicating beings such as ourselves. This “Physical Universe” is based on nothing but Words, it lies on the whispered Word.
In the totally abstract logical existence of noughts and ones of the binary world of computers, or in the infinite points, lines an surfaces as described by mathematics, every thought or idea has a meaning. As there is a meaning and there are symbols, the source code for computers or algebra for mathematics, that are used to share their meanings, they have to be a Capitalized Words. So in logical existence, every meaning has to be a Word. There is nothing more fundamental.
*There is a very different theological answer to the question to: "And why was the Word was with God?", that is more important if you are a Christian, but it is not relevant to this perspective on everything that exists or the great I am. We come to that answer later.