Scientists don’t like infinities showing up in their equations. However, the two pillars of modern physics, relativity theory and quantum theory, both plague scientists with the problem of infinity. General relativity describes the singularity of the Big Bang as a dimensionless point of infinite gravity and curvature of space. Quantum physics offers up states of infinite possibilities within a non-temporal and non-local realm.
Infinities bring unwanted complexities into scientific models. But indeed, current theories suggest that the whole expanding and evolving universe had its prenatal existence in a realm removed from any involvement with time and space. In other words, fundamental reality is not physical.
The subject of infinity is not just some abstract mathematical concept. Infinity can also be found in the potency of all organic life. For instance, a single seed from an apple tree contains within it a potential orchard of apple trees. In fact, the whole earth could be covered in apple trees from a single seed if it were allowed to. Moreover, everything from insects to humans could multiply and smother the earth if disease, competition, predation or finite resources were removed from the equation.
Life has an infinite potency. This reality is a direct smack in the face of physical science, which likes to keep things tidy through the exploration of finite quantities.
How does infinite life hide in a single tiny seed? It seems that infinite things are not constrained by physical size or measurement (like the singularity of the Big Bang theory).
Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg claimed that universal nature is a theater that mirrors the Lord God’s infinite heavenly kingdom—which is spiritual and beyond spacetime or physical matter.
Neither traditional religion nor the New Physics offers any rational insight into understanding a dynamical world void of physical limits and taken out of relation to spaces and times. But this will be the future challenge for both religion and science.
To offer clues and point religion and science in the right direction I have written a new book Proving God. I attempt not only to show how complex order and life can operate in a spiritual (non-physical) realm but that the physics ruling the universe on a fundamental level are expressions of spiritual forces and laws operating in pre-space. All finite entities in the universe are recipient forms of God’s infinite influence (influx).
