13 - Understanding yotzer

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it ...  - Genesis 28

In this post: Yotzer is shorthand for "that which created the Universe." We know nothing else about yotzer, but we can speculate. Naturally, the most interesting speculation has to do with what yotzer wants of us.

Yotzer is not just another god being introduced into the already crowded panoply of gods. Yotzer is a concept.

We have already seen (Post 11) that the atheist proposition that the Universe was not created, but rather, happened by chance and then randomly evolved to where we are today, does not stand up to rational questioning. Questions remain about how the singularity that exploded did so, where the singularity was located in space or spacetime,^{Note 1} why the laws of physics were shattered in the process, and why the universe seems to be so well suited for life, including intelligent life, when the odds of it being so are so miniscule. (see Post 7)

We have also seen (Posts 2, 3, 9 and 12) that the God of monotheistic religions, described by the scriptures and writings of these religions, is a creation of the extraordinary human mind. This fact in no way denigrates the beauty, wisdom or relevance of those scriptures.^{Note 2} However, once we accept that they were written by humans, we can understand that these scriptures are limited by what humans of that time could know or understand about the Universe and its operation.

When atheists refute the existence of god, it is generally the Scriptural God, the product of writers who lived more than 2,000 years ago, that they are denying. We came up with that God long before we understood that our earth was a tiny piece of a universe, and we have, as a species, probably outgrown this type of god-concept, although it has most certainly made its contribution to the world.

Yet the Universe had to have come about somehow.^{Note 3} Any good bookie would prefer the likelihood of some sort of a creator to that of an incredible  series of accidents. It was our instinctive understanding of this fact that caused us to develop our creation stories and the scriptural Gods. I don’t know what or who created the Universe, nor do you or any scientist. However, I have full confidence that something or someone did. Yotzer is simply the shorthand I use to mean “whatever or whoever created the Universe.”

Do we know anything about yotzer other than it created the Universe? No. Are there things that we can infer or assume about it? Maybe. For example, we can probably assume it is intelligent and rational, because the Universe appears to be intelligently implemented If we assume that yotzer is rational, then we can guess that it had a purpose in creating the Universe, that it didn’t do so just for fun, and that there is a direction built into the Universe. Otherwise, why would yotzer create it in the first place?

Are we part of the purpose yotzer had in creating our Universe? No and yes.

On the one hand, I doubt that yotzer is aware of us as a species, never mind as individuals. It is likely no more aware of Earth and its inhabitants than we are of the microbes in our bodies. Its scale of time and space is just too massive.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that the entire system of evolution, including mutational genes and the double helix, didn’t have a reason. I think it is possible that yotzer wants to evolve a species with sufficient intelligence to play a role in a greater direction for which the Universe was created (whatever that may be).

How many such species, in our Universe and, perhaps, other Universes, have emerged? We don’t know yet.

What is the nature of yotzer? There is no end of possibilities. Is it a committee of some sort? Is our Universe a homework assignment for some elementary students in a classroom in the Kosmos? Perhaps, as proposed by Isaac Asimov in his book Nine Tomorrows, a human species that existed on earth prior to us had developed an incredibly powerful computer, but as that species died out the last survivor instructed the computer to take all the time it needed and recreate humankind, and, finally, it said: “let there be light,” and became our yotzer. Another idea that is interesting is that the entire universe is a computer simulation, programmed by yotzer, perhaps in a university somewhere in the Kosmos.

The common vision of the scriptural God has, for many centuries, been of a stern but loving parent. I think yotzer may be more of gardener. It provides “fertile soil” that includes all the rules of physics and evolution, plants “seeds,” which are the stuff of life,  and lets them alone to develop naturally, visiting only to add fertilizer and water when necessary, and perhaps, anxiously waiting to see what emerges.

As discussed in Post 9, our concerns as humans come down to a number of primary questions about ourselves.  But what might yotzer’s concerns be -- especially as they concern us?  What role does it desire of us, if anything, as a/the species that made it to the top of the heap -- at least on this planet?

We don’t know yet, perhaps because we have not evolved enough to know. The first commandment given mankind, according to the Bible, was “Be fruitful  and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it...”  Perhaps that is all that we are mandated to do at this time -- to propagate, to mix our genes until we produce some level of enhanced human that is able to discern what we cannot understand now, and meanwhile, ensure that our little home, Earth,  continues to exist, along with the lifeforms with which we share it.