Xeno, This is the first part of my reply below:
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote: Response in blue, below: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote: Xeno, My reply is highlighted in red below: anartaxius@...> wrote: The reason I posted the link is that it took the position that the universe came from nothing, is essentially nothing. No idea of cosmic mind. I did not mention cosmic mind. I took the position for the post that there is no such thing. The question of how things came to be seems to break down into two general scenarios. The top down scenario or the bottom up scenario. In the first the universe somehow comes into existence as the result of being formed by an intelligence. I tend to agree with this scenario. That's how Aquinas thought the universe was created. Al-Ghazali had similar ideas when he proposed the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It appears logical to me. What's wrong with their rationale? In the bottom up scenario, the universe somehow comes into being by the unfolding of a few simple autonomous rules and axioms. Both scenarios have problems. Science tends to use the second scenario, that somehow, some random fluctuation results in creation of a small number of simple relationships and everything happens automatically from there. I have problems with this rationale as mentioned earlier. The scientists who proposed these theories probably should have taken the basic philosophy courses in college, particularly logic and metaphysics. Because metaphysics cannot be investigated scientifically, metaphysical systems cannot be distinguished from one another scientifically unless they have a physical prediction. You cannot determine by experiment that, supposing there is a god, that it is named Zeus or YHWH or Melvin. So while it might be interesting for some scientist to study metaphysics, it cannot have much impact on their work unless they can translate certain metaphysical ideas into physical parallels which they can then investigate, but then they are not investigating the original idea. There is a lot of work going on now investigating how simple axioms and rules can create complex results. Science has Aristotle been attempting to zero in on basic axioms and rules. The work of mathematician Stephen Wolfram has been doing this for some 30 years or so. Scientific progress has often resulted from re-imagining basic axioms or ideas of how we think about the world. Euclid's geometry basically held the ground for some 2,500 years until some mathematicians questioned the reality of one of his basic axioms - that parallel lines never meet. Einstein used these new ways of doing math and questioned a particular axiom which resulted in the theory relativity. That axiom was that time was invariant. What Einstein did was to suppose time was not invariant. Stephen Wolfram is looking in the use of simple axioms and rules to generate complex intelligent looking structures, as well a chaos. This is an extension of the work of mathematician John Conway who created a simple computer program called the Game of Life that has had great influence on the thinking of how simple systems can create complex objects without any complex or vast intelligence behind it. The idea is the universe proceeds by something called implicate properties, properties that emerge from simple rules that are iterated billions, trillions of times, that could never be predicted just from examining the rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Game_of_Life Both metaphysics and physics employ human imagination. The difference between metaphysics and physics is, with physics the imagination is tempered by comparing it with the world, while metaphysics merrily tramples on, divorced from any rational connexion with the world. JR's Response: The main problem that I see with scientists like Hawking and Krauss is that they don't realize that matter is based on consciousness. They think that they have to measure the tiniest matter there is in the universe to prove that their work is completed in proving their theory of the universe. But their work is not complete. They have not answered the question as to why space and time exist. For matter to exist, there must be space and time. And space/time essentially requires Consciousness in order to conceive the idea of length, width, height and time. Without this consciousness, NO THING can possibly exist, and NO WHERE and NO TIME. How can a quantum fluctuation exist without space/time? The random quantum fluctuation cannot possibly create space/time on its own. If the scientists insist that it is their finding, then it's false. They are contradicting the purpose of the scientific method which is to find the truth. In the end, they would have to address the role of consciousness in the creation of the universe. However, there are other scientists who believe that they can know what happened before the Big Bang. They are doing this by making an assumption that the ending of this universe will show how a new universe will start or gets started. Roger Penrose has given a lecture of his theory of what happened before the Big Bang by using the assumption stated above. But he has not started on a scientific study to prove his theory is correct. I will respond to your other points later.
