Nothing Exists that is Greater than God

    Everything in the universe (or universes) has the God of the Boundaries (GoB) as its original cause, existence source, and prime mover, and because no effect can be greater than its cause, the universe cannot be greater than GoB, nor can anything that is within the universe be greater than GoB.  Here I use "greater" in the sense of "more remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness."  I do not mean "better" or "more good." 

    To see that no effect is greater than its cause, imagine than an object, person, or idea has greatness B, which was caused by an object, person, or idea with greatness A (equivalent to B), plus an increase in greatness D.  This increase in greatness D in essence has no cause.  That is, to say that an effect is greater than the cause is equivalent to saying that there is an uncaused cause.  However, as we have discussed, there can be no uncaused cause in the universe except for GoB, so we return to the understanding that no effect (except for GoB) is greater than its cause (nothing in the case of GoB).

    This is a statement of great power, as the next section demonstrates.  I will discuss some common objections to the statement that no effect is greater than its cause. 

Objection 1:

    Imagine an avalanche.  Dropping of a tiny pebble can cause boulders to go careening down a hillside.  Therefore, an effect can be greater than the cause.

Reply:

    You assume that the dropping of the tiny pebble is the only cause.  It is not.  The other cause is the position of the rocks on the hillside: their large number, their distribution of weights, and their precarious position.  Without all of these causes the avalanche would not have occurred. In many ways this is a physics problem, so we can discuss it with physics language.  Before the avalanche, the rocks had potential energy, by reason of their position on the hillside.  During the avalanche, the rocks have kinetic energy, by reason of their motion. After the avalanche, the energy has become heat energy and dissipated into the air and earth.  At no point was any energy created or destroyed.  That the effect was not greater than the cause is a way of saying that no energy was created, just changed. 

Objection 2:

    Imagine an atom bomb.  A relatively small device has the power to flatten a city.  Surely, the effect is greater than the cause.

Reply:

    As it turns out, this is really the same objection as objection 1.  What an atom bomb does is convert energy from mass into kinetic, light, and heat energy, using Einstein's relation E = mc², where E is the energy that gets released, m is the mass that gets transformed, and c is the speed of light.  No energy gets created or destroyed, only changed.

Objection 3:

    Humans evolved from single-celled organisms.  Humans are greater than single-celled organisms, so the effect is greater than the cause.

Reply:

    There are two possibilities here.  First, let us assume that materialism is true.  That is, that humans merely the product of the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe.  It this case, the objection is identical to objections 1 and 2.  No energy was created or destroyed in the process of making a human, so in this way a human is not greater than an equivalent quantity of single-celled organisms.  You may say that what matters is not the energy, but the ordered complexity.  Therefore, we must also discuss entropy.  In any process in physics, it has been found to be true that the universe is never more ordered after a process than before.  If you attempt to fight this process, you will create more disorder elsewhere.  The classical simple example is to imagine two gasses, nitrogen and oxygen, divided by a partition.  If you remove the partition, no energy has been lost, but the nitrogen and oxygen are thoroughly mixed, and therefore more disordered.  If you replace the partition, the gasses do not sort themselves.  Any process to sort the gasses is difficult, and will produce more disorder than it corrects.  Similarly, as humans evolved more and more ordered complexity, other parts of the universe paid the price.  That is, if materialism is true, humans remove value from the universe by their existence.  They merely change energy from one from to another and reduce order.  Note that the avalanche and the atom bomb also increase entropy, even though I did not discuss it as explicitly.

    The other possibility is that humans have some non-physical component, that is, a soul.  This soul cannot arise from evolution, because from physical causes only physical effects can come.  The soul has an spiritual cause, which is GoB.  The soul is the added value that allows humans to add value to the universe rather than remove it.  In this case we cannot use physics, but we can reasonably fall back on the arguments above that an effect that is greater than its cause requires the existence of an uncaused cause, and the only uncaused cause is GoB.  I argue elsewhere that humans do indeed have a soul.

    In addition to the flat out objections, there are also many disturbing conclusions that can be made because of the principle that the universe contains nothing greater than GoB.  These need to be addressed.

Disturbing Conclusion 1:

    There are strawberries in the universe.  Does this mean that GoB is an ideal, very tasty strawberry?

Reply:

    We have not shown that GoB is a strawberry.  We have shown that GoB is greater than a strawberry.  A strawberry gives nutrition, but GoB is the source of all life. A strawberry can give pleasurable sensations when it is eaten, but GoB is the source of all pleasure. GoB is not a strawberry, but GoB does contain the essence of what makes a strawberry a strawberry.

Disturbing Conclusion 2:

    There is bat guano in the universe.  Does this mean that GoB is in some ways like the most perfect pile of shit that you have ever seen? (very large, very stinky, and all disgusting?)

Reply:

    In some ways bat guano is like a strawberry. The bats used it to remove unnecessary material from their bodies, and it can be used to nourish crops, so it is a source of life, and the reply to disturbing conclusion 1 applies. It other ways bat guano is not a good thing. Be exposed to too much of it, and you will get sick. For that matter, if you eat too many strawberries, you will get sick as well. Both strawberries and bat guano have good and bad aspects. This is leading us directly to disturbing conclusion 3. 

Disturbing Conclusion 3:

    There is good and evil in the universe.  Does this mean the GoB contains a perfect evil aspect as well as a perfect good aspect?

Reply:

    This is called dualism.  To a large degree, it is too early to ask this question, because I have not yet explained where good and evil come from.  However, this conclusion is very disturbing to some, so I will get ahead of myself.  Let us assume that good and evil do exist, and a situation where there is an evil aspect of God that loves evil, and a good aspect of God that loves good.  Love is a good thing, so the evil being is not pure evil, like the good being is pure good.  That is, the good aspect is greater than the evil aspect, because the good aspect is pure.  Because God is always greater, a situation where there are two equal and opposite powers is not possible.  It could be that there is a supernatural being of great evil that is inferior to God.  In Christianity, this being is called Satan.

    So if God is the source of everything, and God is good, where does evil come from?  The key insight is that evil is the corruption of good.  As we get further from God, the goodness weakens and becomes evil.  That is, evil is defined by what it is not (good) rather than by what it is.  It is like asking where dark comes from.  There is no source of dark.  There are only sources of light, which do not necessary reach into every corner and room.