Once upon a time, a very long time ago when I was a little boy, I had an electric train set.

My Dad built it and it was beautiful. It had scenery and a tunnel. I hope my Dad knows now that I appreciate all the effort he went to.

But there were problems. The rolling stock was very good, but expensive and there was no money for new stock. This annoyed a small boy. It fell into disuse.

Later I got another one, much more affordable and had loads of carriages and stuff.

But, there were still things that were wrong with it. Annoyingly wrong. And anyway, I began to find girls had even more interesting curves and things to play with. That trains set ended up in a box in the garage. I finally sold it on e-bay maybe thirty years later. I did not throw it away.

But the wrongs of childhood must be addressed.

So a lot later, I decided to put right those wrongs.

I built a model railway.

For the uninitiated, understand the difference.

A train set is something you buy, take out of the box, set up on a table and play with. It’s fun.

A model railway ain’t like that. You have to design it. You have to engineer it. You have to do in miniature most of the things that need to be done to build a full-size railway. But, of course, you do get a choice of countryside and scenes that you will build it in. And you have to design, engineer and build that too.

As you progress, you find there is a set of rules for your railway. How sharp the bends can be, how steep the inclines, how much clearance you will need on curves for rolling stock. And that depends whether they are short wheelbase wagons or passenger coaches.

Not to bore you with the minutiae, but there will emerge a set of rules about what can and cannot happen on your railway. The Rules of The Railway.

The Rules of The Railway cannot be broken. By anyone. Even the builder.

From time to time, a train is derailed and you have to pick it up and put it back on the tracks. Ha,ha! So much for your rules!

Appendix iv, Section 4, para 3b: “If at any time a vehicle is derailed, the builder, or authorised person, may intervene and reset the vehicle(s) on the track”.

That’s just before the bit about the cat knocking the station over.

This also applies to universes.

I’m going to quote the Bible, so please restrain your religious bigotry until I finish.

I am quoting a passage, the first seventeen words of the Gospel according to St John from the Authorised Bible, 1610. I do so, not for religious reasons, but because it is the most succinct statement of cosmology I can find: “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word WAS God”.

I have used capitals to emphasise my points.

This states that before you have the “B” of Big Bang, you have the Word – the Rules of the Railway. These are the underlying principles that will govern and control the universe.

Forget the Laws of Physics, etc. They don’t exist. If you think an asteroid is hurtling through space, busily tapping on its laptop to confirm that its trajectory obeys the laws of gravity, quantum mechanics and colour coordination for a fabulous outfit, dream on. The universe is the oldest stoner hippy in town. It just does its thing, man.

The laws of physics and the other stuff are made up by humans to help us understand what we observe. Which may or may not coincide with what is actually happening.

But everything, everything, that happens will be in accordance with the Word, The Rules of The Railway.

The passage goes on to explain that these rules are God.

An example of what is in the Rules of The Railway that is not covered in the laws we make up is Randomness.

If you have a big bang and everything splits out of nothing, a singularity, then it should expand into a featureless grey isentropic ball. The same in every direction. Really quite boring. Like watching TV.

But, if a random event forces two points in the mess closer to each other than any other points. They will “clot” together, creating an imbalance in the mess and that will lead to granularity and eventually stars and us.

But Randomness is itself random. So if it happens once, it could happen a lot, or a little, or just once. It’s random.

Back off, bigots. I ain’t done yet. What is being discussed here is so awesome, majestic and all-embracing that the tiny human mind cannot encompass it, let alone the twitching ganglion of your true bigot.

We simply cannot contemplate the universe and not end up gibbering in the corner or just spending the rest of our lives open-mouthed at the sight. So we come up with the concept of God.

This time I’m going to paraphrase the Bible. 1 Kings 19 v11-14. Elijah has an encounter with God. There  is  a windstorm that destroyed mountains, an earthquake, a fire and a still, small voice. The first three don’t work for Elijah. But, the little voice in his head made sense for him.

In an earlier passage, Exodus 33 v 20, Moses is told by God that he cannot see the face of God and live. I take that to mean that, as I said before, confronting the entirety, the majesty, the glory of the entire universe would simply blow our minds.

If you have a belief system that works for you and helps you make sense of this world, far be it from me to tell you otherwise.

For me it makes sense that The Rules of the Railway should be God. Or the other way round.