A Metaphysical Proof of the Existence of God
(for Rick Owen)

Part I.

“The universe and everything in it arose from absolute nothingness due to random fluctuations inherent in the nature of nothingness. It is not necessary to postulate a celestial being as a creative force responsible for initiating the series of events we perceive as the history of the physical universe. The Big Bang itself was merely an unlikely but ultimately inevitable random fluctuation in the absolute nothingness out of which everything we see today arose.” -- from The Creation of the Universe, Oxford University Press.

“Ex nihilo nihil venit.” (From absolute nothing absolutely nothing can come.)

Fluctuating nothingness?

I love such paradoxes, but
consider fully then what nothing is
(or isn't).

The math is simple:
all minus all that ever was,
will be, or is,
could be,
or even might have been:

each elephant, electron, eel, or elf
poofs into emptiness

all quarks and every quivering fear
whiz off into the darkness

all forms of energy and every force,
like wisps of smoke,
vanish
leaving not a trace,

to wit:

electricity and magnetism and love -- mere nothingness;
hate and gravity -- annihilated;
all guilt, all gratitude -- reduced to nil;
nobility, art, and common sense -- all set at nought;
math and chemistry -- all gone to smash;
prayers of thanksgiving -- O! there’s no one to thank! --
victor and vanquished -- equally vanished;
hubris and heroism -- now hidden forever;
cries for forgiveness -- foregone entirely;
insight and insanity -- unseen and unseeing;
greed and gluttony and giving of gifts -- all gone;
courage and cowardice -- both blown away;
humility and haughtiness -- hurled into the void;
friction and friendlessness -- equally forgot;
praise and pleading and all other prayer -- perpetually silenced;
music and poetry -- muter than tombs.

So much subtracted!

Those lads and gals with telescopes and calculus have --

and you unblessed with math and science
may, if you please, accept my word for this
(why would I lie?) --

they have, I say, confirmed for us
that matter is the same as energy,
that time is just the same as space,
that somehow in the early dark
all four were one.

Subtract those too,
as well as every entity or force
of any kind --
the actual and the possible,
what is known
and what is undiscovered still.

And what is left is
nothing,
zero,
nil,

NADA,
entire and absolute.

If our affairs were ever in that state,
there’d be no stage to strut and fret upon,
there’d be no author, no creative urge;
there’d be no drama to unfold;
there’d no tragedy, no comedy
(divine or otherwise),
no story to be told,
no teller of the tale,
and -- ah, poor us! --
no roles for us to star in.

What would be left
from this subtraction
would be
like entropy:

uninteresting

and

irreversible.

Che sera!

NADA!

Part II.

“The mankind-making, bird-beast-and-flower-fathering darkness.” -- Dylan Thomas

“And this all men choose to call God.” -- Thomas Aquinas

I make this poem
in darkness
while those I care about
sleep near and softly
while I seek the light.

Before the first light
there was every darkness,
but in that darkness
all that we are or know
was gathering,
was growing,

and then burst forth into

a trillion billion suns!
quintillions and sextillions of life and energy!
octillions and nonillions of significance!

*****

The dark grows lighter
Where my window looks into the east.

One of those suns
is rising now
with blinding and all other kinds of light.

O clearly Nada never was!

O clearly
something,
someone
always was!

He who is!

I am who am!

Now in the glory of the dawn,

O praise the name
that fathered-forth our world!

-- Warren F. O’Rourke, 2004